NOTE: CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED AS OF AUGUST 9, 2010
This Video Friday, BreatheDreamGo is featuring the trailer to the movie Eat, Pray, Love starring Julia Roberts and 70 free passes to give away to the August 11 preview screenings in Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa and Winnipeg. And 10 lucky winners in Toronto will also receive a prize pack along with their passes comprised of a “pray” t-shirt, mala bead bracelet and bookmark.
To enter the contest, click Read the rest of this entry and follow the instructions. (more…)
Photo from India by Andrew Adams, Katha Images
Aarti (evening ceremony) during Kumbh Mela Festival in Haridwar, India, 2010
“No,” said the khaki-clad policeman. “You don’t have the right pass.” It took me a moment to grasp that I was not going to be able to join my colleagues on the media platform. The spectacle of hundreds of naga sadhus parading into the centre of Haridwar, India was the pinnacle of the Kumbh Mela, the largest spiritual gathering on earth, and I wanted to see it
That morning, I rose before dawn and walked 13 kilometres into Haridwar with a group from the ashram to take a dip in the Ganges River. It was the most auspicious moment to bathe during the festival, and millions of devotees were streaming into the city to take part.
After bathing, I separating from my ashram group to join my journalism colleagues on the platform. When I was turned away, I was stunned. The sun was climbing in the sky, I didn’t know the route back and the city was completely closed and packed with pilgrims.
Buoyed by the intense devotional energy, I somehow found the winding route back to the ashram. Arriving, I felt exhilarated and realized I would never be the same.
That morning, I discovered the truth and power of ritual. It’s not about the achievement. It’s about how a peak experience can change our idea of who we are and what we are capable of. Which is a lot to get out of a long walk on a hot day in north India.
This post has been entered into the Grantourismo and HomeAway Holiday-Rentals travel blogging competition.
Every summer, ISKCON (International Society of Krishna Consciousness — otherwise known as the “Hare Krishnas”) holds a picnic on Toronto Island called the Festival of India – Feed Your Soul. It’s a wonderful event and I never miss it. Everything is free — even the food! — and people of all ages attend. You can join a free outdoor yoga class, have your astrology chart done, enjoy the vegetarian feast, buy Indian clothes and trinkets and best of all, sing and dance along to incredibly happy, joyful kirtan (sacred) music. The event wraps up on Sunday late afternoon with a rousing kirtan session that everyone joins in. It’s basically a celebration of god, a spiritual rave — and no drugs or alcohol are needed to send everyone in a frenzy of joy. I took this video while everyone else was in the kirtan tent chanting along to the music. More pictures from the event follow.
Naga Sadhu (naked holy man) at Kumbh Mela, Haridwar, India
I took this photo in the Naga Sadhu’s camp during the Kumbh Mela in April 2010. I went into Haridwar for the day with two men who were also staying at Aurovalley Ashram — Lalit and Jean-Pierre. We spent an amazing day together, hanging out with the sadhus, swimming in the Ganges and having a lot of fun. I could never have had these experiences without the help of Lalit, who is a large, gregarious Punjabi man who speaks Hindi (and English and French). We spent a long time in this camp, where I bonded with this incredibly sweet young man (but I don’t remember his name!). I wrote about another Kumbh Mela day — the main bathing day — in Alone, and at home, at the Maha Kumbh Mela, the largest gathering on earth.
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love
The biggest question of our time is not do you believe in god; or is global warming real; it’s where do stand on Eat, Pray, Love? The book about Elizabeth Gilbert’s quest to find “everything” in Italy, India and Bali is a publishing phenomenon: it was an international bestseller with more than seven million copies sold worldwide; and in 2008, Time Magazine named Gilbert one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Today, July 18, is Elizabeth Gilbert’s birthday. She is 41. And I want to salute her.
For Video Friday on BreatheDreamGo, I have a video I took while riding in a bicycle rickshaw on the way to the train station from my hotel in Haridwar during the Kumbh Mela. I was staying at the wonderful Haveli Hari Ganga, which is located deep in the bazaar – where the streets are too narrow for cars and too crowded with people and stalls piled high with brass figurines of the Hindu pantheon, pyramids of vermilion kumkum powder and neatly stacked wafers of pastel sweets. The hotel has its own bicycle rickshaw for transporting passengers to and from the train station.
Taj Mahal, India
India is a vast and beautiful country, filled with world heritage sites, throbbing megalopolises, sacred pilgrimage routes, tropical beaches and snow-capped mountains. But along with the ubiquitous tourist draws such as the Taj Mahal, the forts and palaces of Rajasthan and the intricately carved temples of Tamil Nadu, India is home to a very well-trodden backpacking trail.
In a recent blog entry, Authentic travel in India, I wrote about crossing the cultural divide and really getting to know the country you are traveling in. Sara C., who commented on that blog, said. “I spent two months in India in 2008, and by the second month of my trip people would routinely assume that I was an expat living fully within Indian culture. This was because I didn’t dress or carry myself like a backpacker and made an effort to learn local customs and connect with the people around me. Most of the backpackers act like backpackers – they aren’t really interested in getting to know Indians on their own terms or really connecting at all with the culture beyond platitudes.”
Read the rest of the discussion, including the comments!
This entry was inspired by Sarah’s comment and also by by a video I saw at TBEX 10, the travel bloggers conference in New York City. The video, We are backpackers, is a short snappy celebration of backpacking. You can see it on Nomadic Matt’s Travel Site. In the blog post about this video, called Why I’ll never stop, Matt says seeing the video “refreshed, renewed, and re-inspired” him to keep traveling. It had the opposite effect on me.
I get that backpacking is a great way for young people to see the world and the astonishing variety of cultural difference. But I don’t think immersing yourself in the backpacking culture, and sticking strictly to the backpacking routes and hangouts, as outlined in Lonely Planet and other travel guides, is the best way to get to know a foreign culture.
Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India
Aside from the benefits of getting to know a foreign culture — such as increasing your knowledge, self-awareness and perspective — there may be other good reasons for taking the road less traveled. As I said in my Authentic travel in India blog post, the backpacking culture injects a foreign element, and the (usually) poor people of that culture morph around it because they know that, in spite of appearances, these young people come from rich countries.
There is a dark side to backpacking in developing countries. Drug use is one issue, and all the negativity it attracts. And there’s another, which my friends and family in India have brought to my attention. Some poor people in developing nations feel conflicted contempt for backpackers who wear dirty clothes and stay in cheap hovels because they think they are experiencing the “real” India or Thailand or wherever. They won’t express it directly of course, because these are usually the same poor people who are trying to make a living off of foreigners. Which is why they’re conflicted.
I feel sure the poor people of these nations would give anything to have the wealth and opportunities many backpackers were born into in their home countries of Canada, Sweden, Australia. So they don’t understand why rich young westerners want to come to places like India and pretend to be poor. In fact, even the poorest of the poor in India take pride in their appearance and would never let themselves look like some of the slovenly backpackers and hippies I have seen.
If the only local people you meet while you are traveling are the people serving you beer, you are not really getting to know the people of that culture.
Shore Temple, Tamil Nadu, India
Finally, there is perhaps another even more ominous reason to get off the beaten path: an editorial in an Indian newspaper following the German Bakery bomb blast in Pune in February 2010 suggested that terrorists might be consulting popular travel guides when planning attacks. During the Mumbai attacks of November 2008, the popular tourist hangout Leopold’s Cafe was targeted.
I try to see everything in life as a learning opportunity – what is this event or experience trying to teach me? And for me, these attacks on Leopold’s and the German Bakery are confirmation of something I already felt, which is a growing aversion to “traveler’s haunts” as I call them – places like north Goa, Pushkar, Hampi, Manali, Dharmasala and Pahar Ganj in Delhi.
The longer I spend in India, the more I prefer to find the places that are less affected by the influx of tourists. And maybe that’s part of the process, and part of the magic, of travel. The more you go, the more you want to know.
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This is a video of the aarti (ceremony to honour the Ganges River) that happens each day at dusk in Haridwar, India. I took this during the Kumbh Mela, the largest religious gathering on earth. I was standing on a media platform in Har-ki-Pauri, the sacred centre of Haridwar. Notice how the Indian authorities set up the media platform with a electrical wires marring the view of the aarti! But still, I think I got a lovely shot of women int he crowd when I panned down across the river to the side I was on. Of course, a modest video like this in no way captures the heat, the smells, the enormous size of the crowd and the intense devotional energy that was palpable in the air. It was an amazing experience to be there. A privilege, really.
Me, during Diwali puja in the family prayer room, Delhi
Authentic travel in India
I have been thinking about the concept of authentic travel for the past few days, ever since seeing the 76-second Travel Show with Robert Reid on this subject. He actually filmed one shot for the show at TBEX, the travel bloggers conference, and I was one of the audience members loudly saying “no, it’s not” in response to his statement: all travel is the quest for difference and the more exotic the better. But even though I went along with the gag, for the video, I do think a lot of people go to India because they perceive it to be so different and exotic. (more…)
On the morning of April 14 approximately 10 million people streamed into the sacred town of Haridwar in north India to bathe in the Ganga on the most auspicious day during the 2010 Kumbh Mela. I was one of them. Find out how I found myself alone, and at home, at the world’s largest spiritual gathering.
In Varanasi, where the veil between life and death seems very thin, a boat ride on the river can become a journey to the other side. Come along with me on a boat ride on the Ganges River in India’s oldest, holiest city and pierce the veil.
The Ganges / Ganga River is the Mother of India. The River speaks in many voices as she travels from the high Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal. At the source, her song is joyous, full of the the jubilance of youth, the rush of fresh mountain streams, the sincere chanting of pilgrims and the excitement of the onward journey.
