Trips to India are awesome. Anyone with the slightest inclination should go. Last winter I had another great great trip their, deeply spiritual, and I really encourage anyone with spiritual leanings to do it. This winter I'm going back because this winter is the Kumba Mela, the closest one to 2012! So maybe I'll see you in the rainbow camp in Hardiwar in March!
Here's something I wrote up on the details of going to India.
India is magic and wise. India is difficult and monstrous. India is the delta of history and the holder of humanity’s highest wisdom. Everyone should visit. Yoga and meditation students will totally benefit from the perspective gained by visiting where these practices originate from.
Here’s some tips for the trip.
It’s great, have fun, walkabout, it’s relatively safe and inexpensive.
Don’t get sick. It’s harder to have spiritual thoughts when one is crabby and ill in the hotel room. An aggressive, pro-active approach towards health is recommended. Eating right, get good sleep, do the yoga.
A healthy body is more resistant.
Don’t drink the water, unless it’s boiled and purified. Ask for no ice cubes, which are unpurified water. Suck it up and buy the bottled water. It took me three weeks to realize that was my blockage: I’d never bought plastic bottles of water and I had a thing against it.
I got some nasty skin-fungul infection about three weeks in. I bought medicine like a spendthrift hypocondriac. Eventually the disease went away (after I took a friend's advice and lathered myself head to toe with Prell Anti-lice shampoo and let it dry on me like a mudman!) I think it was my body getting inoculated to India’s compost pile. Then I was pretty healthy for two months. Then, just as I was approaching the ETD, I got a nasty food poisoning case, from a food stall at festival, that drove me onto the plane. India is a hard place to be sick. I have so much compassion for all the people living there without health care. Auroville had a dank health clinic offered free to local villagers.
During the trip, I took droppers of “colloidal silver”, basically super small pieces of silver, almost just the vibration and frequency of silver, which apparently has a purifying quality. Hence, silver was used for spoons. Hard to find, perhaps, but available at Auroville.
I traveled with food, vitamins and medicine. I ate a garlic clove or two a day to boost the immune system with garlic’s antiviral antibacterial properties.
Bring your favorite health care products. The organic movement hasn’t hit India.
I didn’t get the shots, because apparently all the diseases have resistent strains anyway, and I worry about the mercury-based thimeresol used in vaccines. That said, I had alot of those shots in my 20s.
India has an unbelievably excellent train system. One can get anywhere on these trains. I recommend getting the 2nd class AC births, a bit more pricey, but totally worth it. The steerage class is like the tightpack method on the slave ships: all night, no seat, people talking about you in Hindi. Very difficult, but also very human. AC2 gets you sheets, privacy, class insulation, no beggars. India is easy enough once you are settled in someplace, but can be pretty challenging on the move.
I quizzed several American yogi travelers deeply before I went.
The best peace of advice I got was this: Don’t get all worked up if the taxi guy is trying to get an extra ten cents out of you. Don’t let it ruin your day. You can bargain till your stress level is shot up and your adrenals are maxed out, and you’ll have saved 50 cents. Keep it in perspective. They may be overcharging you, but it’s still cheap. Due to the rigged economic system’s exchange rates, our 1 dollar is worth about $5 dollars. A great meal will be $2. So it’s cheap. The taxi driver will spend an hour of his life and you’ll give him $2.
With that said, traveling on a budget does require some skillful bargaining. Generally, try and knock off 1/3 of the proposition price.
Appear willing to walk away without the sale. Remember Indians would probably pay 1/4 what you pay. If you know a few words in the local language, the price drops, such as “too much” in Tamil.
Decide how much you’d be willing to pay. Go to the next guy in line.
Fix a price before you consume the service, or they ask their price.( ie whadda-I-owe-ya to the taxi driver at the destination)
If somebody is walking beside you trying to sell you something, I found that changing direction was a good way to shake them loose. I’d walk 10 steps in the wrong direction, and they’d get the hint.
India is a great place to practice being assertive. “No, we definitely said 60 rupees for the cab ride” and
”no, I definitely don’t want your peacock feather fan, however beautiful it is, because I don’t want to support the cruelty to those animals.” There are varying degrees of “no.” “No” with tone, urgency, anger, firmness. Part of the trick is deciding clearly in your own mind. If you may want the offered thing, the sellers can sense that. Saying the word “Jao!” with varying degrees of firmness is helpful. Jao means, I think “go you fool!” or “Beat it!” The combo of the native language and tone is pretty effective.
And sometimes the answer is Yes. “Why yes, Mr. Pushy cab driver, Thank you for your gumption to walk down to the railway station platform and for leading me to the awaiting chariot.”
The cabbies are so dishonest. I got lied to a thousand times. I was lied to more in India than I’ve ever been lied to. It seems like it’s just part of it. Like in Vindivan, buying a lifetimes supply of Nag Champa incense, $40 worth, the incense shop owner said the price he was offering me was the wholesale price, that he was only making a penny or two on each box. I thought, “Hhhmmmnnn, no wonder India is so poor, because they have such a poor understanding of capitalism, that stores are supposed to sell items for more-than-it-cost-them, or as we say, profit.”
The dishonesty is tiring, and it takes some skill to recognize it. Once in Delhi, this taxi driver son of a bitch took me to a travel agent across the street from the Delhi train station. There, I was told that no tickets were for sale today across the street, and I could only get rail tickets from them, at, surprise surprise, a very very “low.” Good scam, almost got $20US out of me, but I politely said, “well, I’ll just walk over an see, and then I’ll come back.” Shysters!
But once again, don’t let it ruin your day. They are real poor, an extra dollar makes they’re day a huge success, and they are happy, so why not be generous when one can.
The second great piece of advice my friend gave me was “It’s OK to spend a little extra and get a nice hotel room when you need it. Don’t feel you have to camp out with the hippies all the time.” For an extra two dollars a day you can often step it up significantly. Safer, cleaner, less riffraff. Insulation.
In Delhi, they ask for American style prices, $60 a night. That’s unusually high. Usually, a good hotel is 200-500 rupees, or 4 to 10$.
I recommend learning exchange rate functionally pretty early. Learn get a rough estimate, or travel with a little hand held calculator. 1=42. or easier 1=40. 100R equals 2.50$
The most I spent was 65$ a night at the super swank hotel at Osho’s Club Meditation in Poona. That place was a nice respite, interlude, intermission during my trip, a submersion in a clean uplifted world.
In summary, a nice hotel room is totally worth it.
In summary, have a great spiritual time. Live healthy and try not to get sick. Don’t sweat the 20 cent scam.
As far as places to visit, I really loved meeting the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Aquarian experiment happening at Auroville, near Pondicherry. So beautiful. His teachings were the most profound spiritual thing I learned in India.
Second, Bodhgaya, where Buddha got Enlightened, is extremely sacred, and the Buddhafields of saint energy vibrates super super high there.
Third, Rishikesh is a sweet, spiritual yoga town, way up in the hills, where the Beatles hung with the Maharishi.
Fourth, Osho’s Club Meditation, in Poona, is expensive and decadent, but spiritual and a nice break from the poverty. Probably not really necessary or wholesome, but interesting. Everynight they have ‘white robe”, where 1000 people dress in white in a giant pyramid temple and dance wildy to rock and roll, do some meditations, and listen to a recorded Osho talk. It’s like being in California-style cult for a little while.
Delhi had a few nice museums, and the Gandhi Samatri, his final footsteps museum ahd a cool gandhi museum.
I had difficulties with money a few times. The ATM card isn’t as helpful as one would like. In Thailand, an ATM machine stole my card on the first day! One wrong pin attempt and gone! Trying to get somebody to speak English over the phone. I had fifty bucks, and I was jetlagged on Casong road. Luckily a CD street vendor was cranking Jack Johnson’s Brushfire Fairytales and i sat down and meditated in front of a 7/11 and made it all better.
In short, I used Western Union. A little expensive, 50-80 dollars, but the money shows up right away, but then you’ve got to carry lots of loot on you, which is stressful. Maybe travellers checks would be good next time. I may try that next time.
I noticed a funny phenomenon. If I didn’t see the beggars, they didn’t see me. If I kept my focus tight, my eye gaze close, I was much less hassled while walking through crowds. Rupert Sheldrake has a book out explaining the phenomenon of the sense of being stared at. Anyway, it works partially as a cloak of invisibility.
Also, a total blank, non-engagement allows one to float past situations. If one start talking or looking or even saying no, one has upped the ante of the interaction.
At these ancient and wise spiritual sites, pray like you mean it, crank open to the spirit, and you’ll find well worn pathways. India is a spiritually advanced nation.
For cheap tickets, I got a great cheap tickets following my friends advice to fly to Thailand first and get an India ticket there.
I got a one-way to Bangcock for $620. From there I hopped a regional airways, maybe Air India, for $280. Flying back from Dehli to NYC was about $700. By contrast, one way NYC to Dehli was $1400. Thailand was pretty sweet too, and a good ‘get-yer-feet-wet’ before India.
Good luck and safe travels, soul brethren
