CHAR DHAM TOUR

The Char Dham Tour
September 29-October 9

First I wanted you to say THANK YOU - DANYAVAAD - to Vinod Ganatra who encouraged (true India style - that means she said "You MUST do this..." to do this tour. I so, so, so wish she could have done it with me. I also wanted to tell her daughter Nisha that she really needs to get with the program and do this tour!!! LOL!!!!

Life is a Journey - Complete it (Hwy Sign)

The Char Dham Tour is a religious Hindu tour done by hundreds of thousands of Indians every year. It consists of going into the Himalayas to ancient temples where different Hindu G-ds did something sacred, and honoring a lot and doing things like going to the mouth of the Ganges River to take a holy bath and wash away all of your sins. There are several spots, but the pilgrimage is focuses on four temples - Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath. Getting to the temples requires that one goes as high as 12,000 feet in some cases and trek on foot (in my case only) for 14KM up (steep) and 14K down. I will let you go to a website that explains them further and focus on my experience on this entry. For more on the temples -- http://char-dham.indiantravelportal.com

My tour started with a crazy bus trip from Delhi to Rishikesh, the town from where we departed. The bus conductor (here there is a driver and a conductor) got in a big fight with someone, and then the driver got involved. After a few men grabbed each other, slapped each other and screamed a lot, the two got back on the bus. The police then put a barracade in front of the bus and the driver promplty tried to run it over - silly man. The police then came in the bus and pulled both of them out by force. At this point we were stuck in front of the bus station line and holding up traffic. The passengers looked around and for about 1.5 hours nobody came by or told us anything. I could not understand anything that was happening so I opened the Tao of Pooh and read the first few chapters. Eventually the two returned and we started our very, very fast bus ride to Rishikesh. Crazy? Hmmm, not so much anymore. Many of the men I have seen in India are pretty machista and they do quite a bit of yelling and slapping. Yes, they don't really punch, they slap each other around then yell some more, and then it's over. My ignorance is bliss.

The tour officially started on the 30th of September. I woke up early (6:30am - my normal time now) and went outside. The bus,which you will see a picture of when I can load it up was small, dirty, but ready to take on the hills of the Himalayas. I, and 25 Indians entered it at 8am (departure time, 7am). IST is critical to know about - Indian Standard Time. Within 1 hour of being on the bus Mr. Saraugi came over to sit next to me. He announced that I needed to understand that for the next 10 days I was part of the bus family. I smiled and told him I was happy to be. Yes, I was the lone foreigner and here I was with 6 different Indian families from all over India (North - Assam, Kolkata, Central - Bombay, South - Bangalore and Mysoor). Everyone spoke great Indian English, a version of English I have come to understand more and more. I laughed inside at my life and the things I get myself into, and I was completely, intensily happy that I would spend the next 10 days of my life on a religious pilgrimage without any other foreigners and with a group of people that I could come to know and love for the days to come.

Always Alert Avoids Accidents (Hwy Sign)

The bus ride as a transportation experience was wild. I love to bunjee jump, hang glide, etc, but I was not ready for the hundreds of times I imagined my body falling over the precipices we passed by. The side of the road was literally one foot from the wheel of the bus. Yes, the Indian government has done a great job at creating roads to get to Char Dham, yes our bus driver rocked and got us around the bends safely, but man oh man did l live on the edge, literally. Additionally, many of the roads were one way and we spent time spinning around other cars and trying to avoid being hit. Cars, iron bars, people, etc, passed by my window at about ONE inch distance. I could have stolen the apples one woman had on her lap.

Be a Friend on the Bend (Hwy Sign)

Inside the bus I was adopted by Mr. Saraugi and some member of his family (not all) and they fed me most of the trip - nuts, spices, fruits, curried fruits, roots I have never heard of, leaves of some special tree in Asam and so much more. They were great. Mr. Saraugi set next to me most of the trip and I absolutely adore him. I was the youngest person on the bus, his wife is 34, he is 42 and everyone else was 59-70 something. So, Mr. Saraugi made me his little brother and proceeded to command me around, which was fine with me. I fought back when I didn't like it and we laughed a lot.

The bus ride also consisted of many, many religious songs, a lot of talking and laughing, a lot of sleeping and some rumblings about the driving. Still, in general nobody really complained. This was a pilgrimage, it's suppose to be hard.

Without Effort, There is Nothing (Hwy Sign).

The 10 day experience was like any 10 day tour you may expect. As the days went on people got to know each other, some groups stayed to themselves, and I kind of floated from each of the 4 couples (The Sharmans, The Chakrabortys, The Pratanarthans, The Ganeshs), the Boys Club (5 men from Bangalore that came together) and the Saraugi family (8 members). With each group I learned something new - about the g-ds, the food in the south, the lives of their children, what the tour meant for them, and I shared about myself. With each group I was the same and different and I molded to their personalities and spoke to them about Brazil and the US. I found out on the 8th day that they had all given me a nickname - Langoon (sp) a type of tall, agile monkey from India. Fitting as I have been referred to as a monkey for most of my life.

The ebbs and flows also came. The first couple of days were wonderful. The excitement was in the air. We got to Yamumotri and took the first Holy Bath and people were rivetting. I loved it. They all welcomed me in participating in the different practices, and I only participated when invited. On about the 5th day people we were all pretty tired. It was the day that we were just on the bus, from 7am (8am IST) to 6pm. This was my anti-India morning. I did not want to be on the bus (my knees really hurt), I did not want to eat the roots of anything, I did not want to be anywhere. I put on my headset and looked out the window. But, by lunch time I was ok and back on the band wagon. The last day was good but also tough since were again on the bus all day.

There was a great deal that was amazing for me. Here is a list to give you a sense.

-Being inside Indian culture was invaluable as I travel more here. The group and the mountains kept me closed off from the few foreigners I spotted from the bus. I wanted it that way. It was important.
-The kindness of people who took the time to explain things to me, who did not allow me to pay for my meals because I was their " guest", the endless help they gave me as I ate with my hands, asked how to say things, etc, was simply amazingly human - beyond race, nationality, class or anything else. At was about, as Hindus say, the energy behind the shell we wear (our bodies).
-The Himalayas are magical. The roads, the rocks, the trees, the monkeys, the snow, the sunset, the sunrise, the cold, the hot, the treks. It is truly a blessed place and everyone should see it in their lifetime. Something very, very great and powerful has to have made it because humans could never make it so perfect.
-The spirituality of the Temples was beyond Hindu. You could feel and taste it in the air. The commitment of the travelers, the age of the practices, the ancient everything that told about history and life and struggle. Rich, poor, southern, northern, no matter what, people were there to praise the g-ds.
-The poverty, the hard life of the Nepalese who came over the border, the children working with their families. the people breaking rocks for a living, the cold, the struggle to carry a tourist either on your back or on a pallaquin (Indian or foreigner) up the mountain for little money. It was all so intense and eye opening, and horrific and beautiful when the children in all of this madness would look at me and smile, just laugh at the odd foreigner or brigthen up when I took out my camera.
-Participating in the practices, especially the holy baths felt like I was in fact washing away my sins, rebirthing in some way, getting into this phase of my crazy life, remerging from the last few years of tough encounters both in the professional (evil boss) and the personal (evil ex) realms.

And, perhaps most important for me on this tour was a conversation I had with one of the man from the Boys Club, the one that looks scaringly like my grandfather Jair. While so many of you who love me have told me what he said, it always the stranger's encounter that hits us. As I discussed Hinduism and Buddhism with him I spoke about the guilt I so often feel for being able to do this. Knowing what I know about poverty, about my family in Brazil, about slavery. and etc I have had difficulty negotiating my own priviledge and figuring out how to sit in my own skin as I see struggle and simply travel through it knowing what I have back in the States. He said it simply, "This is what the G-ds have given you, accept it. This is your karma." So, I continue on my travels and my own heart working to accept that my mother's struggle allows me my priviledge, my step-dad's teachings give me a strong moral compass, that my own cleaning of U.S. homes as a child worker helping my mom, and my recent good work allows me what I have today. As I tell all of my kids of wealth that I train to give their resources and make this world a better place. "Guilt isn't going to help you or any of the NGOs that need your money, talent and commitment will. Moveon.org and do something." Isn't it funny how in life we so often forget to listen to ourselves?

Anyhoo, that's it for now. I could tell you more about how I learned that farting and burping are accepted by some folks in India and that it happens while you are at the dinner table, or that I learned how a female mule does #1, or that I learned how to order potatoes, ocra, a few breakfasts and lots and lots of chai in Hindi, but I will write more later.

Lots of kisses to all.

Julio

"Into the Woods to Find the Giant..."
www.brazilbean.net