It’s still a bhajan I enjoy.
The Upasana, Sadhana, Aradhana song as we called it.
Every time I hear it I’m brought back to camps, yagyas, and those other functions. Omkarji with his big smile and bushy beard having fun on the harmonium as he sang with that deep voice. Chhabiramji with his eyes closed in the zone on his tabla. And Pushkarji going all out with his full percussion kit.
It also reminds me of Gangotri.
The glacier in the Himalayas where Ma Ganga spouts from. Scripturally there are the tangled locks of the Chandrasekhar, the Mahadeva at Mount Kailash but that’s harder to hike to, and Nandi is a tough bouncer from what I hear.
It was around the middle of the summer before we moved to Pennsylvania, towards the end of elementary school.
My brother wasn’t old enough at the time so he stayed back in Rishikesh with our grandparents. But my folks wanted to go see the big chunk of ice.
So there I went.
Not sure how it is nowadays, but back then there was little to no infrastructure.
We hired two guides to take us, my folks walked while younger me alternated between the ground and the horse.
We crossed narrow wood bridges crossing streams of fresh water and edged through sheer walkways.
We stayed in ramshackle huts where (obligatory fuck N35tle) the guides made Maggi noodles for me. Small victories when running water is even more limited than the ashram.
But we eventually finished our journey and made it there.
Unfortunately I was too young at the time to walk all the way to glacier and see the mouth of the river myself.
It’s a place I feel this need to visit again. But not yet, there’s too much to see first.