(camp Rishikesh)
After a long time, I'm back to blogging.
There were two reasons for a long break from the blog world. Not so much as a break, but shifting new blog entries to wordpress was one reason. Bomb blasts at Mumbai led to shutting down some blog servers by some ISPs. This was factually a mistake from the ISPs, since Indian govt had asked some specific blog URLs to be blocked, while some ISPs messed up by blocking the domain instead! Blogspot remained one such for a while and unblocked from some access points quite later than expected! Meanwhile I'd shifted to wordpress.com to return today for my love of blogspot.
Secondly, but more importantly, I was held up in the exit process back at work. I'd blogged earlier (yes, I know more than once :) that I'd be quitting my work for a kind of a sabbatical. My last blog on this indicated the date as July 31st, 2006. However, it finally got done on Aug 10th, 2006. Then on, I've shifted my households to Honnavara and hurried somehow to Rishikesh at Shivananda ashram for a YVFA course. Here, things have gotten a little too hectic for an average human being, more so for a lazy person like me! I do take strolls outside the ashram-- almost daily-- but this blogging thing took a while to get back to.
Thoughts 31
(Published elsewhere on August 8th, 2006)
31. A good relation stays in memories for ever.
The Himalayan trek - 2.1
(Published elsewhere on August 3rd, 2006)
(If you’re wondering what 2.1 stands for, let me clear it off at the start itself. 2’s for the 2nd trek up there in Himalayas and 1 for the first part. I do not know how far it will go, if any further)
And thus we started along the path of Ganges upwards of Rishikesh: Sriram, his uncle Mr. Devaru and me. We had stayed in a hotel bang opposite to where we were to take a taxi from. We were told on our vikram auto journey from Haridwar to Rishikesh that this place called Triveni Ghat is where the press/newspaper vehicles start off from anytime after 0300 hrs. This was to be a very comfortable time to leave Rishikesh in order to make it in good time to Uttarkashi for our agency to be contacted for guide, porters, tent, etc. We wanted to rest a little on reaching Uttarkashi before meeting our agency contact Mr. Pitambar and keep the rest of the day free to buy provisions for the trip. The verbal list of things was discussed over and over again for a final cut at Bangalore itself.
So we took a drop at Triveni ghat and on Sriram’s enquiring, we got ourselves a room at a newly built hotel called Ganga Guest House just opposite the (newspaper-)taxi stand. We’d our dinner at Rimpy’s just 4-5 blocks away on recommendation from Amit, the kid at the hotel reception. The food at Rimpy’s was fantastic and the menu had a huge range to pick from. The quantity of food deserves a special mention: the soup bowl was large and almost overflowing while the regular economy north Indian meal had *4* tandoori rotis, a vegetable, dal, some rice & raita. We ate to our heartful, not to mention the stomach and slept off for a few hours in our room.
The fun began the next day at 0330 hrs when we hit the taxi stand enquiring about taxis only getting confused with inputs that varied from “no one’s driving off before 0500 hrs” to “a taxi will come over anytime now and leave as soon as it is full of 10 passengers”. So we waited and got ourselves hopping taxis with our backpacks just to fill 10 passengers in one vehicle that were otherwise spread out in multiple cabs. Before 0500 hrs, we were driven to barricades that block the ghats during the night for safety reasons. On dropping a newspaper, the road was thrown open for our sleepy driver by the police!
The drive was scary, not as much for the curves and the hills but for the sleepy driver who stood up on the brakes whenever he saw a vehicle approaching us. After a while, I learnt that the driver was actually sleeping in bits at the wheel!!! This came as so much as a shock to me that Sriram and I started analyzing whether he was sleepy or the looks were sleepy. Not wanting to risk and on my insisting that the driver was asleep for good fractions of a second on a regular basis, Sriram and I started talking to SUD (sleeping ugly driver). We were not sure what to ask and went on with all sorts of nonsensical questions about the weather, road, blah blah… god-knows-what. At first, SUD was annoyed and nodded at each inquiry. Later, his sleep took a walk and he started talking some. Although assuring enough, we ran out of petty talk soon and SUD continued his sleep again. We tried much in vain, but success was reached only when a person in the backmost seat fell sick and vomited! SUD had to stop and that made him wake up much. Later, we found that he was as bad a driver, or even worse when awake! I wanted to pen this experience in greater detail just to say that although the journey began on a bad risky note, it taught us a valuable lesson of being careful ahead!
And thus we started along the path of Ganges upwards of Rishikesh: Sriram, his uncle Mr. Devaru and me. We had stayed in a hotel bang opposite to where we were to take a taxi from. We were told on our vikram auto journey from Haridwar to Rishikesh that this place called Triveni Ghat is where the press/newspaper vehicles start off from anytime after 0300 hrs. This was to be a very comfortable time to leave Rishikesh in order to make it in good time to Uttarkashi for our agency to be contacted for guide, porters, tent, etc. We wanted to rest a little on reaching Uttarkashi before meeting our agency contact Mr. Pitambar and keep the rest of the day free to buy provisions for the trip. The verbal list of things was discussed over and over again for a final cut at Bangalore itself.
So we took a drop at Triveni ghat and on Sriram’s enquiring, we got ourselves a room at a newly built hotel called Ganga Guest House just opposite the (newspaper-)taxi stand. We’d our dinner at Rimpy’s just 4-5 blocks away on recommendation from Amit, the kid at the hotel reception. The food at Rimpy’s was fantastic and the menu had a huge range to pick from. The quantity of food deserves a special mention: the soup bowl was large and almost overflowing while the regular economy north Indian meal had *4* tandoori rotis, a vegetable, dal, some rice & raita. We ate to our heartful, not to mention the stomach and slept off for a few hours in our room.
The fun began the next day at 0330 hrs when we hit the taxi stand enquiring about taxis only getting confused with inputs that varied from “no one’s driving off before 0500 hrs” to “a taxi will come over anytime now and leave as soon as it is full of 10 passengers”. So we waited and got ourselves hopping taxis with our backpacks just to fill 10 passengers in one vehicle that were otherwise spread out in multiple cabs. Before 0500 hrs, we were driven to barricades that block the ghats during the night for safety reasons. On dropping a newspaper, the road was thrown open for our sleepy driver by the police!
The drive was scary, not as much for the curves and the hills but for the sleepy driver who stood up on the brakes whenever he saw a vehicle approaching us. After a while, I learnt that the driver was actually sleeping in bits at the wheel!!! This came as so much as a shock to me that Sriram and I started analyzing whether he was sleepy or the looks were sleepy. Not wanting to risk and on my insisting that the driver was asleep for good fractions of a second on a regular basis, Sriram and I started talking to SUD (sleeping ugly driver). We were not sure what to ask and went on with all sorts of nonsensical questions about the weather, road, blah blah… god-knows-what. At first, SUD was annoyed and nodded at each inquiry. Later, his sleep took a walk and he started talking some. Although assuring enough, we ran out of petty talk soon and SUD continued his sleep again. We tried much in vain, but success was reached only when a person in the backmost seat fell sick and vomited! SUD had to stop and that made him wake up much. Later, we found that he was as bad a driver, or even worse when awake! I wanted to pen this experience in greater detail just to say that although the journey began on a bad risky note, it taught us a valuable lesson of being careful ahead!
Trek in the Himalayas
(Published elsewhere on July 27th, 2006)
After having done Yamnotri last August, our second trek in the Himalayas was between 15th to 26th July 2006 and to the source of the Ganges and Bhagirathi. I’m not posting details yet, but here’s briefly what it was:
15th: Bangalore-(flight)-Delhi-(train)-Haridwar-(vikram auto)-Rishikesh (Ganga hotel)
16th: Rishikesh-(shared taxi)-Uttarkashi (GMVN guest house)
17th: Uttarkashi-(taxi)-Gangotri-Chirbasa
18th: Chirbasa-Bhojbasa-Gaumukh
19th: Gaumukh-Tapovan
20th: Tapovan
21st: Tapovan
22nd: Tapovan-Bhojbasa (GMVN guest house)
23rd: Bhojbasa-Chirbasa-Gangotri (Mandakini hotel)
24th: Gangotri-(shared taxi)-Rishikesh (Ganga hotel)
25th: Rishikesh
26th: Rishikesh-(vikram auto)-Haridwar-(train)-Delhi-(flight)-Bangalore
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Thoughts 29
29. Karma: The present can fine-tune the future, even though both are at the mercy of the past.
Monkey mind
The mind keeps on jumping like a monkey is well known and an experience of everyone. Its also a common practice to try and control the mind. There are various meditation techniques taught to that effect. Soon these techniques, when not being used, fall apart! That is, the mind is meditative, at most, only while its involved in meditation.
While comparing the mind with the monkey’s unsteady behavior, we soon forget some other qualities of the monkey. A few months back, at Varadahalli Sridharashrama, I was sitting on top of the hill reading blissfully, when ruffles of leaves caught my attention. A monkey was trying to eat some seed-like fruits from a tree. The discipline with which it searched the fruits and ate them surprised me. There was a process it followed. It used to walk up a branch, picking only the fruits hidden among leaves and then trace its way back doing the same thing, before moving out to another branch and repeating the process. I kept on watching for a long time. It was as if the monkeys knew what is known as the depth-first algorithm!
Humans take undue credit for so-called inventions when all we do is discover! The nature has everything that there is to have, we just discover them and the ego takes over claiming them to be inventions.
Moving back to our topic of mind having monkey’s restless characteristics, it also has the power of monkey’s discipline that I just gave an example of. We fail to see that and are comfortable with accepting that the mind’s job is to jump around and then we let it be. Why not see that the mind’s job is to be disciplined in its search for the fruit that its born to eat? The fruit lies in the depth-first algorithm; there’s no point in moving across branches endlessly without going deep within the nearest branch known as yourself!
Identity crisis!
A gazillion...
... moods: agonizingly funny, downright stupid, insanely brilliant, wholly lonesome, barrelful drunk...
... personalities: involved, enticed, careless, lost...
... plans: all tangential and contradicting.
I can't relate to any of these right now. All these elliptic thoughts seem to be making up a dotted-line to psychosis!
... moods: agonizingly funny, downright stupid, insanely brilliant, wholly lonesome, barrelful drunk...
... personalities: involved, enticed, careless, lost...
... plans: all tangential and contradicting.
I can't relate to any of these right now. All these elliptic thoughts seem to be making up a dotted-line to psychosis!
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