Saturday, August 30, 2008

Alive in Rishikesh

Hello everyone,

We have survived two very, very long days in Delhi and now are enjoying a peaceful, cool time in Rishikesh. We have seen a lot of crazy things, and berated with people trying to get money from us, but it's been okay. I think we are both very happy to be gone from Delhi for now, although we miss our morning chai (over here the chai is basically orange pekoe tea with milk and sugar).

The Yoga Niketan Ashram that we are staying at is pretty lovely. We have a room together in a cabin infested with ants, a hybrid toilet with bidet and two very hard beds. The good part is that it overlooks the the Ganga river and it's fairly quiet.

We have a strict schedule while we stay at the ashram. It's as follows:


4:30am Morning Bell
5:00-6:00am Meditation
6:30-7:30am Yoga
8:00am Breakfast
-- time to do what we please, but it is recommended to study in the library --
12:00pm Lunch
3:15-4:15pm Lecture
4:00pm Tea
5:00-6:00pm Yoga
7:00-8:00pm Meditation
8:15pm Dinner
9:15-10:00pm Kirtan (Mondays and Fridays only.. not sure what this is exactly, but I know it involves singing)


We get Sundays off, except we have to clean from 6:30-7:30am. Not really sure what else to say at this point, so hope everyone is doing well back home. We are grungy over here and are looking to buy some clothing soon! Two shirts over 4 days is not a great choice!

6 comments:

krishna said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
krishna said...

Man that is the most grueling schedule ever. You have like 5-6 hours of sleep! I would cry everyday.

I remember my cousin told me when he was in india he would sometimes see mothers go to a river (not sure which river) to get water for like cooking or something. Then he would look higher up stream and see other mothers cleaning their clothes in the water. Then he would look just a little further upstream and see random men squatting in the river doing a #2... I remembered that story after reading Ganga river lol. Expect a lot of random anecdotes scattered through your posts. India is very interesting.

Unknown said...

That is a crazy schedule! Hopefully it is more peaceful than the structure makes it seem it would be.

Anonymous said...

If you guys want to add some relaxation into that schedule, try getting up a half an hour earlier (ie: at 4:00 am) and practice the harmonica as loud as you can. This will also serve to endear you to your fellow ashrammers.

Anonymous said...

It sounds pretty vigorous. You might both gain a few cm. in height with all the stretching that you'll be doing. Actually, I'm envious.

Peter said...

It's actually not so bad (if you sleep through some of the activities). We still do not have a clock, so sometimes we don't hear the morning bell and sleep until 6. Oh well! Maybe we'll find one today.

Kirtan: We all gather in a room with a bright red carpet and play percussive instruments while people take turns singing. It was fun at the beginning, but the final song seemed to drag on forever and the singers weren't that great. Some of them are fantastic though :-)

Oh and Bob, one of the rules here is NO PLAYING OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. Well, that's what it says anyways. It seems like many of the rules are not current, and people have assured us we'll be okay to blow on our harmonicas every now and then (as we tried this morning).