(no subject)
Most of you know that The Amy is a great lover of yoga, and that it helps her to focus, de-stress, and get in a good workout when she's feeling low. So it's appropriate that after three brutal, punishing years of non-stop medical training (and a few brutal, punishing days in The Hottest And Most Hectic Capital On Earth), we find ourselves on the banks of the Ganges in the yoga capital of the universe. The Amy has had a great time sleeping, reading, relaxing and doing yoga. It's just what she needed.
More surprising is the fact that I'm loving it too. Oh sure, it's chock full of rock'n'roll history (this being the site of the Beatles' 1968 Indian sojourn and the birthplace of many songs that found their way onto my favourite Beatles record--hell, George's sitar-infused "Within You Without You" is playing on the stereo at the internet cafe at this very moment), but I'm also loving the place for its other, non-rock'n'roll-related charms.
Rishikesh is a hilly town, surrounding the mighty Ganges about five hours' journey northeast of Delhi, about 200km southwest of the Tibetan border near the Himalayan foothills. As I write this, I'm sitting in an internet cafe perched high above the mighty river on a busy, dusty one-lane road packed with pedestrians, motorized rickshaws, cars, vendors selling jewelry, fresh lime sodas and popcorn, and a not insignificant number of cows.
I've been wondering about the cows. The cows are everywhere, and they don't seem to have any owners. They make their way around town, feasting on garbage, palm fronds and whatever happens to be lying around, lazing about at the side of the road, and just generally doing their lazy cow thing. I'm not sure what their role here is, but there sure are a lot of them.
I suppose that the cows, being sacred in the Hindu faith, are used to getting their way. This may explain the interaction that Amy & I had with them yesterday. We were crossing the long, crowded footbridge high over the Ganges yesterday when Amy was suddenly and rather ungraciously shunted out of the way by a small white bull who had somewhere to go and was perhaps accustomed to a higher standard of deference from the people of Rishikesh. Put simply, the bull walked up behind Amy at a pretty speedy clip and just... kept walking. Its tiny nub of a horn rammed Amy in the backside, Amy (who was thankfully unharmed) jumped a mile in the air, and the unyielding bovine kept on moving. I suppose when you're a cow in India, people either get out of your way out of respect for you or they get out of your way because you weigh two tons and have no qualms about ramming them in the ass.
When I was done laughing about this, I learned a little about the Hindu concept of "karma." Just as I recovered from my doubled-over fits of hilarity, a much larger bull, with much sharper horns, executed the same move on me.
Now, you might be picturing a bull trying to walk around me but being a little careless about whether he clipped me on the way past, with his right horn brushing my left leg. This is not what happened. The bull came up squarely behind me, saw that he was directly behind me, quite rightly calculated that this would not pose a problem for him, and kept on moving at his regular pace. His left horn jabbed my left leg, and rather hard. I don't fully understand the physics of this, but somehow I leapt skyward and landed well to the left of the bull as he strolled on past. A good laugh and one liberal application of disinfectant later, I decided that I could now cross both India and Pamplona off my list of places to visit.
But even that wasn't the most surprising aspect of our time in India so far. That honour goes to the fact that when we were crossing the bridge, we were doing so in order to get to the yoga class for which I had signed up. It's true: after nine years of coaxing, The Amy has managed to get me to a yoga class. That I had my first yogic experience in an ashram on the banks of the holy Ganges river is something on which I will dine out for years to come. And the truly amazing thing is that I loved it. Yoga, far from being new age crockery, is actually a damn good workout. And while I would generally rather shoot myself in the head than lift weights, do push-ups, or engage in anything that could be described as "working out", yoga now joins squash and basketball on the extremely short list of Physical Activities That Could Be Termed Exercise And That I Nevertheless Seem To Enjoy. Amy promises that if I do yoga regularly, I will not only feel healthier and more limber, but will stand a better chance of looking like Sting when I reach my 50s. That's good enough for me.
So that's India so far. The current plan is to go rafting on the Ganges tomorrow, explore a bit more of the country over the next few days, and then make our way to Singapore and then Bali towards the end of the month.
In the meantime, we're getting more adept at travelling here. India is not like Spain, or Peru, or even Thailand: it's more like the little crushed red pepper flakes that look reasonable until you've covered your pizza in them and find that it's become incredibly, inedibly hot. India, too, is colourful, spicy, hot and inviting, but you've got to take that stuff seriously.
More surprising is the fact that I'm loving it too. Oh sure, it's chock full of rock'n'roll history (this being the site of the Beatles' 1968 Indian sojourn and the birthplace of many songs that found their way onto my favourite Beatles record--hell, George's sitar-infused "Within You Without You" is playing on the stereo at the internet cafe at this very moment), but I'm also loving the place for its other, non-rock'n'roll-related charms.
Rishikesh is a hilly town, surrounding the mighty Ganges about five hours' journey northeast of Delhi, about 200km southwest of the Tibetan border near the Himalayan foothills. As I write this, I'm sitting in an internet cafe perched high above the mighty river on a busy, dusty one-lane road packed with pedestrians, motorized rickshaws, cars, vendors selling jewelry, fresh lime sodas and popcorn, and a not insignificant number of cows.
I've been wondering about the cows. The cows are everywhere, and they don't seem to have any owners. They make their way around town, feasting on garbage, palm fronds and whatever happens to be lying around, lazing about at the side of the road, and just generally doing their lazy cow thing. I'm not sure what their role here is, but there sure are a lot of them.
I suppose that the cows, being sacred in the Hindu faith, are used to getting their way. This may explain the interaction that Amy & I had with them yesterday. We were crossing the long, crowded footbridge high over the Ganges yesterday when Amy was suddenly and rather ungraciously shunted out of the way by a small white bull who had somewhere to go and was perhaps accustomed to a higher standard of deference from the people of Rishikesh. Put simply, the bull walked up behind Amy at a pretty speedy clip and just... kept walking. Its tiny nub of a horn rammed Amy in the backside, Amy (who was thankfully unharmed) jumped a mile in the air, and the unyielding bovine kept on moving. I suppose when you're a cow in India, people either get out of your way out of respect for you or they get out of your way because you weigh two tons and have no qualms about ramming them in the ass.
When I was done laughing about this, I learned a little about the Hindu concept of "karma." Just as I recovered from my doubled-over fits of hilarity, a much larger bull, with much sharper horns, executed the same move on me.
Now, you might be picturing a bull trying to walk around me but being a little careless about whether he clipped me on the way past, with his right horn brushing my left leg. This is not what happened. The bull came up squarely behind me, saw that he was directly behind me, quite rightly calculated that this would not pose a problem for him, and kept on moving at his regular pace. His left horn jabbed my left leg, and rather hard. I don't fully understand the physics of this, but somehow I leapt skyward and landed well to the left of the bull as he strolled on past. A good laugh and one liberal application of disinfectant later, I decided that I could now cross both India and Pamplona off my list of places to visit.
But even that wasn't the most surprising aspect of our time in India so far. That honour goes to the fact that when we were crossing the bridge, we were doing so in order to get to the yoga class for which I had signed up. It's true: after nine years of coaxing, The Amy has managed to get me to a yoga class. That I had my first yogic experience in an ashram on the banks of the holy Ganges river is something on which I will dine out for years to come. And the truly amazing thing is that I loved it. Yoga, far from being new age crockery, is actually a damn good workout. And while I would generally rather shoot myself in the head than lift weights, do push-ups, or engage in anything that could be described as "working out", yoga now joins squash and basketball on the extremely short list of Physical Activities That Could Be Termed Exercise And That I Nevertheless Seem To Enjoy. Amy promises that if I do yoga regularly, I will not only feel healthier and more limber, but will stand a better chance of looking like Sting when I reach my 50s. That's good enough for me.
So that's India so far. The current plan is to go rafting on the Ganges tomorrow, explore a bit more of the country over the next few days, and then make our way to Singapore and then Bali towards the end of the month.
In the meantime, we're getting more adept at travelling here. India is not like Spain, or Peru, or even Thailand: it's more like the little crushed red pepper flakes that look reasonable until you've covered your pizza in them and find that it's become incredibly, inedibly hot. India, too, is colourful, spicy, hot and inviting, but you've got to take that stuff seriously.