It doesn’t really bother you to get up at 5 in the morning when you know that you will walk along the mother and the holiest of all rivers for half an hour. A cup of chai on the way to the yoga class helped start the day though.
Swami Sridarananda welcomed me at 6am and the class could start. I attended a 1-hour men-only yoga class, performing asanas and pranayama. The women session is conducted daily from 4.30 to 6.30pm.
It is definitely a very purist and traditional ashram with a simple (well, it seems so…) approach to life:
“Be Good. Do Good.”
There was something else on my to-do list today… Probably my last task for this part of the project: meeting Mr. Tiwari who had just come back from Canada 3 days ago.
So I took a rickshaw and went to Rishikesh town, where he spends some time of the year.
Do you still remember who Mr. Tiwari is? He is the general secretary of Kaivalyadhama, the yoga institute in Lonavla, which we visited last March.
He gave me a very warm welcome to his house, and he soon started talking about earlier times when Gandhi and the Nehru family got treated at the institute. He’s happy about today’s worldwide growth of yoga, and not so happy about the growth of Rishikesh.
By the way, here is Mr. Tiwari’s definition of yoga:
“Yoga is the Art of Living and the Science of Experience.”
Goodbye Rishikesh! No problem, it is getting slightly hot here…
