Journey To The West : May 12th – May 19th

May 23, 2019 SamuelLMoney Leave a comment

Alas, the story has me returning to Western culture. I woke up and headed to the Delhi airport. I hailed a tuk tuk, only to find out that tuk tuks can’t actually go all the way to the airport, forcing me to take a shuttle bus the remainder of the way. At this point, I have been in a lot of airports around the world and I currently consider the Delhi airport the least efficient one I have ever been to. To enter the airport, you wait in a line where they check your boarding pass and passport/id. I am not sure how you get in if you need to check in there, because you would have to get through the doors for that. Throughout the whole process, they checked my boarding pass nine times. They were checking my boarding pass in areas that required checking my boarding pass to enter. Oh well, a bit of annoyance later and I was on my flight. My seven hour flight turned into over eight due to issues between India and Pakistan and us having to go around, but otherwise an easy flight.

A five hour layover in Kiev, Ukraine saw me have my first taste of beef in over a month, an underwhelming burger. I’m not particularly fond of beer, but it’s such a staple of Eastern European culture, it seemed wrong not to have one. Also, there’s not much to do in the Kiev airport. A short flight later on the tiniest plane I have ever been on and I was in Riga, Latvia.

Latvia Is Not Latveria

I have been dragging bad weather with me through Europe

I landed in Riga around nine thirty at night. Oddly enough, th sun still had not set. I was told it would be cold, but it still felt like tank top and shorts weather to me. Sandra, one of the people from the Beachbox Camp in Thailand, was nice enough to come get me from the airport and let me crash in her apartment. The next morning, the weather was not so nice. It was gloomy and raining pretty consistently. As I have been in hot weather since Christmas, I have no jeans or anything else to wear for cold weather, so I did some Riga sight seeing while checking out some stores. Found a pair of jeans after a bit and met Sandra at Lido’s, a buffet style Latvian restaurant. Latvian food is what you would expect from an Eastern European country, heavy food, potatoes, good food for the cold weather. This style of food is pretty much non existent in Asia, so I was more than looking forward to it.

After a month of sitting around India, I was not quite in volleyball shape. Sandra took me to see the indoor sand facility run by our other friend from Beachbox Camps, Renars. After a few hours of playing, I was feeling a bit more like myself. As tiring as doing several hours of yoga in one hundred degree weather was, it never gave me the level of exhaustion that a few hours of volleyball does. A little food after and I slept like a baby. The following day, we got lunch in Riga’s central market before I went and finished the post about Dharamshala. Then I got the chance to do some more volleyball training.

Indoor sand courts with heated sand and fake island decor for the winter months

I was easily the weakest player and the shortest person in the training group. Usually, I make up for any shortfalls with endurance and defensive skills, but a month of yoga killed my endurance and lack of reps had diminished my defense skills. We spent the training doing a good amount of drills, some focused on advanced hitting techniques. Hitting is my least used skill, since it’s a new one and I prefer to shoot. We did a drill that required me to hit cross body, which loses height from a normal swing, really showing off my lack of height and my legs’ current state of weakness. Following the training, we played some pickup and I got some confidence back being able to shoot the ball and play defense like I never took a break. After playing, I remembered how bad my endurance was after a month of sitting in the yogashala and kind of wanted to die. Some food and another good night’s sleep before my last full day in Riga.

Luckily, Sandra convinced me to buy a hoodie, because she took me to the beach and the wind off sea was freezing cold. I don’t know too many people with sponsorships, so the idea of it is still a bit foreign to me, but it was weird to find out that Samoilovs is sponsored by the municipality of Jurmala, a very popular beach area of Latvia. We made a walk down the beach to see where the FIVB held an event and where Samoilovs trains when the weather is nice. After that, we walked through the beautiful park near the Jurmala beach. Adding Riga to my travel recommendations list. After the super long beach walk, we took the train back to Riga and grabbed some Indian food (because I didn’t have enough of it apparently) and I attempted to give my tired legs a break. Sandra had other ideas.

Something about biking off into the sunset

She had borrowed a bike from a friend and hade her own so we rode around Riga to see some of the areas I didn’t get a chance to see on foot. We made a pitstop to see one of her friends that was attending a Nike group fitness event in the park. Over fifty people were there going through an interval style workout run by a few trainers. The personal trainer part of my brain exploded as they had people of all skill levels attempted exercises that you should likely refrain from using with the beginner crowd. Oh well, better than nothing. We biked a bit more before stopping at a bridge to watch the sunset. Day total ended up being over fifteen kilometers walking and over ten kilometers biking on a city bike. My poor legs never get any rest.

Back to Berlin

After an awesome breakfast at Big Bad Bagels, I carried my fifteen kilos worth of stuff to say goodbye to Sandra and catch a bus to the airport. A painless flight to Berlin and then to make it to another friend’s place. Berlin is the first place I have traveled back to, but after visiting the first time, I decided I could live there. It is pretty much the Austin, Texas of Europe. Tons to do, plenty of people doing all sorts of crazy stuff and not as expensive as you would expect. I was amazed at how much of the city I remembered exactly, but I guess that’s the benefit of a photographic memory. Even the airport had changed dramatically since I was there over two years ago. Interestingly enough, Germany was my second country I traveled to, two months after my first time leaving the US. It was also my first solo travel, an attempt to tackle my anxiety. I was a nervous wreck when I landed the first time, having already made travel mistakes and arriving with dead electronics. Fast forward two and a half years later and I was arriving solo again, this time much more comfortable traveling and being alone. I took the train to a coffee shop near where Julia, another volleyball player I met in Thailand(Thanks, Beachbox!) lived.

I got to stay in an extra room in Julia’s flat, which was likely one of the nicest places I have stayed since I left America, much better than my hostel bed from my first trip to Berlin. After getting settled, she took me to a cool artsy area called Holzmarkt to check out a coffee shop. I have been attracting horrible weather to every city, so we got to do some walking in the rain after this. Our walk brought us to a length of the Berlin Wall that is regularly painted with different art. As we walked, I fully remembered where I was and was able to describe where other things were in relation, which was a really weird feeling for a place I was at over two years prior and only for three days. We grabbed some currywurst so I could check that off of my food list and headed home for some much needed sleep.

That’s one way to prove where your vegetables are sourced from

The following day, we did some more roaming of Berlin and grabbed some lunch at a place that grew their salads inside of the restaurant using hydroponics. Following that, we grabbed some ice cream, because ice cream in Berlin is all delicious and super cheap. While finishing my cone, we passed another highly recommended ice cream place…so we had second cones. My addiction knows no bounds. Julia showed me a really cool park near where the lives where every weekend people sign up to do karaoke and hundreds of people watch before heading home to do some work. While she worked, I hid in a coffee shop and worked on some code.

Following the little coding session, we caught the train to go check out some 3D blacklight minigolf. Walking around with alcohol is a legal and common occurence in Germany, so we grabbed some drinks for the long ride and made our way to the golf place. For an extra euro, we got 3D glasses and played two rounds of mini golf. It’s been a long time since I’ve done minigolf, but most of these holes were pretty intense. The blacklight art was all well done, and the 3D glasses made putting a mental struggle, so we played one game without them on. On the ride back, I grabbed a bratwurst to knock another German food off of the list and then we headed home.

The following morning, we were signed up for a volleyball tournament. The biggest tournament in the Cleveland area happens twice a summer and has thirty or forty courts set up. Several places in Berlin have over forty courts set up permanently and are in daily use. Absolutely madness. I got a chance to play at one of those places for this tournament and it was great to play outdoors again.

When playing mixed tournaments, most places have an unwritten courtesy rule that men serve the ball to the other men and other places have other variations of the courtesy rule. I usually tend to avoid playing mixed due to varying adherence to this courtesy rule. Berlin plays that the men should serve each other and they actually lower the net to between men and women’s height, so it is even easier for the guys. Surprisingly, Julia has been playing for less time than me, so it was cool to get to play with her. The weirdest thing about the tournament was that teams were allowed to sign up with two men, playing on the lower net. Of course, most of the men didn’t adhere to serving the guy, even when they had two guys on their team. Not my favorite occurence, especially with both of us getting used to playing together and getting used to playing outside. After the first few matches, we got our act together and pulled out some wins, finishing four and eight. Twelve games is a solid amount of play for a tournament, especially for one that only cost ten euros per player, and playing with Julia was a lot of fun, so it was a good day. After playing, the hunger was real, so we went and ate some delicious burgers (because I have missed burgers so much) and hit another ice cream place on the way home.

Commemorative 2018 FIFA World Cup Moscow coin for speaking Russian

Following some relaxation, Berlin had more in store for me. On the way to our first destination we had a conversation with a drunk Russian group who were in Berlin to watch Russia play Germany in indoor volleyball. The conversation was part English, part German and part Russian and ended in one of the guys giving both of us commemorative 2018 FIFA World Cup coins from Moscow. Life is pretty cool.

Julia got us on the list for a “Summer Love” party at a place called Birgit & Bier, which had a cool open space area that reminded me almost of a carnival, which was insanely decorated with hearts. After hitting up a little stand with kettle corn and heart shaped candies, we hit up the different bar areas. There was 90’s pop, Hip hop & RnB, Techno and another one that wasn’t open yet while we were there. After roaming around that bar, we made our way over to the Soho House. Apparently, Soho Houses are members clubs around the world for creatives to work out, hang out, relax and attend events and most of the bigger cities have them. By bigger cities, I mean London, New York, Berlin, etc. Due to their membership including celebrities, they have a no photos policy. We went to a “Gods of Hip Hop” event that was being djed by DJ Lord from Public Enemy and had a number of people in attendance from Public Enemy and Wu Tang Clan. The mixes were all awesome and the atmosphere was cool as well, even though it was weird to watch well dressed white people dance to remixes of ODB and DMX. After a few hours there, the exhaustion from several hours of volleyball in the sun set in and I made my way home.

HolzMarkt little dining area is so calm in the city

My last day in Berlin was spent roaming around, as Julia had to work. I did what I always do and popped my headphones in and began randomly walking around. I hit a nearby fleamarket and walked around before grabbing some ice cream and heading over to another part of the Berlin Wall and some other monuments I wanted to see again. As I got to the monument areas, the streets were filled with a Pride Parade. As I made my way around the city, I kept hitting filled streets, so I am not sure if it happened to be moving in accordance with me or there were multiple areas doing it. I found another one of the volleyball places and sat down to watch some people play for a bit. Afterwards, I made my way back to Holzmarkt to take some pictures of the area as I didn’t have my phone with me the first time and to say goodbye to Julia, as she would be working still when I left. I hopped over to a burger place to use the wifi to watch my new buddy, Chaim Schalk, kill it with one of my other favorite players to make it to the finals of the AVP Austin Open. Then I made it back to Julia’s apartment to get all of my stuff together.

A few delayed train rides later and I was at the bus station waiting for my bus to Vienna and watching Chaim play my other favorite AVP team in the finals. Next up, I roam around Vienna looking at statues and eating strudels and get used to speaking to native English speakers again.

Asia, India, Traveling

The Feeling Of Cold: May 4th – May 11th

May 14, 2019 SamuelLMoney Leave a comment

A lot of the time, people ask me if I am homesick. Of course, I miss things about home, my family, friends and city, but there are some more abstract things that come to mind when asked if I miss things. Laying in a hot bath, South American food, and cold air rise to the top of that list. After the crazy heat of Rishikesh, I fled to the cold of the Himalayas. First, I had to finish up things in town.

Inhala, Exhala

Early morning Spanish/Yoga lesson combo in the other ashram

A friend from the three hundred hour course invited a few of us to attend her required teaching course. The three hundred hour course was made up of girls from Russia, who didn’t speak too much English and the most patient Chilean girl I have ever met. The group had a translator, so she spent the month hearing information in English, followed by a translation in Russian, all day for a month. As I said before, I spent a lot of time at the ashram hearing and attempting to speak Spanish. As there would be no translator for the class anyways, she opted to teach in Spanish. Up at 6am, I went to the class, fully prepared for my tired brain to fail me. A good flow class actually requires little instruction. The movements should go with your breath and a quick peek to the front can confirm yopu are in the right pose. As the class went on, I realized that regardless of how good my Spanish was, I don’t know the names of body parts, and most of yoga instruction refers to body movement. I also realized I forgot the word for breathe. Oh well, an hour later, I had completed my first yoga class in Spanish. We all said our goodbyes and then I made a visit to the place that helped encourage me to do my training in Rishikesh.

All You Need Is Transcendental Meditation

It’s like they knew I needed a featured image for the post

About fifty years ago, the Beatles lived in an ashram in Rishikesh, India to learn Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi. Since this occurrence, Transcendental Meditation and Rishikesh gained popularity. The ashram in which they lived still stands today, but almost as ruins. The ashram is a tourist attraction, costing about a American dollar for locals or eight dollars for foreigners. This ashram is more of a complex than an ashram though.

A very small fraction of the little domes

Currently run by the same people who run the Rajaji Tiger Reserve, the profits are used for upkeep. Upon entering the ashram, you go up a long winding walkway which end up upon the area of dome shaped meditation buildings. The bottom floor of each of these appear to be living quarters and a bathroom, with the upstairs being an open area with an opening facing the river. Some of these are filled with graffiti, a common occurrence here. Most of the ashram is covered in graffiti, outside of areas clearly marked “No Graffiti”. The domes are small and peacefull, the stairs had a minimalistic design, and some of them have held the test of time better than others.

Pictures from the complex’s former popularity fill these rooms

Past the meditation quarters, there is the post office and some other buildings before reaching a building containing a cafe, and some photo galleries. The galleries cover wildlife, Maharishi, The Beatles and Transcendental Meditation. A year or so ago, I had looked into Transcendental Meditation, even going so far as to sign up for a session in Cleveland. Upon hearing that you had to pay a fee before you could receive your mantra and certain things were not to be discussed, I opted out. In the future, I will probably attend one just to check it out, but I usually keep away from those kinds of scenarios, although a lot of my favorite celebrities are TM supporters. After this building, the complex gets expansive.

This artist must have been in town for a while, as his detailed paintings were all over the complex

These paintings are all huge. Here’s me next to one of the smallest ones

There are tons of buildings in the complex, many of them were housing quarters or kitchens or who knows what. I checked out most of these, as the graffiti was quite impressive. I will sprinkle some of my favorites throughout this post, but the yoga hall deserves a special mention, as it held some very large portraits of The Beatles and Maharishi, as well as some word art.

One of the multiple housing quarters from a distance

For scale, that doorway is almost as tall as me

Of course, the artist from before had to have their own dome

Next was the very large housing complexes. There were two of them, with many levels of rooms. I made a quick run through both but mostly the ground floor and roofs contained the only good art I found. Both roofs housed more of the meditation domes, but these ones had their externals beautifully decorated. Here is a cool view from the one whose ladder was still intact enough to climb (Sorry, Mom), enjoy.

Behind these buildings, overlooking the river, was Maharishi’s home. I didn’t get many pictures of this, but it was much more ornate than the other simple buildings of the complex, even having a marble looking porch. A small path from the home led to the eighty four caves used for meditation and yoga. I didn’t venture into these as it was dark, and they were lined with river rocks, which just looked like tiny skulls. This was a no graffiti zone, besides the main yoga hall where they all converged and this had some cool graffiti. Throughout the caves were also small areas dedicated to specific asanas. After these caves, I found the home The Beatles actually lived in. This was actually the least interesting part, as it was not graffiti’d but had been mostly stripped, so was just a small building.

An interesting look at the past, some beautiful grounds and a nice walk later and I headed back to get everything together in my room.

Back To The Backpack

I grabbed lunch with the remainder of the yoga group. There were probably five farewell lunch/dinners, as everyone left at different times. I left mine to get everything together and head to my bus. After being dropped off by the ever helpful Mukesh, the man at the desk informed me that my 4:00pm bus would not be there until 7:30pm and that I could sit there and wait. Doubtful. I left my bags and walked back to the ashram. A quick shower and some tea with Antonia seemed much more enjoyable than sitting in a hot building. When I returned, the office was filled with a group from the Spanish Yoga course housed near my school and a group of Israeli girls we had met in a restaurant.

When the bus arrived, we all got on. When I handed the man my ticket, he pulled out his phone and started yelling to someone. Never a good sign. My ticket said seat twenty eight, but he put me in twenty nine. Good enough for me. After a couple sat in twenty seven and twenty eight, he asked me to move behind twenty seven. I agreed before getting into said seat. The girl in seat twenty seven immediately put her seat all the way back, which let me find out the seat was broken. Not only was the fully reclined seat almost touching me, but the left side was broken, so it was so low my leg didn’t fit. When I made mentioned, she replied, “Well, I am going to have to sleep.”…and everyone thinks Canadians are so nice. After everyone got on the bus, half of the seats were open, meaning we would be picking up others, but twenty nine was still open and I paid the same price as everyone else, so I returned. Other people took the broken seats.

The bus was uncomfortable and the furthest back I could put my seat without physically crushing the guy behind me was not comfortable enough to sleep. I dozed in and out over the course of the thirteen hour ride. Entering the mountainous area of Dharamshala, the views were incredible and the roads were horrifying. Each lane was about one and a half cars wide, with the bus whipping around the corners. Every curve, you could feel the bus teeter on its center of gravity. I wish I was asleep to avoid this knowledge. I arrived and got my stuff. I contacted Ana, who had been my city guide in Rishikesh, and asked if I should walk or taxi to the hostel. She told me it was a thirty minute walk, but it was straight uphill, so I opted for the taxi.

A Hunger For Knowledge

I actually stayed in Dharamkot, which is a bit higher up than Dharamshala, McLeodanj (where the Dalai Lama lives) and Bhagsu (where everyone goes for yoga), so it gave me a beautiful view. It was pretty awesome to do yoga in the fresh, mountain area overlooking the cities. My first day, I did a walk through each of the cities, which are about twenty minutes from each other. Bhagsu is similar to Rishikesh, mostly yoga and cafes and shops. McLeodanj is more of the busy, tourist streets you expect in main Indian cities. Dharamshala was the more commercialized area. Over trails and through rocks, I had to try the local dessert, Bhagsu cake. I also picked up some Thai fisherman pants, as I never got a chance to buy any in Thailand, and a yoga mat with accompanying bag so I could continue practicing.

The hostel I stayed in was brand new and also functioned as a coworking space, so it was perfect to get some coding practice in and write that big long post about my month of yoga. I had the whole dorm to myself for the first three nights, which was awesome. I slept with a comforter and was still uncomfortably cold, a feeling I had forgotten. I still opted to wear tanktops and shorts for the first two days, as I truly missed the feeling of being cold.

Apparently how you know there’s an area of Israelis

As I have mentioned in other blogs, I am constantly mistaken as Israeli, Spanish, Greek and, on rare occasion, Italian. Due to this, I have learned to say “I don’t speak Hebrew” in Hebrew, thanks to the frequency with which people come up to me in full blown Hebrew conversation. Dharamkot is literally brimming with Israelis. My aesthetic isn’t helped by the fact that my travel footwear of choice is a pair of Tevas, which seems to be the calling card of an Israeli traveler. I fall short on just the sheer amount they all smoke, but otherwise, I fit right in.

he second day, I felt like learning something new, as yoga had been the only thing I really had time for in Rishikesh. I roamed around Bhagsu looking at different things. Music lessons, Reiki, Sound Healing, Hindi, nope, nope, nope. Although, keep an eye out for me learning harmonica in the future, just not for the prices they wanted. I finally decided on Mandala drawing, cool local art that you will see everywhere in India. I discussed prices and content and the man was a bit vague. Anyone who knows my family knows that my father and middle sister have a god given talent for art, and all that was left for me was math and science. I have always been able to memorize lines and angles to replicate art, but never outright create, so time to change that. I showed up the next day and he told me the four dollars per hour. Starting from a blank page, we went through drawing the design in pencil, how and why we made each design and what they symbolized. After the first two hours, I had a fully outlined design. Then he taught me about painting the design, and why certain colors were chosen for certain places. Painting takes forever, and I am not a patient man. As I colored in each intricate part, all I could think was how long this was taking and how much it was costing me. A friend who had also done the class told me it took her one and a half hours. Halfway through painting, I was at three hours. For the duration of the painting portion, I was sitting alone painting because there wasn’t much to tell me, so I was paying for someone to sit next to me. Oh well, still less than it would have been in America. I took my finish design and went home to relax. My legs were dead from sitting cross legged for four hours.

The first two nights, I spent relaxing, writing the blog and checking out the local cafes to hang out with dogs and drink chai. The third day, I headed into McLeodanj to register for a teaching with the Dalai Lama that would be happening while I was in town. I was actually supposd to go to Agra the night before, but I figured seeing the Dalai Lama was a better experience than seeing the Taj Mahal, so I decided to stay. Later that night, Ana and I took a cooking class, where I took the reins on what we would be cooking. I chose my three favorite dishes since I have been here: Malai Kofta, Dal Makhani and Bhagsu cake. Malai Kofta is a creamy, lighter sauce covering kofta, which is grated potato, carrot and paneer fried into cigar shapes. Dal Makhani is a similar sauce but not as creamy, which is filled with dal, which is black beans and lentils. Bhagsu cake is just butter. It’s actually a base of crushed cookies mixed with butter, a layer of condensed milk (MilkMaid) mixed with butter, and melted dark chocolate…mixed with butter. We were able to make all three things in under an hour and then eat ourselves into a state that one should not walk up a mountain to get home in. Add one more qualification for World Chef Sam Massari.

I Just Need Some Fresh Air

I am really going to miss random dogs guiding me on hikes

Following this, we hit some cafes to hang out and work on things. I say some cafes, because power outages are so common in India that every time we would get settled in one, they would lose power and we would hop to the next one that had internet. Due to this hopping around, and probably vegetarian food being the devil, I got a bit of food poisoning. This is also a common occurrence in India, no one even bats an eye when you tell them. I woke up and my stomach disagreed with the day’s plan of hiking, but I am the boss and my body listens, or it stops getting ice cream, so the hike continued.

It was Ana’s last full day, so she opted to go to the big, local waterfall over the more popular Triund hike to the Himalayas. The hike was through a trail that was mostly rocks and was very up and down. After over an hour of hiking, we reached a waterfall that I wouldn’t call big, even by Cleveland standards. The water was directly from the Himalayas, so it was crystal clear and ice cold, which was refreshing. A local dog guided us back and we decided to do the Triund hike even though it was about 1pm. Google stated it was only a two hour hike. When we got to the head of the trail, a man told us we had to come tomorrow, that he was with the police and that the hike takes three to four hours each way. Oh, well.

I woke up the next day sick again, but this time and a very loud snoring roommate. He was snoring when I fell asleep, and snoring when I woke up six hours later. If you snore this loud, probably don’t stay in hostels. If nothing else though, it was a good motivator to get up and go hike.

I did some research and everything said the hike took three to four hours. With my background, researching hikes while travel is always a bit useless, as you have no idea what someone’s physical ability is when they tell you how long a hike took them, even if they state they are “an experience trekker”. Ana agreed to wake up at 8am and attempt the hike, agreeing to go back on her own if we were not close after two hours.

Goats don’t even hike up mountains as well as me

The trail was at an incline the entire time, wrapping around the mountains. It was actually a pleasant trail for the first three kilometers, which took under an hour. The remaining two kilometers were a bit more treacherous, but I told Ana the best secret Spartans taught me. You’re going to be tired and sore either way, if you take a break, you get to experience that several times. If you push through, you just have to be tired and sore one time, and somewhere that you can actually relax. We came up over the ridge in under an hour and a half to a beautiful view of the Himalayas.

After the hike, laying in the cool, mountain air was the most peaceful thing I could think of. Alone, besides some campers and the shop owners. I grabbed some Oreos to snack on while enjoying the view, because duh. The other side of the ridge gave a view of what looked like the entirety of India. It is standard to enjoy some instant noodles at the top of the hike, so we made sure to do that before heading down. We spent two hours at the top, so it was definitely worth the hike. The way down took about as long as the way up, as the rocks made it difficult to head down quickly.

Ana left, so I helped carry her stuff to the bus station. Since I was in town anyways, I checked some shops for a radio, because I had been told that I would need one to listen to translations at the Dalai Lama. The first shop I entered offered me one for thirty American dollars. I left out loud. I wouldn’t have paid thirty dollars for a radio when radios were useful. I shopped around a bit and ended up finding one for six dollars. Two other friends would be in town for the teaching, so I told them they could use my headphone splitters and share my radio. After this, I hid in a cafe and drank Chai and wrote code like the good little travel nerd I am.

Just hanging out in the Himalayas, no big deal

The Main Attraction

I returned home to find I had another roommate. Snoring roommate was awake when I got home, but asleep by the time I got out of the shower. Today, his snoring was so loud that I couldn’t hear the Netflix show I was watching. I assumed new roommate would have something to say, but fell asleep immediately. I waited about an hour, in hopes that the snoring would reduce or stop, but it didn’t, so I had to get up and shake the guy to get him to stop. It worked. After about fifteen minutes, the snoring continued, but this time, new roommate was also snoring. The absolute worst. I had had zero loud snoring roommates this whole trip, and now I had two, one being the worst I had ever heard. As if someone checked the stats and saw that life forgot to give me snoring roommates and needed to even things out. I practiced some meditaton techniques and fell asleep. I woke up to even more loud snoring. Full of rage, I looked up to see it was not loud snoring roommate, it was new roommate. Just the worst, I grabbed all of my stuff and headed off to see the Dalai Lama.

There were a couple thousand people in attendance for the teaching, which was requested by Russian monks. Due to this, the Dalai Lama spoke in Tibetan, and then it was translated to Russian before being translated to other languages. I should have spent more time learning Russian. Using a radio was a brutal experience, between feedback and the signal cutting in and out, I remembered why we don’t use radios anymore. Not to mention that he would speak, then it would be translated, then translated again, so there were about five minute windows between when you would receive information in the language you actually understood. Regardless, it was cool to have seen the Dalai Lama. His voice was so calm and steady that it was almost like guided meditation. He only spoke for the first hour and a half of the scheduled four hours, so we left shortly after the next Lama began speaking.

From Peace To Chaos

I hung out around the city and got things together. The hostel asked me to do a small Instagram commercial for them, which I agreed to, even though I look a bit homeless as a mountain yogi. After that, I grabbed my things and headed to another bus, this time from Dharamshala to Delhi. This bus was significantly nicer. Usually, transportation in Asia states it will have power outlets and wifi, but they never do. This one wasn’t lying. The seats were also semi sleepers, meaning the legs reclined up as well. I had no neighbor, so I was able to spread out and get comfortable.

Some people have seen from my snapchat, but I sleep four to six hours a night, with three to four of those hours being deep sleep. On transportation, I can sleep for an hour at most. On this bus, I slept for eight hours of the twelve hour ride. It was amazing. I read for a bit and a listened to a podcast before falling asleep. A bit more reading after waking up and I was there. It was as great as I always suspected.

Upon entering Delhi, I expected to get blasted by a tuk tuk driver. Luckily, I was using Google Maps to make sure he was going the right way and was able to say something when he headed the wrong direction. We established that he was confused about where I was going. He took me to the right place and then tried to get me to pay him more because he drove the wrong way. We both laughed and I left.

The hostel stated it was in an upscale cafe district of Delhi, but I never found that area. The hostel was definitely geared towards Indian locals, which is impossible to tell from the HostelWorld posting, but I just needed to sleep there before my flight. I had no interest in doing any tourist things in Delhi, as it was over one hundred degrees and I am a bit over tourist things. It’s unfortunate that this is my final full day in Asia and I am in a hot, big city, but oh well.

I arrived five hours before the hostel check in, so I put my bags down and did some yoga on the rooftop before doing some yoga and eating some breakfast. After this, I roamed around to find an ATM. ATMs in India seem to be pretty hit or miss, so it usually takes about three before finding a working one. It was 10am and already too hot to be walking around.

Same Person, Different Timezone

I went back to figure out my taxi situation and see if there was a movie theater close. I agreed to wait to see Endgame until I got home to see it with my dad, so I haven’t seen one recently since India doesn’t play as many English movies as Thailand and Vietnam did. I found a fancy nearby mall playing the new Detective Pikachu movie, so I decided to venture there and get a ticket. The movie wasn’t for seven hours but most things in India require an Indian phone number to book, so I decided to do it in person. Upon arriving at the mall, I found it was way fancier than I expected.

The contrast is harsh between this mall and the streets outside

A few blocks from the mall looks a bit different

By this, I mean it was the fanciest mall I have ever seen. This is a harsh contrast to the fact that just outside on all sides are standard Indian streets. Random street stalls, garbage and stray dogs included. The mall was exclusively stores like Rolex and high tier fashion stores. I figured I could grab a ticket and sit in an air conditioned cafe for the next six hours, but the place was too fancy to just have a cafe and all of the surrounding places were open air restaurants. My plans were hosed.

I walked around for a bit before finding a small restaurant for lunch. I grabbed some chicken chowmein, which I was mad about paying too much for. When it came out, it was the size of my head and delicious, so I took back my anger. After the food, I sat around for a bit before venturing around to see if I could find a cafe. No luck, I headed into the mall to check out the restaurant that covered the whole first floor. It was a bit more open than I cared for but I figured I could just sit there and read. I got the menu and the regular cup of coffee was five dollars, ten times what a cup of coffee costs anywhere in India. I walked downstairs and found a giant food hall that had every type of cuisine imaginable, sweets and groceries. I sat down, ordered a scoop of ice cream(which was five times the price of ice cream anywhere else) and read for a bit before getting bored of how crowded the place was.

Again, I ventured out and found a small bakery. No wifi, no AC, but they were charging prices like they were still in the upscale mall. I grabbed a donut and wrote the majority of this post (oh, meta), before taking a walk around the park just north of the mall. The park didn’t have anywhere shaded to hide so I found another small restaurant with a fan and read a book while I waited for my movie time.

I entered the fancy movie theater and chuckled at the fact that my movie ticket was four dollars and a regular drink and popcorn was almost ten. Oh well, I grabbed some and headed for my movie. I have seen hundreds of movies over the years, so I have a pretty good grasp on how many trailers a place will play based on how nice the theater is and where it is. India threw me for a loop, they didn’t even let anyone in before the start time. Then they played about twenty minutes of trailers, standard for a big movie theater. Similar to Thailand, prior to the movie, everyone stood for the national anthem. At the start of the movie, a message came across stating that they was a point planned when it seemed best for an intermission. An intermission…in a movie that was less than two hours. I thought maybe they would plan it for the end of a scene but they must have just picked the very center part of the film. The movie stopped while a character was in the middle of a word. The lights came on and everyone rushed out for more snacks, even though you could order snacks inside the theater and it was only two hours. Twenty minutes later, the movie begun. If you’re keeping track, that’s forty minutes of non movie time for a movie that is less than two hours. Good movie, time to grab a tuk tuk home.

Following the movie, I contemplated heading to a night market, but decided to just go home and make sure everything was in order before leaving Asia for Europe in the morning. No tuk tuks outside of the theater, I realized it was my last night in Asia. My favorite thing to do is walk around cities at night, so I decided to walk home. Delhi is much cooler at night anyways, so I enjoyed my walk home. I got everything together and went to sleep in my bed that the air conditioning barely touched. I woke up hours before I needed to so I did some more yoga on the roof.

The city views in India don’t really hold a candle to the mountain views

It feels good to only write a post covering a week again, so this is the end. Expect weekly posts again with me making my way through Europe over the next month before hitting New York for the AVP NYC Open!

India, Self Improvement, Traveling, Yoga

My Soul On Fire: Yoga, Vegetarianism, Meditation in India

May 7, 2019 SamuelLMoney Leave a comment

The last travel post left off with me arriving at Akshi Yogashala in Rishikesh, India after some treacherous travel days. This post was postponed due to a weekly update off my life in the ashram not being very interesting, so I figured a big post covering the whole thing would be more worthwhile. Unfortunatly, that means this post will likely be four times as long as a usual one, and due to the fact that I wasn’t with my phone much, it will have significantly less pictures. That just means I will have to keep your interest with information.

To start, “My Soul On Fire” is the name of two of my favorite episodes of Scrubs from its final season (the best show in existence, if you didn’t know) and ever since hearing the title, I have been obsessed with this phrase. Throughout this trip, I have had this constant feeling of my soul being on fire. Travel more, read more, learn more languages, write more code, make more friends, more more more. I was excited to finally write a post titled “My Soul On Fire” and saw yoga, meditation, and pranayama as the perfect chance to do so. My original thinking was that maybe all of this stuff would set my soul ablaze, and I could aptly name it, but after a month of slowing down, I realized that my soul has been on fire for a while now.

Akshi Yogashala ended up being the perfect choice for me. Rishikesh is brimming with yoga schools and I just wanted one that was Yoga Alliance certified, and they all are. My engineer skills came in handy when going through and cross referencing all of the reviews, number of reviews and types of yoga/classes taught at each. I got it from over two hundred down to five and then class starting time and tuition cost ended up putting me at Akshi. It was away from the busy streets of Laxman Jhula, had a nice courtyard right when you walked in and due to me being the only guy, got me a private room. So now for what I did there.

Just to keep this post a little more organized, I am going to break down each of the areas that I was taught then cover some things about Rishikesh and India and then do my usual story telling style. Without further ado, let’s begin.

The Only Routine With Me Is No Routine At All

I was never shy about saying that I was scared about spending a month in the ashram. It is likely quite obvious that I am a busybody and am always doing a million things at once. The daily schedule for the ashram was as follows:
05:30am – Tea
06:00am – Hatha Yoga
07:45am – Pranayama
09:00am – Breakfast
10:30am – Anatomy/Philosophy/Teaching Methodology
11:45am – Mantras/Adjustments and Alignment
01:00pm – Lunch
02:00pm – Break
03:00pm – Anatomy/Philosophy/Ayurveda
04:15pm – Ashtanga Yoga
06:15pm – Relaxation/Meditation
07:30pm – Dinner

Everyday. For four weeks. On Sundays, our day ended after lunch and Wednesdays, we had off entirely besides a planned excursion (I will cover these), but otherwise this was my life for a month. Needless to say, this was a significant change of pace for me. After the first week, I stopped going down for morning tea and opted to use that time to listen to music in my room. I am not going to give you a lesson on each of these things, but here’s a rundown of what each generally is and what we did in them from day to day.

Forget What You Know

This entire post really needs to be preempted with the fact that I signed up for this certification for the same reason I sign up for anything, I wanted the information for myself. If I can use the information to help someone else, perfect, but otherwise, I saw the potential for yoga to help me increase flexibility and reduce to some common injury areas for me. Also, doing things slowly, taking time to meditate and generally just focus on being calm are outside of my usual comfort zone, so I wanted to see if I could do it. I was pretty certain daily meditation or being a vegetarian would kill me, and I was almost right, but we will get to that later.

Spiritual is not a way that I would ever describe myself, and I tend to think that a lot of that stuff is just ignorance of facts but the more I have learned about things I had originally written off, I have found that it is just different words for the same thing. The amount of things that the Western world considers spiritual voodoo, is actually backed by science, but they just aren’t using the medical terms for it. A lot of the stuff I learned, works and is based on actual science that we also learned. Some of it is a bit more out there, and likely won’t make it into my normal routine.

For the entire month, I made an agreement with myself that I would go into everything wholeheartedly as if it were something I believed in my whole life and after the month I would pick and choose which I would continue. I recommend this approach, it let me learn and enjoy a lot that I would have likely blown off had I not been so open minded.

Handy Notes

Here’s some quick terms that I am going to get out of the way so that I don’t have to repeat a million times and you don’t have to be confused when I mention them. Shoot me a message or an email if there’s a word I use in this post that doesn’t get covered.

Prana – Sanskrit for a unit of universal energy. Breathing brings this in and out of our bodies.

Asana – Sanskrit for pose. Techniquely means stable and comfortable, so even if you are in the correct pose, you are not in the asana unless you are holding it comfortably and stable.

External Yoga

Hatha Yoga is one of the six main paths of yoga. It is known as external yoga, because it covers the physical portion of what yoga pertains to, with Raja Yoga covering the internal. Hatha is the slow stretching yoga, usually paired with Vinyasa to create the fitness style yoga that is so popular in the Western world, but not here. Every day at 6am, we would slowly stretch out our bodies. A slow, monotonous daily routine that my brain took weeks to cope with without feeling the need to fall asleep once we hit the laying poses. Different sanskrit names and asana sequences filled the normal Hatha routine compared to our more standard Ashtanga practice. Hatha could change day to day depending on what part of us the teacher felt like we should be stretching that day. Hatha is likely the style I will teach anyone who wants me to introduce them to yoga, as it is less intense than Ashtanga and can be customized to each person or for specific goals. This class gave me a much greater understanding of the role each muscle and tendon plays in sitting, stretching and laying down.

The Expansion of Energy

In Sanskrit, Prana means energy and Ayama means expansion, so pranayama is the expansion of energy. Mostly, this was different breathing techniques. We learned a new one every day for the first few days and we would do a few sets of each breathing technique before adding a new one. By the end, each day consisted of doing an increased number of repetitions of five sets of different pranayamas. Each pranayama is described as helping different things, as well as being advised against for people with different ailments, from anxiety to depression to high blood pressure. Some increased the flow of energy, some slowed the heart rate, others increased focus. Alongside their desired effects, learning these techniques also taught us how to do different types of breathing. Abdominal, thoracic, ujjayi (throat) and yogic (all three at once) were all taught over the course of the class.

Alongside the different breathing types, we also learned to apply locks. These are said to keep energy from leaking out. There is a throat lock, an abdominal lock and the pelvic lock. Certain pranayamas called for different combinations of locks in their more advanced forms. The abdominal locks were actually a very common bodybuilding trick in the Frank Zane era for showing off abdominal control, which was an interesting skill to be taught and already know from the past. All of these further just increased attention to and control of the breath.

This class also included the shat kriyas, or body cleansings. Of the different ones, we had to practice three of them. The three we learned included the neti pot, rubber neti, and a specific dhauti. The neti pot, you have likely seen for cleaning your sinuses. Lean forward, pour in one nostril and watch water come out the other nostril, easy. The rubber neti required you to put one end of a long piece of rubber up your nostril and put it in until it entered your throat, at which point you pulled it out of your mouth. This was a big point of tension for a lot of people, but was no worse than anything in a Spartan, so I did it like it was an every day occurence. The final dhauti required you to drink three cups of warm salt water and then to vomit all of the water out, cleaning your stomach and esophagus. As I mentioned with one of the posts about food poisoning, I taught myself to puke on command year ago, so this was super easy for me, but not such a pleasant experience for everyone else. Overall, a cool class with an awesome teacher covering strict control of your body.

I Am A Soul, I Have A Body

The anatomy classes were things I had already learned during school and my personal trainer certification. These focused mainly on how breathing worked in the body and the functions of the spine. Learning each section of the spine and the muscles/tendons controlling these areas helped us to learn why certain asanas required certain muscles to be engaged or why certain adjustments should be made. Important for me, it helped with correcting some lower back issues caused my tightness from weightlifting and sitting at a desk. Other portions of the class were dedicated to showing the relation between yogic teachings and actual medical realities. For example, yogic teachings state that breathing brings prana into the body, so essentially oxygen, and the prana moves through seventy two thousand nadis to carry the energy throughout the body, which correlates to the blood vessels where the oxygen is carried through. How correct it is, I didn’t bother to check, but it was close enough that I never bothered fact checking.

This class was a bit slow for me as I knew it all, and being one of the only native English speakers, essentially functioned as a class for me to translate Indian English to something the other classmates could understand. It’s one thing to be fluent in a language, but to be able to understand technical terms is another thing entirely, compounded by the fact that those terms are being said by another non native English speaker. Overall, a good class to keep my scientific brain from writing off the whole experience as witchcraft and conspiracy theories.

Why Though?

The Philosophy class covered all of the things taught in the yogic teachings, from the definitions of all of these sanskrit words, to how energy functioned in the body, to the different types of yoga. Some of the main things were the main principles of yoga, such as the rules and regulations, as well as the different types of yoga and their uses. A ton of information here that helped keep things clear in the other classes.

Those Who Can’t Do, Teach

For three days, we had a teaching methodology class. This mainly covered things like how to structure a class, how to approach different situations, how and when to speak. A lot of this information we learned by experiencing our two yoga teachers lead us through sequeneces every day, but this covered a lot more of the planning and situations that will arise. A good course to have before our required teaching.

One Om Together

The course I was least excited for, mantras, ended up being one of my favorites. The course teacher was the wife of the director of the school and she was originally from Russia. She was awesome and was very clear about the fact that although all of the mantras mention different gods and Hindi things, that it was not inherently religious. We discussed different versions of mantra chanting and had to memorize about ten mantras. After learning them, we heard them everywhere, as they are usually sung over a melody and played like normal music anywhere else. The most simple mantra was just “Om” (Aum) which is the universal sound. It technically means god, but it is more symbolic of universal energy. This chant begins and ends almost every other mantra. Once you got the hang of it, it came more from your chest than from your vocal cords, and frequently, after about a dozen chants, you were told to focus on the feeling that was created from the chant. Try it, it makes focusing so easy.

The other mantras we learned were all meant for different things. Many were to receive help clearing negative energy or the create a bond with a teacher. Ashtanga yoga has a set opening and closing mantra. There is also a mantra that was done before any time we ate. My personal favorite was one to Ganesha (maybe you’ve heard me mention him before), that is said to help remove obstacles. Overall, a great class but we only had it for the first two weeks.

Good, But Could Be Better

Adjustments and Alignments were a source of dread for me when they started. Bulky muscles are not something that seemed to be common in the yoga community of Rishikesh, so mine were a common point of criticism for the classes. They held me back from certain things, as my muscles were able to counter a lot of the adjustments done, especially since the girls in the course were about half of my size and I can only relax my muscles so much. Add on to this that I work on computers and my hips and hamstrings are even tighter from that, and my flexibility is shot. My flexibility is quite high for someone my size thanks to volleyball, but the leg muscle from volleyball decreases my flexibility in certain areas. Oh well, many painful classes later, some of those issues have been reduced.

The class essentially ran us through some common poses and what you can do to help adjust a student to the correct version of the pose, or variations you can give them to strengthen their body for the correct pose. It also covered some great things to do to open up your hips, hamstrings, shoulders and chest, all of which I plan to add to my normal routine so maybe one day I can actually be flexible.

Just Add Turmeric

Ayurveda is basically Indian Life Science. It covers the idea that each person is made up of some variation of the three doshas and each person’s personality and health is diffferent based on this combination. It was kind of cool to learn about, as my main dosha, Pitta, explains my body type, eating habits and generally necessity for cold and sweets. It covers different foods for people to each depending on the weather, eating and sleeping tips and some other things. Most of it was interesting, and if nothing else just promoted a healthier lifestyle. Some of the things were counter to what I have learned and personally experienced with nutrition, but like everything else, I will take the useful parts and discard the things I find less useful. This was another three day course, but there are many course offerings on just Ayurveda, so maybe one day I will learn more.

The Eight Limbs of Yoga

Ashtanga Yoga means the eight limbs of yoga. This form of yoga covers internal and external yoga. Unlike Hatha Yoga, this form is unchanging. Their are six different series, with each needing to be mastered before you can move onto the next. We learned the first series, which we were told takes about five years of daily practice to master. There is a set sequence of poses (which takes about an hour and a half) and specific moves for each inhale and exhale. This course was done by tradition, so we did the class with doors and windows closed, no fan, and no water, even though it was over one hundred degrees. They believe the sweat is purifying, so maybe I overpurified.

Personally, this was my favorite. I will cover the teachers later, but our teacher had been practicing daily for three years, and he was a great teacher. He brought a strict following of tradition and his voice was powerful. This was an hour and a half of constant poses, which is an insane amount of work. While it didn’t satisfy my body’s necessity for powerful work, it did leave me feeling like I did something. Unfortunately, due to lack of exhausting me, a lot of times it had me ready for a more power related workout following.

This is likely the type of yoga I will (and have been) continue practicing daily to keep up with practicing. It is a bit harder to teach, as it requires a bit more dedication and teaching the sequence took us about ten days of daily class. Not really something you can teach a beginner, and much less likely to appeal to someone who would be a more casual yoga practictioner.

Relax Your Forehead

Here is where the issue with my body being trained for powerful work after intensive cardio or stretching comes in. Following Ashtanga, we had relaxation or meditation. The same teacher as pranayama, his voice was one of the most soothing things I have ever encountered. Regardless, my body is always ready to work, and when it’s primed to go, relaxing is not an option. Sometimes I could full on meditate for about fifty minutes before becoming restless, but if I was already hyped up from Ashtanga, I would spend the entire hour restless.

My ability to enter a meditative state is pretty good, but staying in one is pretty weak. This is pretty common for me, as I don’t tend to rest. A normal person gets seven to nine hours of sleep, and during that gets one to two hours of deep sleep. As a reference, I get four to six hours of sleep a night, and get three to four hours a deeps sleep during that. I am all about efficiency, and that stands true with resting as well. When I shut it down, I shut it all the way down, but not for long. This is something I will work on, but I think going back to harder exercises will remove some of my restless, so I will play it by ear.

The course covered different meditation techniques, including things like staring into the flame of a candle, and different relaxation techniques, like relaxation. A really interesting class and something I would like more experiencing leading, and I think it was helpful to experience.

The Cast

In past posts, I only mentioned someone outside of Ryan and myself if their introduction is pertinent to a particular story. With this situation, I think at least a short introduction is necessary just to cover the different personality types. I was the only guy in the course, which growing up with all sisters prepared me for. There were seven other students in the two hundred hour course with me and one girl finishing up her final week from the previous course. There were also five other girls completing their three hundred hour course, as well as a translator for them as most of them were Russian and spoke little English. There were five teachers and some other people working at the ashram.

My classmates consisted of girls from Russia (the one completing her final week), two from Taiwan, one from Germany, one from Ireland, two from Brazil, and one from Chile. The other group consisted of four Russians and another Chilean, with the Russian translator being from Ukraine. Most of my time not speaking English was spent speaking Russian and Spanish, so I was happy to have that knowledge going in. Each of them came from different backgrounds, professions and varying levels of yoga experience, from current teacher to limited experience. On top of this, I was the youngest person in the course by a good margin. I was a bit worried about my lack of flexibility and being the only guy, but they all immediately felt like family and it was a joy learning all of these things with them.

A fire ceremony kicked off our time together

I will go into a bit more detail with the teachers, as their unique personalities brought something different to the table, which I think allowed me to construct what I think my desired teaching style will be if I ever pick up teaching yoga. We had to teach a one hour class for our certification, so I already practiced this a bit, but experiencing the different classes daily let me experience different teaching types to pick and choose the parts I liked best.

The Hatha teacher, who also taught Adjustment and Alignments, was very intelligent and straight to the point. A lot of his instruction came off as a bit harsh as a result, but the information was always spot on with no time wasted. From him, I learned a ton of techniques for working on flexibility issues, as well as what to look for when adjusting myself and others.

The Pranayama teacher, who also led meditation and relaxation, was a class favorite. The energy in every interaction with him was always pure joy, regardless of the situation. Even when he taught us the uncomfortable shatkriyas, he was coaching mental strength to people and brought such a positive attitude. As was mentioned before, his voice and manner of speaking was extremely soothing. For my required meditation in my class, I definitely stole is speaking style and cadence, which the other classmates said worked alongside confidence to make the experience very calming.

The Anatomy teacher, also taught Philosophy and was the director of the school, was wildly intelligent and had an insane confidence in teaching any information. We had less personal time with him, but the knowledge he taught us formed the backbone of the other teachings.

I tried to convince him that he was a perfect height for volleyball, but something about dedication to yoga

Our Ashtanga teacher likely did the most in forming my teaching style, as his strict following of tradition as well as pinpoint accuracy in his means of communicating adjustments and alignments made everything so simple. As every inhale and exhale has a corresponding movement in Ashtanga, there is limited time to give or receive information , so every word must be chosen careful. This combined with his confident way of speaking allowed you to follow his voice and let your body follow along almost unconsciously. An admirable skill in a teacher of anything, especially something as intricate as moving the human body in odd positions for over an hour.

He only taught me Ashtanga so I’d be stretched for badminton

The Mantra teacher taught me the use of mantras as a focusing technique amongst other things, while pointing out their usefulness. They also allow you to introduce the class to following instruction and bonding together before any asanas are performed. Prior to this class, I usually stayed silent during mantras, but hearing an entire class perform a mantra is a pretty amazing thing.

I didn’t even know she was Russian for the whole first week

There were many other people in the ashram, including the people from the other course, but I think two of them deserve a special mention. Mukesh was mentioned in the previous post as he was the one who picked me up on a scooter and drove me back to the ashram at night when I arrived. He handled seemingly everything at the ashram. He led pre meal mantras, he handled our payments and any forms we needed, he fixed any issues we had. All around, he was delightful and helped whenever we needed it. The other person was Vidarth, the son of the director and mantra teacher. He was two and a half, spoke some Russian, Hindi and English, and generally brought joy to all of us. I have missed my neices and nephews since I have been gone, but this was the first time I had any extended time to hang out with kids. He sang mantras with us, flirted with the girls and was generally just a funny kid.

My man, Vidart, already spreading his vast knowledge

Becoming My Polar Opposite

Regularly throughout the course, other classmates would expound on how calm I was, and how they hoped to approach situations with my level of calmness. This isn’t me bragging, this is to point out how different my life was last month. No one who knows me would describe me as calm. I am all fire, usually competitive and on the move.

Beyond this, I am an avid meat eater. As of this writing, it has been thirty two days without meat for me. I plan to eat meat when I get to Europe, but said I would stay vegetarian for my stay in India. The first couple of days I felt tired and weak, but this was also likely from the significant decrease in protein, fat and overall calories. The sattvic style meals mostly consist of vegetables, broth and chapati. Occasionally, there are lentils and chickpeas but the amount of protein and fat was definitely not what my body was used to. Once I rectified this difference with desserts and the occasional dish outside of the ashram, I felt a bit better. I still noticed a significant decrease in size, although only a slight decrease in actual weight, but this could also be due to lack of blood in my muscles from not working out and not having any creatine in my system. Either way, it has been fine, although the focus has been more on carbohydrates with protein being harder to get. I miss the texture of meat and can’t wait to get back to it, but it allowed me to try some dishes I likely would have never tried.

Sometimes the meals at school definitely didn’t satisfy my American appetite

The cafes held it down on Indian food though

Rishikesh as a city is known as one of the holiest cities in India and the birthplace of Yoga. The holy river Ganges runs through the city and the area near where I took my course was literally filled with yoga, ayurveda and similar things. There were no other options, there was no meat sold anywhere, no books to buy outside of these topics, no alcohol. Living in Rishikesh almost forced you to live this lifestyle. I think the lack of choice made the reality easier to stomach.

Realistically, I sucked at keeping my focus purely to the practice. I spent eight hours a day meditating, doing yoga and learning similar topics. Never in my life have I had to study for things, my brain excels at holding information. Instead of studying the material we learned every day, I spent my minimal free time learning German, practicing web development, watching movies and reading books. So standard Sam stuff. I also spent some of the time practicing volleyball on the roof by myself, because I took our ball from Thailand, which helped keep me from being restless and helped me work on some stuff I learned from my olympic friends. Only so much can be changed at once I guess.

After the initial weakness from diet change, everything flowed pretty easily. With temperatures topping out at over one hundred and my general disdain for routine, there was a bit in the middle where I dreaded going to the lectures. A day or two where I spent sick in my room gave me a necessary break. Beyond this, the entire experience was amazing and allowed me to clear some things out of my head. It also allowed me to make some decisions that have been mildly haunting me about my future, as I couldn’t reconcile what I actually want and what I think I should do. Meditation definitely has its place in the busy mind.

All Work And No Play

On our full days off, we had one scheduled excursion. The first one was a mountain sunrise “hike”. I was pumped, I woke up at 4:30am excited to hike. What we really did was take a truck over an hour around the horrible, winding roads to a big staircase leading to a temple to view the sunset. A beautiful view, but not the hiking I was looking forward to. The second one was a Ganga Aarti performance. A nightly sunset ritual with mantra chanting and people moving varying sizes of handles set ablaze. Concluded with the standard blessing and forehead painting, this was a nice experience to see something more traditional on the river. The third excursion was rafting down the Ganges. I love rafting, and in the heat, the ice cold Ganges was perfect. Most of the girls had never been rafting, and the stronger rapids led to all of them screaming at the top of their lungs. This trip also included some jumps off of rocks into the water, which is always a fun way to increase your heart rate. The final excursion was an hour hike to a sacred cave which housed a Baba, a man whose life was entirely dedicated to meditation. He meditated in the cave for twelve years. After meeting him, we were brought into the cave. After the initial opening, we were asked to go further into the cave, which was a smaller opening used for meditation. One of the girls didn’t want to enter due to claustrophobia, and I wasn’t able to enter due to being too big for the narrow pathway leading to the second room. We meditated in the initial room with the Baba while the others meditated inside. Overall, each one exposed us to something new in Rishikesh.

Posing at the view where we saw the sunrise

Climbing back in the raft after leaping from that rock behind me

It’s really easy to grow your hair out when you just meditate in a cave all day

Outside of the excursions, we made many trips into town for dinner, dessert and to check out the shopping options. I found some new dishes that I will likely be ordering from Indian restaurants and desserts I will be making for events. I also got asked to play volleyball by some locals, which was a fun experience. The net was in the middle of a dirt field, and although some of the locals were good, they all insisted playing opposite me, so most of it was spent playing three versus eight or nine. They were also all hard court players, which isn’t exactly my favorite style of volleyball. Otherwise, I was hiding in my room or hanging out with my classmates.

The Holy City

Rishikesh was my first real exposure to India besides the ride from Delhi. There are a lot of similarities to Southeast Asia but tons of differences. The city is mostly silent, besides cars and scooters laying on their horns for almost no reason. Scooters and cars ride in both directions on the almost single lane roads. Trucks are filled to the brim with humans and drive with almost no logic. People ride scooters across bridges and down walkways that are too narrow for two people, yet they will lay on the horn behind you as you are blocked by another scooter or a cow. Patience is key here.

I guarantee both of this scooters were laying on their horn when I took this

Cows are sacred in India, and thus they pretty much do as they please. They block narrow walkways and lay in the middle of the street. The go to the bathroom wherever and whenever they want. Occasionally, an entire horde will block an area and you just have to sneak past them. They are nice enough though, so we pet them and fed them our flower necklaces every once in a while. They are absolutely everywhere in the city though.

This cow got my respect and Thays’s flower necklace

Most of the month, Rishikesh was above forty degrees Celsius (over one hundred Fahrenheit), so sweating was constant. This made it almost impossible to have the energy to do anything outside of yoga. Luckily, the holy Ganges River was only about a ten minute walk and stays between ten and fifteen degrees Celsius ( fifty to sixty degrees Fahrenheit) and we headed there whenever we got the chance. The extreme temperature change gave us a chance to cool off, as well as time to work on some meditative breathing to be able to enter the water. Trips to the river also included locals approaching you to take selfies or facetime their friends video of you, with or without asking permission. Overall, a saving grace in the brutal heat.

Other than that, the city is mostly yoga schools, ayurveda clinics, merchandise shops or cafes. Your options are limited on what to do outside of the yogic lifestyle, so we usually opted to just hang out in cafes or walk around. The girls spent a lot more time shopping than me, because I have no patience for this. There are some things I will miss about the peaceful city, but I was ready for a change when I left.

The Culmination

My meditation guiding skills are enough to put everyone to sleep

Our course came to an end with each of us having to teach a course. My course consisted of a beginning and ending mantra, five minutes of pranayama, one hours of asanas followed by ten minutes of guided meditation. It was interesting to see how everyone turned the same information into completely different classes. We also had to take a short multiple choice test on the information we learned, which we all passed.

And then got real lazy after a long photo shoot

Our final day concluded with a ceremony where each of us got to talk about our experience, followed by the teachers telling us about their experience teaching us and then each of us getting our certificates. Following getting our certificates, we all ventured to cool off in the Ganges.

But for now, I’m just an overgrown child

Now, with another certification, my soul is a little less aflame, I am a certified yoga teacher, and back to living out of a backpack. Before leaving Rishikesh, I visited the famous Beatles Ashram and then made my way to Dharamshala, home of the Dalai Lama, but that’s for the next post. As usual, let me know if there’s anything else you want me to expound on or especially bored you. Until next time, Namaste.

Samuel L. Massari

Monthly Archives: May 2019