Running around

The thing you most want to hold on tightly to, when you're in India, is the ability to let things go. I arrived at "my" ashram, all ready and set to sign on as part of the staff, only to be told: "but we thought you were only coming in June!" Turns out there was a course going on, which they forgot to tell me about when I last called (in March) to tell them I was coming (in May) - with the result that there was no room for me. "Go away and come back next month" - they told me, only in a nice way.

After the initial disappointment, I packed back up and took a taxi to Rishikesh. We've been to Rishikesh before, the Mecca of Yoga, where the late George Harrison found his Maharishi, where men dress up like big orange monkeys for the benefit of the tourists (and their pocket change), and where I found another ashram that promised two daily sessions of yoga, and two more of meditation. Turns out that Rishikesh is very, VERY hot in May. I tried to tough it out for a week, but finally gave up - lying sweating in my bed at night was something I could do back during the Yoga Teacher's Training Course in Kerala, when I had lots of interesting things to do and people to see (or vice versa) - but I wasn't really in the mood for it this time.

So I hopped a jeep for Gangotri.

Gangotri is considered one of the four sources of the sacred river Ganges (Mata Ganga to us Hindus), and as such is one of the four pilgrimage sites during high season, when all the devout Hindus want to fill up plastic bottles with holy water to take home and bless themselves with. Guess when high season is? Yup! The merry month of May. The reason for this is that, just like the other three holy sites, Gangotri is high up in the Himalayas, where the snow likes to stick around until way into April - so before May it's physically impossible to climb up the narrow winding road (you might remember a few of us tried last April, and had to turn back, losing part of the road along the way, where it washed out just after we passed over it). Somewhere around mid-June, the monsoon starts, and then you can wash away off the montain-side if you're not careful. So May is the time, and the place was crawling with pilgrims (Indian) and trekkers (foreign).

The reason for the trekkers is that the REAL source of the Ganges (or one quarter thereof) is a glacier, which used to be in Gangotri, but has receded about eighteen kilometers (probably due to global warming), to a place call Gomukh (which, literally translated, means "cow's mouth", because that's what it supposedly looks like) - and the only way you can get there is to walk (I didn't).

Gangotri is not much more than a few hotels and ashrams (on one side of the bridge) and a few hotels and shops (on the other side). The hotels and shops are doing great business now, and the only place I could find to stay was a little room with a great view and no electricity (I'm not sure about the electricity in any of the other hotels, either). I hadn't really planned on getting here, so I left my shoes and warm clothes at the ashram - which meant that the cold weather forced me to get on the first bus back to Uttar Kashi the next morning. But the trip was worth it - the mountains, trees and waterfalls along the way are enough to take your breath away. You get a sense of exhilaration just going up the road, coming closer and closer to the snow-capped peaks, and watching the streams that pour into the Ganges from aaaaaaaaaallllllllllllll the way up there.

Tired of running around, I checked into Hotel Ganga Putra, which is a ten-minute walk away from "my" ashram, and arrived at an arrangement with them that I would come in just for the yoga classes until my "slot" was available for me to come and stay. The arrangement has it's advantages - a private room (which I couldn't even dream about at the ashram), with a huge picture window opposite the green mountain across the river, and a BIG water heater all my very own, so I can have lllllloooooooonnnnnnnnnngggggggggg hot showers - and it's disadvantages (I have to pay for it all).

The river rushes endlessly by, and you can hear it no matter where you are - in the room, on the road, and in the yoga classes. When I was here last April, it was still relatively dry and you could walk across it at certain points, but it's getting constantly bigger and fuller now. Today the yoga instructor had to speak extra loud, so that we could hear her over the river's roar. I expect it will get even more so after the monsoon hits us. I've spent a sum total of more than ten months in India so far, but I haven't seen the monsoon yet (unless you count the tail end of last October in Kerala, when my glasses kept fogging up and I couldn't see where I was going), and I'm especially looking forward to watching the Ganges grow when it happens here.

So, it's a mixture between letting go - enjoying the advantages of my current situation - and occasional let-downs, when I feel lonely and frustrated. Either way, in a couple of weeks, this unexpected chapter will be over, and then we will be on our way towards more unexpected adventures, the only difference being that the unexpected will be expected (does that make any sense?)

India - Round Three

Just in case you thought this saga was over - no, it's not.

Our story begins with (yet another) strike in the holy land of Israel. After a few weeks of visiting family in Israel, my plane was scheduled to take off for (the holy land of) India on Wednesday, April 30th. Being a Royal Jordanian flight, I was scheduled to make a transit stop at Amman, Jordan. Wouldn't you know it, but on Monday, April 28th, the high holy priest of the Histadrut declared that he was going to call a strike and bring the whole country to a stand-still on - you guessed it - Wednesday. Sparing you the upset stomach and worry and finger-nail-biting - at 12:30 noontime on Wednesday, I got a call from Royal Jordanian, telling me to be at the (totally empty and not-functioning) airport at 2 PM - we were going to take a bus to Amman!

So I ended up with a free tour of eastern Jordan, and I got to see what the Allenby border-crossing point looks like, too. After that, the plane trip to Delhi seemed quite common and mundane. The only diversion was the group of noisy young Israelis sitting close-by (who were evidently on their way to the traditional Israeli-Indian Experience of drugs, dope and dancing - did you know that the Indian inhabitants of Goa hate Israel and Israelis because of this?), passing a huge whiskey bottle between them, laughing and comparing hotel rates with and without TV's. There are very many and different Indias, it seems, and they are worlds apart, even though they are geographically in the same country. The only time I see a TV in India is in Delhi, on my way in or out of the country. Most of the cities I visit have a law prohibiting sale of alcohol, and the really big mind-trip in all of them is meditation, which you do without the benefit of drugs.

We landed in Delhi at 5 AM as scheduled, and my friend, who was supposed to meet me at the airport, wasn't there (reminding me, yet again, that this is India). We had agreed before, by e-mail, that he would meet me at the airport and take me to a hotel to stay one night, and then help me get a train to Rishikesh on my way to the ashram at Uttar Kashi, which was my real destination. (By the way, just to keep the suspense from getting any higher - I am now writing you from the ashram, so now you know I got there and everything is OK.) He had overslept and arrived a little later.

Now for the next part, it would help if you would bear in mind that you are dealing here with a person who never was exceptionally sane to begin with, and it's been downhill for the past few years. We had some tea and we did get as far as the hotel that he booked for me, but at that point I had already decided that I couldn't wait any longer to get where I was going, so I stayed in the car while he went in to cancel the room at the hotel.

And then we drove - all the 400 kilometers and 12 hours to Uttar Kashi.

Most of the time I slept in the back, while he talked in the front with his cousin who came along for the ride. The heat in Delhi was unbearable, but as we progressed farther north, and more importantly, closer to the Himalayas, the weather got cooler, and we could see that it had rained.

The rain also explained the landslides that stopped us. We stopped in Rishikesh for lunch, and then moved on, only to be stopped a few hours farther by a road-block where part of the mountain decided that life would be better further down. The cars stood in a line and waited for the mountain to stop moving. Actually, it was a little land-slide - more rocks and dust than mud. At some point, it more or less calmed down, a few trucks decided that it was time to move, and we moved behind them. The paved(?) road had miraculously turned into a gravel path, and when we finished bumping along it - we hit the cows. No, we didn't literally hit them, but the long, long line of them must have stretched out over several kilometers. Now, you must remember that the roads anywhere in India, but especially in the mountains, are barely wide enough for one car, and in this case, they have slopes on either side, going either up or down, but either way - steep. So we became intimately acquainted with the cattle, their backsides and their keepers. Welcome to India.

After 12 hours, we finally reached Uttar Kashi - almost. There was another landslide just before the town, and this one was big and serious enough that we couldn't pass it. So my friend dropped me off at a hotel that was conveniently located just before the landslide, and set off to drive the whole 400 kilometers back to Delhi. Don't ask me why he considered it unnecessary to rest before he did that, it's beyond me.

The next morning (today), the road into town was still closed. I think I was the only guest at this particular hotel (how many loonies are there, after all...). After hearing where I wanted to go, the guy at the reception offered to take me on his motor-bike. So I mounted my backpack on my back, and we piled up onto his bike. Less than 100 meters out on the road I fell off, when the mud from some road-works made the bike tilt to one side, and the weight of my backpack took me with it. I've been on motorbikes before, as you may know, but it seems that the rules of balance are different when your back weighs more than the rest of you. After that, I got the hang of it, and - excepting a gravelly part where we agreed it would be better for all concerned if I got off and walked a few meters - the rest of the ride was fine.

Now, this is the exceptional thing: when we got there, I asked him what the bill was - for the hotel stay, the room service, and the ride altogether. He said 430 rupees, and I pulled out a 500 bill, fully prepared to give him the lot in return for being so helpful. He said he had no change. Those of you who have been in India know full well that this is the standard line for people who want to get as much as possible, and expect us foreigners to say, as I did, "That's all right, you can keep the change". But not this guy. He wouldn't let it go, and suggested we ask the other people at the ashram if they had change. In the end we did find the change, and he went on his way.

So here I am at the ashram. Rather, right now I am in Uttar Kashi town, which is 8 kilometers from the ashram, because there is no internet at the ashram, and I wanted to let you know that all is well on this never-ending saga. At the moment there are no phones at the ashram either, and it turns out that - even though I did take my cellphone with me this time - there is no reception here either. Probably because we are on the banks of the river Ganges (Mother Ganges to us Hindus), and the great Himalayas go straight up on either side of the river, blocking off any radio-waves. Did you know that Uttar Kashi is home to the Nehru School for Mountain-Climbing? According to the Lonely Planet guide-book, the first woman to climb the Everest studied here.