Hitch-Hiker’s Travel Blog of India

I’ll put up some links I promised to some people. Good stuff, check it out!

I’ll edit this post later to add more stuff to keep the links in one place.

List of organic farms in India: http://woofindia.blogspot.com/

Site of H.H. Sacinandana Swami: http://www.saranagati.net/

Books:

Autobiography of a Yogi: http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/contents.html

Power of Now http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/3574861/The_Power_of_Now_-_A_Guide_to_Spiritual_Enlightment_by_Eckhart_T

Books by Swami Sivananda: http://www.sivanandaonline.org/graphics/EBOOKS/swami_sivanandaji/introduction.html

Books by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada: http://vedabase.net/

Books about Kriya Yoga: http://www.yoganiketan.net/

Forums:

Gaudiya Repercussions: http://www.gaudiya-repercussions.com/

The expiration date of my Indian visa was drawing closer, so I set out to find out how to get a new one. At first I thought I’d head for South India for the remaining time on my vise and then cross to Sri Lanka to get a new one. I had to turn down this option as I found out it’s not possible to cross to Sri lanka overland because of the conflict in the northern parts of the island. Other options were going to Nepal or Bangladesh for getting another visa and I didn’t feel like going to Nepal again so shortly. Another thing to worry about were the rumors I heard that I might just not get another tourist visa to India as the iIndian authorities aren’t too happy about poor hippies hanging out in India forever and ever, going back and forth over the border to Nepal to renew their visas.

At first I tried to map my options through the internet, looking through different traveller sites and forums about India for peoples’ experiences and advice on staying in India for longer times. After some time and finding no conclusive answer I thought I’ll give the local travel agencies a try - and things got sorted out much easier and faster than I expected! The man at the travel agecny enlightened me that if you have a 3 month tourist visa, it’s possible to get an extension within India, up to a total of 6 months - even if it says “tourist visa non-extendable” on the visa sticker. All I had to do was to go to the FRO (foreign registration office) at Mathura and apply for another 3 months in there.

I was very happy to hear this as getting an extension in Mathura (only 20km away from Vrindavan) would allow me to stay in Vrindavan for all of the very auspicious Kartik month. As it was still pretty early I could still reach the office on the same day and I set out on my way to Mathura right away.  After a rickshaw to the Mathura road, an autorickshaw to Mathura and a few autorickshaws taking me here and there in Mathura looking for the office, I finally found it, quite a few hours later, but still in time to submit my application. After filling out a couple of forms and a small walking excursion to get photocopies of my passport and to find an ATM to get enough cash for the application fee (both of wich I would’ve had at my ashram at Vrindavan but didn’t take with me!) I finally submitted the application and was told to come back in one week.

So, if the Lord is willing, I’ll be able to stay in India for another 3 months and will need to think of the return trip only next year. I’m super happy about this, now I don’t have to go back and forth to Bangladesh for a stupid paper (and risking I don’t get it and end up stuck in Bangladesh!), I can stay here in Vrindavan for the entire Kartik, I’ll be able to meet many of the spiritual teachers of Iskcon (as they will be coming here during Kartik) and I can go on a japa retreat with Sacinandana Swami, a spiritual teacher I have particular interest in. On the more material side of things, this also means I’ll be celebrating my birthday and also the new year here in India, maybe at Goa (as I’ve heard the new year is a big party at Goa).

Yesterday was the day for Govardhan Puja andDiwali. In the morning, when I woke up, I had some worries over money - if I’ve got enough for the rest of the trip etc. The Lord answered by taking care of all my needs all day long, for no money at all! In fact, there was an abudance of everything I need.

First, in the morning, I went to the Iskcon temple and as I was having darshan of Srila Prabhupada at his samadhi, I saw some ukrainian devotees I had met earlier waving at me to come over. I went to say hello and they told me they’re going to Govardhan and asked me if I want to come along - they would pay for the auto-rickshaw. I didn’t have any plans for the day until then so I said yes. Before we left they wanted to have some breakfast and also bought me a slice of mahaprasadam pizza.

An hour or two later we reached Govardhan and went for the Iskcon temple in there. The kirtan was already going on and Govardhan Puja was just about to start. We joined in the kirtan and watched the puja - after wich it was time for the feast, a feast more opulent than what I’ve had in a long, long time. I wasn’t very hungy as I had taken breakfast recently, so the feast was more than I could handle.  After the fest we took another auto-rickshaw back to Vrindavan and I wnet back to my ashram to take some rest, being totally bloated by the feast.  When I got up, it was about the time for Gaura-Arati, so I headed to the temple. I was also hoping to find my american friends as they had told me there will be a diwali party that night. After the Damodarastakam I found my friends and we got on a motorbike and drove to the party.

Actually the party turned out to be two parties, first one at some (very fancy) private garden, with another feast buffet and the second at the food for life (Iskcon’s charity org.) restaurant, also with free food. I had to skip the buffet, still being full from the feast at Govardhan and at the second party I could have just a small bit of the food for taste.

I stayed at the party until really late, around 1 AM. The party was an odd mix of “ordinary” western style party, Indian Diwali celebration and Hare Krishna festival. There was ecstatic bhajans at a small kutir, a disco with Indian electronic music in a basement and a wild amount of fireworks outside (fireworks are an essential part of Indian Diwali celebration).

I’ve been thinking of getting rid of my laptop for a while already - actually ever since I was in Kolkata. In there my camera broke due to the rain so I lost one of the main motivations to have the laptop - storing and editing photos and videos. A couple of times on this trip I’ve also ended up wasting my time on nonsense (games, mostly) with the laptop. So, finally, I decided to get rid of the whole thing as I felt I’d be better off without it and I sure could use the money I’d get from selling it. The Lord was also supportive of my desire to renounce the computer, as it was very easy to find several buyer candidates for the laptop. I ended up selling it to a brahmacari from eastern Europe, who needed a computer for some translation work he was doing. It was a great arrangement of the Lord - I’m sure he could use a good deal for an inexpensive laptop and what used to be an obstacle to my bhakti became a tool for his.

Soon after arriving in Vrindavan I met a couple of second-generation devotees from US and their austrian friend and made good friends with them. It was nice to meet people who weren’t hard-core, dead-serious fundamentalists about the dharma - people who realise that it’s the inside that matters, all the rules, regulations, etiquette and dress code being just the outside.

My new friends recommended I join them on the Iskcon-organised bus trip for midnight bathing on Radha-kund, as it was a very auspicious time for going there. When I booked the bus tickets I had no idea of what was to come..

We got on the bus at 8 or 9 PM and arrived near Radha-kunda about one hour later. The bus couldn’t take us all the way because the police had blocked the road and didn’t allow any vehicles to pass. We decided not to wait as the Isckon people were negotiating with the cops about getting the buses through and instead we would take a walk to Radha-kunda. On the way we managed to catch an auto-rickshaw and went with it for the rest of the remaining 4 kilometers. On the way my friends told me they’re going to make dandavats-parikrama (circumambulating, moving only by throwing yourself to the ground over and over again) around Radha-kund. At first I thought I’d join them, but I changed my mind as we reached Radha-kund. The surroundings of Radha-kund were all backed with crowds of pilgrims and devotees, all of whom whad come for the very auspicious midnight bath. After doing just one dandavats I felt this isn’t my thing, not in a crowd like that, no matter how auspicious the moment would be for such austerity. I ended up helping out one of my friends as she was doing her parikrama by varrying a water bottle for her and occasionally yelling at, pushing and shoving the crowd to make space for her next dandavats. Only as I was slowly walking accompanying her all around Radha-kund I could really appreciate the amount of austerity my friends were set to do - it took us about two hours to complete the parikrama! The last few hundred meters were the most challenging due to the crowd being thicker and thicker as we were approaching the place where we started.

The most intense part of the night was yet to come - it was getting to be midnight and the crowd of hundreds (or thousands!) all flocked to the Radha-kund (wich is a small pool of water) on all sides and of course we wanted to be in the middle of the action, bathing in the water at midnight. By now our ‘ream’ had been reduced to three as one of the girls in our group didn’t go for the dandavats-parikrama and instead joined some argentinian devotees and we had lost them in the crowd during the parikrama, so it was just me, one american girl and one austrian guy. As we went into the thicked crowd we would notice some of the indian men were acting like animas, having no respect for the holy place of Srimati Radharani or for women - they would shamelessly try to grab our friend, no matter that we’re in a holy place, no matter it’s a rekuguiys festival, no matter she’s accompanied by two guys! We ended up moving as a very tight group of three, never being more than 10cm apart from each others. Rarely on this trip have I felt as close to the people I’ve met as on the Radha-kund - both physically and mentally, behing in the holy dham with a couple of fellow western devotees and surrounded by an ocean of indian pilgrims.

After the midnight bath and pushing and shoving our way out of the crowd (wich wasn’t an easy task either, with more and more people coming in for their auspicious bath) we met up with the missing frind of ours and her argentinian companions and on our way back to the buses we compared our experiences of the evening. Our friends had also been assaulted by the crowd just as badly as she had fought her way to the kund on the other side. She told us of having beaten several guys on the way as hard as she possibly could and she had also recieved help from the more decent members of the crowd. All in all it was a night to remember. We reached back to Vrindavan at around 3 AM, after having a night snack at a dhaba while waiting for the other devotees to assemble back to the bus and after a tired bus trip back. I crashed at my friends’ apartment at Iskcon MVT since my ashram was most likely locked up at such late hours.

I decided to go back to Vrindavan for the Diwali festival and wonder about the return trip later. I started from Delhi in the morning, taking an auto-rickshaw to a good hitchhiking spot. After a couple of short rides on motorbikes I got a ride in a SUV and as I told the driver I’m going to Vrindavan,  he told me he’s not going that far, but insisted on buying a bus ticket for me. As I got on the bus, I heard a voice behind me saying “Hare Krishna, prabhu!” and turning around I saw a fellow devotee also heading for Vrindavan. After a few hours on the bus, we reached the crossroads for Vrindavan and got off the bus and took an auto-rickshaw to the Iskcon temple in Vrindavan.

After reaching Vrindavan we parted and I went off to look for lodging - I didn’t feel like going for darshan before taking a bath and changing my clothes. It turned out to be harder than I thought as Diwali and the Kartik month are very auspicious times for sadhanaand visiting holy places and therefore many ashrams and guesthouses I tried were either booked full or had ‘high season’ prices. Eventually after a long, sweaty hour of walking around I found an ashram for a reasonable price and checked in.

It’s great to be back in Vrindavan. Somehow I feel I can appreciate the holy dham more this time around and I also feel more welcome here this time - I guess I’ve learned something in between my visits here.

After Varanasi I decided to head directly to Delhi to apply for visas for my return trip - I would need visas to Pakistan and  Iran in order to cross over to Turkey and Europe. I ended up taking a bus to Delhi via Aligarh, wich isn’t exactly on the main road. After an exhausting ride on a night bus I finally got to Delhi. In Delhi I a few of the morning hours looking for a guesthouse and after finally finding an acceptaple place in the ‘tourist ghetto’ of Paharganj and checking in, I fell asleep and slept for most of the day.

The next day I went to the consulate of Finland, as I knew I’d need a recommendation letter from there for the visa application for Pakistan. At first everything seemed to go OK, the lady working at the consulate brought me the paper - but had a mistake on the date of the recommendation. She went back to her office to correct it - and while doing so she also contacted the authorities in Finland to check up on me! A while later she returned, telling me she won’t give me the recommendation because I’ve got “unfinished business” in Finland - meaning the finnish authorities had told her not to let me go anywhere!

After this I decided to make one more try at the Pakistani consulate, thinking I might get the visa even without the recommendation letter. After another couple of hours of looking for the right gate, desk, forms etc. I found out I won’t be getting the visa without the letter no matter how I try. Oh well, maybe it just wasn’t the Lord’s plan for me to be returning through Pakistan right now.

As I returned to my hotel I was pondering, on what to do next. I could book a flight to Turkey, but landing in Turkey and heading north towards Finland in the middle of the winter doesn’t sound too good for me - a big part of what little funds I have left would be spent on the air ticket and in Europe everything is much more expensive - and on top of that it would be raining and as I got closer to Finland snowing also, and having been in tropical countries for the past 8 months I don’t have any clothing suitable for that kind of climate.

I decided to stay in India for time being and figure out my way back a bit later - I might end up visiting Sri Lanka or Nepal again to make yet another visa to India, and while I’m doing that I’d get another shot at the Pakistani visa, too.

In the evening another guest of the hotel told me the Diwali festival is about to start. Diwali is the festival of light and one of the biggest religious festivals in India. I’ll write more about Diwali later.

One day in Varanasi I was in my hotel room, a nice one with a balcony and view to the Ganga, lying on the bed when I saw something move in the room from the corner of my eye. Before I could get up or react, a monkey ran back to the balcony, jumping on the balconies to a rooftop - with my bag containing my passport! It felt a bit surreal, such a crazy freak accident it was. In the rooftop the monkey had emptied the bag of its contents and had had a small taste of everything, and finding nothing edible had left the stuff there. After a bit of climbing on a really shaky ladder (with some local kids having seen the scene onlooking with curiosity) I recovered my passport. Now it’s been ’stamped’ at Varanasi, with teethprint and a small bit of the cover missing :D.

Starting from Ranchi, I was already coming near to Bodh Gaya. It took me until afternoon to reach the main road between Delhi and Kolkata - to reach Gaya I would have to pass along this road around 50km and then cross it. When I was hitchhiking on the highway, I got a ride going all the way to Delhi (1000km!), the driver explaining me that he’s going to stop for the night at Varanasi. Somehow I didn’t feel like going for a yet another smaller road before reaching Gaya, so I decided to head for Varanasi instead.

The lord gave a lesson on ahamkara, on the false feeling of ‘I’ doing things. A bit before Varanasi the driver asked me if I know the way to the town and my reply was I think I’ll find my way.. well, after a couple of hours hitching back and forth on the highway bypassing Varanasi, I still couldn’t find it! After a bit more of searching (and acknowledging that I of myself am nothing) I ended up in the back of a mini-truck, on wich I took the 10km trip to Varanasi. As I was arriving it was already getting late, around 10 pm, and the Durga Puja was in full swing. Varanasi looked rather different from the last time I’d seen it, this time the streets full of the festival crowd and with huge sound systems and light installations put up on the streets.

During the Durga Puja people build temporary temples for Durga Mata, the temples being basically tents made up of large amounts of fancy looking cloth and bamboo sticks for support. Some of the temples are fairly big, with big and beautiful deities (also temporary, made of clay). The festival mostly happens in the evening time, starting at around 7 pm after arati/puja in the temples, going on until midnight or even later. Durga Puja lasts for a total of 9 days, the last day being the climax when the Durga deities are taken around the city on trucks (accompanied by other trucks with the massive sound systems!) followed by the dancing festival crowd.

I was in Varanasi for the three last days of Durga Puja, and greatly enjoyed the festival. It was cool to walk around the town and see all the variations of the same theme in the ‘temples’ put up by various communities. The last evening was also a first time I saw a lot of Indian people getting drunk together - even ‘partying’ seems a bit different in here from what how it is in the west. Seeing the Durga Puja it came to my mind it could be the the Love Parade of India - or the Woodstock!