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july 2017yogajournal.com.auago, mentioned might happen. “As
much as India is about an outer
pilgrimage, pay close attention to the
invisible stirrings inside you, what seems
familiar and what seems so amazingly
sacred,” she wrote in an e-mail to me
before my trip. “May you have the ability
to be totally present with whatever arises
and be able to surrender to the grace of
what is.”
In a place where nothing seemed
familiar—the language, the elaborate
Sanskrit lettering on boulders along the
trail, the devotion woven into every
interaction, and the imposing peaks on
the horizon that made me feel like I was
approaching the edge of the world—I
felt a surprising sense of ease. My
sadness and uncertainty about the turns
my life had taken over the previous year
were tempered by the happiness,
gratitude, and trust I was feeling on this
path in the high Himalayas. I found
myself leaning in to my emotions as they
surfaced and staying present with them,
experiencing what’s arguably the real
purpose of yoga—a tradition that has
deep spiritual roots in this place.
Just beyond the halfway mark for the
day, I walked ahead of Singh and the
others, though I still trailed far behind
the Sherpas from neighbouring Nepal
whom Singh had hired to carry our
bags, tents, and food. I felt content alone
on the trail, and the only people I
encountered were fellow pilgrims
descending from Gomukh, mostly older
Indian men wearing tattered lungis
(traditional sarongs) and plastic sandals,
and carrying jugs of silty, sacred Ganges
water. I stuck out in my specially
designed hiking pants and trail-running
shoes, but it didn’t seem to matter. Every
person I passed greeted me with a
friendly nod and said “Sita Ram,” the
spiritual version of “hi” or “howdy”.
One barefoot man in a saffron lungi
that symbolised he was a sadhu, an
ascetic who’d chosen to live on the
fringes of society to focus on his own
spiritual practices, held my gaze as he
approached.
“Sita Ram,” he said, and then
stopped.
“Sita Ram,” I replied, stopping as
well.
Though he said something else in
Hindi that I couldn’t understand, his
raised eyebrows telegraphed a question:
Why was I hiking to Gomukh?
When it was clear we wouldn’t beable to chat, we went our separate ways.
As I hiked on, I considered the sadhu’s
unspoken question, one I’m not sure I
could’ve answered in that moment even
if I were fluent in Hindi.
The path got rockier, and I wondered
how the sadhu had traversed this ground
without shoes. It reminded me of my
Irish grandmother, who often told my
sister and me the story of how she’d
hiked Croagh Patrick—a Catholic
pilgrimage up a 600-metre mountain in
County Mayo—barefoot, which got
dicey at a steep pitch near the top
covered in loose shale. “We took three
steps forward and 1o back, it was so
slippery,” she’d say in her sweet Irish
accent. “It’s like life itself: When you fall
back, you try again. And you have faith
that you will make it.”
Thoughts of my grandmother took
my mind off my fatigue as I pushed up
the final rocky hills to our campsite for
the night. We’d pause here to sleep and
refuel before the final six-kilometre push
to Gomukh the following day.Tapping the source
The Sherpas had arrived hours before us
to set up our tents and cook a vegetarian
feast: vegetable biryani, saag paneer, and
aloo gobi, with stacks of freshly made
chapati—pan-fried, unleavened
flatbread we used to sop up every last bit
of sauce on our plates and in the serving
dishes. After sipping masala tea, we
wandered around the campsite and into
a cave where a baba (considered even
holier than a sadhu for his commitment
to a life of meditation and living in a
state of samadhi, or bliss) was playing
his harmonium. We sat cross-legged in a
circle around him and chanted Hare
Krishna in a call-and-response—a scene
that’s remarkably normal on this
pilgrimage.
The next day, I woke up early and
wandered back to the cave, where the
baba hosts a daily morning meditation.
I settled onto a stack of blankets and
closed my eyes, and before I knew it,
almost an hour had passed and it was
time to head back to camp for breakfast.
If only meditating always felt so lovely at
home, I thought, before remembering
the energy Singh had told us we’d feel
near the source.
Bellies full—though not too full,
having learned from the previous
morning’s mistake—we set out for our
final destination. While still uphill,Chanting with a babaOfferings for a puja ceremony