Welcome to the Alignment Yoga India Travel Log. More information will be coming soon, but in the meantime, we would like to share with you a lovely story of a previous visit to India, written by Pam...... enjoy!
HUNTING LIONS IN INDIA
Lion footprint
We arrived in Mahuva just last night, and already this morning we are going on a day trip to see Lions in the Gir National Forest northwest of Mahuva. The Gir Forest is a lion sanctuary, the last place in all of India that lions still exist in the wild.
At 7 am sharp, Nagin, Prabha and I leave the ashram in the private car of some local devotees of Bapu who have been charged with taking us to see the lions. But any good day of adventure must start with breakfast, so we are first taken to their home in Mahuva to partake of that repast. On the way, we stop at a small street stand to pick up fresh ganthia for our breakfast. Ganthia is a deep-fried dough that is rolled out by hand into thin ropes, then broken into small pieces and dropped into boiling oil where it fries to crisp, golden perfection.... the fried bits are then retrieved from the bubbling oil with a huge mesh ladle, laid out to drain before being liberally sprinkled with salt, and then packaged for transport in rolled newspaper. Ganthia is Bapu's favorite food...
We arrive at the home of our kind hosts and are served a typical Gujarati breakfast of the crunchy, salty ganthia, green mango chutney, raw red onion, and fried green chilis. It would be typical to serve jaggery ( a type of raw cane sugar) with this meal, but we did not have it today. Rotla bread, chai, and dahi (a yogurt-like curd) complete the meal.
Generously cared for by our hosts, we all prepare to depart; we head outside to pay our respects to their two daughters, who both stay at home with tiny babies on their hips. Leaving their gated compound, I walk under an archway of blooming jasmine that leads to the street. As I step through the flowery gate, two pigs streak by squealing wildly! In the front, obviously, is the female... fleeing..... behind her, the male in hot pursuit, is desperately trying to mount her on the fly.... INDIA!!! I take a deep breath of jasmine and head for the car....
ALONG THE ROAD TO GIR:
8 am: We are on the road...our journey by car will be several hours; along the way, Nagin tells me stories and points out sights.... he tells me about a Baba, a friend of Bapu's, who only eats, sleeps, smokes, and cooks with marijuana! At night he cuts a huge plant, lays it on the ground with a sheet spread over it, and there he sleeps! Says it feels good....
8:30 am: We pass through the small village of Majadar, home of Dula Bhaya Kag, one of Gujarat's greatest poets.....
8:40 am: We drive through a stretch of road where it has obviously rained the night before; we pass a large puddle of water that stretches some 6-8 feet out into our lane of traffic; a woman is doing her wash there.... she squats serenely with her laundry in the road and we simply swerve around her.... water is precious in India, and water is where you find it....
9:30 am: Hindus have an expression for death, especially the death of a spiritual leader: they say, "The body has become quiet;" actually, the word is "shanti"; "peace; peaceful"; so, "the body has become peaceful".... "sharir shanti ho gaya" = "the body has attained peace"
9:45 am: We pass a group of "Banzares", ie gypsies who live out of colorful bullock carts and pony carts; like all gypsies, they move all over India, from place to place....
10:00 am: two mongooses (mongeese?!?) streak across the road!
WE ARRIVE AT GIR:
11:00 am: We have arrived at TULSISHYAM TEMPLE, a Krishna temple in the heart of the Gir Forest lion sanctuary.... "tulsi" = basil, the color of the particular balck basil that is sacred to Krishna; it is a blend of deep green, purple and black; "shyam" = Krishna, the blue-black aspect of Krishna..... tulsi is considered sacred to Krishan; the figure of Krishna in this temple is the color of purple basil; dark, almost black.... we enter the inner sanctum of the temple and the sound is unearthly...... "OOOOOOOORRRRRRRRNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!"
Nagin:
"In Church, you go to worship God;
In Mass you go to pray to God;
In Mandir, you go to visit God;
God lives there, eats there, sleeps there...."
THE MAHANT AND THE NECKLACE:
We are taken to meet the mahant (ie, the 'abbot') of this Krishna Temple; he greets us and presents us each with a red and gold bracelet and a necklace of small beads and deep red yarn.... I am happy to have these; I am told that the mahant had just travelled to Rajkot to obtain these.... A young man, late 20's perhaps comes in to bring the mahant a message; he is wearing a beautiful, heavy silver necklace.... I watch the following interaction between him and the mahant:
Then mahant speaks to him in a peremptory voice; a sheepish, silly grin spreads over the face of the young man; his right hand slowly moves up to the necklace and he self-consciously fingers the beautiful silver beads as he utters a tiny embarrassed laugh .... I understand that the mahant has instructed the man to remove his silver necklace and replace it with the same religious relic of red yarn and beads that he has given us.....
THE GREAT LION HUNT!!!!
After meeting the mahant, we are off to greet the Lions!!!! Bapu has called ahead to inform the forest manager that we are coming and to give special orders that the lions MUST be found!!! We wait quite some time for the officer to arrive but are eventually told he has been delayed by an accident and that a local person has been summoned to guide us. Personally, I believe he did not want to risk the possibility of the lions eluding us after Bapu had delivered special orders that they be found at all costs! We are driven into the preserve, 700 acres of dense forest, following a muddy, rutted road deeper and deeper into the trees and brush; eventually we turn off onto a pair of even smaller and muddier ruts; we are driving through dense thorn trees covered with 2-3 inch spikes.... We are told by our guide that there are over 450 types of medicinal plants in this forest...
Soon we abandon even the ruts.... we are now driving directly through the forest itself, very slowly, inching our way, squeezing through the acacia trees with inches to spare.... it seems impossible, but the track worsens even more.... pure mud and foot-deep ruts; we stop the car and get out to walk.... I step out of the back seat and immediatly sink my left foot into mud up to my ankle.... unmiring myself, I scrape the mud off as best I can and we carry on.
Under the manly captainship of our driver and the local guide, we plunge into the bush!!! GREAT!!!! WE ARE HUNTING LIONS IN THE FOREST!!! This makes me more than a little bit anxious! I am armed with nothing more than my purse! But somehow I have the feeling that today is not my day to be devoured by lions, and I carry on..... Suddenly our 'guide' freezes, and points stiff-armed into the woods..... there in the forest stand, not lions, but half a dozen absolutely enormous deer! Huge and reddish, dotted with white spots, they are gorgeous... Huge racks of antlers covered in velvet sweep straight back from the crowns of their majestic heads; their racks spread back and then fan out horizontally into 8-10-12 or more points.... breath taking!! They gaze back at us for a while and then flee off into the woods; our 'guide' motions us to follow him, and we leave the trail and follow their path directly into the woods.
As we set foot off the track, Nagin is ahead of me in his whites; he is highly conspicuous in the woods!.... He turns towards me, all stealth and solemnity, man of the forest that he is, and declares of the deer in a conspiratorial whisper, "They have gone into the woods!!! We are trrracking them!!!" It is a wonderful, crazy, hilarious moment!
We spot these beautiful animals a few more times before they dissolve into the woods..... We plunge on in our pursuit of lions, great hunters that we are! Beautiful hills, forest and grasslands.... I can easily imagine lions here..... we see matted grass where the lions have lain, and back in the muddy track, we spot beautiful clear paw prints, but alas, today is not our lucky day.... even the guru cannot command the lions, and today there are no lions for us! But I am content with the adventure; I am content with not having been eaten by lions; I am content with the spotted deer and the several wild peacocks that we spy on the way out... I have been to lion country in india!!!
