Sri Ram Ashram and Haridwar, India - September 13 - 20

It would be an understatement to say that we were ready to leave Delhi. The crowds, aroma, and constant attention by the masses are enough to drive anyone away, especially Dandy, who doesn't like big cities to begin with. We got up very early (before 8:30pm in NYC) to give ourselves plenty of time to get to the train. Our plenty of time, however, was soaked up by attempting to cross the busy street (terrifying), unnecessarily going to the reservation line, and making our way to the furthest track at the station. We boarded the wrong train car with less than 2 minutes to spare. After moving seats twice (because we could not find our seats) and accidently stealing water, we settled in for the 4-hour ride to Haridwar. Along the way we saw many small villages and farmland. The amount of wide spread poverty and poor living conditions were astounding.

Haridwar is a holy pilgrimage city for the Hindu religion. Accordingly, Haridwar is a major Indian tourist destination (for future reference within this post, note the emphasis on “Indian” in this sentence). About 25 minutes south of Haridwar is Sri Ram Ashram which would be our home for the next 2+ weeks. The ashram is a Hindu orphanage for abandoned and neglected children from the surrounding area. There are about 50 children at the ashram, ranging in age from infant to mid-20’s.

We arrived a little before noon and were greeted warmly by some of the children and staff. After putting our stuff in our room (no A/C and it is in the mid 90’s with close to 100% humidity) we were asked to join everyone for lunch in the cafeteria. The eating area is actually a room with rows of burlap on the floor. Everyone brings in their metal tray and sits cross legged on the floor to eat with mostly their right hand (although also given a spoon). Due to a complete lack of flexibility, already poor eating coordination, and the fact that most meals consist of rice with a sauce that stains clothes, these eating arrangements have been the bane of our existence for the past week!

The cafeteria area (notice the lack of tables/chairs, top left), how we spend most time at the ashram (top right), a shot of some of the main dormitory building at the ashram (bottom right), my punjabi pant failure (overpriced Delhi pants destroyed by playing a football match)

After lunch we were introduced to the kids’ strict and jam packed schedule. The first thing we noticed was the 5am start! Approximately every hour of the day up until 9pm is filled with prayer, work out, meals, school, study, nap, chai, study, play, study, prayer, etc. Since we are engineers (or were), we were asked if we could help with some of the high school aged kids’ study hall. We thought, “oh that will be great, we can help with math and science, no problem, we are well educated, shouldn’t be an issue.” WRONG! The 9^th graders were working on proving congruent triangles within complex trigonometric shapes and the 11^th graders were working on memorizing the parts of the brain, heart, and nervous system. Fair to say I think we hurt more than we helped and we have not since returned to “help” with study hall since the day that we arrived. Mostly we have found that pretty much the only thing we are even remotely good at is playing with the kids. They are great kids with an amazing work ethic and unlimited energy (we are absolutely exhausted!) Although we are having a lot of fun playing with them:

1. The language barrier has been a bit of an issue at times (especially with the younger kids). Although there schooling is in written English, they’re spoken English has a very heavy accent and we do not understand much of what they say and vice versa.
2. They play many of the school yard games wrong with rules that have been made up over time. This is frustrating as many of the rules don’t make sense. For example, when playing “football” the goalie is not allowed to leave a made up rectangular area with dimensions of ~8 ft. by 2 ft. deep. Also, throw-ins only exist sometimes, after a goal the goalie kicks the ball to restart, and penalty kicks are 6 inches from the goal. When we try to correct them we get shot down and told we are playing wrong.
3. The kids can be brutal to each other. Slapping fights and yelling at each other is a constant. We are still trying to determine if this is part of the Indian culture or just the culture among the kids.
4. We are very tired of pushing the little ones on the “jhoola” aka swings.
5. It is so ridiculously hot! Natural showers (profuse sweating) is occurring about 15 hours a day. On top of that, I am asked to wear the traditional Indian dress (punjabi) which consists of full length pants, a shirt down to your knees, and a scarf. Because the world isn’t fair (and sexism is real), Andy wears whatever he pleases. The actual showers consist of a tile-lined room, a bucket of water, a smaller bucket of water to use to pour water on your head, and a faucet.
6. 5am prayer is not something we have had the energy to attend more than twice in a week. The prayer and aarti ceremony is an interesting experience involving fire, conch shell horns, chants, and drums – look it up on youtube. It is even more entertaining when performed by kids under no adult supervision.
7. We are completely out of shape is seems and the running around combined with morning crossfit workouts have left us very VERY sore.
8. Monkeys are everywhere! They seem to be not too aggressive, but everyone is pretty cautious around them and tries to scare them off whenever they are seen.
9. A guard walks through the ashram campus at night (all through the night...) blowing a whistle to fend off any stray wildlife (notably monkeys). We have tried earplugs, but they are too uncomfortable.

Andy and his little buddy, Aman

Regardless of these trivial things, we are really enjoying our time at the ashram, especially now that the culture shock has worn off a little bit. A quick note about culture shock: although temporary, it’s terrible, and the first week in India was more of a challenge than either of us expected. I may have said more than once that “I want to go home”. I suppose the discomfort is part of the journey though…

Our next big adventure came when we visited Haridwar a couple of days later. We hired a taxi driver (for ~$30) to take us around to all of the sites within the holy city. We left at 7am and returned a little before 8pm. We first went to a handful of Hindu Temples (Chandhi Devi, Mansa Devi, Daksheswara Mahedev, and some smaller temples scattered around the city). There were more than a few things that were shocking to us about the temples:

1. You must take off your shoes and walk barefoot before entering. We also found out the hard way that this includes not bringing your shoes into the temple inside your backpack. Also, the floors are absolutely disgusting, making me 110% sure that we’ve both contracted an incurable foot fungus (symptoms have not yet presented, but I’ll keep you posted).
2. At the main temples (Chandhi and Mansa Devi), you are forced into these small rooms with about 1000 of your closest Indian barefoot friends where you are confronted by a man who ushers you to him, he hits you hard on the back multiple times, puts paint on your forehead, then yells at you for not giving money to the god to which the shrine is for (or at least that’s how it happened for us). We were bewildered to say the least.
3. The shrines were not what we expected, but to be fair I am not sure what it is that we expected. The only way we could think to describe the first shrine that we came across was “a pink playdough blob triangle face”. We clearly have a lot to learn about the Hindi culture.
4. One of the traditions is to wrap string around a specific type of tree. We understand that you ask the gods for a favor and when it is fulfilled you remove your string.
5. Seeds/nut necklaces are a thing. Like I said, we need to do some research or ask someone what all of this means.

Scaring a monkey and then being scared by a monkey (top left), prayer strings on a tree (top right), giant statue of Shiva along the water (bottom right), how we felt after seeing the Hindu holy men (bottom left)

After temple mania, we went to see a rock which was floating in water. We are again still not sure of the significance of this since it is just a large porous pumice stone. After taking a quick walk through a National Park with our driver, he dropped us off at a busy market near Har Ki Pauri (where the aarti ceremony would be held at sunset) and told us (in broken English) that he would meet us here in 5 hours. We looked at him horrified, but were not sure what to do since he did not seem to understand most of we said (or us him). So… we set out walking, feeling very much alone and unsure of what we were going to do for 5 hours. Here is where the “Indian” tourist destination really comes into play. Apparently, white people are so rare in Haridwar that we were constantly stopped and asked if they could take a photo with us. If they were too shy to ask, they simply stared (or I should say gawked) at us. In one instance we were sitting down in a park drinking some water, a man walked past, saw us, sat down about 10 feet in front of us, and then stared right at me until we couldn’t take it anymore and we left the park (~ 5 min). Because after 3 hours we were out of places to walk and tired of being stared at we took shelter in an upscale, Indian hipster coffee shop where we hid for 2 hours before aarti began. The aarti ceremony was out of this world. Thousands of people flock to the banks of the river Ganges, sit cross legged, and sing the Hindu chants, while holy men perform the ceremony. Many send prayer leaf boats with candles down the river (although many sank in the rapids). We really enjoyed the ceremony, which was only hindered again by our complete inability to sit cross legged for more than a few minutes. In this case, we had to sit for over an hour, I thought my legs were going to fall off (or I’d have to cut them off). On our way back to the ashram, we saw an elephant on the side of the road!

More of our Haridwar experience: Daksheswara Mahadev temple (top left), Har Ki Pauri in the daytime (bottom), preparing for aarti at Har Ki Pauri (top right)

Also, this week we visited the nearby town’s Sunday market (lots of nice looking farm produce) and the nearby Gujjar village, which is a nomad village in the jungle. To get to the village one of the employees at the ashram took us and one of the older kids via tractor. The Gujjar people are Muslim and a lower caste that raises cattle for milk to sell. They live in dirt huts which are surprisingly well kept. The people were very nice and welcoming to us.

Our Gujjar village trip

So to wrap up this ridiculously long post, after 10 days we can say that India is rubbing off on us and we are beginning to really like it here (at least here at the ashram). The shoeless traditions, our celebrity status, and what we perceive as cultural contradictions aside, the Indian people are warm, welcoming, and always willing to help us out. On multiple occasions the Indian people have helped by calling our taxi driver (when we have lost him), given us directions by walking us to where we are trying to go, and been patient with us when we are being unknowingly culturally rude.