Blogs from Uttarakhand, India, Asia - page 10

Moving on from a great start in our Yoga course at Parmarth, we were eager to get going into our second week for much of the same. Getting to the class however on the Monday morning, it was clear our coming week was to be very different from what we had come accustomed to. Sadly, Mathaji, our awesome and truly inspirational teacher was suddenly taken in to hospital on Sunday evening. With Mathaji seeming so fit and healthy especially considering her years, this really was a shock to everyone, and left us all hoping for a speedy recovery. Our other teacher, Indu, was there to take our first class that morning but wasn’t there for the classes later that day, we later found out the reason for this being that Mathaji was in fact Indu’s mother…. ... read more

So, with our sightseeing almost well and truly over in India, it was time for some more Yoga. Going for a different angle than our last bout of limb stretching, this time we booked into an Ashram rather than a Yoga healing centre. The Ashram itself, Parmarth Niketan, is actually quite famous around the world and is located in the worlds epicentre of Yoga, Rishikesh, made famous by the Beatles when they came here back in the sixties during their ‘hippy faze’. As soon as we arrived in Rishikesh, Donna and I knew this would be a place we would enjoy. Crossing the bridge over the Ganges to the Swarg Ashram area (where most of the Ashrams and yoga fraternity are based), we were immediately away from the noise of the traffic of the opposite side, ... read more

Ritual bathing is widely practiced across the Indian subcontinent. It is thought to purify the body before ceremonies and at the climax of pilgrimages. Nowhere can the immensity of mass ritual bathing be felt more intimately and directly than at Haridwar, on the most sacred of all rivers, the Ganga Ma, or Mother Ganges. According to the Indian legend The Churning of the Ocean of Milk, the ocean was churned by gods and demons to produce amrit, the nectar of immortality, itself a reference to kundalini, or latent energy in the body, which is aroused during meditation or yoga. Amrit is also the source of the city name Amritsar in Punjab, where the holy pool of water in the Golden Temple is referred to as the “pool of nectar”. To protect the pot of amrit, the ... read more

Rishikesh has been called the “Yoga Capital of the World” and the “Gateway to the Himalayas”. In 1968, the Beatles stayed at the Maharishi Mahesh yoga ashram, during which they composed 48 songs, some of which appeared on the White Album. The riverside community remains a spiritual center to this day, where local pilgrims and backpackers bathe side by side in the sacred Ganges, with waters much cleaner and nearer to their Himalayan source than overly polluted but more well-known Varanasi. Nowadays, Rishikesh is also developing a reputation for outdoors sports such as river rafting and trekking. I have made a point of spending some time in Rishikesh on all three of my trips to India. In 2005, it was my last stop on an overwhelming 3-month trip journey through Sichuan, Nepal, Tibet, and India. I ... read more

A trip to Himnagri We started our journey from Pithoragarh on 26th June at around 2 p.m., not a good time to start a journey especially in the pre-monsoon season in a hill station as it might rain in the evenings. We four lads Banti, Chintoo ,Lalli and me explored Pithoragarh a beautiful valley located on the China and Nepal border in Uttrakhand .Our actual plan was to reach Milam Glacier which later on confined only up to Munsiyari due to the time constraint. Well, we started this journey in our favorite Royal Enfields which we rode from Delhi. There are two routes from Pithoragarh to Munsiari which can be used to reach this heavenly location in Uttrakhand. The first route is via Kanalicheena, Ogla, Jauljibi , Madkot reaches Munsiyari and the another route ... read more