I left Delhi early this morning by train to Haridwar. The train station was buzzing with activity even at 5:30 a.m. After anxiously awaiting my train to show up on the schedule board - which flashes rapidly by in Hindi and then English, I found my platform, got settled on my assigned car and seat, and we took off promptly at 6:50.
The train ride out of Delhi station started off slowly. Along the side of the tracks is total squalor and trash. Even outside the city there are slums along the tracks just on the fringe of ramshackle and decaying towns. Looking beyond the brown tarnished landscape are signs of simple beauty. The morning sun is beginning to burn through Delhi's haze and smog; I see a flock of wild parrots milling around the side of an abandoned building; and then we finally roll past bright green farmland. Train travel is great. I have a nice relaxing window view of the passing countryside and a friendly young porter has come around with a breakfast snack and chai; and then a little while later he came back with a spicy lunch of dal and chick peas and more chai - and this is all included in the ridiculously low price of the train ticket!
In an refreshing way India to caters to its citizens - (Indians pay next to nothing to tour their historical sights) - perhaps in an effort to make up for the needless bureaucracy, and the evidently crumbling infrastructure everywhere around you.
I still see the prevailing color as an undertone of brown - the Indian men all wear brown or beige scarves wrapped around their heads and bodies. I see the varying religious garb religious observers: the Sikhs and Pashtuns and Muslims; men with different hair styles and long white beards on the seemingly religious men. Some women have dots on their foreheads and lots of men have a dotted smears of crimson and gold on theirs. Most women wear saris in all sorts of vivid colors and styles and most women have a decorative gold piece pierced in their nose. Other women are wrapped and wearing silk or satin pants suits, and the Muslim women are tightly bound in their veils and abayas. We travel further into the heart of the farmland and I see miles and miles of sugarcane. Along the road we pass small towns and villages with thousands of neatly stacked dung patties, and rows and rows of hand-made mud bricks.
After the three hour train ride I arrive in Haridwar and take a 45 minute tuk tuk ride through a gauntlet of passing trucks, vehicles, motorcycles, bicycles, cow drawn carts, and people. I was dropped off at the end of the road and had about a 1/2 mile walk across a narrow pedestrian bridge (with motorcycles squeezing through the throngs of Hindu pilgrims and me) to get to the the side of the river where the ashram is located. Along the way are all sorts of interesting looking men apparently highly enlightened and ready to offer any sort of blessing or advice (I'm not sure if they speak any English, but they clearly look like they were straight off the movie set of The Little Buddha).
Once I settled in at the ashram I realized what the translation for ashram really means -- "peace and quiet." I am finally away from the incessant Delhi traffic and non-stop honking of horns - I think I'm going to like it here in Rishikesh!