DISCLAIMER TO MY FAMILY: I'm fine. Truly. This will probably sound way worse in your imagination that it is. Trust me. Don't worry :) I considered editing this heavily and sugar coating it so as not to cause concern, but this is who I am and y'all deserve to know the true me. I'm happy and I'm safe. It's all good :) If you don't think you can handle the details, you should probably stop reading. In the words of my 13 year old guide, "No worries, no hurry, no chicken, no curry".
This is going to be disjointed and disconnected, but I'm not going to even try to get into a linear mindset. It's much more pleasant not to.
O.M.G. There are no words in my vocabulary to describe how India has been for me. I have no idea of the day of the week. Someone said we've only been here 4 days. Each day seems like a month in personal transformation.
I adore India! I adore the crowds, the sounds, the smells, and especially the crazy crazy traffic! All around me I see beauty.
The second night here I had a close encounter with the mud on the banks of the Ganga after dark and was a bit shaken. I knew in my core I was OK, but my ego monkey mind was screaming all sorts of dire things that could have happened to me or that might still happen as a result. I woke up Ginaji and told her about it and she, too, felt I was OK. After all, it *is* the Ganga, even though there are corpses floating down it. I had bizarre dreams that night and woke up still shaken. I walked to the ghat (steps leading down to the river) and did my daily practice of chanting and meditating. The message that I was completely safe permeated throughout my entire being and I was called to go greet the river again. I stood in it up to my ankles and poured a bit of water on my head and Ma Ganga gave me her blessing.
The Hotel we are staying in is very nice and the staff is very attentive. It has marble floors and a veranda on all four sides. My room has a view of the Ganga. The food here is exquisite and all vegetarian. The khichade at the hotel is delicious and I'm in love with pumpkin curry.
The sanitary conditions here are way worse than I expected. I never knew I could be so comfortable sitting on the floor with insects , or eating off of leaves on the floor with the insects, etc. I've only seen one toilet that flushed, one must pour water down the others, including the one in my room. Some are Indian style, which is basically a hole in the floor that you squat over. There is no toilet paper in public toilets and I'm glad I brought a good supply The locals truly do use their left hand to clean themselves up with. I know this because I've seen it happen in public. Hand sanitizer is my constant companion.
The power goes off repeatedly and no one blinks an eye. Generators and car batteries power most things. It went off about 6 times during our first dinner at the hotel in Varanasi. It went off in the middle of dinner last night in one of the most expensive restaurants in Varanasi. Said restaurant also had insects crawling around, btw.
The list goes on and on and I love it. This is life!!! Life in all it's breathtaking agony and beauty is in your face all the time here.
It's extremely disorienting typing this, mingling my two worlds. I'm in an Internet cafe paying about .75 USD an hour listening to the constant car horns and bike rickshaw bells and Hindi being spoken behind me. I feel a bit lightheaded as my brain tries to wrap itself around both worlds at the same time. I've petted cows in the street and dodged water buffalo and seen monkeys cavorting on rooftops.
Lots of people live in carts or what looks like shelves in the side of buildings or just on the sidewalk or ghats. Whole families live in small rooms in winding alleys. No one seems unhappy. This is mind blowing. The children are so adorable and so happy!
Spiritual practice is everywhere. Shrines are intermingled with the stalls. I attended a friend's puja this morning and an Aarti puja for the Ganga last night. This morning we went on a sunrise boat ride on the Ganga and spent some time in front of the burning Ghat, where they burn the bodies. We chant daily as a group and it's amazing how connected we all became, almost immediately.
I've been to temples and chanted with a dear heart 13 year old guide who works for one of the silk factories. He taught me a new mantra.
Radhe Krishna Radhe Krishna Radhe Krisna Radhe KrishaI've gotten bindi from priests. I've lit candles and floated them in the Ganga in wee boats made of leaves and filled with flowers. We took a sunrise Ganga boat cruise this morning and sang the Sunrise Raga. We sang harmony for the people doing their daily practice on the ghats. We sang Oh, Shenandoah, substituting Ganga for Shenandoah and Ma Ganga for wide Missouri. The locals were mesmerized, they don't have harmony in Indian music.
Govinda Bollo Radhe Gopala Bollo
I'm picking up my tailor made suit this afternoon. The thought of me sitting in the floor with 4 or 5 other women and a few men in the middle of shopkeeps unrolling piles of silks and cottons and having clothes tailor made should make a lot of y'all laugh out loud ;)
In addition to the suit, I bought three cotton shirts, one in mauve, one in orange, and one in white and a beautiful striped scarf in purple, lavender, and orange with a bit of white and light green thread running through it. I also got three beautiful wall hangings in the silk factory we visited.
The heat is obscene and so is the humidity, but unbelievably the added layer of scarf helps keep me cool. I chanted two mornings for over an hour in full sun and was fine. We walked about two miles down the ghats last night to the puja, up and down steep steps, over rivulets of questionable liquid streams (think untreated waste) and broken stone and mud paths at a very quick pace with my water bottle, camera, and fairly heavy day pack strapped on. I don't think there was a dry inch of clothing on me when we arrived, but I made it and was in the lead of the pack most of the way. It's amazing what my body can joyfully do when I'm on the path that's right for me!
Dinner afterward was in what I call Varanasi Times Square. Bright lights, traffic going in every direction at insane speeds and more foot traffic than car, rickshaw, and bike traffic mingling with the cows, dogs and goats. Stores and beggars are crowded all together and it's quite bizarre. We took rickshaws home and I was within inches of dump trucks at least 5 times and cows multiple times as well. Everything does this amazing dance and no one hits each other when collision looks unavoidable. Women and children are sitting sidesaddle on the back of scooters and motorcycles with babies in arms. Children are walking in the street and miraculously no one gets hurt.
We've had two music lessons with teachers of Ginaji. They consisted of about 2 1/2 hours sitting cross legged on the roof of the hotel overlooking Ganga. It was hot but the breeze was nice and the staff hung tarps to shade us from the sun. I adored the Dhrupad (classical Indian singing) lesson and am considering coming yearly to study with the Guruji. He teaches at the University here and also takes on private students. It's very spiritual and activates all the chakras and physical and energetic bodies. I love Sargam!
I think I'm getting a massage this afternoon. It's 150 rupees for 45 minutes and that works out to about $5 USD. Yeah, I can get used to this.
I'm very clear that I'll be back. It's the most unusual thing; everything feels so familiar here. It's exactly like the places I created in my mind when I played in imaginary worlds as a child. I know this place...
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