Yesterday I met a very sweet yoga from China and a gutsy yogi from Austria (she lives in Switzerland now).
I took a walk with the Austrian across the bridge and to the other side of the Ganga River. She said she wanted to bathe in the river… I said i’d walk her.
Next she spoke about jumping off the bring into the river. I hate to be the guy who says “no”, but this didn’t seem like the thing to do here. As we got to the bridge she began asking folks (most of whom didn’t speak English) and got the impression she shouldn’t do this. We got to the other side of the water and she stripped to her bathing suit. There were maybe two boats in the water and a couple of people washing themselves (no swimmers). She said she wanted to swim across the river to the ashram and handed me a bag of her belongings. As she began to put her feet into the dirty water a policeman began to shout at her … basically saying “NO!”. She put her clothes back on and we walked back. Later she said she spoke to her teacher (who is here) and was yelled at again – “No one swims in the holy Mother ganga River!”
Annie say that a guru was speaking in another ashram last night and decided we’d go. It meant crossing the bridge at night and taking a rickshaw up the winding cliffs with a driver 9and his friend (who was navigating). They didn’t know where it was and in the dark, this felt uncomfortable. We finally made it at the end of the talk…. on the way back we smelled pot and realized our driver and his navigator were both smoking while driving on these winding mountain roads in the dark.
On the walk across the bridge we needed to navigate between the people and motorcycles. One cycle had no lights…. but the back seat driver was holding a little pen light.
Today I’ve been given permission to do balloons. I don’t have many with me. We’ll see.