Rishikesh. An overview

I feel that I could stay in Rishikesh for a lifetime.

Rishikesh is the kind of India you want India to be a lot of the time. It’s a holy city filled with life, and it’s an easy, good life. It seems to sparkle and move, but move at a much slower pace than a lot of India.

I spend a lot of my time here in quiet. In solitude. Practicing yoga. Sweating. And feeling free.

+ Enjoy this lovely song, sent by a truly lovely person this morning:

“Are you real or something from wanderlust
Who can you can we trust my dear, sweet, flower
Who can you trust
From cradle to grave
From ashes to ashes, from dust to dust” – Fink, “Yesterday Was Hard on All of Us“

Today will be filled with waiting//showering (*I fear that I smell of hot curry and sweat more than ever before)//more yoga//itching a new collection of bug bites// packing up my life again.

[Photos: Day one, around the great Ganges river in Rishikesh//Grace Farson]

All that is gold

I don’t even remember where I was when I took these, but I liked this place. I was outside of Jaisalmer in the Thar desert and other than that, I cannot tell you were these monuments were. . .

Today is filled with not so great news, but I feel that things are looking up. There is always something else, something more. . .and a good deal more to look forward to.

A shore of washed stones
A sky the color of stone
A stone cliff

Stony face, stony heart

There is nothing here,
Twisted roots, sea taking the land
Back. Sea wrack
And rain.
There is nothing
Here between us but stone.

One must learn to live with stone,
Make it a bed to lie on
A step to climb.

Carve.

– Kelly Cherry

[Photos: Gold somewhere in India//Grace Farson]