Our last week in India was spent playing with the kids at
the orphanage, unsuccessfully working on our flexibility, doing cross fit, SE
Asia trip planning, and taking an overnight trip to Rishikesh, all while our
immune system (with the help of antibiotics) continued to ward off the malaria
we have surely been exposed to through the hundreds of mosquito bites we have
endured. Most days at Sri Ram Ashram have gone something like this:
- Half wake up when the 5am bell rings, consider getting up, then reconsider and go back to sleep.
- Wake up 5 minutes before cross fit starts at 6:30am, again consider going back to bed, but drag our sore bodies out of bed and make it down to the courtyard in time to be shamed by several very in-shape teenagers (side note: they love burpees. What is wrong with them?!!!!)
- Eat breakfast. This typically consists of either noodles, ramen noodles, fried rice, or PB&J. Always accompanied by curd and yummy yummy chai tea.
- Hang out in the morning/afternoon and either do some much needed trip planning (since we did almost none before leaving the States) and/or play with the 2-3 year-old kids. Play really means us pushing them on the swings or us attempting to convince them to do anything but be pushed on the swings.
- Lunch at 12:30 which is much like dinner: white rice and watery sauce (either lentils, corn, beans, eggplant or misc. unknown vegetable). The food is quite good, but after two weeks most meals taste the same and we are very tired of rice.
- By 2pm the kids have returned from school and finished lunch. From 2-3:30 is much needed nap time. We can’t believe the schedule these kids keep, we feel like we need more sleep than them and they are growing kids! There are two things happening here, we are either very lazy or they are not getting enough sleep (my money is on the first one although there is a possibility it is both).
- Between 4 and 5:30pm they study and we stay out of the way because we learned the first day that we are actually no help at all.
- Play between 5:30 and 6:45pm. Inevitably, the elementary school aged kids rope us into playing another one of their games which have very loose rules, you can never win, and always end up in screaming/slapping matches.
- Aarti prayer between 7 and 7:30. We go to this about half the time and since the same songs are repeated every day and they have a convenient book which phonetically spells the Hindi words (could also be just the way the Hindi word is spelled), I sometimes try to sing along which awards me with muffled chuckles from the surrounding girls (apparently I’m not saying the words correctly… go figure).
- Dinner at 7:30, which is actually another cross-legged session from hell, where our feet go numb and we scarf the food as fast as possible in order to stand up again, all while attempting not to spill too much food on ourselves. We really are embarrassingly un-flexible, but still I challenge you to eat a meal cross legged and report back to us.
- Playtime again after dinner until the adults are able to get the kids to come inside for bed (usually between 9 and 10pm). Note that this leaves a mere 7 hours for sleep and that assumes you fall asleep right away.
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| "Dani Didi" (sister) and "Andy Bhai" (brother) with the some of the kids! |
Apart from this regular schedule, there are two outstanding
events which provided much comic relief for us (and now you). This first one is dedicated to my former co-workers: While playing with the toddlers, one of them took off
for the bathroom. After about 5 minutes, I started hearing crying coming from
the squat toilets. We located the boy, naked from the waist down, in one of the
stalls hysterically balling his eyes out. Behind him was a gigantic dump. Could
it possibly have come from a tiny 3-year-old?! The answer was yes, and it turned
out that he was crying because he could not get the poop down the drain. It
took us quite a long time to figure out that there was no flush, but a bucket
that had to be filled with water and used to wash the poop down. After solving
problem #1, we were onto problem #2 (pun intended): how do you help a 3
year-old wipe his butt Indian style? There were several issues here. 1.
Although we had heard that they use water and their left hand, we ourselves had
no experience with the proper technique, 2. Language barrier, 3. I gathered
that he wanted me to do it for him (either that or he wanted to use my Punjabi
(my clothes) as toilet paper). The end result was Andy and I doing charades on
our interpretation of how he should clean himself and although he splashed water
on himself, he never actually wiped before we were forced to give up and help
him back into his clothes. Fail. The second event came during cross fit. One
morning, the kids introduced us to a running belt with a chord which another
person holds to provide resistance for the runner. In this scenario, Andy was
the runner and one of the seniors who we became close to was holding him back.
Unfortunately for the boy, Andy has a warped sense of how strong he is…. I’m
sure you can see where this is going. Andy started sprinting, pulling the boy
to the ground, and rather than stop due to the panicked Hindi coming from
behind him, continued to run, dragging the boy behind him for a solid 20 feet before stopping. HILARIOUS! I haven’t
laughed that hard in a very long time!
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| The boys and "Dani Didi" |
On September 23rd and 24th we visited
Rishikesh, the yoga capital of the world (thanks to the Beatles) and Westerner
yuppie retreat. Since the Ashram is outside of town and we wanted to take the
jungle route through Rajaji National Park, we hired a private taxi to drive us
the ~1 hour to Rishikesh. Along the way we spotted some spotted deer and a
flock of peacock, as well as did two river crossings where there definitely
should have been a bridge (in our small Tata taxi this was an experience in
itself). After arriving in Rishikesh, we stumbled over ourselves for an hour
trying to find the river guide that was going to take us rafting on the Ganga. Luckily
the ashram let us borrow a local cell phone so we were able to make calls and
it turned out that he got his days confused and we were really in the right
spot to begin with. Rafting the Ganga was both amazing and terrifying at the
same time. The Ganga is considered holy in India and bathing in it is said to
cleanse you of your sins. Due to the recent rains and the season, the holy
river was high and flowing FAST, 40,000+ CFS. The 19 km trip usually takes
about 2.5 hours to get down, for us it took 1.5 hours including stops to scope
out the rapids! It was just us and the guide in the raft with a safety kayak
paddling close by. The guide was very experienced, but brutally honest about
our chances in a fast and horrifying looking class 4 rapid. Apparently, the
chances were good that we were going to flip the raft because the boat was so
light, but not to worry because the water is so high we won’t hit any rocks.
We’ll drink a lot of water, think we’re drowning, and never want to do it
again, but we’ll live. Yes, he literally said this right before we entered the
rapids. In good news, the guide was also really good and we made it out without
flipping the raft. Later, we got to jump in the river to “body surf” some rapids
and also exonerate us of our sins (bonus!). With the amount of water we got in
our sinuses I figure we’re good to sin for a while. Luckily, Rishikesh is near the source of the Ganga River in the Himalayas were the water pollution is minimal.
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| Rafting the Ganga. The top left picture shows Andy attempting to push me out of the boat. |
The second day in
Rishikesh, we took a yoga class where I did my first yoga head stand! The rest
of the time I embarrassed myself with my lack of flexibility, but at least I
had one glorifying moment. Andy did great, I was very impressed – when did he
get flexible? Maybe all that sitting cross-legged is paying off for one of us.
We took public transit back to the ashram, which cost us 6x less than the taxi
ride to Rishikesh. It did, however, involve 2 rickshaw rides and an old very full bus with no
suspension.
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| The sites around Rishikesh. A cow was walking the suspension bridge with us! |
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| More sites from Rishikesh. The top left picture was taken at Parmarth Niktan of Lord Hanuman splitting his chest to show that another lord is inside him. |
Before flying to Nepal on the 30th, we returned to Delhi for a day. We were shocked at how much more comfortable we were the second time around. We even navigated the metro system! Don’t get me wrong, we still dislike Delhi a lot. There are far too many people and it is by far the filthiest city we’ve ever been to. Like true Americans though, we did manage to find a fancy mall where we saw how the elite of India live. It was literally like walking into the USA. We ate at Taco Bell and Red Mango! It even costs the same… go figure.
Apart from our day-to-day experiences, we have learned
several things of note about Indian culture:
- Cats are to be feared above all else. This lesson came in the form of ~20 screaming children who announced they had seen a cat! After attempting to inquire about the type of cat they saw, I was fairly convinced that indeed they meant a cat, as in a kitty cat. Bewildered as to why they were so afraid of a cat, I offered to scare it off, to which one of the girls exclaimed, “You aren’t scared?!” I rightfully wasn’t afraid until I rounded the corner in the dark and became increasingly concerned that the “cat” they saw was actually a man eating leopard or tiger (which according to various sources, definitely exist and are a real threat). Luckily, it was indeed an average sized house cat which scampered off to the tune of many high-pitched screams. Apparently, cats on your property are considered bad luck in India. So in summary, dogs roam like stray dogs, cows roam like stray dogs, and cats are terrifying. Oh also, you will be laughed at for being afraid of a spider the size of a dinner plate (no kidding).
- The Indian head nod is a head gesture which extends diagonally and has, as I’m sure you can understand, been the source of much confusion for us. It is used often by pretty much everybody. Best we can tell, it can be used to acknowledge your existence, gesture for you to do something, and/or to confirm or deny something. For example, we were bargaining with a rickshaw driver for a ride. He said 50 rupees, we countered with 40. Then he did the Indian head nod and walked away leaving us wondering if we should follow or go find a different driver. Bewildered, we got in the ricksaw and we were off. Since he drove us where we wanted to go and didn’t drop us at any tourist traps first (and since we were still confused as to how much we owed him) we just paid him 50.
- India is not for the type A person. For example, when a large billboard in Rishikesh says, “Daily drop-in meditation at 7am” what is really means is daily drop-in meditation at 7am for part of the year, not this part, but part. The same situation occurred via a website which advertised drop-in yoga. After wandering the streets for literally an hour trying to find the place we called and found out that they were closed for all but 4 months of the year. They acted like we should have somehow known. SERIOUSLY?! Would it be that hard to add a note to the website/billboard which specified what months it applies to?! Like I said, India is not for the type A person.
- Riding in a car in India, or being anywhere near a road for that matter, is… terrifying. Also very loud. There is no such thing as traffic lanes and often cars drive at each other, one or both swerving at the last second to avoid colliding. The horn is used constantly. I think they just like the sound it makes. The driving habits are even recognized by the young kids who pretend to drive by erratically moving the steering wheel and making continuous honking noises.
- Maintenance is not a thing: meaning building maintenance, road maintenance, vehicle maintenance, etc. It seems strange to spend so much money and time building and furnishing a structure, only to let it to fall apart piece by piece. Even at mid-to-high end hotels the tv, a/c, mini fridge, shower, lights, etc. are more likely to be broken than working. Regardless, rather than remove the broken amenity, it remains in the room as decoration. Why not spend slightly less to begin with and maintain what you have?
All curious cultural details aside though, we are sad to be
leaving India and especially all the kids at the ashram. They were so welcoming
to us and we really started to make some lasting relationships with them. We
will certainly be following them on Facebook, and who knows, maybe we’ll make
it back one day for a reunion visit. Although the culture in India is SO
different from our own, the people are kind and exhibit an inner peace that we
can learn a lot from. Their religion, which is entwined into their lives,
preaches acceptance, love, and peace. Minus the driving habits, sexism, and
aversion to tables and waste management (both trash and the human variety), we
think they are on to something.
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| More pictures at the ashram. The top right and bottom photos where taken at 5:15am with the kids that got up to say goodbye. |
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