Odessa is situated on terraced hills overlooking a small harbor on the Black Sea. Yasoda Mayi Devi Dasi's apartment is a just a short five-minute walk from the sea. There is a cold wind blowing off the bay this morning. I watch from my room window as the trees below shed their last few big, beautiful yellow leaves.
The last time I saw the Black Sea was three months ago, from the other side, when crossing the Bosporus Strait in Istanbul, on my way from Turkey to Russia, via England, earlier this year in August.
Did you know that the Black Sea got its name (Pontus Euxinus) from the Ancient Greek navigators because of its unusual dark color compared to the Mediterranean Sea? Visibility in the Black Sea is on average approximately fifteen feet (compared to up to one hundred feet in the Mediterranean). The land at the eastern end of the Black Sea, Colchis (now Georgia) marked the edge of the known world for the Greeks.
In the evening I return to Sunaina Devi Dasi's dance academy to talk about another world: a world without end — a world that is accessible only through faith...
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