MEET PAPU SAI
Papu is as at home chopping vegetable as chopping trees or dancing on red hot coals during a fire dance.
 
His main job though, for the last four years is as the ashram’s chief cook and kitchen manager. I think he is actually a gourmet magician specializing in supernatural food conjuring. As a recent visitor and PhD food sociologist Estelle Fourat beautifully put it, he creates "food that has the right combination of nutrients through delicious ingredients to please the palate, at the same time to nourish body and soul.”

By carefully ensuring all ingredients are fresh and organic, and prepared to perfection, he is one of the people most responsible for the overall health and happiness of everyone here.
 
He creates his nutritious menus in accordance with the principles of a pure sattvic vegetarian diet. A diet regimen that places emphasis on seasonal foods such as fruits, dairy products, nuts, seeds, oils, ripe vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and non-meat based proteins. He prepares each meal with local ingredients from environmentally sustainable sources.
 
However, I think the he has a two secret ingredients that makes the food he conjures incomparable. In addition to fresh organic local food, he adds a large measure of joy. You can see it in his eyes and smile as he stands before us and watches us at every meal, making sure we are absolutely, completely, and totally satisfied with both the quantity and quality.
 
Papu, you have made me feel at home.
… and I think the other major secret ingredient you add is love, Thanks.

Splendidly and unabashedly hirsute, mustachioed, bristly, brushy, furry, rough, shaggy, silky, unshorn, woolly, bearded, bewhiskered, unshaven, lanate, stubbly, downy, fluffy, fuzzy, lanate, and down right pilous, piliferous and pileous.

In Rajasthan facial hair is an art form. 
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PHOTO CREDIT:@ Shreejan Sita 2016 - Shree, the Director of Yoga Programs here at the ashram, got this terrific shot while on our trip to the tree farm in Rampura. I only wish I could take wildlife photos like this! 

New Year 2017 dawned for me in a spectacularly splendid fashion.
 
Some days you can hike for days … and days … and days, and find no great opportunities for photographing wildlife. Other days you go out, have an unbelievably perfect, astonishingly awesome opportunity, and miss the exposure, blur the shot, have your battery die or a CF card fill, or somehow stupidly miss a perfectly wonderful chance at capturing a remarkable image.
 
Other times, like New Years week, I just couldn’t miss – and they were all species that I had seen before but were unable to get really nice images. All were on my “wish list” for images I’d like to get before I leave country. It was as though Rajasthan was feeling benevolent, heard my request, and decided to grace me by granting my wish. Thank you Rajasthan, I couldn’t have asked for more.
 
Copies of all of my images will stay with the ashram to be used in their educational programs in their exemplary ongoing efforts to reconnect people to nature. It is in the mission statement of the ashram, written by Jasnath 500 years ago, that all of Humanity will have an abiding connection with the natural world.

NEW YEARS DAY, 2017
 
The only thing cuter than 2 Rajasthai kids is 4 Rajasthani Kids.
 
As I was walking around the Bitari Farm near Palodi on New Years day a couple of boys came running up to me and dragged me over to the goat shed to show me the cutest little kids. We all laughed as the baby goats were a real pain in the udder as they pushed, shoved, and excitedly jockeyed for position for their morning breakfast.
 
Crisp cold air, hot warm milk, excitement and laughter, and boundless energy.  The young ones, both humans and goat kids, were so in the moment; vibrantly alive, acutely attuned to the world, and so open to the gifts this particular day had to offer. It is a lesson worth learning. Both excelled at the joy of just being. It was as though these things were all that mattered. - They were right.
 
I love this place it never ceases to amuse and amaze me … and teach me.
 

NEW YEARS DAY, 2017

This post is simple, short, and totally relatable, especially for those of you that have done some serious cold weather camping or live in a home where dishes are done in an outdoor courtyard.
 
No one, I mean no one, really enjoys doing dishes outside in the cold, whether it be in a courtyard or campsite. She quickly did her task with great efficiency and not a word of complaint.  I think she drew the short straw since the rest of us were inside busy making sogra or chopping veggies next to a crackling fire.

Once she was done with her chilly task she came back inside, snuggled up to the fire and warmed her hands and feet. Once her frozen extremities regained feeling and her hands started working again, she cradled a cup of chai and sipped it slowly to warm her chilled inner being.

1 JAN 2017
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My New Years morning was spent at a farm near Phalodi about, two hours drive northwest of the Ashram. There I sat on a rug, on a concrete floor, helping the women make lunch ... and enjoyed every minute of it.
 
Do to my limited Rajasthani cooking skills, I was relegated to the “peeling garlic and shucking peas duty” which I believe I truly excelled at. The best part of the morning though, was watching one of these women prepare sogra and then expertly cooking it over a wood and dung fire. Such perfect delicious food coming from humble surroundings. Rajasthan never disappoints me.
 
The story of our lunch time sogra began the day before on New Years Eve. When Guruji and I got there the women were in the courtyard of the house carefully cleaning the millet of any little stone or stick that had found its way into the bag of seed before the they ground it into flour.
 
I met this ground flour again the next morning on New Years Day. I wandered into the kitchen and found the women all gathered in there busy tending pots and cutting up vegetables for a nice subje of some delicious sort, and cooking  sogra.
 
There was such an elegant poetry in watching practiced hands expertly rolling the dough into a ball, adding just the right amount of flour or water to get the proper consistency, then expertly flattening, and patting it into, what we, in southwest United States and Mexico, would call a thin tortilla.
 
This thin flatbread was placed in a flat pan, above the open fire and allowed to cook. The woman’s hands continued their dance of grace and beauty, as the flatbread was cared for and tended to. The bread was flipped several times then, when cooked to perfection, it was exposed to the flames of the fire for a final mild roasting or toasting to bring out every gram of flavor. The ashes were blown off and the sogra was ready for our meal
 
The ingredients were simple; millet flour, water, a little salt, and sometimes a little ghee, but the result of the work by these amazing woman in a simple kitchen, was a delicious, nutritious, thick, crunchy millet flat bread that I enjoyed with my meal on New Years day in Rajasthan, half way around the world from home.

They made it feel like home here too.