Rishikesh: This Guy Took Too Much Acid back in the 60's
Rishikesh is a world renown yoga destination. It's filled to the gills with ashrams in which people stay to practice yoga, meditate, and live the life of spiritual contemplation. It nestled at the base of some mountains, and it's built around the holy river, ganges. Back in the day, the Beatles crashed here for up to 6 months (or something like that). What does this amount to? A lot of older, grey-haired people on the verge of turning 70 walking around in long flowing clothes pestering the local provisions store for better quality trail mix and peanut butter. All one can think to themselves, is that this person must have eaten a lot of acid back in the day, and now that they are old and retired, are trying to get the 60's back. Not to sound harsh, I've always been envious of the generation that comprise the 60's counter-culture movement. Seemed like a fun time.
I too fully intended to stay at an ashram during my stay in Rishikesh. Do some yoga, hear some lectures on the guru's particular version of the classical "good life," and spend sometime away from the material world. BUT.....unfortunately, I was attached by quite a LOOSE MOVING bug, if you catch my FLOW. Day one of my adventures consisted of a trip to the druggist to buy lots and lots of electrolyte mix and hunt down the closest thing to saltines that I could find. This was not food poisoning, so my anti-biotics couldn't save me this time. I simply had to let it RUN its course.
Thankfully, by day two my situation was less urgent, so I was able to venture out. Given that I really didn't make a full recovery till my second to last day there, I chose to not partake in yoga. If you've ever done yoga before, then you know, probably first hand, that passing gas during the practice sometimes just happens. You don't even feel it coming, and all of a sudden, pooooof. So you'll be sympathetic to why I chose to not do yoga in my situation.
Beyond how I was doing, Rishikesh has some wonderful hiking. Lots of trails, though not neccessarily marked ones, so keeping track of some land marks to find you way home is crucial. My method of not getting lost was staying close to the water. Follow a stream up hill, then even if you don't go down the exact same way, by following the waterway you can be sure you'll get home. Truly some stunning sights, were seen. I'm not even going to try to recount, you'll just have to go yourself.
Another interesting aspect of Rishikesh are all the wandering ascetics. They dress in orange, wonder the mountain, and devote their live to achieving a level of being beyond their human form. However, you do have to be somewhat careful with these guys.......some are more criminal than authentic. Regardless, none of them are going to mug you in broad day light, and its at least entertaining, if not enlightening, to chat with them for a bit.
Overall, Rishikesh is a wonderfully serene place. Plenty of places in the mountains, along the river, or in cafes to post up to read, write, or just reflect. While staying at a ashram and doing yoga was out of the question for me, I still did a lot of reflecting. Most days I just hiked around, absorbed the environment, and sat and let myself get bored. You'd be amazed where your mind will take you, and realizations that arise when you just sit, let your self get "bored," and see what naturally arises in your thoughts.
In Rishikesh I formed a new view of what it is to travel, or rather I added something to my view. Traveling for me gave me chance, for once in my adult life, to not really plan or be concerned with anything, it gave my head a chance to STFU (if you don't know that acronym, all you need to known is that it means to shut up), and just let myself be however I was going to be, and see what boiled to the top. I realized that between all the planning of what I thought I SHOULD do as an adult, began to overshadow who I really am. Just hiking and thinking in Rishikesh really allowed me to get back in touch with how I feel about stuff, what I think about stuff, and who I am really, rather than how I thought I should feel, or how I thought I should think, or who I thought I should be. It was this part of my trip and that I really began to save myself from myself.
