Traveling

We're FREEE!!!!!!

Yup- we bailed.
Ashram hell. I was totally up for the discipline, but not the crap food. Especially not for the amount I was paying. And there weren't even hot showers. Ok, I sound a little spoiled there, but in all seriousness, the main reason I didn't want to stay was that she had told us the class was small- 10-15 ppl max. There turned out to be 21 people AND not enough room for my legs in the yoga class SOOOO...

First, we came into town for the afternoon because we needed some provisions to get us thru.

Lead-up: They gave us our own plate and spoon and would come around and slop, really SLOP, baby food onto our plates. Half the people there were doing Vipassannas so they weren't speaking, so neither could we. That made meal time great fun- we couldn't even make fun of the food while eating it.

Then we washed our plates and went to meditate. To tell you the truth, the mantras, meditating, yoga and everything else was great, it was the fact that we were so many and got no personal attention- I couldn't do yoga properly bc we were all jammed into this small room.
I was thinking about my old yoga teacher in Rishikesh (actually, it's Laxman Jhulla) and how he would come by and tell me how I was doing each pose wrong, and how only in time would my body work itself out, bc now it is such a mangled mess I couldn't possibly think of doing all the poses properly... I missed him.

So we came into town, bought tons of food and ran into a couple of other people who had also headed into town- we were all quite negative. To also put this into context, the guru said the classes would be small, that the food would be wonderful and they were both really really big lies. And for all this we were paying 500 rupees a day- about 15$ (which is an obscene amount of money in India-)

We decided to leave as soon as we got back- worked out we could do great philosophy classes, yoga classes and do the chanting on our own in Rishikesh for less money. And not have to get up at 530am.

Funny thing is, the part that we were most nervous about was the 'yogic cleansing'. Basically you stick a beaker type thing with a nozzle in each nostril and pour water in til your sinus is cleared and the water comes out the other nostril. We were terrified. Now, after doing it this morning, we are all really interested in getting our own beaker type thing and doing it every morning. No, really. I'm serious. It was really strange too, cause I was squatting in a garden with this beaker thing in my nose (ok not beaker, but I can't think of a better word- just nozzle?) and the water was rushing around my head and it really started to hurt and I was thinking "Wait a sec. I know this feeling- it's like having water up my nose- oh ya. that's what i'm doing." (Hey, gimme a break, it was 630am and I had just done an hour of meditation).

Sorry this blog is all over the place- I should've thought about it before starting
out but now I just want to get it all out there for you.

So when we got there, we had lunch first and all the zombie like people that werent talking (Vipassannas) were eating with us in the hall. We were seated on the floor and the slop was plopped onto our plates in front of us, with some going on the floor and all. Best of all, was that we werent allowed to talk. Rob, Maya and I laugh about 75% of the time we are together (which probably explains why nothing ever gets done) so it was very hard not to joke about this predicament.

After lunch we went back to our rooms and it was all unleashed. I had worked out that if I were to continue this ashram thing, I will have to pretend I am a newsreporter (not kidding) and I was going to write a great story all about it. Mainly, I was doing it for you guys reading this.
Rob was pretending that he was a pig, grunting in his head and everything. That's really how it felt when they plopped the food into your trough.
Maya was playing Ashram Survivor- who would be the first person to leave?

So when we went to talk to Guru Lalita about leaving (we chose the ashram bc it had a female guru) she freaked out. She said we couldn't just leave, and if we wanted to we would have to pay the full 3500 rupees, instead of the 500/day that we were thinking it would be. It turned out that she was just interested in the Rupee, not the enlightenment process, so I got quite upset. We were trying to understand, in a place where you are concentrating on a better way of life, meditating, yoga-ing, sticking water up your nose and all those positive things, why would she want us to stay against our will? All for the Rupee.

So that really turned me off.

Now, we are back at the same hotel and will go to "Swami G" (again, not kidding) for our philosophy lecture tomorrow morning. I will go back to Dr Das for my yoga and we will leave beautiful, peaceful Rishikesh on the 16th to travel North to Dharamsala bc the word on the street is that the Dalai Lama is in his town giving some free lectures. Hopefully I can get in to 1 or 2.

It's nice to be back in a place where I recognize the cows.

Gotta go. Need to find one of those beaker nozzle things for tomorrow morning's cleansing.

posted by jjoollee @ 4:33 AM