Going with the Flow of the Ganges

Of the many things we were told about India, one of them was to not expect things to go according to plan. They haven't. Yesterday, we left Navneet and Priya's apartment expecting to catch a night bus to Dharmsala but ended up scratching the Dharmsala/McLeod Ganj idea, due to time constrictions, and instead took a night bus to Haridwar.

The great thing is that when you allow yourself to go with the flow, amazing things occur. In the night bus Jamey sat next to a young man, Prantik, who it turned out was traveling with his two other friends Abhinab and Devandra, to Haridwar and Rishikish. The bus arrived in Haridwar at 4am and we had no plan for our morning and no address for the Ashram we were planning to eventually go to. We ended up spending the morning with the three guys. We went to the river with them for morning prayer, which is when people bathe in the Ganges to purify themselves. They explained to us a lot about the rituals, and showed us to the temples. We ended up spending the entire morning with all three of them, six hours altogether. So far, that morning has been my favorite experience since it was all such a matter of chance that we even met them.

(The picture is, from L o R, Abhinab, Devandra, and Prantik)

I'm currently sitting in a yoga Ashram outside of Haridwar. I wintessed a prayer session this evening and, word has it, that I will probably be woken up for one anytime between 4:00 - 5:00 am. It should all be worth it though, as I spent a good hour lying on the roof looking at the stars from under my blanket, smelling the smoke of the campfire in the distance. For the time being, I can't ask for more.

That is all for now. I've accepted that I don't have the time to report on everything that happens, so I've chosen to keep my posts reletively short.