Rishikesh

I am now in Rishikesh, a small Hindu city perched on the stones above the brown tides of the turbulent Ganges, and it feels good to be embarking on the same route as so many Hindu pilgrims. Spending days relaxing, watching the river pour through the large gorge, meeting lots of travelers and actually swimming in the icy waters I have found a prime spot to spend my last little bit in this crazy country. I am finding lots of musical inspiration in the place where the Beatles wrote the White Album and the resounding river bounces off cliffs from the tallest mountains in the world, and have located the one clandestine restaurant that serves eggs for breakfast (Rishikesh is a strictly vegetarian town). Although most people here in the "Yoga capital of the world" head straight for the ashrams and meditation halls, I have accepted the fact that I will be drinking expresso and lounging on the little white sandy river beaches while I read "City of Djinns," and let other more committed members of the international spiritual community contribute to the awareness-raising craze surrounding this place.

I pick my way down small paths through the local villages where makeshift "ashrams" (though actually just shanty huts in the forest) support the babbling, bandy-legged babus who bathe, pray, meditate and wash their orange robes in the cooling waters. The temperature is still high, though not the blistering degrees of Varanasi, and it is nice to be at a spot closer to the source of glacial output and upstream from any factories and much of the civilization that contributes to the Ganges of Varanasi. Wherever I go I see these hunched holy men in their g-strings, giving perfect puja to the river of their scriptures, and I can more easily understand such worship where the water runs clean. At night the sky is lit with crazy lightning and thunder, winds ripping through the canyons and banyan trees, turning to warm and manageable breeze by daybreak. Rishikesh is a wild, rough, spiritual and, ultimately, completely relaxed compound where one can just BE.