The Festivities Schedule

Sun peaking out.........

One of the three kitchens of our one family


One of the two buildings in our compound and Mt. Kanchanjunga (the 3rd highest peak in the world) peeking out from the clouds


Dear Wedding Attendees---->

How one could try to schedule fun I have no idea but we are certainly going to give it a try. We have at last secured our venue and all your hotel rooms just next door so you really can stumble back into bed from total saturation of fun, dancing, meditation, or jet lag!

There are going to be two major events happening at the same time. One is the wedding (very major) and the other is the Basantika Durga Puja. Ma Basantika Durga is the goddess of love and compassion. Ma Durga has two 10-day festivals in the year one in the spring to celebrate love and compassion placed at the start of the growing season and the second in the fall to celebrate the killing of all passions placed at theharvest time.

Our days during the wedding mela (festival) will stagger with the Durga puja and the wedding festival. In-between things we will organize outings into the amazing landscape of the Sikkim Himalaya's, beautiful flora and fauna, and amazing living Buddhist heritage culture. Our celebrations will have lots of local people attending too of various sub-cultures of this region: Sikkimese, Tibetan, Nepali, Keralite, Bengali, and more! Not to mention our house now hosts about 12 foreign people from five different countries. It is really a rainbow friends house!

We are VERY much looking forward to all of you attending. In India guests are next to God, so get ready to be pampered and taken totally out of your known element. Here is the sketch of our schedule:

March 17: Krishna, Amber, and Karyna Arrive (Also Naga and Tati)

March 21: Mom and Dad Picco Arrive and Johnny and Melissa Picco

March 22: (Gwen and Sukriti Ma arrive) Evening Dinner to Start the Mela

March 23: (Duchyll, Earl, Cat, Dan, Kaveri Amma, and Erika arrive) . Evening dinner in honor of Nila Ma's birthday

March 24: The start of the Durga Puja. Afternoon-Evening is the Mehendi Party (painting ladies with Henna)

March 25: Daytime Durga Puja. Nightime is the Grand Wedding Puja (ceremony). Probabaly goes all night

March 26: Daytime--big Durga Puja. Nightime- The bride and groom separate and the ladies party together and the men party together. The bride and groom must not meet.

March 27: Daytime-- Daytime- The groom begs are the bride's door and is fed a special rice pudding). Evening---BIG PARTY with lots of local friends!

March 28: for those still standing, is the BIG Durga Puja completion


.....so for real, take melatonin and rest up because you all are going to have to will your jet lag away! check out the invitation attached at the bottom, and do write with questions. more soon

four winds
Kurukulla aka Yoli

Holy Holi!!

Our local protector detiy

Vimalanath and Oliver red-faced

Max and Dave doing India!!!




Saturday, March 3 all of us here in the house celebrated Holi, the yearly festival of colors and for us the celebration of the birthday of Sri Chaitanya, the founder of the Vaishnava lineages (Hari Krishna's for those who know that one). In the house we prepared for a short ceremony, offerings, and meditations, and then went to play colors!

What does that mean? you take different colored powders and throw them on each other! FUN! We decided to keep it red and herbal but we certainly had some fun.

Look out!

Ma giving Matsendranath Holi head blessings

Our Invite

my arrival

there is always this point upon exiting the airport where india hits you. its the smell of delhi: burnt this-and-that, pollution, people, spices, random food, and garbage all mixed into one. i love it. smell is that thing that the mind associats with memories and somehow this funny smell of delhi always fills me with a sense of fullness, gratitude and adventure. india never lets me down.

this was my first time flying on a direct flight to india, what an invention!. fifteen and a half hours on a plane is a feat in itself, but it was so worth the effort. to not have to do a layover in europe somewhere is a real blessing. they didn't kill us with quality of food this time, although the days of free liquor on international flights is over--at least the american carriers. these days you gotta sneak your own!

on the plane i kept seeing these particular people on the plane, the looked familiar but were not sitting togehter. with a fifteen hour plane daze it didn't hit me until I was exiting the plance in New Delhi and say a sign saying : OZOMATLI. no wonder!

maybe it was the travel fatigue bit i gave the guys of ozomatli a big shout out. there were comming to india to play music annd travel. maybe they could make it to the wedding?

People in Our Family

Here are some folks that are at our house......

Babaji and the Ma (s)


Mrinmoyee Ma and Vimalanath




Some brothers: Vajragarba Nath, Nagabodhi Nath, Bairav Nath, and Babu




Uma Ma , Nila Ma, and Sukriti Ma



The photo above is the Babaji in action. We love fire......





So this is me and the young prince Humkara Nath. that is what i started calling him recently. we met on the first day of college, he had a big red afro that i thought was deadly cute. he was the hot guy who lived off campus, drove a motorcycle, and worked at a bar in the nighttime. rolling dice was fun.....
he is a builder and designer. check out his website at:

http://humkara.googlepages.com/greengroup

Hello Friends

Waterfalls of Sikkim
This is our house from the cable car
The houses from the cable car, apartment building and big house
The Man--Guru Rinpoche
Mt. Kanchanjunga, the third highest peak in the world
Blue sky, yaks, and mountains---that's sikkim
Map of Sikkim: an international region nestled between India, Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet
Green Sikkim

so i wanted to get something up before I leave just to get your pallets wet with a little taste of the fun in store on this installment trip to India and the tribal northeast region. the occasion this time? my wedding!!! at last the young prince humkara and i will wed. it has only taken ten years to get our acts together.

so more to follow about sikkim, the unique cultural heritage and fun and adventures with our Mad Father!

four winds
kurukulla aka yoli