monkey slaps, cricket watching Babajis and finding my bliss

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Sigh...* Life. 'Tis a funny thing eh? You trundle along one path, expecting one thing and it becomes apparent that life has different plans for you...I know this sounds completely ridiculous but I was most definitely not coming to India for adventures. Most certainly not. This was meant to be serious business. Work to do. Things to learn. Progress to be made. *Ahem*

I seem to have spent a large portion of my life going on adventures, many of which I seemed to just find myself in and be helplessly drawn to, but a significant portion of which I actively sought out with the attitude of 'might as well, at least I'll have a good story to tell' even if it was something rather stupid like smoking crack or buying a one way ticket to Ecuador with $100 in my pocket, say. And a lot of them just ego bullshit, wanting to have interesting experiences to then be an interesting person...

Anyways, I decided to leave Rishikesh for a week and then return so that I could go on one final yoga retreat, one last blast of dal/gruel munching, sunrise mantra chanting wholesomeness which after all is what I'm *meant* to be doing (-: ... with no particular idea of where to go I decided to travel for a week with a new friend - Ruth - who I had met at Phool Chatti ashram. Ruth is a very cool gal who is British but runs a posh yurt camp in rural south France.

Ruth was on a mission to find an eccentric French man who lives in a remote area in Uttarakhand that her friend had met several years before and whom Ruth had developed something of a fascination for and inexplicable urge to find. She has been writing a novel and said French man has even become a character in her novel. So, off we set on an overnight train to Kadgotham, then a local bus to a small town called Nainital, which is situated around a beautiful lake, high up in the moutains. We spent the afternoon doing a street food tour, sampling momos (Tibetan dumplings) at the Tibetan market, chowmein, fried in big cast iron woks in front of us, potato patties with chickpea curry, yummy sticky syrupy gulab jamens, sweet corn dressed in limed juice and masala spice, and finally a good old cup of chai with some insanely sweet jelabi whicih is a bit like deep fried sugar. The sort of thing which most definitely should not be nice but you find yourself guiltily rather enjoying it. (Did I mention that I decided to give up sugar in India? Ha ha).

The climax of our visit to Nainital however was to become members for a day of the gentleman's boat club and sip gin and tonics and admire the waiters who reportedly all sport handle bar moustaches. Sadly there was no tonic so a gin and soda had to do which was still rather agreeable (and was the first booze I have had since a cocktail in an awful bar called Nasa which was made to look like a spaceship in Bangalore with Adam). Also, most dissapointingly the waiters had very small moustaches and most certainly not handle bar moustaches (as, I'm sure you are aware that the definition of a handle bar moustache is a "hirsute appendage of the uppr lip with GRASPABLE EXTREMITIES''.)

The other highlight of my visit to the boat club was appraoching a monkey that was busy affectionately pretending (I should hope) to pick fleas out of one of the waiters hair and then being slapped accross the face by the monkey for encroaching on his personal space.

The following day, several bus rides and a jeep ride later I find myself in the most gorgeous suuuuuper plush hotel which Ruth had invited me to stay with her for free with stunning views of the Himalayas and deep forested valleys. We had our own cottage complete with wood burning stove and terrace and duvets (wow, first duvet in India. Beats my manky British airways blanket) and arm chairs and and room service and and and.... can't tell you how blessed I felt to be able to stay there. Even though the first meal I ate at a local restaraunt made me ill and I spent most of the two days there in bed. With fluffy pillows. And an eiderdown duvet. And clean white sheets.


(our cottage)


We did however continue with our very special mission of finding 'Gerard' the mysterious French man, indirectly my whole reason for being in Kasar Devi. We started by walking up a small hill to the temple that Kasar Devi is known for and speaking to the Babaji who lives next to the temple in a very tiny, austere little hut in order to meditate and contemplate the mysteries of the cosmos. Maybe we could ask this holy man whether he knew the French man.

Babaji was sitting in his little hut watching cricket on telly when we reached the top.

"Oh, you have a TV?" we asked.

"Yes, life up here is pretty boring sometimes"

Oh. Yogis aren't meant to find solitude and contemplation and meditation boring are they?

"Do you meditate?"

"Some times. At night. I usually have too many visitors"

So, we become his visitors for an hour as well and sit in his little hut whilst he makes us chai, asking about where we come from, occasionally averting his eyes momentarily from the cricket. In terms of our mission there was however a vital clue. He did know the French man!

"Yes, yes, he has lived here for many years. French man. Very handsome face"

Turns out he had a photo of himself taken with the French man's daughter on his wall. Ha! Evidence!

As the sun sets we bid our fairwell and amble down the hill, excited about continuing our mission and wondering where else we can ask for more vital clues. At the bottom of the hill there are two strange characters - old weather beaten Western men, one of whom looks like he some kind of shuffling, drunk homeless man draped in torn blankets and the other also like he has had slightly more than his fair share of chillums. I dont know how but I instantly knew we had found Gerard.

Gerard I think used to be a piano teacher in France. But he has also spent years in Afghanstan in the 60s. I'm not sure how long he has been in India before but he saw the land Auroville was built in before it existed. To be honest, I'm not sure he even knows that he's in India. I think he qualifies as the heaviest smoker I have ever ever ever ever come accross... and I think I have met my fair share of pot heads. We are talking chain smoking charras spliffs and chillums all day. I mean, his eyes point in different directions. The man is on a different planet.

But he is very excited that we have arrived and we make plans for him to come and pick us up with his friend and take us to Jageshwar, a complex of ancient temples 40km away and we walk back to our beautiful and cosy room, watching the sun set and turn the snow capped Himalayas shades of warm peaches and pinks, happy to have fulfilled our mission.

2 days, one temple visit and one exisential crisis later I made the decision to not go back to Rishikesh but to stay in Kasar Devi. I realized that every time I try and put myself in some kind of regime like an ashram I get ill... and after this happening 3 times I think I slowly got the message. Yeah... so I came here to be all studious and find good yoga teachers and live in ashrams and be strictly conscious of eating healthily, no smoking, bla bla bla... but it's so not my path. I get sick every time I try. I sneak in packets of biscuits and can eat two packs in a row. Eating dal and rice every fay makes me constipated. I've never been comnstipated in my entire feakin life.

What if...what if I got up early and did yoga and ate well and was wholesome because I wanted to, not because I had to, being in an ashram. What if I just paid really close atttention to my body and if it yearned for a cappucino and a slice of cake I just celebrated this and did exactly that? What if I said 'fuck all the shoulds' and did exactly whatever I truly, deeply wanted to do? What if I did the learning and awakening I wanted to do through me and my experiences not listening to somebody else? Wouldn't that make so much more sense? Our beings contain everything we need to discover, an inate knoweldge of how to return to balance, to equilibrium, if only we would listen to them.

3 days, 3 blissful, beautiful, inspiring days later and I am so glad I decided to stay. I have found a little guest house in the valley, where it's just me and another girl staying and Sabhu (who I think might well be Jesus reincarnated. In the body of a 26 year old Indian man. Gorgeous Indian man *cough*). At night I lie in bed with the curtains wide open so I can see the stars and am woken with the first light of the day. I sit on the roof with a blanket around me and watch the sun rise every morning, meditating. Then at 8am or so when it's properly up I do a good yoga session... asanas and pranayama. I have late breakfast and then spend my time reading, writing, going for walks, chatting to people. And hey, how can you not smoke when you can have hand-rolled local charras that's literally grown 1 km away? I feel like for the first time in my life I am reclaiming my body, developing the will to be present and grounded. I have totally found my bliss here.

I'm loathed to even mention the name of the place I am at because the Lonely Planet has not yet discovered it (woo! I'm in a place not even on a map of Uttarakhand!) and it has such a special feel to it. It's not even a village - just a collection of houses on a narrow winding mountain road. And so obviously the kind of people you meet here are so different to people in well known tourist spots. There are quite a few Westerners who have been here for months or years...

Cannot believe I leave in a week to go to New Zealand.

I have set myself two missions before going:

1) to manifest a super comfey, wicked place to stay in Delhi on my way out

2) to handmade all my Christmas cards with materials only from here (there are a few shops the size of a telephone box) and send them before I leave.

x x x x x

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Comments

[Adam]

Your whole blog post just put a big smile on my face. I'm glad that India has given you something beyond cricket and ashrams ;) Desires are not necessarily something to reproach yourself for. Life is for the enjoying in both a momentary and universal sense. Or some such other wise words.