Stepping onto a city street in India is like being punched in the face. Hit in the nose with the smell of curry and cumin, the eyes with reds and purples on the women's saris and the ears with the honking of a hundred rickshaw horns. You better have your senses ready for a good fight cause India is quick and clever and taken down many a traveler before you.
I start my journey just like all travelers to India do: a mango lassi followed by two days of chronic diarrhea. Welcome to India, lady, namaste. I make my way south to Kerala to a meditation and yoga ashram on a quest for enlightenment. Or at least a glimpse of it. My days begin at 5:30am and are filled with chanting, silent meditation, yoga asanas, breathing exercises, classes, and two vegetarian meals per day. The best part: you yoga clothes, essentially pajamas, all day long. The retreat hosts about 75 others from all over the globe. One night I find myself sharing tea with an Iranian, Columbian, Israeli and Briton - and that's not the start of a bad joke.
Since the center takes care of everything for you, you have no time to distract yourself with work or errands - you start to see people's real feelings come to the surface. Their fears, insecurities, frustrations, joys and tears. It can be ugly, it can be lovely, but mainly it's just open. Open to whatever comes up. But this is why you came, right, to go deeper.
The Hindu god that I feel the most drawn to is Ganesha, the elephant god, the Destroyer of Obstacles. He’s the "gateway god", the Hindu god that you try once and get hooked to try others. If you're gonna go on a journey into the crunchy parts of yourself, you're gonna want Ganesha by your side - wielding his mighty trunk through your ego's B.S.
