Yoga & Incredible India!

God! I am loving this so much, I have no idea why I didn't do it any earlier!

OK, let's take it from the beginning. 

I woke up by 6:30 or so, feeling a lot better than yesterday evening, but still with a running nose. My first class of the retreat was to start at 8am, so I first went down to the restaurant and had my favourite Ginger Honey Lemon tea. As I sipped on the tea, I also finished up that horrible book I had been reading yesterday. The book was bad, but at least I have the satisfaction of actually reading a book end to end!

After tea, I went up to the yoga studio and waited for the class to start. Sharp at 7:55am the teacher, a young Indian guy, walked in, handed over the yoga mats to me and the two other girls who are part of the same retreat as me, and we were all set to start! 

He started off with a little bit of meditation, a few prayers, some simple warm up and then went straight ahead into the yoga postures. And man, it was AWESOME! I have a little bit of experience with yoga and this was only the first class, but I found it pretty challenging and exciting! It makes such a difference practicing with a real master!  He was slow and deliberate and made small corrections that made a world of difference, and I really enjoyed every bit of it! The session ended with two rounds of surya namaskar. Again, I am familiar with suryanamaskars... but mainly via Youtube videos. The way he taught it was incredible! It was pretty challenging as he made us hold on to every posture until we were trembling, and by the end of it I felt pretty enlightened... I thought, "Oh, so this is suryanamaskar!"  

Post the class, I went for the buffet breakfast and helped myself to some poha, vegetable paratha and some masala chai and felt pretty satisfied with it all. During breakfast, different people from the hotel - starting with its owners, the general manager and others, came up to me, introduced themselves, asked me how everything was and generally made me feel pretty good. Really, their service is too good! I also learnt that there are three retreats happening in the hotel right now - one that I am attending, another with a bigger group that started a few days earlier, and yet another, even bigger one which is a teacher training group from the US. On top of this, there are a few guests who are not on a "retreat" but have the option of taking one free yoga lesson every morning. 

Sure enough, over the last 24 hours, I have noticed that where I turn, there are people practicing yoga - in the studio, on the terrace, in the garden, near the pool - it was like a little community of hardcore yoga enthusiasts! So inspiring! 

After breakfast, I took a shower, worked on the film script/storyboard for a while and then took some rest to give that cold of mine a break. Lunch was ala carte, but still part of the package I had taken. I ordered myself a dish that seemed like mixed vegetable manchurian (even though that wasn't the name on the menu) and a couple of tawa rotis. Post lunch, I did what anyone would do in such a situation. I slept off. 

Soon it was 4pm - time for the second class of the day. The teacher once again started off with the same meditation, prayers and warm up but the postures in round 2 were slightly modified, more advanced stages of what we did in the morning. Even the surya namaskars at the end were modified slightly to make them more challenging. I really liked the progressive approach but was also pretty certain that tomorrow I would be just a heap of sore muscles.

Post the class, I set out to actually see a bit of Rishikesh. I had been confined to my hotel ever since I got here yesterday, thanks to the darn cold, and it was high time that I stepped out. So I walked out to the point of interest closest to my hotel - the Lakshman Jhula, or one of the two main hanging bridges of Rishikesh, across the mighty Ganges. I walked down a steep downhill path - first a very narrow alley that went by tiny yoga ashrams and tinier temples with chanting echoing through its walls, and then later on the main road that led to the bridge - again, plenty of temples, plenty of shops, vehicles, tourists, sadhus, cows and what not. 

The bridge itself was an epitome for "exotic" India - you know the India that is completely stereotyped since the British Raj and currently in wester media? Yeah, the bridge was making that stereotype come completely alive. 

Within those few meters of that extremely narrow bridge which has just enough space for two rows of pedestrians, there were pedestrians of course, and also scooters, prams, monkeys, dogs, cows (I actually bumped into one after expertly avoiding a dog) - there were vendors, tourists, locals, foreigners, youngest ones wrapped and bound to their mother's chests to oldest ones craning on to walking sticks, vibhuthi, tattoos, piercings, "Om" symbols, blacks, whites, colours, plains, prints, long hair, short hair, matted hair, shaved heads - all of it crammed on to that one all consuming bridge. Phew! 

It was Incredible India compressed into that tiny space. And sure enough, it was absolute chaos as everyone was trying to take pictures of it standing right there. 

I somehow got off on the other end, and went right into a tiny temple which was empty and quiet and exuded peace as if unaware of the chaos outside. I spent some time there, and then walked back through the bridge once again, shopped around a bit, went to another serene temple - this one was actually the historic Lakshman Jhula temple but not soul was in it, and then walked back to the hotel, this time taking the steep uphill path. 

I was super tired by the time I got back - from the cold, the two yoga classes, the walk. So I immediately freshened up, had my dinner - rotis and a platter of tandoor vegetables, and hit the bed early with my second book for the trip in hand. 

Everything felt so perfect - the solo travel that's giving me so much time to myself to sleep, read, relax, doing a lot of good quality yoga, and being in an atmosphere that is so spiritually vibrant. Feeling so grateful!