Hitch-Hiker’s Travel Blog of India

My next destination after Pt.Aven was Amsterdam. I headed out of Pt.Aven early in the morning and after a couple of shorter rides got to a major road, heading for Paris. The rest of the day was a breeze as I got the nicest ride with an older french gentleman on a spacious Renault all the way to Paris. The ride was an amazing contrast to how things used to be in India – the road was smooth as lik, traffic flowing at steady 110km/h, french countryside landscapes rolling by – and the radio playing classical music all the time! It felt more like a futuristic spacecraft gliding along at high speed after the bumpy roads, loud trucks, honking horns with their dozens of different melodies and bhajans at high volume from bad speakers in India.

As we were getting closer to Paris I decided to try and avoid the hassle of hitching on the ring road by getting off the car at the last peage, about 20-50km before Paris. Almost immediately as I got on the peage a team of customs workers and police showed up at the peage and started stopping trucks and checking their papers and cargo. Maybe this could’ve actually been beneficial to me as they stopped mostly foreign trucks, but I decided not to stuck around and instead took a walk on a parking lot near the peage. Ath the parking lot I met a truck driver from Bulgaria, heading for Poland. He would give me a ride and although it wasn’t exactly my direction I decided to hop on to get out of Paris. I was heading north and he would be going east of Paris. He took me for about a hundred kilometers or so and dropped me at a gas station in a place where his way was crossing with a north-bound motorway. This time I ended up at the gas station after standing for a while on the crossroads and getting told by the gendarmerie (=french cops) to not to do that and instead go for the gas station. After some time on the gas station I got lucky again – two businessmen heading for Lille picked me up. Their ride gave a nice boost to the total mileage of the day, especially since they were driving super fast (180km/h!) on the motorway at night. One of the businessmen told me he lives near the Belgian border and agreed to drop me exactly on the border on his way home.

I slept at the border and went on hitching the next day through Belgium and Netherlands until Amsterdam.

Amsterdam turned out to be a bit too hectic for me for now. At first I was hoping to stay in one of A’dams squathouses for a few days but soon found out they’re not so very welcoming to strangers – a policy I can well understand and also a policy I would most likely adopt if I was living in a squat and had a dozen potheads on my doorstep  every day . Later I went around the center, dropping by at Consicious Dreams, my favourite headshop in A’dam and there I met a polish guy living in Mexico, now on a stoner holiday in Amsterdam and he was kind to offer me a place to stay for the night at his hotel room. The rest of the evening I spent keeping company to him on his mushroom trip and making a tour of a few coffeeshops with him. It’s amazing how much a person can smoke if one really puts full effort to it . And it was an eye-opener to be looking at it from outside, having done the same earlier in my life.

In the morning I felt I’d had enough of the Amsterdam craziness in just one night and decided to skip the Santo Daime and head on towards Germany.

Now I’ve been here in Pt.Aven for a bit more than a week. It’s been nice here, it’s been a good place to take the culture shock of returning to Europe. Being in a big city would’ve been too hectic coming alsmost straight from a meditation centre in Sri Lankan jungle. Now I’m feeling more adjusted to the change in my surroundings, the change in culture and conditions (especially costs!) of living – and the weather.

Staying here has also been a great learning experience about interfacing and coexisting with people whose values differ from mine – a skill wich will surely be useful going around in Europe, since here I cannot isolate myself to the holiness of pilgrim sites or the shanti of mountains and meditation retreats. Someone in India told me one who gains peace of mind meditating on a mountain and loses it when returning to the city actually gained nothing – the peace was on the mountain, not within oneself. Now it’s my time to face the exams after taking classes of this trip, to face what some term ‘the world’. I’m lucky to have this gradual transition instead of crash landing in a western metropolis.

Now it looks like I won’t be staying here so long after all. I’ll be heading out towards netherlands tomorrow. In Netherlands I’ll be going for the Santo Daime church, a church originating in Ecuador and combining elements of christianity with ancient traditions of Amazon. I’ll also try to check out the dutch squatting scene a bit, another kind of alternate community and way of living I used to be into earlier.

All in all I’ve loved staying here in Pont Aven. I had a chance to produce some more of my video art here, something I couldn’t do since a long time as I didn’t carry a laptop or a camera. It’s also been great to connect with some people of the modern art schools international community of young artists and to see some of their works. I especially loved their outdoor expo named “Impermanence”, with art pieces themed to the constant flux of change all around us.

The flight went OK with the airline (Jet Airways) providing me access to a luxury lounge at Chennai as I was waiting there in transit for 7 hours. The lounge was super sweet, with free unlimited drinks (hard and soft and lucky for me, some fruit juices too) and snacks (really tasty veg sandwiches).

Later I learned this sort of material opulence isn’t really good for me. Getting a bit too happy with the sandwich buffet I overate and food poisoned myself slightly. I’m pretty sure the sandwiches themselves were OK, it just wasn’t OK for me to eat a ton of them right after doing some strict tapasya in regard to eating at the meditation retreats. Luckily I’ve also built up my immune system fairly good, so I was back to life when landing at Brussels – but the sandwiches definately gave their own flavor for the overseas flight (I feel sorry for the passengers nearby ).

I landed in Brussels a bit after the sunrise, at 8 AM. As we were approaching Brussels, my first contact with Europe was to see it from the air. I noticed how everything in here is so square, so orderly. The agriculture plots, the city plans, streets, houses. All neatly and squarely in order – totally unlike anything I’ve seen for some time.

Next came a feeling of being in a whole another dimension from where I had started the flight. People not smiling, not seeming to notice each others at all – and all in such hurry, as if running somewhere. I must have stuck out a bit, going at a slow paace, others speeding past me, my eyes wandering and trying to make eye contact and being amazed by the cleanliness, order, advertisements, everything around me. And having a big smile on my face due to the excitement of entering something completely new and the strangeness of it all.

After collecting my luggage, wandering through the border formalities and a quick peek at the netcafe, I was out of the airport. The morning was crispy, a bit cold at around zero degrees, but enjoyable when I put on all of my clothes and stuck to the sunny spots. Before I even made it to a proper hitchhiking spot I was on a truck. The truck was actually heading to Antwerpen, a direction completely opposite from mine, but I didn’t mind as going the other way would’ve meant hitching along the ring road around Brussels and I figured it’ll be easier to go around the city a bit further away. After a few rides I had passed by Antwerpen and Gent and was heading towards Lille in France. As the day went by I reached Paris at around 5 PM and was seriously considering staying for the night there as ending up camping on the roadside on this season and weather might be a bit extreme.

I ended up going further as the driver who took me to Paris said he could drop me off at a “peage” (=road toll collection booths, generally good for hitching in countries where they got road tolls). Before nightfall I reached the ring road of Rouen, but not the city itself nor any shelter for the night. The night was my first night outside since a long time as in asia accomodation or shelter of one kind or another was always within my price range (and mercifully often completely free) and readily found everywhere. This is not the case in Europe and I was completely aware and accepting of this fact as I started from Brussels and even more so as I left Paris. The night was tough and could, but nothing I couldn’t take. A funny detail was I used the hammock I bought at Goa for the first time – not for chilling out in tropical heat, but to suspend myself off the freezing ground in Europe. The hammock, combined with a sleeping bag, yoga mat and just about all of my clothes were just enough to make the night bearable, even if not comfortable. I was positively surprised by the efficiency of my “camping setup”, both in terms of suitability for the extreme conditions I faced as well as super small size and multifunctionality (comparing to the tent I used to carry around on my previous trips). The food I bought at Lanka was also a crucial part of being able to withstand the cold – staying warm takes a lot of energy, so having a good amount of nuts, honey and ghee was most welcome.

In the morning I hitched again and stopped at the next gas station to make use of my thermos – something I’ll be sure to do more often in the future when hitching in this kind of weather – having a cup of hot drink totally rocks when you’re out in the cold. After some standing around at the gas station I got a ride and went on with a couple of shorter rides until I struck gold – a ride from near Rouen to almost all the way to my destination, Pt. Aven in Bretagne! I got the ride thanks to the previous driver – as we were pulling over at a gas station he was explaining the number codes of license plates pertaining to locations near my destination and finished with pointing out a car on the next gas pump wich was from the same area as Pt. Aven. Then he would proceed to talk to the driver of the other car and ask for a ride for me. The next ride was most welcome, with the driver speaking not much english and not minding me taking a much-needed nap in the warm car after the night of shivering out in the cold.

As I got off this ride, I ran into the only obstacles on my way to Pt.Aven – small countryside roads crossing over from near Morlaix to Lorient and Pt.Aven. I learned – yet again – that I shouldn’t crave for things of worry too much. It’s better just to be the observer and let things happen. I feel this is a very important lesson and also one wich might still need a few repeats to make me not forget. Fortunately the Dharma is such that the lessons you miss or forget will be repeated until you take heed of them – divine justice and divine mercy, all in one!

Eventually I reached Lorient and after a couple of rides on the bigger road, Pt.Aven. The last driver was very kind to take a detour of 10 kilometers to put me right at my destination, also borrowing his phone so I could contact my friends in Pt.Aven.

I’m writing all this at my friends’ place at Pt.Aven on my second day here. I’m still in the process of of absorbing the culture shock and getting settled in here. It seems I might end up spending the next month in this small french coastal town all concentrated on art, with a school of contemporary art and about a dozen art galleries and boutiques (and only one supermarket and bakery).

After the sunrise at Sri Pada I started the walk back down with some chinese travellers I had met on the top. Actually the way down is just as demanding as going up or even more so – descending thousands of steep stairs just after coming up is a load of work!

After a few hours of stairs, taking a few breaks at the chai shops on the way we reached the village on foot of the hill. It turned out my newly met chinese friends had hired a minibus and a driver to take them around Sri Lanka – and they gave me a ride back to the main road. From there I headed for Nilambe, for another meditation center. I had a nice day of hitching, but didn’t reach Nilambe and decided to stop for the night at Nuwara Eliya as I had some emails to write and didn’t feel like pushing for an extra-long day on the road. Nuwara Eliya is a small town on the hills, a bit colder than other parts of Lanka I had been to as I found out in the evening. It’s got all the tourist facilities, supermarket, guesthouses and netcafes, all very welcome on my short visit to “the world” in between meditation centers.

The next day I went on hitching and reached Nilambe, on the same day as Eva it turned out. Nilambe meditation center is a wonderful place, a bit more relaxed about the discipline than Vipassana centers, in the middle of a cool forest on a hilltop, at a very quiet and beautiful location. The daily programme was a bit different too, including two yoga classes, sunset-watching meditation in the forest, a bit of unselfish work to keep the center running – and a tea break with “practicing right speech” or a license for chattering with others! All in all Nilambe felt more like a meditation hangout comparing to the Goenka’s Vipassana boot camp – a very welcome thing for me as I wanted to relax a bit after Kosgama before going for another boot camp at Dhamma Kuta, but still to preserve the energy I built up at Kosgama over the interval. Nilambe seems fit for more serious meditation too, provided you make it so for yourself – in Goenka boot camp there’s no choice, people come there only to work seriously.

The final Vipassana at Dhamma Kuta was exactly what I needed to seal this trip. I dover yet deeper into my mind, discovering and breaking more and more attachments and obstacles on my spiritual path. Now I feel I “got my shit together”, that I’m done for this trip as far as making spiritual progress goes and that I’m ready to face the western world again, seeing it from a whole new standpoint now.

I read somewhere the real test for what one learns or merits on a pilgrimage comes only after returning, if one goes back to one’s old ways or keeps in mind the lessons learned. I’ve learnt what I can for this trip and am ready for the exams now. I’m sure my life will never be as it was before this trip, never again.

Now I have three more days on Sri Lanka before flying out to Brussels, Belgium. While at Goa I recieved an invitation to Bretagne in France so it seems I’ll be continuing my travels in Europe for a while still. It looks like I might reach finland in April, around 15 months after beginning this trip.

— Actually as I’m writing this (above I typed up from my notebook), it’s only one more day. Today. Tomorrow I’m flying out. I spent today shopping for dried fruits, spices and other stuff to bring over to Europe. After a shopping round I went for the Hare Krishna temple to gorge down a mountain of their wonderful food – the last proper meal I’ll be getting for a while and a good preparation for the harsh weather conditions I’ll be facing in Europe. Now I’m off to buy some fresh fruit for tonight and for taking with me on the flight – the airplane food really sucks, so I’ll be sticking to what I bring with me instead.

After leaving Hikkaduwa I went for another Vipassana meditation retreat at Kosgama in the inland, countryside of Sri Lanka. On the day I moved from Hikkaduwa I also had a short visist into Colombo for an experience with the Lankan bureaucracy, immigration officials to be specific. After hours of bureaucracy I finally got the visa extension – and while ‘doing time’ with the office I had some good time with fellow travellers also applying for the extension. After the immigration I went for the Iskcon temple for a lovely meal – I hadn’t taken a full cooked meal in ages as it’s hard to find a place where they know how to cook pure food for yogis. That’s something they really know in Iskcon, how to cook properly! Yum!

After the day in Colombo I took a train to Kosgama and met Eva, a fellow meditatior on the train, also going for the same 10-day course as me. We came to Kosgama a day early and spent the evening sharing our ideas and experiences on spirituality and life in general. We ended up sharing a room in a guesthouse as the meditation centre wouldn’t give us lodging for the extra night. Again, like in Hikkaduwa, it was great to connect with another meditatior outside the meditation centre setting.

The next day we went for the course. The course was wonderful, although not as reality-rocking as the first one – I guess the first time of everything is magical. I really loved the course and the results of it, being abe to purify my mind on a yet deeper level and more thoroghly. I saw several cravings and aversions buried deep in my unconsiciousness – now, being aware of them, I’ll be able to work them out and untie a few more knots within. Somehow I was still left wanting for more and I’m super happy to have the oppoturnity for one more 10-day course before I fly back to Europe.

I had some trouble communicating with the kitchen staff about my diet – the food in the center contained onion and garlic with plenty of chili, all too strong for me to hold the balance of my mind. I ended up eating very simply, mostly boiled vegetables (and going raw veg for the last days). I felt greath with a simple diet and feel like I’ll be keeping it for some time.

After the course I was planning to spend the week in between the Vipassanas at another meditation exnter Eva told me about, some place with more freeform meditation and most attractive for me, pure food and daily yoga classes. We went out of Kosgama together with Eva and had a surreal, amazing, transcendental day hitchhiking together towards the other center. In the end we ended up splitting, her heading to Kandi for some paperwork for renewing her visa to India and me taking a trip to Adam’s Peak or Sri Pada, a holy mountain for buddhists, with the footprint of Gautam Buddha enshrined on the top.

Somehow the time right after a meditation retreat feels, um, different. Things happen in an extraordinary way – actually everything wich is otherwise ordinary becomes extraordinary. This was especially true of my time in Mumbai and also of this day. I feel much more connected to the consiciousness of others around me, especially spiritual people. Practicing meditation by myself also has the same effect but to a much lesser extent.

This day has been amazing, first the deep connection I experienced with Eva, the super-luxury hitching experience and to top it all off, the climb to Sri Pada.

The climb was a real pain. To teach myself of the attachments and baggage I carry around and to build up my willpower, I took my backpack with me up all the way to the top. What a senseless pain. Do I REALLY need all the 10 kilos of stuff I lug around?! I guess I do, I wouldn’t carry it otherwise. The night on the top was amazing, as was the last bit of climbing late in the night, through the clouds, with sparsely placed lanterns lighting the endless stairs going up. As I got up there was a crowd up there, coming for some ceremony about to happen at midnight. I didn’t pay much attention to the ceremony, but the mountain itself was mind-blowing. I’ve never seen so many butterflies in one place in my life. And in the night, on the west side of the mountain, there was an amazing thunderstorm. We couldn’t hear it as it was so far away, but the light show was dramatic and beautiful, a dark sky lit occasionally with gigantic thunderbolts both between clouds and from clouds to the mountaintops in distance. To have a great contrast with this was the morning, slight clouds and soothing mellow colors of the coming sunrise, mountaintops floating in the sky amongst the clouds and the mountaineous landscape blending into the sky in the distance. And of course, the main event, the sunrise above the clouds. Wow. There’s no words for all of this really, it’s something one has to experience oneself.

I finished writing this only now, coming out of my second Vipassana on Lanka. I’ll write a bit more about my experiences in Nilambe and Dhammakuta (the site of the second course) later. Now I still have 3 days to go before my flight out of Lanka, back to Europe. Even being here in Lanka seems a bit alien to me after several weeks spent in meditation retreats, I’ll see how strange it gets in the airplane and getting out of it in Brussels.

As for right now, I’ve had enough of staring the screen at a netcafe, it’s about the time I go and face the apparent reality out there instead of the virtual reality behind the screen – or maybe head for my guesthouse and look for the actual reality within.

Yep, I arrived at Sri Lanka a few days ago. At first it felt a bit strange seeing my mom after such a long period of not seeing her – especially with the major changes deep within I’ve gone through during this year. After a while of strangeness we got along very well and it’s been nice staying at one of the Sri Lankan beach destinations, Hikkaduwa, with her.  She came to see some ‘adopted’ kids my parents have here – they pay for the kids’ education, toys and food and come to visit them every now and them.

Staying at Hikkaduwa has been a gradual change towards the western atmosphere, it’s much more western in here than in India. I’m happy to have such a gradual change instead of just crashing into the ice cold darkness of Europe right away. Also it’s been very nice to have some luxuries I didn’t have for ages – namely, a posh room at an apartment hotel, with my own kitchen! Finally I can prepare my own food to have food completely suitable for my sadhana – and not having to live on fruits and nuts only. Also it’s been sweet drinking as much fruit juice as I feel like on the beach restaurants, with my mom sponsoring it all. It’s relieving not having to make monetary considerations about everything.

I really love the place where we’re staying – Kailash. The owner is really sweet, a surfin’ yogi who holds yoga classes every other day and in generally is beaming with good vibes. If I’d imagine Kailashpati(aka. Bholenath or Shiva) with a surfboard, it’d be pretty much him . In general I feel that the consiciousness of the owner – or the collective consiciousness of the organisation owning – a place very much determines the atmosphere in there. That’s why I really love some ascetic ashrams and hate some luxurious hotels. It’s got nothing to do with the material side of things, it’s all about the vibes – the energy – the consiciousness at the place.

I made some beautiful videos here. Surfing seems like tons of fun, if I only had more time I’d want to learn. Now I’ve stuck with taking photos and videos of the surfers. It’s so much like living surrounded by the material but keeping your self in the spiritual – some times it works out and it’s super cool, then some times I fall in and then it’s time to swim .. And after every surf on a wave it’s yet another swim out to the ocean to catch another wave.

I’ll be going for another Vipassana retreat here in Lanka. Probably I won’t be updating for a while as I don’t want to waste too much of my energy on sitting in the ‘net cafe and typing. I already booked a ticket back to Europe, about one month from now. Now I have this one last month of my trip in these parts of the world and I really want to put all of my time on sadhana – not typing. Maybe I’ll write a bit about my insights after the meditation retreats, just before I fly.

The trip isn’t going to be over with the flight, there’ll still be something in Europe in the spring – so all of my long term readers (all the three of ‘em! ), stay tuned and check back in mid-March.

I’ve now been at Kaniyakumari for a few days. After the first night I found a nice guesthouse, cheaper than most (there’s no backpacker tourist infrastructure here, the entire place is made for indian tourists/pilgrims preferring posh hotels over beach shacks) and with a nice view to the sea from the rooftop, facing east and the sunrise. I did a bit of scouting around after having an anticlimax with the southernmost tip beach (it’s full of people and noise). I found a sweet beach with some huge waves maybe 15 minutes away from my gueshouse. The first morning I went out for the sunrise on the beach but later I’ve just preferred to watch it from the guesthouse rooftop – an ideal place for a few asanas in the morning .

India seems to be very small for spiritual people. Here I met a couple I previously saw in Vrindavan and we exchanged experiences and tips about different spiritual places and practices we’ve experienced. I also met one more person on the same wavelength as me and we did a bit of sharing as well – including some filesharing as he had a laptop with him.

Some time ago my mother emailed me, telling me she’ll be visiting Sri Lanka soon and inviting me to fly over to meet her. Actually my sudden turn for the south was mostly motivated by her invitation, as flying from the south makes much less flight kilometers and is cheaper than flying from Mumbai or Goa. I’ll be flying over from Trivandrum tomorrow.

I’m very much looking forward to what Sri Lanka has to offer, while at the same time being most content, happy and grateful with what India has given me during the past year. It’s all been a world-rocking experience, both materially and spiritually, an amazing journey of adventure and self-discovery. I truly love India, from the bottom of my heart. Now it’s time to move on, towards a new country with a new spiritual (and material) climate and new learning experiences.

I’m also very happy to be seeing my mother and having a chance to talk to her without any distractions – most times I visit my parents they’re too busy with their job for any serious discussion. Now I’ll have a few weeks with her in a more relaxed setting.

As the year changed, many things changed with it. So did my plans for the rest of my trip. At Goa I met someone and recieved an invitation to France. A bit later I got an email from my mom thelling me she’ll be coming to Sri Lanka and inviting me to meet her there.

As of right now I’m on a train to Kaniyakumari, the southern tip of India. After the meditation retreat I spent some time in Mumbai and then decided to head south for crossing to Lanka. The last place I want to see in India is the south tip, a spiritual place associated with Swami Vivekananda, the most prominent disciple of Ramakrishna. The place is named after one of the forms of Goddess, a girl who did tapasya(=austerities, yoga, meditation, etc) in order to have Shiva as her husband – and in the process she killed a bunch of demons, who could only be slain by a virgin.

At first I left Bombay hitchhiking, but after around 800km and 2 days on the road I felt like having a different mode of transport for the rest, about 1000kms to go. I’m presently having the common class experience on an indian train – something to definately try out once while you’re in India. The general class is the third class on the trains, the cheapest way to go on trains and therefore always super crowded – with no seat reservations of course. Travelling on the common class teaches one to sleep in the smallest spaces and strangest positions .

After Goa I headed to Igatpuri, to the international Vipassana academy, for a 10-day course of Vipassana. Vipassana is a form of silent meditation with it’s roots in the buddhist tradition of Burma. When I went to the center, I was looking forward to adding one more tool to my set of means to subdue my mind.

I definately got more than I bargained for. Already on the first three days I would observe an increase in my abilites to control my mind – eating pure food (especially the delicious Iskcon prasad) moderately had long been a challenge for me as I had been totally conditioned by the Iskcon style “it’s all prasad, eat all you can!”-thinking. At Igatpuri – and ever since after it – it was a breeze to refreain from stuffing myself even if the food tasted great and was up to the strictest standards of sattvic food. The real content of the course was still to come later.

Most of the realisations I had on this meditation retreat can’t be put into words – and trying to do so would only degrade them and cause inflation to their value. In short I could say before the retreat I “had it all figured out”, I had a certain kind of construction, a house of cards, built up in my mind and that’s what I called reality. What happened was that the retreat just pulled one of the bottom cards off and the entire thing came down crashing – and leaving me yet again wondering about the true nature of reality and the “ultimate truth”. Actually, similar things had happened to me several times before, but I just wasn’t aware of it happening – for example beginning with Krishna consiciousness devastated my previous house of cards.

In the end it all boils down to experience. Srila Prabhupad said Krishna consiciousness is a scientific method; make an experiment (surrender, do the sadhana, follow the rules and regulations for some time), observe the result, make a conclusion based on the result. The same applies for Vipassana (take 10-day course and follow the instructions) – and drawing conclusions from both experiments and their results, I will make my view of the world – not a house of cards this time, not assuming too much, but just sticking to the experiential facts. I recommend every one of you do the same. Keep an open mind and an open heart, you’ll be sure to hear the message God has for you. Both Krishna consiciousness and Vipassana – and I’m sure every other form of spirituality in this world just as well – are valid and functional methods, just try and find out what suits you, what is your path.

All in all my experiences with different forms of spirituality in India and elsewhere have profoundly, completely changed my life – several times over even. Every time it’s been for the better. Go and find your own path.

This might well be the last post concerning spirituality, as I don’t want to push my views on others, that would be degrading to my realisations. There’s many places to read of spirituality, many of the ones I’ve found helpful have been listed in the Links post.

Peace & Love,

-The hitchhiker on the path of Dharma

I got exactly what I came for at Goa – and so much more also! I went for Arambol as I had heard good things of it – and some people I met in Vrindavan were also heading there. It was great, relaxed hippie backpackers, a couple of goatrance parties and making friends with wonderful lovely like-minded people. I also ended up taking a break from my sadhana for a while – something that happens easily with so many chillums going around .

God was still just as present in this place full of so-called ‘vices’ as everywhere. I ended up staying right next to a Narayan temple, with a nicely tended Tulsi at my doorstep (everyone at Goa is consicious about showing their particular brand of spirituality, be it Christian, Muslim, Hindu or any other – every Hindu household has a Tulsi growing outside). I also greatly enjoyed the sunset bhajans sessions on the beach, something a bit more relaxed and out-of-the-box than the usual Iskcon thing, with a bunch of freestyle-devotees and hippies bringing their drums, guitars and other instruments for a chilled out session of dancing and singing in praise of God.

I met some interesting characters at Goa. Igor, a russian owner of one of the beach restaurants at Arambol was one of then. He had a video projector and a screen at his place and got excited as I told him I used to have the same and use it for VJing (playing and mixing videos at psytrance parties) in Finland. He told me of his friend, a DJ, and invited me for electronic audio-visual jam sessions every night after the sunset – I would play the videos and Dima, the DJ, would play some nice Drum’n'Bass beats or psychedelic chillout.

One of the nights we had an amazing party at Igor’s restaurant, with some more of his friends coming over and doing fire juggling show with poi and sticks – of course, with music and visuals too. I took a trip from this party throughout to night into the jungle next day. In the evening and night we had the party, after wich we moved to the beach for some more beautiful fire show. As others went to take rest, I stayed on the beach in meditation for a couple of hours, until the sunrise. The sunrise was beautiful beyond any description by words. After the sunrise I took a walk to the other side of Arambol, as I wanted to have my trip in the jungle as well and I had found out of a trail going into the jungle on the other side of the beach a few days before. The trip to the jungle was exciting – and a great learning experience. Among the few things I learned were to be aware of every step, every decision and every choice I make – and to always keep the balance of my mind. I learned this in a rather practical way as I lost my shoes in the jungle and had to be very aware not to get my feet hurt ! I also realised that not only the form of Krishna, but every form, is a form of God. As it says in the Gita, ‘Vasudevah sarvam iti’, all this is God. Little did I know there was much more to come in the way of learning experiences..