25 November - Rishi& the Beatles

covered lots of ground in Manali, then dharamshala/dalai lama 'house' and now in rishikesh . have spent afternoon at the old and massive ashram where the beatles came in the sixties to study with the Maharishi, remember all those photos of them garlanded up?

well the maharishi didn't pay his taxes so in 97 (but seems longer ago) the Indian government reclaimed his territory and gave it over to forestry, it's like going to angkor wat in Cambodia, what was once a thriving huge compound full of houses and halls and roads and huts and blah blah is now overgrown with trees and vegetation , a bit eerie in fact. The gate is locked but you call out and a lock keeper appears and lets you in for a fee. On the way over, the banks of the Ganges where chocka with cross legged gurus and their pupils. A blonde woman gave us a filthy look for presumably taking up her field of vision. Sorry asshole, she should have learnt by now to meditate despite distractions. Ganges very clean here, my only other comparison being seeing it down river at Varanasi. My companion who was here ten years ago claims to have found rooms that were stillf full of documents scattered about. Alas he took none and no pictures and nothing tangible remains now apart from the structures.

Rishikesh is still hippie central. very nice /chilled out place but every time i see some westerner in dreadlocks, i want to cross the road, cannot bear them. Then I remember to practice tolerance and you know, live and let live. Anyway.... great yoga classes here, ie the guruji bothers to explain poses and corrections , my experience in London is not so hands on. No sign of celebrities visiting these parts now, was expecting at least a photo of Sting embracing some tantra master who had taught him all he knows. And my hindi is coming along, by which I mean i cannot understand the locals walking around with their mobiles attached to their ear but i can amuse them with silly sentences i learn like 'i will fire bullets' . er. yes, those sentences stick in the mind, the more useful ones do not. The Beatles and the rest would have crossed the ganges by boat and arrived in what must have been paradise then, ie before ... now, when there are too many jeeps on the road and they make a racket. no stray dogs here howling in the night but been here two nights and one wedding marquee 50 ft from hotel last night and another nearby .. sigh... wouldn't mind so much if was indian music but it's the worst kind of disco music ever. but it's ok, they're not hassly here so you can wander around w/o being sold stuff .