Part SIXTEEN....
... It was the middle of July 2016, I was still loving it in Panama, and my e-tourist visa was approved for a thirty day visit to India. I purchased another one way ticket, only this time I decided I would fly to the Northern part of the country. When I first made the decision to go, before all the stumbling blocks, I arranged to fly in to the South so that I could accept the aid of my friend Nidhi. With only
thirty days I instead planned to beeline my way to Rishikesh in the north, an ancient city at the base of the Himalayan foothills known for its roots in classical yoga. I think I actually read somewhere on the internet that it was known as the yoga capital of the world so of course I had to go. Wasn't I after authentic yoga? Surely it had to be there. I pictured some stereotypical Indian guru in a Himalayan cave with a beard and a robe and me sitting on a cushion before him. I am being somewhat serious. So I ended up taking a bus from the mountains to Panama City where I would fly out and make the two day journey through three airports to make it to the sacred land known as Mother India. A land of magic and Mystics, spirituality and worship, the occult and orient, and many many stinky cows....
Part SEVENTEEN.
.... Before my trip to India, I was bombarded with messages of warning and caution from friends and family. I was told to be careful . I felt loved and supported but also had this strange suspicion that no one really knew what they were talking about. Maybe I just appear to lack intelligence or common sense... It certainly might have looked that way if anyone was following my journey up until that point! Panama to India, what a wise decision... Then when my good friend sent me the six message of caution I actually responded to him, asking what I needed to worry about. He basically said it would be easy to get lost and find myself taken advantage of. Okay, pretty basic. Then when he found out I was flying into New Delhi in the north, he asked me to get in touch with a personal friend of his who happened to live there. Okay, cool. The Universe continued to support me its mysterious ways. I connected with his friend who graciously offered to host me for a few days as I got over jet lag and integrated myself into the Indian experience. Let me tell you, New Delhi is chaos. Cows walking in traffic, bicyclists pedaling towards you on the wrong side of the freeway towing a wide cartload of mangos, and people freely urinating on the sidewalk chaos. The sights the smells the land itself... Wow! This was something. It was a literally an assault to my senses after my quiet mountain village in Panama. Within two days I had already achieved the easy feat of acquiring diarrhea aka 'Dehi belly'. Since I flew in on Friday afternoon, I decided to stay the weekend with my host so I could contact the local embassy on Monday to see about extended my visa. It worked out as I was incredibly jet lagged and on the toilet every twenty minutes. Monday rolled around and I finally connect over landline with the embassy. After some difficulty I get someone on the line to help, explaining my 30 day e-tourist visa and hoping to apply or extend for a longer visit. Access not granted. With only 27 days left on my calendar I figure I make it as quickly as possible to Rishikesh as my final destination and use all of my time there on the quest for real yoga. Whatever that means....
Part EIGHTEEN
... I got the next bus out, northbound from New Delhi . I'd been in India for only three days and already had butt-pissed diarrhea probably thirty times. The embassy wouldn't let me stay in the country longer than my visa would allow (27 more days at that point), and I risked detainment and arrest if I overstayed my welcome. I didn't really care much about that because I was already in - but I didn't want to find myself permanently banned from the country, which was a possibility. Apparently, tourism wasn't their industry, as I also discovered at the bus station in my attempt to find the right bus. I started developing all sorts of schemes in my head about how I was going to stay in the country, or hop over to Nepal to renew my visa somehow and return, because I wanted to take my time exploring this smelly, chaotic but mystical and beautiful land. Even six months didn't seem long enough. How long would be I away from home for? Who knew at that point - I was on the other side of the globe with just a whispering wish in my heart burning a hole in my chest. As the bus bumped along towards the Himalayas, my stomach gurgled, my
head complained, but my heart sang. I was in the land of the real yogis practicing real yoga, having physically extricated myself from what I saw as a lost-in-translation version of truth. Using the telephone game, our Western world had turned what was once a way of life into exercise in a heated room, and I no longer wanted to contribute to this dilution. What was the true Spirit of Yoga? I had faith that my bus was headed to the heart of the matter - Rishikesh, the so-called yoga capital of the world....
Part NINETEEN
... I arrived to Rishikesh under the light of the full moon. It was an auspicious day for this pilgrimage that I appeared to be on, as it was also the Guru Purinma. Indians celebrate this special holiday by honoring all teachers - past, present, and future, but more importantly by recognizing the inner light that is our true Guru. Our North Star. Every human being has within them this amazing discerning faculty to ultimately determine what is right and what is wrong. All we must do is pay attention to the feeling in our heart, and trust that we 'know'. The difficult part is having the courage to act, as the thinking mind will easily sway us from what is right and true in favor of what is easy or fun. Its job is to ensure that life remains comfortable, but if everyone always did what was comfortable and familiar, the beauty of our creative abilities would lie under cover of our survival instinct. Being creative is being brave and having courage. We use the gift of our spiritual inheritance, which is this light that guides us, to step out and into something new. We do this often enough and we inspire ourselves. Through our own inspiration, the world appears as it is - beautiful, perfect. And all we want to do is contribute to its beauty in our own creative manner. We have feet to dance, a mouth to sing, and hands to illustrate. Our bodies are representations of creation and creative ability flows through us. It's only when we open our hearts to sing our song and not somebody else's that we begin to experience this ultimate joy. It is our birthright. We are born perfect and we forget our own perfection. Enlightenment isn't something we attain. It's something to remember. So I stepped off the bus into unfamiliar territory, my body shivering from the stomach cramps, and realized my phone listing all the places I planned to stay, had died....
Part TWENTY
.... It was late at night when I stepped off the bus into this unfamiliar place of Rishikesh, and I was feeling lost. I was comforted immensely by the glow of the full moon as I looked up and she smiled down upon me. My phone was dead, so that meant at least a temporary death to my plans. The addresses of the destinations I had planned ahead of time was locked inside a device that needed a wall socket to power up. See, when I first arrived jet lagged to India, I would wake up at 2 in the morning and ponder my journey ahead. I knew that making it to Rishikesh was a priority, for the ancient city contained many of the established ashrams of notable yogic lineage in all of India. An ashram was essentially a place of residence for spiritual aspirants, and are built around the truths and principles discovered by incredible scholars of the ageless science and technology of yoga. Amidst the darkness of night, awaiting the sun to climb his way into the morning, I would be searching the Internet on my phone for what (I thought) would be the best ashrams to visit. I paid attention to the lineage itself - who was the yogi who founded the ashram? Had he 'achieved' anything of 'worth'? Where would I find my so-called guru? The One who would bring light into darkness? (Gu means light, Ru means dark). I had faith that answers to these questions could be found once I arrived to the sacred city, and compiled a list on my phone's notepad of the most qualified locations to spend time at. My plan emerged as if created by a kid on a shopping spree in a toy store - excitedly throwing into the shopping cart everything of interest. Only this plan become obsolete when I stepped off the bus late that night, and I just needed to find a place to stay. ....
