Today has been rest & recuperation after the tour.

Because tomorrow we head off to Bhutan for further filming for the PGS intuition documentary.

Cameraman Extraordinaire Pieter de Vries ( CE ) has joined us, and will be filming in Bhutan.

When we come back from Bhutan we go to Varanasi – formerly called Benares – a very holy town on the Ganges. And then we go back to Bombay for more filming.

So there’s still a lot to do before we return to Australia.

We hope to complete filming by the end of the year, but it’s subject to funding. We still have a lot more to shoot in the US, and some in Hawaii.

We are being intuitively guided in the making of this film.
Everything is working out as it should.
The film is going to have a big impact.

Jennifer and I today are in post tour post partum depression. We miss all those crazy beautiful people we shared the last two weeks with.

But now we’re starting to think of our tours next year. We will definitely do the same tour – the Mother Ganga tour – at the same time again next year, so that we conclude with Ganpati.

And we’ll do another tour in April / May – which we’ll announce shortly. I’m not sure where that will be yet – whether it’s the Celtic Camino will depend on level of interest. I’ll post a blog shortly to ask who’s interested.

And now I’m going to have a nap.
I’m bushed!

It’s been a big year, and it ain’t over yet!

The tour is over.

It was an exhilarating and truly memorable two weeks – and when I go back over the photos I shot during that time, I can’t quite believe that we did all that we did.

In many ways the tour was like a Camino.

There were times when it was challenging, and there were times when it was overwhelmingly beautiful –

Other times it moved some to tears of profound joy and bliss,

Other times it was confronting and it forced some to really examine the way they looked at the world.

I have no doubt that those who came on this tour will be changed in some way by what they experienced in these past two weeks.

For some, I know that major changes are now in process.

Like I say, it was like a Camino.

It was a tour unlike any other, because it was a personal tour – it was a tour of our India; the India that Jennifer and I know and love.

Jennifer and I in no way profess to be India experts. It would take us a lifetime to learn all there is to learn about India. And even then, not being Indians, we would still be merely observers of an ancient / modern culture.

But we’ve been coming here regularly now for more than eight years, and we designed the tour around things we like to do – places we like to visit – experiences we’ve enjoyed in the past.

We ate well. Very well. The food was divine. You don’t get Indian food like this outside of India. A couple got Delhi Belly for a short while, but it passed. So to speak.

For the majority, there were no problems.

Jennifer and I took the group to the out-of-the-way restaurants and dhabas we’ve discovered and enjoyed over the years.

Places where you see no tourists, only locals. Places you’d be scared to eat at, normally – where you wouldn’t eat at, normally. These were the places where we had our best meals – meals that were unforgettable.

Like the sweet shop outside Dehradun –

And of course on any spiritual tour there has to be shopping!

Jennifer is a deeply spiritual person. I told one person on the group that if Jennifer sees a temple she’s like a rat up a drainpipe.

She’s the same with shoe shops.

She can’t walk past without rushing inside to take a look…

There was also the beautiful Indian clothing, the jewellery, the genuine pashmina shawls and scarves from Kashmir that are so finely woven they’re almost transparent. You never see this stuff outside of Northern India. Or if you do, the prices are astronomical.

Here they are very affordable.

The ladies loved shopping with Jennifer – because she knows the best places to go to get the best quality, but invariably I was brought in to do the final negotiations on prices!

But food and shopping aside, this was a spiritual tour first and foremost – and it was on that level that most of our group were deeply affected.

Some were moved to tears at the Dalai Lama temple at Dharamsala, others had memorable experiences at the Sikh Golden Temple at Amritsar, and for some, the aarti ceremonies at the ashram at Rishikesh by the Ganges were the highlight.

No-one though will ever forget Ganpati. It’s hard to describe the scale and the magnificence of that evening.

Interestingly, one of our group later pointed out that amongst the millions of people on that beach that night, we were the only foreigners. There were no tourists where we went…

It was my third Ganpati, and so I knew where to go, and how to safely take the group into the heart of it, to experience up close and personal the incredible energy and exuberance of that ceremony.

Everyone on the tour came away loving India, and loving the people. The Indian people at all times greeted us with smiles and warmth and generosity. Everywhere we went – someone would ask us if we could have our photo taken with them…

And they were honest.

There were several occasions when one of our party would leave something valuable behind, at a restaurant or in a shop or on one occasion in a taxi, only to be chased by someone and have it returned.

I inadvertently dropped some money on the floor of a café, and a young Indian lad tapped me on the shoulder and handed me the cash. He could have easily nicked it – it was not a small amount of money and I had no idea I’d dropped it – but he chose to return it to me. I tried to give him a tip to thank him, and he refused, but I insisted.

Like the slum-dweller who wouldn’t take payment for guiding us through the slums for an hour. Again we had to insist before he would take some money.

The tour dispelled many fears, many prejudices, many misguided beliefs about India. That’s not to say that the country doesn’t have thieves and criminals and major societal issues, particularly involving the treatment of women – but our experience was a good one.

One of the reasons we had such a good time was because of our assistant, Rachit.

Everyone loved him.

He not only worked very hard behind the scenes to keep everything running smoothly and meet all the group’s needs, but more importantly Rachit is a highly political and very ethical young man with deeply held beliefs about his country and its social mores. He was able to provide a context and a deeper insight into the country, its people, and its complexities.

It was very sad to say goodbye to everyone yesterday. Over the two weeks we’d all become very close. Like the Camino, the full impact of this tour probably won’t hit for weeks or months later.

The chance encounter with a couple of Buddhist nuns, laughing as they walked up from the Dalai Lama Temple –

The rousing music at aarti by the Ganges –

The early morning light on the Golden Temple –

The transcendence of doing yoga at the Taj Mahal –

Cramming into the back of a tuk tuk –

Donning head scarves –

The ashram hut where George Harrison stayed at Rishikesh –

The rush of a gigantic Ganesh on its way to the Arabian Sea –

The dignity of a slum-dweller, so proud of his work –

The wisdom and mirth in the eyes of an old man –

The innocence in the eyes of a boy –

Everyone has their own gallery of memories from the tour.
No-one will leave India unaffected in some profound way.

It was a pleasure and a delight to have shared our India with such a beautiful bunch of people….

Marie –

Jill –

Janet –

Britta –

Lynda –

Dale –

Today was our last day – and talk about finishing with a bang!

Ganpati was huge – even bigger than last year, it seemed.
More on that later.

But first –

Our day started with a trip to the Dharavi slums near the airport – made famous in the film Slumdog Millionaire, as well as the best selling novel Shantaram. An extraordinary book.

I’d driven past these slums dozens of times, but never ventured to stop, much less walk in. But we picked up a guide outside the slums, and he showed us around.

By “guide,” I mean he was just a bloke who was hanging around outside the slums, who said he could take us through. Later when we came to pay him he refused payment – he said it was his pleasure to be able to show us where he lived and worked.

We insisted – but it was a shock to us that someone living in the slums wouldn’t want payment. But as we wandered around the inside of the slums, it became apparent to us that what you see from the outside is not what it’s actually like inside.

Inside, the slum is a thriving commercial hub. It’s perhaps one of the most efficient reccyling plants imaginable. Every conceivable kind of junk is turned into something useful, something that can be resold.

We wandered through, at first feeling a little uncomfortable at our intrusion – we were after all affluent Westerners walking through their territory taking photographs. But we were welcomed with smiles and grace, and invited into their homes and mini factories.

At no time did any of them ever ask us for anything.

There was no begging, no asking for money if we took a photo, and we felt no sense of threat or hostility. On the contrary, we were warmly welcomed.

It was an eye opener for some of us – to see the dignity with which these slum dwellers lived their lives. They seemed happy, content, friendly, and they were certainly industrious.

One of our group also noticed that unlike American or some European slums, there was no sign of drugs, or alcohol abuse, none of these slum dwellers was stoned or drunk – there was no sense that our lives were in any danger whatsoever.

Walk into a slum in East LA taking photos and chances are you’ll be stretchered out with multiple gunshot wounds.

We then got into our bus and headed for the JW Marriott Hotel, at Juhu Beach. It’s the hangout of the major Bollywood stars, and Jennifer and I often stay there when we’re working in Bombay.

They have an amazing Sunday brunch buffet – voted the top buffet in all of India – and we proceeded to feast on an amazing array of foods – from caviar to sashimi to roast duck to the best selection of sweets I’ve ever seen.

After lunch we came back to the hotel and rested before heading out for Ganpati.

We walked 2kms from our hotel to the beach, and by the time we got there there must have been half a million people already watching as the Ganeshas trundled their way down to the water.

Ganpati is a celebration of the elephant God Ganesha – which Hindus believe clears obstacles from their path in life.

The statues are made from plaster-of-paris or paper mache, and once immersed in the sea off Bombay, they begin to disintegrate in the water. Some of the statues are two stories high.

As the light began to fall the bigger statues made their way down the beach, and more people flooded in. There must have been at least a million people there – and possibly more. For our group, it was the experience of a lifetime – and a fitting end to an extraordinary tour.

Later, over dinner, we all marvelled at how much we’ve seen, and experienced, in these past two weeks. From the Red Fort in Delhi, to the Taj Mahal, to the Golden Temple and Amritsar, to the Dalai Lama temple and all the Buddhist temples in Dharamsala, to the ashram at Rishikesh and the very moving aarti ceremonies – and now Ganpati; it really has been jam packed with amazing experiences.

For Jennifer and me, the highlight has been having the opportunity to share the India we are getting to know with some truly wonderful people.

Tomorrow when we all go our separate ways, we’ll all be sad – because it has been a very special time we’ve spent together.

Those in this city still devoutly call it Bombay.

Those elsewhere call it Mumbai.

Call it what you will, it’s the rock’n’roll capital of India – the centre of Bollywood – the glam city – with enormous wealth, enormous poverty, enormous charisma.

A whole different energy to all the other places we’ve been to.

We’re here for a huge festival tomorrow – Ganpati – when literally millions of people will take gigantic paper mâché statues of the Hindu elephant God Ganesh down to the Arabian Sea and immerse them in the waters off Bombay.

Some of these statues will be two or three stories high, and will take a dozen men or more to carry them.

This will be my third Ganpati. And I will be taking our group into the madness and hurly burly of it all.

Today Marie left us early to return home to France, for pressing work reasons. It was very sad to see her go.

After breakfast, we did some sightseeing of Bombay – the famous Gateway of India / the Colonial Victoria Railway Station / the massive, and fascinating, Crawford Markets /

We had lunch at one of Jennifer and my favourite haunts – The Tea Centre. We could have been back in the time of the British Raj!

In the late afternoon we headed off on foot to visit the famous Haji Ali mosque, situated on a tiny island about 300m off the beach, accessed by a raised concrete walkway.

On the way we found a small community that were preparing their Ganesh for the ceremony tomorrow –

Possibly because of Ganpati, there were hundreds of thousands of people there, everyone pushing and shoving to get to the mosque by sundown.

Even though it was at times uncomfortably crowded, it was beautiful nonetheless- and those of us that went inside the mosque were moved by its energy.

Today was a free day – nothing structured.
But it turned out to be extraordinary.

For most of our group, the morning was spent having Ayurvedic treatments of various kinds – massages, oil treatments, diagnostic session, and someone even had an Ayurvedic enema!

Afterwards, over lunch, she told us all about it…

A lot of us simply had the ashram’s Ayurvedic doctor determine what our “dosha” was – our Ayurvedic body type: Vata, Pitta or Kapha.

Here is a link to the various Ayurvedic doshas, and what they mean…
Ayurvedic doshas – 

Once you know your dosha, then according to Ayurvedic medicine, you should eat certain types of food, stay away from other types, same with drinks, and so forth.

Evidently I’m a Pitta dosha.
According to Deepak Chopra, that means I have these characteristics:

Pittas are usually of medium size and weight. They have excellent digestion, which sometimes leads them to believe they can eat anything. They have a warm body temperature. They sleep soundly for short periods of time and have a strong sex drive. When in balance, Pittas have a lustrous complexion, perfect digestion, abundant energy, and a strong appetite. 

Pittas have a powerful intellect and a strong ability to concentrate. When they’re in balance, they are good decision makers, teachers, and speakers. They are precise, sharp-witted, direct, and often outspoken. Out-of-balance pittas can be short-tempered and argumentative. When pittas are overstressed their typical response is, “What did you do wrong?”

Tick, tick, and more ticks.
Except for the short-tempered / argumentative bit.

Most of us on this tour spent some time in the Ayurvedic clinic, and all would say it was money and time well spent.

After lunch – which was spent in our regular cafe that is on the banks of the Ganges – we then split off to do various things. Some of the women had their hands henna-ed. Lynda though wanted to find the original ashram where the Beatles hung out in the late 60s.

Remember their Indian phase, when they all went off to meet their guru, Maharishi Mahesh? And the world was introduced to the sitar, and Transcendental Meditation? Well they went to Rishikesh, and to an ashram not far from where we’re currently staying.

So Dale, Lynda, Marie, Jill, Rachit and I headed off to find this ashram – now overgrown and abandoned. I took my iPad and played Magical Mystery Tour as we walked!

It was so cool.

Dale and I walked together for a while, and he recalled that he was in the armed services in Vietnam when all this happened, and the Beatles music was so important to the servicemen. He said they knew all the lyrics by heart.

After about 2kms walk we got to the ashram, and it was freaky.

It was overgrown and abandoned. It looked like Hobbit-town. We found the hut where George stayed – Hut Number 9. Remember that song on the White Album – Number 9? That’s where it comes from…

I had to leave early because I’d been seconded by the ashram to be their official photographer for the night’s aarti – a special occasion to celebrate the signing of an accord on pollution at the UN, in part instigated by the big boss of the ashram – Puja Swamiji Chidanand.

After I left with Jill, with Lynda following, Dale and Marie evidently went further into the ashram and discovered rooms where they painted, posted graffiti, wrote some of their lyrics on the walls etc.

Before I left though I took a photo of us all sitting on a bench outside the Number 9 hut – where the Beatles must have sat and played guitar and dreamt of the songs they were later to compose.

Incredible.

I then had to race back to begin photographing the aarti. Here are some shots as Official Parmarth Niketan Ashram Photographer!

I’ll have to put that on my CV!
Here are some shots…

And here are some shots I took after the ceremony was over –

I haven’t been able to post these past couple of days.

The ashram doesn’t have wifi.

Nor does it have alcohol.

Nor does it have sausages.
Or any kind of meat.

In fact there’s a law that decrees that alcohol and meat are banned within a 15km radius of Rishikesh.

Which means no egg and bacon breakfasts – and no beer of an evening…

That’s ok.
This is a holy town.

It’s been a full couple of days since I posted last.

Yesterday we went on a walk from one suspension bridge across the Ganges to another – a trek of about 2kms – and along the way we explored Rishikesh.

The ladies also spent a good deal of yesterday having Ayurvedic treatments – and came out fairly glowing.

And yesterday afternoon we attended the Parmarth Aarti ceremony, which happens every day, and is renown throughout the world.

It involves singing chants to various deities, and lighting of lamps and fires as offerings to these deities, and to eliminate darkness.

Here is some information on the Aarti ceremony –

Aarti ceremony / wiki

Because Jennifer and I filmed at Parmarth last year, we were given VIP treatment last night – thanks to Laurie Larson, who is Sadhvuji’s assistant. Sadhvuji and Swamiji are in NY at the moment, at the invitation of the United Nations to formalise an agreement concerning pollution.

These folk don’t just sit in their ashram and chant mantras – they get out and change the world. I noticed this sign on my walk yesterday, and it summed it up…

At the culmination of aarti last night our group was handed the lamp, the diya, which they swung in time to the very rousing music.

Here are some shots I took yesterday…

We are now at Rishikesh, in our ashram. 

That sounds pretty cool huh? 

After a week and a half of five star luxury, the creme-de-la-creme being the Taj at Chandigarth, which was  over the top opulent, we are now in ascetic digs. 

Real ashram living. 

But, the rooms have AC, ensuite bathroom with a proper western toilet, and a view of the Ganges! 

What more could someone on a spiritual tour want? 

But – gasp – NO WI FI!!!!

Oh well…  Luckily I have a local SIM card for this iPad so that’s how I’m posting. But I can’t post any of the shots I’ve taken with my camera – only very ordinary shots taken with this lousy iPad camera…

Rishikesh is a dry, vegetarian town. At least where we are. No booze of any kind, and the restaurants don’t serve meat, or even eggs. Some don’t even sell diary. Black tea folks! 

The ashram itself is beautiful. 

And so too the very powerful energies coming off Mother Ganga. 

Right at the moment Jennifer is having a full Ayruvedic massage and therapy treatment – 90 minutes for Rs2100 – which is like US$32. The other ladies are lined up to have a session too. 

The rest of us are going for a walk following the banks of the Ganges back towards the town of Rishikesh. 

Should be fun. 

Will post more later. 

Edited with BlogPad Pro

It was a longish drive today to Chandigarh.

We stopped for morning tea in a small joint – while they made genuine chai for us, with the spices and all –

Marie and Britta, finding themselves both dressed in white and blue, being the colours of Greece, then proceeded to do a Zorba the Greek dance out on the terrace!

After morning tea and before we got on the bus I lined everyone up for a “The Usual Suspects” shot.

We drove a few more hours, then stopped for lunch at a dhaba – which is kind of like an Indian roadside diner.

We had a glorious meal of tandoori naan, dhal, roasted curried vegetables, biryani rice, and paneer in a sauce that I’d not had before, and was truly delicious. 

More food than we could eat came to Rs2000 – for 8 of us, that came out to Rs250 each, which is like US$3. That’s also including mineral water and tea.

We kept driving and came to Chandigarh mid afternoon. Jennifer wanted to go see a very famous Rose Garden straight after check in – it’s 40 acres, and it was situated right opposite the hotel, so we walked over.

Three women on a bench caught my eye. Principally because they bookended the bench – with a young lass on the left on her mobile, while an old woman sat in a wheelchair on the right.

I asked them if I could take their picture and they agreed.

It turned out the old lady WAS old – in fact she was one hundred years old. I took her photo and she told me I was a handsome man.

I later told this to Marie. She laughed and said that’s why she’s lived so long – because she loves life!

(This post is only halfway done – and it’s late, because the internet at the hotel in Dharamsala is not working sufficiently well for me to post photos… sorry!) 

Today we ventured outside of Dharamsala –

Firstly, we visited the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, which includes a museum of Tibetan religious artefacts and works of cultural significance.

Some of us walked down the long steep hill to the library.

Marie wanted to buy an umbrella from a Buddhist monk, who didn’t want to sell it to her because he said it was old and broken. Marie was insistent, not because it was likely to rain (it never rains on my tour! 🙂 ) but because she wanted it as a walking stick.

She offered him five hundred rupees (Rs500), for the umbrella, which you could probably buy in a market for Rs100. The monk didn’t want to take that much money, insisting that it was old and broken. But Marie was insistent. And those that know Marie know that when she is insistent, she gets what she wants!

She bought the umbrella, for Rs500, telling the monk that it was a donation to the community. Five minutes later, she tried to open the umbrella and it broke. Which delighted her because she could then strip the umbrella part off and use the stem as her walking stick!

We had previously filmed at the Library last year, and luckily the monk in charge remembered me, so he opened up the Archive stack which contains all the scriptures and religious and philosophical writings – some of which date back more than two thousand years.

He kindly opened up a manuscript that was 1700 years old. These scriptures were sneaked out of Tibet after the Chinese invasion in 1959. The Chinese were determined to destroy all things religious – and tragically they destroyed Buddhist monuments and temples that had stood for many centuries.

Upstairs from the stacks there’s the museum, which houses items of cultural significance that were smuggled out by monks during the invasion, and carried across the Himalayas in secret to Dharamsala.

In the afternoon we went to a Buddhist Temple out of Dharamsala – the magnificent Gyuto Karmapa Temple.

Janet found it to be a place for contemplation –

So too Marie & Jennifer –

Later we went to another temple, which is also a showcase for Tibetan Arts & Crafts – the Norbulinka Temple complex..

Tomorrow we have a “free” day – a day just to wander around Dharamsala, do some shopping. go back to the Dalai Lama Temple, and just allow time to absorb all that we’ve experienced so far.

The tour tomorrow will be half way through, and already it’s been quite amazing, and very affecting for some of our guests. But there’s more to come!!

Today we hopped our bus and drove five hours into the foothills of the Himalayas – to Dharamsala, and the Dalai Lama Temple.

After a hair-raising trip at times up steep mountain switchbacks, narrowing missing oncoming vehicles hell bent on self destruction and taking someone with them, we finally arrived at our beautiful hotel, then proceeded to quickly head off on foot to His Holiness’s temple.

On the way we met two Tibetan Buddhist nuns – elderly ladies – who stopped and greeted us warmly, each one of us. We were touched by their act of grace.

The Dalai Lama is not in residence at the moment – we think he’s in London – but it made the visit to the temple no less profound.

There were some young monks chanting in the forecourt, and we sat and listened.

It was mesmerising.

On the way out we found gigantic prayer wheel in a small room decorated with handprinted mandalas, hundreds of years old.

Janet and Britta in particular found the whole experience really moving…