A Perfect Day in Rishikesh

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Trip Start Oct 09, 2007 Previous
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  Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India
Thursday, March 5, 2009

[Side Note: After 2 days in bed hovering on the crampy / exhaustion side of traveler's dysentery. I am fully back to myself today, having escaped its full blown, lengthy misery (and the necessity of hardcore antibiotics) with the homeopathic medical kit that Baba had his miraculous Dr. Ronen Roy make up for me before I left Kolkata. Personally, I think Dr. Roy should create homeopathic traveling kits for sale on the internet and make himself available for phone consults! (He is one of LDLM's homeopathic physicians. He treats about 200 people each day in Kolkata's slums.) I had a MUCH easier time of it this time than I have ever had before going the allopathic route ... and anyone who travels India gets sick! It's a given.]


***

I have finally settled on a daily routine here in Rishikesh. It took me much longer to find the right one than I had hoped it would, but now that I have it...I couldn't be happier.

I always wake early, usually around 1st light, to the lusty, blustery, often howling winds that come rushing down from the Himalayas to Rishikesh in the cool of each night.

I get up, put on a long sleeved turtleneck, my cozy woolen shawl, and some socks, open my door and sit on my front porch until 7, when the hotel café opens. I order a small pot of marsala chai (spiced milk tea), and return to my little terraced garden to sip on it while enjoying the lively, Rishikesh dawn.

The heaving trees flash with streaks of the new day's light once the pinks disappear. And the air is alive with more than exuberant, rushing wind as flitting, chittering, whistling, thweetiing and trilling song birds refuse to be outdone by the cawing and darting crows.

I continue enjoying the morning, bathe, pray a bit, journal, work on the internet (gmail chatting with my daughter Lisa in Portland) until taking a late breakfast.

As the sun heats up by mid morning, the winds die obediently back, like a good dog that has been firmly commanded to sit and be still by its master. By noon it is usually hot, well into the 80s (but almost never humid)...my Mother Ganga time.

I walk down the hill from the enclave of backpacker hotels and restaurants where I stay to the main road, catch an autorickshaw (Rs 10, about 20 cents) to the RamJhula foot Bridge (south of here). I walk across the bridge, looking for the fish below and jumping out of the way of aggressive motorcyclists, avoiding the beggars if I can, then turn left toward the sandy, rock strewn beaches on the northeast side of the bridge. I find a quiet place to sit on a rock with my ankles in the wonderfully cool and refreshing waters at the river's edge. I get up, roll my pant legs up, wade in her, and work up my courage for an ever-so-brief and breathless swim, fully clothed (as all women do) in the icy waters a few feet farther out from shore. Quickly returning to sit on a rock, for a few moments water drains out of my rolled pant legs like a tiny, noisy faucet, which fascinates me for some obscure reason. My wet clothes keep me pleasantly cool for hours in the heat, though, so I am never uncomfortable.

For me, sitting beside the Ganga alternates between meditation and a child's playful, abandoned delight. I am completely mystified, and totally entranced, by her placid, ever moving swirling currents and how they constantly reverse in the breeze, criss-crossing to form hundreds of thousands undulating, light kissed waves and rivulets. She evokes a lightness of being, and a natural, flowing happiness that I lost access to long ago, if I ever knew it at all in this lifetime.

At some point, I chant the 108 Names of Baba Lokenath with her water gently lapping over my feet. Then I walk barefoot the short distance away to the Sivananda Kutir - a small little chapel where the great Hindu Master Sivananda did intensely focused meditation and tapas (sacrifice to God) for 10 straight years. The energy of the Kutir is so palpably deep that going into meditation ...even for MY restless, anxious mind ... has never been easier. Just breathing into the energy that is already there all around me carries me away to quiet ecstasy or unspeakably deep stillness. Sivananda must have been a very great master, indeed to be able to charge the air and ground with this energy (he did his sadhanna here from 1924-34.)

The Kutir opens from 9-11 a.m. and then again from 3-5:30 p.m. for anyone to drop in and meditate. Silence is requested and kept. I leave at 4:10 pm, walk back across the bridge, catch a rickshaw up the hill to the "High Banks" hotels in order to make it to afternoon yoga from 5-6:30 pm. I am a pretty ridiculous spectacle on a yoga mat for the 1st time in my life at age 62 and over 200 lbs, but the young yoga instructor is patient and loving, seems very pure in spirit ... and is utterly inspiring in his perfectly demonstrated yogic postures. He also imbues the sessions with quiet and deep awareness of yogic philosophy that is the whole reason for doing yoga in the first place

So this is the routine and the practice I will keep for the remainder of the time I am in Rishikesh. I am so happy with it, and am deriving so much benefit from it, that I may stay here longer than I originally planned.

Post your own travel photos for friends and family Pictures

Sunset on the Ganga

View out of my hotel room door

More Ganga Fish Feeding at Rishikes

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