We left the Ashram in the Himalaya mountains at 6:30am, after saying goodbye to most of the 18 yogi’s who were taking the final class in Kriya Yoga (which also began at 6:30am). The Kriya yoga course schedule for the past 10 days has been pretty constant… not leaving Annie much time for her shopping chakra but leaving me time to deal with the WIFI needs:
5-5:30 – optional prayers
6:30-8:00 – prayers, breathing, yoga
8:30-9:00 – breakfast (in silence)
10-12:30 – Kriya Yoga
1-2 – lunch (in silence)
3:30-4 – Vedic Chanting (I never had the nerve to ask for a definition of “Vedic” – just go with the flow)
4-5 – Kriya Yoga review
5-5:30 clean up (good for Karma)
6-7:30 – Prayers (chanting and lights) on the Ganges River (required attendance….although we don’t do “required” well)
7:30-8 supper (in silence) …. although they invited us to a question/answer session with the head swami which meant supper would be at 8 or 8:15…. we appreciated the “invitation” but only “accepted” it once.
I guess since we missed the final class we won’t be finding our blissful enlightenment during this life time? That’s okay…. “blissful enlightenment sounds pretty boring to me… there’s no place to go from there. There’s one thing I heard the head swami here say that I really enjoyed – “I hope I go to Hell rather than to Heaven…. there’s more people who need me there!”
On the drive (about 7hrs) we “enjoyed” the three lanes of traffic on roads that were wide enough for maybe 1-1/2 vehicles… sharing the roads with the cows, the sharp zig-zag turns on the mountain cliffs, a number of ox (or whatever they were) pulling vehicles, carts with a load of people hanging off the backs and sitting on the roofs, even a camel pulling something…. it’s all become “everyday” stuff here over the past months. For most of the drive we listened to an audio book by Yogananda – “The Autobiography of a Yogi”…. about the life and experiences of an enlightened Yogi back in the first half of the 1900’s… as he evolved and traveled around India, America, and other places. Listening to his adventures in India while we’re here has been magical.
One of the most magical parts of these months has been becoming fast friends with wonderful people from all around the world. India, Nepal, Greece, Peru, Canada, China, Japan, France, London (the only city beside New York it seems that when you ask a person where they’re from, they’ll answer the city rather than the country), Brazil, Russia, Iran, and quite a few other countries… some of which I’d be afraid to try spelling. It’s going to take some time to process everything we’ve been thru and experienced…. so if we don’t write of call during the next week or two, we’re decompressing.
One thing for sure…. At the beginning of this adventure I said we’d be doing things that would be out of our comfort zones and we’d either return home kissing the ground or looking forward for our next adventure …. at this point it looks like we’ll be researching our next adventure.