On the road

My previous plan had been to travel from Agra to Jaipur, then Pushkar, Udaipur, Jodhpur, and Jaisalmer, hitting all the tourist destinations in Rajasthan. But I wasn’t too thrilled about just seeing all this beautiful stuff. I saw Varanasi, I saw forts and monuments in Delhi. I saw the Taj Mahal and the Agra fort, respectively perhaps the most beautiful building in the world and the former capital of the Mughal Empire. This is some of the best that India has to offer but I have no context for it’s significance and most of it doesn’t interest me.

So when I met Viktor from Sweden, about my age, at my guesthouse in Agra, I was very interested to hear what he had to say about the 10 day vipassana meditation course he did. I got a little interested in this type of Buddhist meditation when I was living in Salem, though I never got around to actually sitting down to meditate for more than a few times. Viktor seemed down to earth, I trusted his recommendation I didn’t just want to keep seeing stuff, so I signed up for a course in Jodhpur starting on March 14. He was pleased that he convinced me and he gave me his email address so I could tell him about my experience.

I had two days to get my ass to Jodhpur so I spent a night at a couchsurfer’s bachelor pad with five Polish kids and a German woman outside of Jaipur. The guys who owned the house cooked really good food and arranged a bus ticket to Jodhpur for me. The bus left at 11:30 pm so I met one of the guys from the house, put my stuff on the bus, and gave him 600 rupees to buy me the ticket. I waited and waited and finally the bus engine started but I didn’t have a ticket. I pleaded with the bus driver to wait two minutes and ran around aimlessly looking for this guy. All of my stuff was still on the bus though so I was pretty nervous that the bus would leave with all of my possessions. Two guys were trying to help me and though I trusted this guy not to run off with my money, I had to tell them that I didn’t have his phone number and I didn’t know where he was buying the tickets. FINALLY a different guy showed up with a tiny receipt sized piece of paper that was my ticket. Sleeping on a bus is not much fun but I got to Jodhpur so I was happy.

After seeing the fort in Jodhpur (my favorite so far) I hired an auto rickshaw to take me to this meditation center. The driver looked like he was 16. The place was quite a ways out of town and I think this kid though I was taking him out to the desert to kill him. After asking directions several times we finally found the center but all the signs were in Hindi and no one there spoke English so I had to rely on my driver to translate. I knew he wanted to get rid of me so I just had to pray that it was right place. They did give me a room with a bathroom no questions asked but it wasn’t until I saw white people speaking English that I could breathe a little easier knowing that the course wouldn’t all be in Hindi.

It was a ten day meditation course. There were 11 of us. The rules were no talking for nine days, no killing, no lying, no stealing, no sexual activity and no intoxicants. We meditated from 4:30 am until 6:30, ate breakfast, rested, meditated from 8 until 11, ate, rested, meditated from 1 until 5, ate, rested, meditated from 6 until 7, then attended discourse where we watched recordings of the man who started this organization talk about meditation and the Buddha (this was my favorite part of the day), after which we meditated from 8:30 to 9 and went to bed. It came out to about 10 hours of meditation per day.

This course fulfilled three important purposes for me. First, I got a chance to stop traveling. No one wanted anything from me and the people around me were self-selected so I trusted them. I was doing something that I actually wanted to be doing. Second, I learned how to meditate and I got some outside motivation to do it. It was intense but it was a really interesting experience. Also, when my mind wandered I thought about all sorts of useful and totally irrelevant things. I had nothing but my own mind to entertain myself (no reading or writing materials allowed) and I kind of got to see the inner workings of my brain. Third, I got to learn about the Buddha (not Buddhism), something I’m been interested in for a little while. The man on the discourse recordings was highly intelligent and well-spoken and told stories and gave simple metaphors to help us better understand him , though after 9 days of hearing his voice 99% of the time, he got a little tiring. I could say a lot more, but I’ll keep it to this.

I would recommend anyone who has 10 days free (say, after school or between jobs) consider doing this. It’s donation based so you can give as much or as little as you want. There’s a center in Onalaska halfway between Seattle and Portland. The website is called dhamma.org.

On the last day a Norwegian and an English woman and I got a ride to the city from a nice man who sat next to me during meditation. I got pretty close with these two women (the only other foreigners) for only talking with them about 12 hours and we all gave hugs when we parted ways. I caught a bus to Jaisalmer and am currently staying at a really nice hotel inside the Jaisalmer fort for less than $4 per night. I went on an overnight camel safari and found out that riding camels is a cool thing to do but in practice it’s pretty uncomfortable. I went with four nice Korean people. It was a lazy day.

We rode for about an hour and a half, then hung out for 4 or 5 hours under a tree, eating lunch and relaxing. We got back on the camels and rode a little further to our campsite. We ate dinner and slept under the stars on simple mattresses, but at that point I started getting sick and it continued unrelenting through the night. The one night I didn’t have a toilet I had to get up perhaps 6 times to dig a whole in the sand and squat down. I had a fever, I was dizzy, dehydrated and I ran out of toilet paper, so it was a long night. I spent all yesterday recovering in my room, drinking water and watching Ken Burns’ Baseball. The people at the hotel are really nice to me and keep checking in on me. I feel much better this morning.

Tonight I catch an overnight bus to Japiur, then a flight to Nepal. I stay in Kathmandu for 2 nights, then head to Pokhara. I’ll write more then.