rishikesh: fairy kingdom

12.17.11

rishikesh. a place i had no real desire to travel to. a place that, in my mind, was tied only to the beatles and the maharishi, but with no real appeal. not like the forts of rajasthan, or the temples here in the south, or the history of the brits and mother teresa in Calcutta. you know, just a place that some white boys with moppy haircuts traveled to once and made famous.

was i ever wrong.

rishikesh feels like this little fairy kingdom tucked into the foothills of the Himalayas. the ganges here is blue-green, and frigidly cold. it winds, rolls, forces its way through the gharwal mountains, past ghats and sadhus and, every evening, a ganga aarti. the hills are breathtakingly beautiful, especially in the morning as the fog from the evening’s chill rolls off and the sun rises slowly, slowly over the peaks, the ashrams and the dogs and cows which inhabit even this holy city’s streets.

 

rishikesh is crawling with sadhus. holy men in holy orange everywhere you look, each having taken on the cremation fire in this body so as to be free from the next cycle of suffering, death and rebirth. they wear orange as a sign to the world that they are free from attachments, and that the alms you may or may not feel compelled to give may make a difference in whether or not they can eat tonight. every once in a while, you’ll find a particularly colorful character (excuse the metaphor even as i talk about wearing saffron), dressed as blue skinned Krishna or Hanuman the monkey god, with years and years’ worth of dreadlocks piled on top of their heads. the sadhus compete with the local monkeys for the claim of the largest population. both choose to spend their time near the laxman jhula and ram jhula bridges, competing for the attention of the hordes of foreigners who come to this city’s shores in search of god and themselves.

 

it’s annoyingly quaint that every shopkeeper in rishikesh greets you with a ‘namaste.’ it’s delightful that every little restaurant serves ginger-lemon-honey tea and falafel with hummus and pita. the bite of cold in the air and the howling wind that woke me up around 6am are a wonderful, yet brief change from the consistent 90 degrees and sunny down in tamil nadu.

standing at the ganga aarti on the shores of the icy river, i understood the mysterious, peaceful appeal of Hinduism for the first time in my life. i breathed deeply the chilly air and snuggled even more into my fleece jacket. it’s no wonder shiva, after descending from his Himalayan abode of kailash, chose to come here to rishikesh and the neighboring town of haridwar. i’d choose to make this place my home, too, if i could.

it makes me a bad international traveler, a hypocritical yogi and a terrible example of openmindedness and willingness to learn to say that most of the hindusim i see here in the south is chaotic, loud and a sort of caricature of itself. the temples here are brightly colored and piled high with depictions of gods and animals and if i’m really honest, i’ll admit that i have a hard time taking Hinduism seriously. until this aarti. the priests with their firebowls saluting the river just after the setting sun, the chanting and singing of the devotees who came to watch, and the man who stood next to us and handed me some marigold petals to offer to the river, and the scrawny little white boy with his hair in a ponytail, eyes closed and hands clapping softly in front of his mouth changed my mind and my heart. as the sun completely disappeared behind the mountains and the river rushed past, i threw my marigold petals into the stream and let this place get under my skin.

i’m not saying i want to convert to Hinduism, or even that i believe that Hinduism is something you can convert to as opposed to just be. i am, however, saying that for the first time in my vast experience of India, i understood the faith in a new and beautiful way.