Vacation Update

Last week we returned from our trip to Southern California. We flew into San Diego where our friend Lokojit gave us a wonderful tour of the town. I just have to say-- I love the environment and vibe of California. I might in fact be a California girl. Shh, don't tell my Texan friends. We went to the San Diego zoo, visited Old Town and hung out with our friend at Seaport Village.

 My friend, Rabindra is a rock artist and spends most of his day balancing rocks for large crowds of tourists and visitors. I have never seen rock balancing art live before so I enjoyed watching this process from beginning til end. It was nice to see people clamoring around these amazing artists all over Seaport Village, it's nice to know that some performance arts are still very much alive and well in certain parts of the world. I wish I'd taken more photos; alas, I was worried to death about appearing like a dumb tourist although it was the truth.

The San Diego zoo is world renowned for it's high standards and variety of animals- they even have pandas- but the zoo's most interesting feature was the zip line tram 'Skyfari'. You get a birds-eye view of the entire property, lovely historical attractions nearby and you have a quick escape from the zoo once your legs are too worn-out from walking all damned day. It was a nice adventure but next time I'll bring more sunscreen and an extra pair of legs. 

We hit up Los Angeles Ratha Yatra this year and it was, surprisingly, not as huge as I imagined it to be. I heard from devotees that this year's Rath parade was not as big but there were still many visitors at the festival grounds itself. I mean, a sea of people washed up on the beach, I have never seen that many people at a Hare Krishna event before. The parade was amazing, there were great mrdanga players and kirtan leaders keeping the crowd of devotees dancing enthusiastically, except for me. I was too busy recording and photographing the event because who knows when I'll be able to see this group of talented devotees again.

We went to Universal Studios and I wish I had never done that, Sea World, Mexico and maybe even Disneyland/world would have been better. In the words of my neighbor, "Tourist trap"