Early Awakening

I slept really badly last night. I don't know why. I have my suspicions about the pickles and sauces that the grandmother next door gives me at breakfast time which I eat in the evenings. God knows what's in them! I do get some peculiar dreams...

I don't use an alarm - I judge the time by the light coming through the curtains. If I can see their outline then it's time to get up. Generally it's some time between 05:45 and 06:15 which is precise enough. The old lady brings me chaia between 06:30 and 07:00 and I have to be at SISP by 09:00 which, incidentally, is late compared with my old UK routine. Anyway, I could see the window's outline very clearly, though my body was telling me it was early - and my body was right. 04:45. Urgh! Had someone suddenly fixed the street lighting? Did the person across the road have her lights on? No! It was a full moon and perfectly clear skies, and the moon was shining incredibly brightly into my window!

When this kind of thing happens I just have to get up. If I go back to bed I will generally toss and turn until it's time to get up so I may as well be up. If somehow, miraculously, I go back to sleep, I will wake too late. But, here in this house, there's little chance of sleeping late. The lorries, cars and rickshaws find it necessary to sound their horns at the people walking (going to pray or work?), even though the vehicles must, presumably, have their lights on, and make enough noise as it is. The pedestrians are surely already well aware of their presence, unless they're sleep-walking. Don't get me wrong - there's not much traffic between 21:00 and 06:00, but a single blaring horn at 2am is very disturbing.

I decided to make an early chai. In the kitchen I found three house geckos! These little lizards are not stupid and hurry off whence they came. There are no vents in the kitchen so where had these come from? Well, two scuttled out through the vents in the hallway. The third went through the hall, through my bedroom, through the bathroom and out of the window!

It's 05:50 - time for a shower.

Addendum
20 minutes later I was up on the roof with camera, trying to spot the moon. The sun comes up really quickly here so no time to lose... but the mists had risen and people had lit their small, smelly, smokey fires. No moon to be seen!