Day 3 - Parmanth Ashram

After a quick breakfast of sweeeeeeeeet chai and a rice and daal combo and white (!) toast (carbs, anyone?), we had some time to digest both this light fare and our new digs. Seeing the Ashram in the daylight was breath-taking. It's luscious gardens, beautifully kept lawns (the women mow them by hand), and statues of Hindu Gods at every turn make you feel like you are in a palace.

Today was the first day of Ayurvedic Panchkarma treatment, including the most lavish massage and hot oil treatment that exists in the world. After the 90 minute session, replete with visions of myself on fire and other sundry out-of-body experiences, I felt like I was reborn. I entered the lunch room glowing, feeling that just-after-savasana feeling multiplied by about 40.

For those of you who might be interested in Panchkarma, I'll describe it here. If you really couldn't care less, proceed to the next paragraph. So, I see you stayed :). "Panch" means five and "karma" means rituals (in this case). The three rituals of today were hot oil massage, strategic oil dripping on forehead, and an intensely hot steam bath. The massage was the best I have ever had in my life. The hot oil is poured all over and my "technician" even hopped on the table at times to be able to capitalize all her strength (of which she had tons!). From your head to your toes, you are drenched with hot oil (all your hair, too) and rubbed for almost an hour. You're completely naked except for a primitive loin cloth made out of shoelace tied around your waist and thin fabric hiding your private parts (but that eventually comes off, too). The woman massages everywhere - your belly and your buttocks, your breasts and your armpits. While she was working, I just felt myself release completely. I even saw visions of fumes of toxins leaving my body. The next step was the hot oil drip on your forehead for a half an hour. This is when I truly left my body. At first, I was caught up in imaginative visualizations -- colors swirling around my body, then myself catching fire (I think because the oil was so hot), then my body was gone and I was just an observer, ebbing in and out of awareness of time and place. When that was all done, they put me in a steam closet, in which I sat on a shelf and then they closed the door. I had no idea how long I would be staying in there, but luckily my "woman" (feels cheap to call her a "masseuse" -- somehow "woman" seems better) stayed nearby and let me out once I started whimpering. Well, once I started whimpering really loudly.

After a shower and a vegan lunch (yes, I am suddenly coffee, meat, and mostly dairy free), I walked around Rishikesh by myself despite advice not to. Everyone else wanted to nap, but I was too rejuvenated after my treatment to sleep. So I walked the streets with all the pilgrimagers and festival-goers. The streets are just as dirty as Delhi; there is cow shit (and possibly human shit?) everywhere. But, with the raging sacred river and all the people clad in orange, you just accept it along with the territory and just try not to step in any. After looking at some Ganesh statues and mala beads for sale, I returned unscathed just in time for the evening yoga class at the ashram. Unlike Elizabeth Gilbert's ashram in Eat, Pray, Love, this one (Parmanth) doesn't stress mediation and prayer starting at 4 am, but it does have morning and evening yoga classes.

For my yoga dorks out there, I will say that even though I dropped into a deep savasana where I felt I was floating in the Ganges (literally, the fans became the sound of the river and my mat was a raft), I really did not like the sequencing of that class. We started seated, doing various Kundalini up-and-down-inhale-and-exhale exercises I wasn't warmed up enough for, then did savasana, then chanted (oh! we chanted the one I learned in teacher training, "Sa-ha vavatu."), then did 4 sun salutations, then another savasana (at this point I was wishing I had just practiced on my own), then more chanting, then back bends, then forward bends, (my teacher back home would not be pleased!) then shoulderstand, more savasana, more chanting. Then we did gate and side-gate, then savasana for the last time. At the end of class, Shireen (one of the women on this trip with me) asked, "Was this a Kundalini class?" to which the teacher responded curtly, "No, we don't do Kundalini here. This was Hatha yoga." Yet another reason I like Vinyasa!

As I type this, another troupe of orange boys is marching by chanting, "Bol-Bum! Bum-Bum!" They are really serious with their religious fervor! Actually, when I was looking for the internet cafe I'm currently sitting in, a local (in western clothing) man, probably about 20, who works in the family restaurant during busy times (like this festival, or Mela) and is a trekking guide in Ladakh the rest of the time, told me that many of the people here are smoking the Bob Marley. I asked if this was something Shiva would condone, and he said that they are not here for Shiva, but for the scene, for something to do. That seems like an awful long walk just to toke in all orange clothing (and while carrying a decorative pole with water balanced on both sides), but, hey, these folks don't have things like Facebook and blogs to consume their time.

What they do have, though, is this energetic river lined by trees that are absorbing a gorgeous fuchsia sunset to the right, and mountains covered in lush green "jungle" (David, one of the group leaders says there's elephants and tigers in there!) to the left. Palm trees, statues of Shiva, and the sound of tablas are in every direction. This place is rife with kinetic and spiritual energy, and I am so happy to have landed here.