Characteristic of many emerging countries, there's a resourcefulness and resilience that belies western sensibilities. I first noticed it at one of the shrines, when I realized that young men were recollecting the flowers placed on the tombs along with plastic bags disgarded at the door by the piglrims and repackaging them for the next wave of visitors. Empty water bottles are gold, used for everything from selling Gangas water to carry for puja, to one man's ingenious system of piping 'drinking' water from a public faucet across the stone sink into a 40 gallon jug on the ground, three liter sized bottles cut and formed to a temporary water duct.
Just a snippet over 1/3 of the way through and I've hit stride again today, first meditating on a ledge above the foothills village of Neelkanth, then later in yoga and meditation classes on the roof of Omkaeananda Dioeshwar Mander ashram, five stories above the east bank of the Ganga, just across the footbridge from our hotel.
India 2012: Thurs26: Walkabout/ Shopabout Rishikesh
There's a subterranean energy flow here that's not so much beneath the ground as it is buried under mountains of commercialism. Although we did see at least one Ayurvedic Massage center that looked like a Walnut Street salon - from its squeaky clean, minimalist lobbie sporting shelves of mass-production products, to its ad-agency brochure, This shoppe is an anomally here. And certainly not where I'll have my massage. The rest of Luxman is a specific form commercialism in the way of market-stall clutter. Cluttercialism.
It may be an undercurrent, but it can't be denied, that powerful coursing of energy that's not just the surge of the Ganga a mere100 feet away. It's the energy of hundreds of years of thousands of devotees who've left millions of gold-dust footprints on this path.
Here are those verdant hills I wished for, saw in my minds eye, upon waking on the train a few hours ago: grains and sugar cane; cow patties and firewood; gypsy tent cities on the outskirts of villages. Then a turn into the mountains and a nauseatingly rutty, radical switchback dirt road deeper and deeper in and up.
This is a football-sized multi-tiered wet dream of a doll house with processions of what looks like at least 24 karat gold figures: costumed priests, palaces and fanciful aeroplanes and marching as well as flying elephants and camels and horses. It's a pure example of jaipur art. I wonder the total weight of the gold?