Greetings From Rishikesh

May 10, 2004
Rishikesh

Today (Monday May 10th) is my eleventh day in India. I got off the plane late at night on April 29th after an uneventful flight from JFK to London to Delhi. Thankfully the guesthouse that I'd made reservations with over the internet had indeed sent a driver to pick me up at the airport and I was taken to a very nice small guesthouse in a neighborhood about 30 minute's drive away from the airport. It was pouring rain when we reached the guesthouse just before midnight, and I noticed a cow standing in the street in front of the house as I got out of the taxi, authenticating my arrival in India.

 

 

That first night I woke up at 4am to the sound of Muslim prayers amplified from a nearby mosque. That first night I felt kind of disoriented, but I'd heard about the early prayers, and it again confirmed that I was really here in India.

The guesthouse in Delhi was very comfortable, run by a very engaging couple named Avnish and Urvashi (Ushi), who were helpful in getting me started with my plans to travel within the subcontinent of India. I mentioned I was into yoga and interested in India's spiritual heritage, and Avnish was kind enough to share with me a personal account of some of the steps along his own spiritual path growing up in India, quite compellingly sharing some of his encounters with holy men and saints. He also brought us to a very old Hindu temple in Delhi and showed us how to make a traditional prayer and offering. It turns out Ushi, a very attractive and interesting woman herself, is a Reiki master, and when she heard that I'd received Reiki training earlier this year she invited me to a gathering in her home over the weekend of some of her Reiki students. So I enjoyed a quite comfortable and personable first weekend in India (and I heard quite a few stories from other travelers at the guesthouse about squalid tourist accommodations they'd experienced in Delhi, and what a charming exception Avnish and Ushi's place was).

 

 

There are a myriad of details I could try to share about this trip, far too many for me to capture. During that weekend in Delhi I was able to observe from the patio balcony an Indian wedding taking place just down the street, with a large tent set up, and a brass band whose players were dressed in traditional costume. I watched the groom ride up on a white horse (and almost get thrown off the horse as the wedding party set off their firecrackers!). Early in the mornings I walked to a nearby park to witness a group of women doing yoga slowly on the grass lawn, and men walking briskly around the park for their morning exercise; a few parrots could be seen in the trees on the street.

I decided to go to Rishikesh for the first leg of my Indian journey. I bought a railway ticket Saturday for Haridwar, the train station closest to Rishikesh, and had to go get it using the special tourist quota of tickets as all the regular seats on the trains were sold out because the Indian summer holiday season has just begun and many local Indians are on vacation traveling now. I'd been warned to be on the lookout for touts (scam artists) around the railway stations, and sure enough, my auto rickshaw driver took me to a travel agent's storefront instead of the train station as requested, where I was supposed to buy a more expensive ticket for which he'd receive a commission--I ended up walking about six very active and busy blocks to the train station and through the entire New Delhi train station area before finally getting to the tourist quota window. By the way an auto rickshaw is the front half of a motor scooter with a couple of seats mounted on the back with a little roof enclosing the whole thing; they're cheaper than taxis and you find them everywhere, with sometimes over-enterprising drivers eager for a fare, and arriving at the right price usually requires a bit of haggling. You really get an experience of being out there in traffic when you ride in them, and being in Indian traffic is a pretty wild ride quite often. In fact after I finally got my ticket I received a pretty intense auto rickshaw ride back to the guest house, through a traffic jam in downtown Delhi and then via a shortcut through a pretty squalid Delhi slum. It's a good thing I'm used to living on 42nd Street around Times Square, because I can see how all the activity in a city like Delhi could really freak someone out.

 

 

I took the train on Monday morning to Haridwar, called the Shatabdi Express, a 4 1/2 hour trip north. Taking the train is a very Indian experience, with mostly local folk and some tourists on board (I've noticed a lot of visitors from Israel so far). Saw a lot of plains towns and fields rolling by out the window as we headed north. They serve you tea and a snack along the way. At Haridwar I walked to the bus station, where all the buses were standing together in a big yard, and it took asking several people (none who spoke English) which one the Rishikesh bus was. While several beggars approached me and a mother with her baby followed me around begging for rupees I eventually figured out which one was the bus for Rishikesh, where I arrived about an hour later.

 

 

Rishikesh is a beautiful little town in the Garhwal hills of Uttaranchal, the foothills leading to the Himalayan mountains. The mythical and holy Ganges river flows down through gorges between the hills, heading for the plains cities to the south. It's traditionally a jumping off point for people on pilgrimages to temples and Hindu holy sites higher up in the Himalayas, and it's also the place where the Beatles came in 1968 to meet the Maharishi (the transcendental meditation guru). There are many ashrams and two crowded little touristy areas that one reaches by walking over one of two suspension bridges over the Ganges (honestly this part of town reminds me a little bit of Waikiki from my days living in Honolulu, where everything is aimed at catering to the tourist crowd. There are myriad shops and market stalls, cafes and tourist hotels in these two areas, called Swarg Ashram and Lakshman Jula, and the narrow alleys which connect them force the foot traffic to share the thoroughfares with scooters and motorcycles, who are constantly honking and forcing pedestrians to get out of their way. There are a lot of sadhus (wandering ascetics) hanging out and importuning folks like me with "Hare Om" as they beg for alms.

 

 

I've been staying a bit away from the tourist areas in an ashram I learned about from an article in Yoga Journal. It's perched on a forested hill overlooking Rishikesh and the Ganges, and has a nice grounds with lawns and trees (and families of monkeys often passing by--the day before yesterday I returned to the ashram to do some yoga and was greeted by two dozen monkeys in the yard in front of my room, cavorting and foraging in the trees in the yard; they didn't seem to mind me being there in the slightest; but you've got to be careful around them--I was doing yoga on the porch yesterday and one of them ran up and snatched my portable clock from right next to me, and made off with it!). I was the only guest until yesterday, and am enjoying a quiet place to do yoga and meditate and come and go to town as I please. (Many of the tourist hotels I've observed are in the middle of quite a bit noisier scenes.) I've been taking many long walks around the town and along the paths that run alongside the Ganges and up the hills, taking a look at Hindu shrines and temples and lounging in cafes where I eat my meals (good food purchased very cheaply with rupees); sometimes I chat with other travelers, and have heard some interesting stories; and I have plenty of time to be alone with my thoughts. One night this week I sat up from midnight until half past three and watched from the ashram lawn the drama of a lunar eclipse in the beautiful star-filled sky while I heard the drumming and chanting of prayers from the Hindu temples on the river below. That's an evening I'll never forget.

 

 

Yesterday I took a dip in the Ganges river, "Mother Ganga." Bathing in the Ganges is supposed to wash away one's sins and bad karma; if that's the effect it has on my I'm all for it.

It's become quite warm during the day, what would be mid-July summer temperatures in New York, although thankfully it's not humid, and the evenings are quite pleasant. Further south it's even warmer, and I'm starting to think I may be spending most if not all of my trip in northern India this time around.

The next leg of my journey was to involve meeting up with D., my on-again, off-again girlfriend. She has been traveling with a female friend of hers through Gaya, Varanasi, and Agra since the beginning of the month. They've had some bad luck on their trip, getting harassed by Indian men quite a bit for being unaccompanied unmarried women while they've traveled, unfortunately. D.'s friend is going back to the states on Wednesday May 12th and we were supposed to meet in Dharamsala and travel together until June 2nd, but as of last night I have learned that she is now planning to go back to Agra after the 12th and stay there and study with an astrologer who was recommended to her by one of the filmmakers she worked with when they were making Shortcut to Nirvana, the documentary of the 2001 Kumbh Mela. She's having a powerful spiritual experience there, and feels compelled to continue exploring it. It's quite hot in Agra now (approx. 115 degrees celsius), and this experience with the astrologer seems to be "her thing," so going to continue with my plan and travel to Dharamsala today on my own. I'm kind of disappointed, as I was hoping we would deepen our relationship during this trip, but now it's not looking like that's going to happen.

 

 

But other than that, I'm really enjoying my freedom and the time here to really reflect, on life, myself, everything. And I look forward to a great experience in Dharamsala.

I hope everyone is well back home. Until next time,

Om Shanti (Peace)
Sol

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