About Rishikesh
Trip Start
Oct 09, 2007
1
38
45
Trip End
Mar 10, 2008
Rishikesh,
Uttarakhand,
India
Sunday, March 1, 2009
The Ganga gives and sustains life for billions of Indians as she courses eastward for 1500 miles to the Bay of Bengal. Here in Rishikesh, closer to her mountain source, her waters are a lovely green and they are pure (pure being relative in India, when people empty so much garbage into her). She is held sacred by Hindus, with good reason, and has mystical powers to which I can personally attest.
I have been longing to come to the Ganga and put my feet in her every day for 14 years. While in Kolkata she is far too polluted to consider that; here she is welcoming and clean enough to actually do it.
With its hodgepodge of large and small, new and old ashrams, temples, mostly dingy looking hotels, and vendor stall footpaths crowded with hippy backpacker type tourists from all over the world, cows (and cow pies), thousands of mendicant sadhus (Hindu monks in orange robes), other beggars, and roaring motorcycles recklessly blasting their way through the crowds, Rishikesh town sits along the quickly rising banks of the hillsides above the Ganga's alternately sandy and boulder strewn beaches and cliffs. In the busiest areas of town, large steps (ghats) lead to the Ganges.
This is a city in love and at play with Mother Ganga. Old and poor women sit at the ghats, selling tiny leaf bowl arrangements of flowers, incense and burning camphor lamps to offer into the Ganga with your prayers. Young and old come and bow, stand in her, reverently dipping their cupped hands into her waters, then raising them with fingertips pointed downward, pouring the water back to her. Then they splash their heads with what remains of her sacred waters on their fingertips. Boys and men regularly take playful and prayerful, gasping and shivering dips in her cold waters. Women do as well, but fully clothed and much more tentatively than the men and boys.
The sadhus live everywhere on her banks, in little huts, in tents, among the rocks, sleeping on steps of the ghats. Cows are everywhere, on the footpaths, lounging and foraging the beaches. Stray dogs, a few mules, are often in the mix, while monkeys stay closer to the path, on rooftops, in trees, sitting on fences, or clinging to the bridge railing. The brown monkeys are aggressive. One attempting to grab my bag the other day. When the woman I was sitting with tried to loudly shoo it away, the monkey lunged at her just short of attack mode. We promptly moved. (These animals can really fight if they want to!) Yesterday, another one actually did grab it, but I managed to keep a strong hold and it retreated. The larger, grey monkeys are harmless.
Two foot bridges at opposite ends of town allow pedestrians to cross the river between the major commercial-and-ashram districts of the town. You can also take a boat across and avoid the crowds. Crossing the footbridges is an adventure as motorcycles, bicycles, and old men pulling very heavy loads in carts make their way between crowds of pedestrians, beggars and hawkers. Pathetic looking old women and crippled men sit with their backs against the wire fence, shaking their bowls, appealing to you for donations. Young boys are clamoring for you to buy a small bowl of grey chapati balls to throw over the fence and feed the fish below. For the first time yesterday I stopped and looked down where they were tossing these balls, and was astounded to see a gathering of phenomenally huge fish below (see photos).
Mother Ganga's sands are more dazzling than you can imagine. While most beaches glisten and reflect light in the sun, the Ganga's sand flashes with such brilliant, intensely white and fiery light that you feel you are walking in sand littered with shaved diamonds. It is as if all the soul light, the infinite light and pure life force, of all the eons of Himalayan masters who have bathed in the Ganga and prayed beside her in the mountains have permeated her very sands.
In 1994, toward the end of my time in Kolkata, my taxi driver had insisted that I had to go to the Ganga when I was in an utterly ugly, snarly and toxic state. He refused to take me back to my hotel as I had insisted that he do. Instead, he drove me to Ramakrishna's Ashram, told me we wouldn't leave until I went to go the ghat (steps to the river), and stood at least ankle deep in the Ganga for 2 or 3 minutes. I begrudgingly did as I was told without the least expectation of any spiritual experience. Standing in the water, it felt as if I was standing in champagne, bubbly, soothing, refreshing.... It was very pleasant, nothing more. But when I stepped out of the river, I was completely ecstatic. Every cell of my body was literally singing with joy, so much that I skipped and sang my way back to the taxi to thank the driver (when only five minutes before I wanted to knock him in the head).
So I know that the powers of Mother Ganga are real. This time, I also come without expectations for a "spiritual experience" because I know that kind of grace is not repeatable in any way. But I do know her powers are real, and she stirs deep, nameless emotions in me. On my way here, when I first saw her in Haridwar at night as I was crossing in an autorickshaw, I broke into tears without having the faintest idea why.
So I come with a prayer to her. Sitting beside her, I am filled with deep, deep peace...with quiet joy ... More and more, I am experiencing her energy as I lose myself in her placid and gently swirling currents, and in her shimmering, effervescent and mystifying, pulsing rivulets. Watching her unconstrained, happy leaping over rocks, delighting in her little silver leaping from her waters' edges at sunset, I think I understand why so many Indians, even when they are very poor, are happy. They have her as a model, a physical embodiment of life's capacity to flow effortlessly and happily forward, to sustain our human hearts and lives, to nourish our souls, however few our belongings might be. So I pray to become more like her in her essential nature, in her seemingly infinite capacity to absorb our human ignorance, foibles and suffering, while moving forward with natural ease, beauty, peace and joy.
