Part 21
... There was one last thing that I asked my incredibly hospitable and beautiful host before leaving to catch my bus from Delhi northbound towards the Himalayas. I don't know what prompted it, but her answer to my question happened to change the entire course of events in my life. As usual. Despite having a overbooked itinerary and only 27 numbered days to discover Rishikesh, I asked her what ashram I ought to visit in the city. She wrote the name and address on a slip of paper, which I looked at briefly before slipping into my pocket. Truthfully, I wasn't super interested, because like I said, I had already compiled my list of ashrams to stay. She did say they had daily yoga classes, which was a plus, and that it was cheap, also a plus, but I wanted... I don't know, something more? I've always trusted the locals in all my places of travel, and usually I just follow their confidence and allow myself to be guided in this way. I think some of our best lessons being abroad are found through this willingness to surrender to the greater organism of Life, and trust that if we open our heart to the world, the world will reveal herself to us in the form of a hidden path, a newly befriended stranger, or a destination that would have previously went undiscovered. The places that exist in our imagination, behind the familiar territory of rationality, appear before us as a fairytale come to life; reality is a dream come true only once we allow our ideas about the world to dissolve, so we can then see that the ideas we come up with in our heads are merely failed attempts to capture something that is infinite and beyond all thought...
Part 22
... I knew I must have looked lost but I was determined to put one foot in front of the other and trust that I would be guided in the right direction. I knew I'd have to ask for help at some point, which is another thing I love about being alone and abroad. Life is just not possible to live by ourselves, and experiencing the mutuality of existence is one of the many pleasures available to us when we give up our egoic desires to "go at it alone!" So when the Tuk-Tuk driver approached me from the shadows of the bus station to
ask if I needed a ride, I put my faith in this good human before me. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the scribbled note from my friend in Delhi and handed it to the man. He looked down at it, murmured something indiscernible, and paused. Maybe it was just for dramatic effect. Then he demanded a price as if it was already a done deal. Apparently this was the way they did business in India. I was too tired and still sick with diarrhea to argue, so I hopped in the back of what appeared to be the equivalent of a motorized lawnmower, and we set off. Rushing through crammed and dirty streets, I looked out at the passing flashes of people wearing orange and the various tea shops on the side of the road. Was it always this busy? I wondered. It must have been late as it had gotten dark hours ago and I was very exhausted. I had no desire to find a place to Charge my Phone so that I could actually end up at one of the more well known ashrams that were on 'my' plan. I just hoped that he would take me somewhere I could sleep for the night and practice in the morning. ...
Part 23
... The Tuk-tuk driver dropped me off in front of the dingy looking building somewhere in the middle of Rishikesh, right next to the great holy river known as the Mother Ganga. The chipping paint and the moss growing from all the rain made the sign out front seem less than new, but it matched the handwritten note so I figured it was where I was supposed to end up. I just hoped they had a bed to sleep in and a toilet to receive my watery bowels - I was still jet lagged after two+ days of travel, flying from Panama to India, and already had diarrhea. I was too exhausted to care that the place lacked the majesty I'd expected from a locally recommended ashrams. I paid my driver the nominal fee of 150 rupees (about 2 bucks) went in and found the inside as poorly maintained as the external. I think I was just experiencing my over-the-top Western standards about how public buildings should be kept. I'm glad I was unimpressed because the external appearance of things has a way of directly influencing our opinions about them and thus, changes the object itself and our interactions with it. If something fails to meet our preconceived expectations, we might be lucky enough to drop our guard and suddenly something really cool happens. Without the armoring of our conditioned perception, things appear as they are, which is real and perfect. My perception of the place I had stepped into was that it sucked and I was determined to leave as soon as possible, but as tired as I was, I paid for the night and collapsed onto the mat-on-a-board of a bed in my small room....
Part 24
... I awoke early and went downstairs to check the yoga schedule. The man at the front desk told me they had no classes as it was the low season. I was feeling pretty discouraged at this point by my experience so far in Rishikesh, so what could I do? Practice. Since it was still so early I couldn't get anywhere to check in somewhere else, so I just set out with my yoga mat and went searching for a clean, open expanse of grass or just some open space to practice in. The city was already waking up and people dressed in orange were marching through the streets. I had just stepped out the front door, and was already assaulted by stares from passerbys that I would quickly grow accustomed to, and walked like I knew where I was going. I didn't have an idea so I just turned left and began walking. For some reason there were (what seemed like) hundreds of people walking in the opposite direction, so I was going against the flow. This didn't help me get any less stares. I found out later it was a special holiday month that people from all over India would travel to Rishikesh for a month-long worship of their deity Shiva, called the Shiva Ratri. It was over a week before someone told me that the city wasn't usually filled with two million pilgrims wearing orange, and that this wasn't its standard chaos. I was relieved. Anyways, i was swimming up river that morning but apparently felt like I was headed in the right direction. I hadn't walked more than twenty feet and I saw a path leading out of the downstream current and up a hill, away from all the hustle and bustle. A sign hanging over the path hung like a holy broadcast. It just said "YOGA". I stepped off the street under the sign and started walking up hill....
Part 25
... The path was caged over the top and looked like some strange tunnel on the side of a hill. There were monkeys overhead, so I guess the cage must have been a good idea, but didn't stop their shit from being smeared all over the walkway. The noise and stares from the street down below fell away, so I didn't care, plus the sign out front promised "YOGA". I stepped over the crap and carried onward. It became a small climb and actually fatigued me a bit in my semi-dysenteric state, but eventually opened up to a beautiful vista with an open expanse of grass with a flower bed and a small security outpost. What! I couldn't believe my luck. The flow of the river Ganga was seen from the lawn and the smells and sounds from below were drowned by nature; birds, monkeys and the breeze in the trees was music to my ears. I approached the security guard and asked him where I'd found myself and he just pointed to a piece of paper taped to the wall. At the top it said 'Yoga Niketan Ashram' with a schedule posted underneath , starting with meditation at 5 am, which I missed, but a yoga class was starting in thirty minutes at 630 am. It wasn't one of the places I'd planned to attend and didn't appear in any of my research for quality ashrams in Rishikesh, but the unexpected beauty of my discovery of it left me enamored. When I asked if I could attend the yoga class, the security told me only residents were allowed, so I promised I would be back when the front desk opened at 8 am and promptly laid my mat down on the grass out front to practice. Afterwards I came back with my bags and checked in for the night. Even though I found what appeared to be a nicer place to land myself, I still had plans of my own and a list of places to go. Little did I know, I would end up at Yoga Niketan for longer expected....
