Asia
India
Rishikesh
… A trekking adventure! Basia is feeling better but not that well, so she stayed. After driving a while uphill on a winding road, we arrived to a cave that has been used by holy (wo)men to meditate for centuries.
"The goal in Life" according to this sign is to achieve Samadhi… I'll return tomorrow to clarify the topic of different levels if enlightenment/liberation (concepts difficult to understand…)
…and talking about understanding, if I thought understanding Basia was a challenge… meet Sonu!
He is a lovely an talented Yoga instructor, who also takes care of a myriad details in the Ashram. Most of the times I have to hear a short phrase in context and think about it for some seconds before understanding! Anyway, the title of top difficulty to understand for my brain belongs to Becs, our (also lovely) kayak instructor in Antarctica. The strong Kiwi (New Zealander) accent beat my previous challenge (a strong Scottish accent).
Back yo the cave (no pox allowed… nothing to see anyway; just a dark cave) I enjoyed like 15 mins… after that I got restless (still can't hold physically a comfortable position for a long time) but that time was enough to feel calmness and a vibrating energy; I guess the practice has sensitized me a bit.
But the cave didn't look safe, so I got out and sat somewhere else
(I always follow orders :P)
This lizard wasn't paying attention to signs either!
After The Cave, we drove down to a "restaurant" to have breakfast. Since the selection of food was not very ample, I went for the omelette… more about it later…
Then it was time for The Waterfall… driving even more uphill on a narrower, unpaved road that was severely eroded by water… that OBVIOUSLY implied close encounters face-to-face with other cars
Of course we also had to walk uphill! It was a nice hike that reminded me I am still a fatass that seriously has to get back into a shape different than "round"
The massage under the waterfall was lovely… but then, we had I descend all that we ascended
(It was not that much; I'm just being melodramatic! ;) The most important thing was to avoid spraining my ankles, so I constantly had to stop thinking g about awesome ideas and focus on the next step!
Meanwhile, it was obvious that the omelette was a Trojan Horse that sneaked into my body an invading army… the battle was fierce and a couple of times I thought my defenses were being defeated… but We prevailed! There were skirmishes during the rest of the day but the souls of the "evil bacteria" slowly and intermittently abandoned my body in a series of rumbling winds… ;)
We returned just after noon; Basia was now up for our next adventure, that proved to be much more interesting than the previous one…
We walked South for about an hour to reach the abandoned Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi Ashram (a.k.a. "Beatles Ashram"). It is on the borderline of the jungle, in what is now a protected area. It is left to decay, since "the political powers" do not let anyone take care of it due to old, strong differences with the Mahareshi… basically, left to die due to dirty politics.
In this Ashram The Beatles composed The White Album (the title song is my favorite one from that period). Not only the album represented yet another jump into new horizons for the band; it was also a time when all fabulous 4 started diverging in their musical, spiritual and philosophical styles.
Below are pictures taken inside the huge complex. I was impressed by 4 things: 1) how big is the complex; 2) how destroyed it is; 3) the acoustics inside the conical stone huts; 4) some of the graffiti art, mostly one room in one of the main buildings as the famous "Beatles Cathedral". Take a look below ;)
Then Basia and I left the rest of the troupe that went to a ceremony by Ganga, and walked straight back
Poor little Basunia was again feeling really bad…
(the sign above is about the benefits of colonic cleansing… jajaja!)
Strong winds, dust and a gloomy sky warned us we might not arrive before being drenched, so we walked as fast as we could but doing some stops… after we got out of one store, we found the floor soaked; we just missed the rain because there was none more :)
We had dinner at 9 and went to sleep and had 9 dreams…
No comments:
Post a Comment