A truly awesome trip to India that I will never forget
JUSTIN CONNOLLY follows the path of enlightenment
IT’S a small name for a giant of a nation. Stretching some 2,000 miles from the Himalayas in the north to the Indian Ocean in the south, and almost as far from west to east, India is a vast country.
And it’s as diverse as it is huge – it’s rich in many ways, yet staggeringly poor in others. It has deserts as dry as dust, but can be lush with forests and wetlands.
My tour would take me north and south, and provide me with five of the most breathtaking moments of my life.
The first came within half an hour of my arrival – stepping out of Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi at close to 1am, I was smacked in the face by the ferocious heat. Everything seemed intensified – the colours, the sounds, the smells. People say that in India everything is turned up to 11. It’s true. And you never quite get used it.
Most visit India to do the Golden Triangle – Delhi, the Taj Mahal, and Jaipur – or for a Goan beach holiday. My travels began in Delhi, but I was to follow a different path.
My journey was focussed on one of India’s most famous exports – yoga. The government is encouraging it to improve the nation’s health, and an International Day of Yoga is celebrated each year, marked with mass practice across the country.
So, my first date in India was with its prime minister Narendra Modi in a park in the northern city of Chandigarh – where I would enjoy my second experience of a lifetime.
I headed north from Delhi for a six-hour coach journey, which took nine hours (in India, said my excellent guide Vijay, time is just a concept).
I tried, on the road, to puzzle out what the driving rules were. It turns out there aren’t any – except that you must sound your horn a lot.
For the whole nine hours I was mesmerised by the fact that every vehicle almost hits another every two seconds, but I never see a collision. The traffic “flows like a river”, says Vijay.
On this journey the miserable poverty of parts of the country hit me – the road is lined with barely-habitable buildings, populated by people who have almost nothing. It’s impossible not to be heartbroken.
Progress is evident, though. Almost everywhere I looked there was building work going on – new roads, new buildings, new hope springing up. But in a nation of around 1.2bn people, that progress is naturally slow.
Chandigarh is a ‘planned city’, purposebuilt after partition to be the capital of the Indian Punjab.
At the hotel there, the night before Yoga Day, I learned that the people of India have a different relationship with beer than I do.
They were perplexed when I ordered a bottle. They offer a choice of Heineken or Kingfisher, only they didn’t have any Heineken.
I chose Kingfisher. They brought a Heineken anyway – and then asked if I wanted them to open it. When I asked for a second, the waiter was dumbfounded. “Another one?” he said. “But you’ve already had one!”
The next morning I’m up at 4am (thank God they wouldn’t give me more beer), to join some 60,000 others for the mass yoga session with guest of honour prime minister Modi in a massive park.
It is a humbling experience to join in with thousands to practise yoga in the country of its birth. It was peaceful, beautiful, and utterly inspirational. An honour.
After another six-hour coach journey, nine hours later we were in the foothills of the Himalayas to visit Haridwar and Rishikesh.
Both cities lie on the banks of the Ganges, a holy place for Hindus, who come in their thousands at dusk each day to bathe, chant and send little boats with candles in them down the fast-flowing river – they call this ceremony aarti.
My group of 20 or so westerners joined the locals and Indian visitors on the banks at Haridwar for what was another stunning sight.
As the sun sets and the chants rise, the river comes alive with fire and I can, for a moment at least, really believe the gods are with us.
The Indian people are never anything but friendly, welcoming and helpful. Many, inexplicably, want selfies with us (I’m told India is the selfie-capital of the world).
Further up the river is Rishikesh, known as both the ‘capital of yoga’ and the place the Beatles went in the Sixties to hang out with the Maharishi. The area is still alive with yoga ashrams, and yogis from across the globe come to learn from the masters.
I visited the Parmarth Niketan ashram, and took part in a yoga lesson at dawn in the beautifully peaceful gardens.
And if you’re not moved practicing yoga at dawn in Rishikesh in the shadow of the Himalayan foothills, I imagine you’re not truly human. Moved I was and placed in my pocket yet another memory I will not easily forget.
Rishikesh is an interesting place – full of cows wandering the street (a sight common in many Indian towns), but imbued with a spiritual atmosphere even the heathens among us (like me) are somehow touched by.
I had no time to linger, I had a plane to catch in Delhi, which took me to another world – almost 2,000 miles from the dusty north is the lush southern state of Kerala.
It is wealthy in comparison to where I had come from – it’s rich with spices and coconuts, has a high rate of literacy, and also has some of the finest beach resorts in India.
Kerala is also home to Ayurvedic practice, and there are some fabulously authentic treatments to be had in spas along the coast. And they’re cheap, too – the basic massage costs little more than £7.
Kerala is also famous for its backwaters, and no visitor should leave without taking a houseboat trip along its tranquil waterways. It’s a slow meandering way to spend an afternoon. Another memory to keep and relive over and over again.
My fifth moment of magic comes in another ashram – the Sivananda ashram in the foothills of Kerala’s Western Ghats.
This is the most peaceful place I’ve ever visited. Lying in the main hall after my lesson, drifting into a calm state of mind and wondering about nothing but the wind in the trees, was a taste of something I would like to have more of.
My final two days in India were spent in the west coast cities of Chennai and Pondicherry. These places were beautiful, too – stunning Hindu temples in Chennai, and a wholly different feel in Pondicherry thanks to its French heritage.
And as I stood overlooking the Bay of Bengal on my final day I considered myself as lucky as any man to have been there.
This journey was one of those greats we all should take once in a while – the kind where you can’t quite believe you’ve been where you’ve been, and seen what you’ve seen.
I saw a country of vivid contrasts, vast and wild, with the ability to reduce you to tears – in sadness sometimes, but mostly in awe.