How it all began (05/29-06/02)...
Car ride to 30th street station Philadelphia, Megabus to New York City, 1 train to L train to Williamsburg, L train to Queens, B15 bus to airtrain to JFK airport, flight to Helsinki, 615 bus to downtown Helsinki, 615t bus to Helsinki-Vantaa airport, flight to Delhi, car ride to Gurgaon, taxi to metro to Delhi, train to Dehradun, rickshaw to home in the Himalayas.
Needless to say, I am very exhausted. In my short time gone thus far I have learned many things, and I have been hoping to share them ever since. On the 30th I was flying overnight from New York to Helsinki. I knew it would be to my benefit to eat and sleep well on the 8-hour plane ride since I had a long layover the next day and long travel plans over the next few days. The plane was packed, and we were seated 9 people to each row. To no avail, my seat was in the very middle of the row. I played chess on the plane, listened to Alan Watts' lectures, watched the silent black and white film called "The Artist", and also watched several episodes of Modern Family. We were served food an hour into our flight and an hour before landing. For dinner, we were served a slab of beef with crackers and a roll with butter. For breakfast we were served ham and cheese on a roll. Needless to say, I was not able to eat either of those meals and thus I chewed my buttered roll and crackers very slowly. Letting the flight attendants know I am vegetarian was not something I had thought to do beforehand. Now I know.
On the plane I was so engaged in my own mind and my own apprehensiveness that I slept maybe one hour maximum the whole flight. Besides, it had never gotten fully dark as we were traveling through different timezones, and I feel as if I witnessed several different sunrises along the way. The sunrise as we were flying over Iceland was incredible; every single color of the rainbow. I smiled big. When we landed at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport in Finland, I was exhausted and hungry, but I had an 11 hour layover before my next flight and so it was time to get a move on. I had no specific arrival plans or preconceived notion of how to get around town, but I knew that I wanted to travel to downtown Helsinki somehow and ride a bicycle. With no knowledge of the Finnish language, I roamed the airport with a child-like curiosity admiring the sites and the language being spoken. Finnish is a beautifully written language; the words are very long, and thus my attempt at learning dialogue was futile. I got as far as "Haloo" and "Hei" (Hello and Hey). While roaming the airport I made a friend, and he kindly told me how to travel to downtown Helsinki. I found the bus stop and took the hour-long ride downtown. When I arrived I had two motives in my mind: Food and bicycle. The food was easy: I ate at the first place I came across and ordered a bagel with Brie cheese and mango. Finding where to rent a bicycle, however, was much more difficult of a task. I asked many people (in English, of course), though each of them had absolutely no idea. Eventually I came across a very friendly couple from Mexico who were riding bicycles; I knew they must have rented their bicycles because they were stopping at the intersections and looking quizzically at the city map. I approached them and finally I was given an intersection in which I could rent a bicycle. I found a map, wandered aimlessly until I found the bicycle rental place, and in no time I was cycling around giddy on the streets. Helsinki has a set up strangely similar to that of both San Francisco and Portland, and so it was rather easy to travel around. I biked around for an hour taking many pictures. After taking the last picture I made the mistake of placing my camera in the basket on the back of my bicycle. Within two minutes I reached back to grab the camera out of the basket again only to find it had been stolen. I hope the person enjoys the pictures I took.
Eventually I was to take the bus back to the Helsinki airport, as my flight to Delhi was approaching. I sat in the airport for several hours before my flight with the intention of napping, but everything was noisy-- especially my mind-- and I was not able to sleep still. I was beginning to feel anxious at the thought of not being able to eat or sleep again on my next 8-hour flight to Delhi. The thought was nauseating. We boarded the plane and several things worked out in my favor. The flight was under-booked and so there were probably 40 of us in the entire plane. Imagine the back of the plane-- some 20+ rows-- only seating maybe 10 of us, and you will get the idea that this flight was like an intimate sleepover. I took a nap immediately, before the plane even took off. I was very hungry and was starting to think of ways I could convince the flight attendants to supply me with vegetarian food. As laughable as it is, I started thinking of a "I-have-a-meat-allergy" story and as the flight attendant was serving dinner and approached me I had it all planned out in my mind what I would say if a slab of beef was the dinner again. However, she said three magical words which were the highlight of my day thus far: "Chicken or vegetarian?" My eyes opened big and I think I said something like "whaaa, oh my god, vegetarian!!!, thank you so so much, bla bla bla". She looked at me strangely and handed me the vegetarian meal which was an Indian cuisine. Success!
After a long flight we finally landed in Delhi. It was very very hot, I was very very tired, and I felt nervous about how I would find my ride to Gurgaon. I crossed through the bureau of immigration, picked up my backpack at baggage claim, took a deep breath, and exited the airport hoping to find the man whose home I was to sleep at that night. Luckily, as soon as I stepped outside there was a man waving at me holding a sign which read "Kristen//Vipassana house". Swami Aman had taken the train all the way from Dehradun (6 hours) to greet me at the airport because the day before the taxis in all of India went on strike, and he was nervous that as a foreigner I would have no idea what to do in that situation. I feel very grateful. I hopped in the car with Swami Aman and his friend Puneet; Puneet lives in Gurgaon, and that is where we were headed to spend the night. Gurgaon is only a 20-minute drive from the Delhi airport, and in that short time I witnessed the unique beauty of India and fell in love immediately. We were driving away from the airport and there were many people sitting on the side of the road meditating and practicing Pranayama. We drove by a homeless man on the highway who was sitting with a bunch of coconuts and a knife. Puneet and Swami Aman said something to one another in Hindi; Puneet slammed on the breaks, put the car in reverse (into traffic on the highway) and parked the car next to this man. Aman turned to me and asked "Have you ever had coconut water?" The man slashed the coconuts with his knife and gave us straws inside. In just a minute the three of us were drinking the delicious coconut juice (stopped on the side of the road on the highway).
We continued to Gurgaon where I was to meet Puneet's family. Puneet lives in a beautiful condominium-type-house and I was given my own bedroom. We drank chai and talked for awhile, and then Aman told me to get some sleep because he wanted to take me to see two shows later that same day. I layed in bed for several hours but could not sleep at all. Just the day before the weather was 50 degrees Fahrenheit in Helsinki...now in Gurgaon/Delhi the weather was 45 degrees Celcius (about 115 degrees Fahrenheit), and there was only a ceiling fan to cool the room down. What a difference. Realizing I was not having any success in sleeping I got out of bed feeling hungover from little food and very little rest. Puneet's friend made us all lunch; he told me he is a very good cook in Southern India, and if I want to visit he will teach me. We filled our bellies and soon Aman and I were going to see a Bollywood musical at the "Kingdom of Dreams," a place which Puneet used to manage. The dancing was incredible and I was very intrigued by the performance; however, I was so tired that I kept dozing off. For whatever reason my body decided that THIS was the place it finally wanted to sleep, instead of in the bed I was provided with earlier or the air-conditioned plane ride to Delhi. Silly body. I fought so hard to keep my eyelids open and hoped Aman did not notice me falling asleep. The performance ended, and I told myself that I only have to make it through 6 more hours (we were going to see another performance that night) and then I could finally sleep. The second performance was even better. Afterwards Aman and I sat outside under the moon waiting for Puneet to pick us up to bring us back to his house. In the distance I heard Bob Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind" playing out of speakers and I sat smiling looking at the nearly full moon thinking to myself that everything I know and everything I do not know, and everything I like and dislike all exists under this same moon. The notion of a two-tiered and bifurcated world is absolutely irrelevant and inconclusive.
We got back to Puneet's home, ate fresh fruit, and finally my eyes were to rest, though we had to be up in 4 hours to catch a train to Dehradun. We awoke, said goodbye to Puneet and his family, and then Aman and I took a taxi back to the Delhi airport where we were to take the metro to the train station which we would take 6 hours to Dehradun. When we got off of the metro it was 6:35am, and the train was departing at 6:50am, so we ran as quickly as possible to the train station and luckily made it with two minutes to spare. It is not like America where, if you miss your train, you can just catch the next one. If we missed the train we would have had to take an un-airconditioned bus all the way to Dehradun, because trains in India sell out veyr quickly. Aman said people camp out over night by the ticket booth to get a ticket because when tickets go on sale at 8am, by 830am tickets are sold out for the entire month in all of India. I feel grateful to have been given the opportunity to ride a train to my destination in Uttarakhand, as it is a very unforgettable experience for sure. There is a lot that can be learned by sitting on the train and observing. And by not knowing 99% of what is being said, I feel like an even better listener. The train passed through some of India's worst slums. The poverty in India is not concentrated; it exists everywhere. Even next to locations like Puneet's condominium in Gurgaon there are large families sleeping on the floor underneath a roof of branches in the insane heat. I sat on the train observing and listening to and learning from all that was not being spoken.
Aman and I finally arrived in Dehradun and were approached by maybe 10 different rickshaw drivers who were competing against one another to have us ride to our destination with them. Finally we had arrived at our "home in the Himalayas" as Aman calls it. I am very lucky to have Aman looking out for me, as he is very sensitive to what I can and cannot eat/drink as a foreigner. At our home in the Himalayas there is a meditation hall, several bedrooms, and a small kitchen/dining hall where we all gather together for three meals a day sitting on the floor in Ardha Padmasana and enjoying the qualities of life together. Aman believes that everything is composed of five elements: water, air, fire, earth, space. Before we eat, we synchronize with our food by allowing the five elements within us and the five elements within the food to become one. Then we eat slowly, chew fully, and pay attention to the food as it passes through the digestive tract. Aman told me he is impressed with how I eat with my hands and through our conversations of meditation and yoga he feels confident that I have lived here in my past life.
I have only been in India for a day and a half, but I feel as if I have been here much longer. There is much more to be learned, and I hope to find what I am not looking for. I want to share this gift with everyone, and thus I plan to blog as often as possible. And if I can grab a hold of a camera, perhaps I can also post pictures. The beautiful qualities of life...
Namaste.
maiN bahut qhuś hūN (I am very happy)
Car ride to 30th street station Philadelphia, Megabus to New York City, 1 train to L train to Williamsburg, L train to Queens, B15 bus to airtrain to JFK airport, flight to Helsinki, 615 bus to downtown Helsinki, 615t bus to Helsinki-Vantaa airport, flight to Delhi, car ride to Gurgaon, taxi to metro to Delhi, train to Dehradun, rickshaw to home in the Himalayas.
Needless to say, I am very exhausted. In my short time gone thus far I have learned many things, and I have been hoping to share them ever since. On the 30th I was flying overnight from New York to Helsinki. I knew it would be to my benefit to eat and sleep well on the 8-hour plane ride since I had a long layover the next day and long travel plans over the next few days. The plane was packed, and we were seated 9 people to each row. To no avail, my seat was in the very middle of the row. I played chess on the plane, listened to Alan Watts' lectures, watched the silent black and white film called "The Artist", and also watched several episodes of Modern Family. We were served food an hour into our flight and an hour before landing. For dinner, we were served a slab of beef with crackers and a roll with butter. For breakfast we were served ham and cheese on a roll. Needless to say, I was not able to eat either of those meals and thus I chewed my buttered roll and crackers very slowly. Letting the flight attendants know I am vegetarian was not something I had thought to do beforehand. Now I know.
On the plane I was so engaged in my own mind and my own apprehensiveness that I slept maybe one hour maximum the whole flight. Besides, it had never gotten fully dark as we were traveling through different timezones, and I feel as if I witnessed several different sunrises along the way. The sunrise as we were flying over Iceland was incredible; every single color of the rainbow. I smiled big. When we landed at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport in Finland, I was exhausted and hungry, but I had an 11 hour layover before my next flight and so it was time to get a move on. I had no specific arrival plans or preconceived notion of how to get around town, but I knew that I wanted to travel to downtown Helsinki somehow and ride a bicycle. With no knowledge of the Finnish language, I roamed the airport with a child-like curiosity admiring the sites and the language being spoken. Finnish is a beautifully written language; the words are very long, and thus my attempt at learning dialogue was futile. I got as far as "Haloo" and "Hei" (Hello and Hey). While roaming the airport I made a friend, and he kindly told me how to travel to downtown Helsinki. I found the bus stop and took the hour-long ride downtown. When I arrived I had two motives in my mind: Food and bicycle. The food was easy: I ate at the first place I came across and ordered a bagel with Brie cheese and mango. Finding where to rent a bicycle, however, was much more difficult of a task. I asked many people (in English, of course), though each of them had absolutely no idea. Eventually I came across a very friendly couple from Mexico who were riding bicycles; I knew they must have rented their bicycles because they were stopping at the intersections and looking quizzically at the city map. I approached them and finally I was given an intersection in which I could rent a bicycle. I found a map, wandered aimlessly until I found the bicycle rental place, and in no time I was cycling around giddy on the streets. Helsinki has a set up strangely similar to that of both San Francisco and Portland, and so it was rather easy to travel around. I biked around for an hour taking many pictures. After taking the last picture I made the mistake of placing my camera in the basket on the back of my bicycle. Within two minutes I reached back to grab the camera out of the basket again only to find it had been stolen. I hope the person enjoys the pictures I took.
Eventually I was to take the bus back to the Helsinki airport, as my flight to Delhi was approaching. I sat in the airport for several hours before my flight with the intention of napping, but everything was noisy-- especially my mind-- and I was not able to sleep still. I was beginning to feel anxious at the thought of not being able to eat or sleep again on my next 8-hour flight to Delhi. The thought was nauseating. We boarded the plane and several things worked out in my favor. The flight was under-booked and so there were probably 40 of us in the entire plane. Imagine the back of the plane-- some 20+ rows-- only seating maybe 10 of us, and you will get the idea that this flight was like an intimate sleepover. I took a nap immediately, before the plane even took off. I was very hungry and was starting to think of ways I could convince the flight attendants to supply me with vegetarian food. As laughable as it is, I started thinking of a "I-have-a-meat-allergy" story and as the flight attendant was serving dinner and approached me I had it all planned out in my mind what I would say if a slab of beef was the dinner again. However, she said three magical words which were the highlight of my day thus far: "Chicken or vegetarian?" My eyes opened big and I think I said something like "whaaa, oh my god, vegetarian!!!, thank you so so much, bla bla bla". She looked at me strangely and handed me the vegetarian meal which was an Indian cuisine. Success!
After a long flight we finally landed in Delhi. It was very very hot, I was very very tired, and I felt nervous about how I would find my ride to Gurgaon. I crossed through the bureau of immigration, picked up my backpack at baggage claim, took a deep breath, and exited the airport hoping to find the man whose home I was to sleep at that night. Luckily, as soon as I stepped outside there was a man waving at me holding a sign which read "Kristen//Vipassana house". Swami Aman had taken the train all the way from Dehradun (6 hours) to greet me at the airport because the day before the taxis in all of India went on strike, and he was nervous that as a foreigner I would have no idea what to do in that situation. I feel very grateful. I hopped in the car with Swami Aman and his friend Puneet; Puneet lives in Gurgaon, and that is where we were headed to spend the night. Gurgaon is only a 20-minute drive from the Delhi airport, and in that short time I witnessed the unique beauty of India and fell in love immediately. We were driving away from the airport and there were many people sitting on the side of the road meditating and practicing Pranayama. We drove by a homeless man on the highway who was sitting with a bunch of coconuts and a knife. Puneet and Swami Aman said something to one another in Hindi; Puneet slammed on the breaks, put the car in reverse (into traffic on the highway) and parked the car next to this man. Aman turned to me and asked "Have you ever had coconut water?" The man slashed the coconuts with his knife and gave us straws inside. In just a minute the three of us were drinking the delicious coconut juice (stopped on the side of the road on the highway).
We continued to Gurgaon where I was to meet Puneet's family. Puneet lives in a beautiful condominium-type-house and I was given my own bedroom. We drank chai and talked for awhile, and then Aman told me to get some sleep because he wanted to take me to see two shows later that same day. I layed in bed for several hours but could not sleep at all. Just the day before the weather was 50 degrees Fahrenheit in Helsinki...now in Gurgaon/Delhi the weather was 45 degrees Celcius (about 115 degrees Fahrenheit), and there was only a ceiling fan to cool the room down. What a difference. Realizing I was not having any success in sleeping I got out of bed feeling hungover from little food and very little rest. Puneet's friend made us all lunch; he told me he is a very good cook in Southern India, and if I want to visit he will teach me. We filled our bellies and soon Aman and I were going to see a Bollywood musical at the "Kingdom of Dreams," a place which Puneet used to manage. The dancing was incredible and I was very intrigued by the performance; however, I was so tired that I kept dozing off. For whatever reason my body decided that THIS was the place it finally wanted to sleep, instead of in the bed I was provided with earlier or the air-conditioned plane ride to Delhi. Silly body. I fought so hard to keep my eyelids open and hoped Aman did not notice me falling asleep. The performance ended, and I told myself that I only have to make it through 6 more hours (we were going to see another performance that night) and then I could finally sleep. The second performance was even better. Afterwards Aman and I sat outside under the moon waiting for Puneet to pick us up to bring us back to his house. In the distance I heard Bob Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind" playing out of speakers and I sat smiling looking at the nearly full moon thinking to myself that everything I know and everything I do not know, and everything I like and dislike all exists under this same moon. The notion of a two-tiered and bifurcated world is absolutely irrelevant and inconclusive.
We got back to Puneet's home, ate fresh fruit, and finally my eyes were to rest, though we had to be up in 4 hours to catch a train to Dehradun. We awoke, said goodbye to Puneet and his family, and then Aman and I took a taxi back to the Delhi airport where we were to take the metro to the train station which we would take 6 hours to Dehradun. When we got off of the metro it was 6:35am, and the train was departing at 6:50am, so we ran as quickly as possible to the train station and luckily made it with two minutes to spare. It is not like America where, if you miss your train, you can just catch the next one. If we missed the train we would have had to take an un-airconditioned bus all the way to Dehradun, because trains in India sell out veyr quickly. Aman said people camp out over night by the ticket booth to get a ticket because when tickets go on sale at 8am, by 830am tickets are sold out for the entire month in all of India. I feel grateful to have been given the opportunity to ride a train to my destination in Uttarakhand, as it is a very unforgettable experience for sure. There is a lot that can be learned by sitting on the train and observing. And by not knowing 99% of what is being said, I feel like an even better listener. The train passed through some of India's worst slums. The poverty in India is not concentrated; it exists everywhere. Even next to locations like Puneet's condominium in Gurgaon there are large families sleeping on the floor underneath a roof of branches in the insane heat. I sat on the train observing and listening to and learning from all that was not being spoken.
Aman and I finally arrived in Dehradun and were approached by maybe 10 different rickshaw drivers who were competing against one another to have us ride to our destination with them. Finally we had arrived at our "home in the Himalayas" as Aman calls it. I am very lucky to have Aman looking out for me, as he is very sensitive to what I can and cannot eat/drink as a foreigner. At our home in the Himalayas there is a meditation hall, several bedrooms, and a small kitchen/dining hall where we all gather together for three meals a day sitting on the floor in Ardha Padmasana and enjoying the qualities of life together. Aman believes that everything is composed of five elements: water, air, fire, earth, space. Before we eat, we synchronize with our food by allowing the five elements within us and the five elements within the food to become one. Then we eat slowly, chew fully, and pay attention to the food as it passes through the digestive tract. Aman told me he is impressed with how I eat with my hands and through our conversations of meditation and yoga he feels confident that I have lived here in my past life.
I have only been in India for a day and a half, but I feel as if I have been here much longer. There is much more to be learned, and I hope to find what I am not looking for. I want to share this gift with everyone, and thus I plan to blog as often as possible. And if I can grab a hold of a camera, perhaps I can also post pictures. The beautiful qualities of life...
Namaste.
maiN bahut qhuś hūN (I am very happy)
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