On Our Way to the Holy Land- Or Not!

Here is the Yoga Hall At Parmarth Ashram where many of the yoga classes take place.


Here is a sign I saw while walking along the Ganga anouncing yoga classes.


These girls smiled as we snapped pictures of them. Afterwards I showed them the pic and they all giggled!


Today we plan our trip to Dharmsala to hear the Dali Lama give a talk on the Compassionate Buddha. Sounds easy, right? Not so much. We ask several different internet cafe/travel agents to help us with our trip. It seems that since everyone and his mother(hi Mom!) is going where we are going that you can only get special tickets now that cost 500 rupees extra. We want to travel 2nd class air, which means that the train has windows as opposed to bars, and the seats are more comfortable. It's an 11 hour train ride into the city close to Dharmsala from where we will take a bus into the main area to search for a room close to the temple where he will speak. Since there are so many people traveling after the festival all of the trains are filled up. There are no more 2nd class seats, only sleepers. This means it would be a rough ride, less safe and comfortable. We go to yet another travel place and end up booking 3rd class air which means nice! When I was in India in 2006 we took 3rd class once, I think it was from Delhi to Rajastan, to ride camels. There were waiters dressed in uniforms carrying silver tea service. I remember laughing at how many times they brought us food and drinks. It was completely opposite of what most of Indian travel was like. We'll see! ( right Jon?)

We have breakfast in a nice cafe here in the market and tell our server our plans. He too handles travel accomadations. Who knew. He pulls a curtain in the back of the restaurant and a small travel agency appears. Well, not exactly like that, but close! He reserves cars for both of us to get to our stations one hour away, Natalie to Dehradun and us to Hardiwar. As we're sitting eating our breakfast a marching band comes through the market way, trombones and all. We hear that it is a famous local Swamiji's birthday and this is part of the celebration. We shop a while and head back to the room to pack up our things and check out of the ashram. The journey should be interesting. Like Priscilla commented this morning while trying to book our travel, you never know what's gonna happen next here in India. We're not sure if we will have contact from Dharmsala or not. If not, no worries, we'll be with his Holiness!

Namaste~ Lynne