Oh Brothers, Where Art Thou? (...In Rishikesh)

Greetings from Dharmasala, where (finally!) I have found natural beauty in India! Behind us are snow-covered Himalayan peaks, while an immense valley sits before use, dotted with red and green-roofed houses. Admittedly, there is a polluted haze over the valley, but the Himalayas behind us are clear! We arrived this morning after a harrowing 11-hour bus ride from Rishikesh, filled with unpaved roads, hairpin turns, and crevices between walls of solid rock. The altitude is affecting me a bit—my ears popped on the way up, and I just took a very long, and very necessary nap.

Back to Rishikesh. I was disappointed with Rishikesh’s lack of chillness. It’s the city where yoga was created, but the streets are noisy and full of honking, and the pollution creates a haze over the Himalayas. Fun things about Rishikesh: the entire city is both vegetarian and alcohol-free. At a nearby café, the only books in languages that I could read were “Eat, Pray, Love” in English, and the Bhagavad Gita in Hebrew. Typical. We stayed next to the Anand Prakash ashram where we meditated, did yoga twice daily, ate delicious healthy food, read books, and chilled. Leanne and I have both been practicing yoga for ~15 months or so, but this was Joanna’s first yogic experience. She is already talking about returning to the ashram when she’s on her own after Leanne and I leave.

Rishikesh is divided by the Ganges, and there are two “pedestrian” suspension bridges, paved with concrete, that connect both sides of the city. I put “pedestrian” in quotes, because motorcycles are allowed on the bridges. A lesson in who, precisely, has the right of way on these bridges would be really useful, as motorcyclists expected pedestrians to move to the side. The suspension bridges sway as you cross them, which is kind of terrifying. The bridges were dotted with monkeys, who would steal your bag of potato chips, given the opportunity.

As my title alludes, I met both an Akiva and an Oren in Rishikesh. 

Tall dude at ashram goes up to me and Joanna and asks “Is that a chamsa I see?”

(Background: we had been noticing that lots of Indian shopkeepers and touts have been greeting us in Hebrew. At first we thought they were picking up on our curly Ashkenazi hair, but later we realized that it was probably Joanna’s chamsa.)

Joanna nods

Tall dude: So you’re you of the Hebraic faith?

Me: Well you said chamsa, and not hamsa, so you’re assuming Jewish and not Muslim. Could have gone either way.

Tall dude: Not the response I was expecting. So you’re on the down low about being Jewish?

Me: I lay tefillin on the roof of the ashram this morning, so I’m not hiding anything.

Tall dude: Oh, so you’re one of those kinds of Jews (sidenote: still have no idea who he was referring to). You know there’s a Chabad right next door.

Me: Oh, I didn’t realize it was quite that close. I probably shouldn’t lay tefillin there.

Tall dude: Good point. So, you brought leather into the ashram?

Me: Yeah….

(Apparently this is a no-no. Oops.)

Tall dude is named Oren, born in Israel, moved to the US when he was three, teaches yoga in Los Angeles. Claims yoga has brought him closer to Judaism. Is interested in kabbalah. Tries to convince me that fire puja is totally compatible with monotheism. I am suspicious.

Akiva and Nomy, were the only two chareidi travelers at Chabad in Rishikesh, along with their two year-old son Shlomo. They’re also the only two Chareidi travelers that I have met anywhere in Thailand, Laos or India. Akiva is originally from France, and Nomy is from Jerusalem, of French descent; while Nomy speaks French fluently, she can’t write in French. Her last company was French, so while she spoke with her boss in French via Skype, he would message her is French, and she would respond in English, which she learned in school.

Akiva and Nomy moved from Jerusalem to Haifa last Tammuz. Nomy works in hi-tech as an app developer, and she terrified Leanne with her description of all of the consumer data currently available to marketers. Nomy is between jobs right now, and teaching at a Michlalla, which enabled her to take off two weeks for travel. For her next job, it is very important to her that she have female coworkers, even if they’re not religious so that she can chat with them about her life, her children, etc, because you just can’t talk to men about those things. Apparently, they had recently had a non-viable pregnancy which was terminated in the fifth month, so they wanted to travel as a way of putting a hard time behind them. Of course, I didn’t actually speak with Akiva, so it’s possible that he’s in yeshiva, or it’s possible that he does something else. Only a man would know.

Nomy and Akiva were shocked that there was no meat at either meal on Shabbat (remember, Rishikesh is an entirely vegetarian city). This was their first vegetarian Shabbat….ever. While they were excited about going back to their hotel and having some milk chocolate for dessert, Nomy went on a rant about vegetarians refusing to eat food that God has permitted. While dealing with Orthodoxy when I want to go to shul abroad is irritating, watching Chareidim dealing with vegetarianism on Shabbat kind of makes us even. Akiva and Nomy (and Galya, a middle-aged Israeli women who I met in Pushkar) were on our bus from Rishikesh to Dharamasala, so it’s possible that we’ll see them again.

Of note: we recognized nearly half of the 60 or so people at Chabad in Rishikesh from Chabad in Pushkar, two weeks prior. Apparently all Israelis have the same itinerary, and everyone moves in packs.

Other fun character that we met at the Ashram: Jen, a 20-something Canadian, who had just come from Goa, where she had been hired as an admin assistant at a tantric yoga retreat. Turns out, the retreat guru was sexually assaulting participants in the guise of giving them “tantric massages.” There is now a court case, which means that Jen has to deal with the ineptitude of the Indian criminal justice system. Oy.

Another 20-something North American woman tried to convince me to go for a swim in the Ganges with her. She was a big Ayurvedic medicine devotee, who compared swimming in the Ganges to a mother’s embrace. While I remained skeptical, Leanne and I did dip our feet into the river. Leanne then Purelled her feet. I did not.