The Backpacking Bride Read online

  Jon had been old school. He was adept at using a laptop and a smartphone, but he hadn’t quite committed himself to going entirely paperless. Hence the wallet stuffed with notes.

  I’m now so grateful that he still liked to print things out methodically and file them in order.

  He’d not just put together a travel itinerary. To me, it felt like he’d given me some hope and some encouragement and that he was providing me with his guidance from the grave. He’d created a memory file of things to do and places to go and even people to investigate back in all his old haunts.

  And I still want to experience all these things.

  ‘Only, it’s not a honeymoon anymore.’ I said to Pia with great determination. ‘It’s a pilgrimage in Jon’s memory.’

  Chapter 7

  The Moksha Ashram, Rishikesh

  After spending the rest of the morning in my small room contemplating leaving the ashram early and heading back to Delhi, I hear my stomach groan and I realise I’m still hungry, as I’d hardly benefitted from my breakfast. I wondered what might be on offer for our vegan lunch.

  In anticipation of finding a meal plan or a menu, I cast my eyes over The Schedule and The Rules once again. I thought about the noble silence and how much I’d really wanted to say hello to everyone I’d met this morning in the shala and at breakfast in the hope of making a friend. To me, it seemed rude to sit to eat with people and not acknowledge them.

  Neither is it conducive to fostering new friendships.

  I’m suddenly feeling lonely. I feel so distant from everything and I’m missing my friends from back home. The last time I’d logged onto the internet I’d had an avalanche of messages and texts from my friends. Long emails from work colleagues offering their condolences. Sympathies from the girls I sing with in the rock choir.

  I haven’t actually seen any of them since the afternoon of my leaving party at the bank or since I dropped out of the choir a couple of months ago because I was too busy packing up my house and planning my wedding. I appreciate all the kind words and all the offers of help.

  But what can anyone do?

  I want to send a message to Pia but I can’t get an internet connection in my room. I suppose I’ll just have to wait until after lunchtime to make some new friends here.

  Just at that moment, a bell rings so incredibly loudly that I leap up from my bed.

  I immediately cover my ears with my hands against the racket of ear-splitting decibels.

  Have I somehow over-charged my phone and set my alarm to full volume?

  I grab my phone and disconnect it from its charger but quickly realise this terrible racket is coming from a loud speaker in the hallway on the other side of my bedroom door. In my confusion, I decide it must be the fire alarm.

  Oh my goodness! The place is on fire! I need to get out!

  I flee from my room to run screeching like a banshee down the stairs, along the corridor, and across the terrace in an absolute panic, to join everyone at what I consider to be the muster station, except I find myself in the middle of the dining room. I skid to a halt (stubbing my toe painfully on a wooden table leg) and realise that no one else seems to be even remotely alarmed by the bell from hell. ‘There’s a fire! Where’s the fire?’ I yell at them all breathlessly,

  Then, as the awful ringing stopped, everyone calmly sits down.

  ‘It’s okay. It’s just the lunch bell.’ I was told in a whisper by a woman opposite me.

  Then the kitchen door flies open to waft the smell of warm curry spices across the room and two kitchen assistants appear carrying trays of food and baskets of flatbreads. Lunch is served to us on a banana leaf rather than plates and it’s a portion of dahl curry and sliced raw carrot.

  Just before we all tuck in, someone at the top of the table produces a small hand-held bell and rings it. Everyone lowers their heads in a moment of silent grace. I find myself silently seething and wondering what it is with all the damned ringing bells around here?

  With prayers over, everyone begins to use their bread to mop up the spicy dahl lentils.

  I do the same and have to admit that the meal actually tastes really delicious. I do enjoy a good curry and for me the hotter it is the better I like it. At an Indian restaurant, I will invariably choose a vindaloo over a korma any day. However, after my hungry enthusiasm, my mouth is burning like a furnace. Thankfully, there’s a big jug of drinking water on the table to quench my thirst. I gulp down two large glasses but then feel my stomach starting to feel a bit grouchy.

  When everyone has finished eating, the little bell is tinkled again. This time, it signals not only the end of the meal but also – thankfully – the morning sentence of imposed silence. The woman sitting opposite me, who had bravely broken protocol earlier to explain to me about the sounding of the lunch bell, leaned forward to introduce herself.

  ‘Hi, I’m Belle. Welcome to the ashram. What’s your name, honey?’

  ‘I’m Maya. It’s nice to meet you, Belle.’ I say, thinking how ironic it is that her name is Belle, when I can still hear that lunch-time alarm bell ringing in my ears like extreme tinnitus.

  Belle, I’m guessing, is likely to be the closest person here to my own age. She looks to be in her forties. She has dark eyes, a friendly face, short black spikey hair and a nasally sounding American accent. She’s wearing a colourful kaftan and lots of jangly bangles on her wrists and I notice that she also has pretty henna tattoos on both her palms.

  ‘Maya, I’ve been here for a couple of days. I hope you don’t mind me offering you advice?’

  ‘Please do. I’ll be incredibly happy to hear it,’ I assure her, curious about her words of wisdom.

  ‘For dinner tonight, you should ask for oat porridge instead of the curry. The one thing I wish I’d known when I first arrived here is to take it slow and easy with the spices. You can trust me on this one. You’ll thank me later.’

  I nod and thank her just as a sharp breath-taking cramp hits me square in the belly.

  I excuse myself to dash back upstairs. In a cold sweat, I pray I’ll make it to the latrine in time. I lock myself in the bathroom and squat over the hole in the ground until I can’t feel my legs anymore. And, when the awful Rishikesh Runs seem to have stopped, I want to either cry or swear or both because I realise there is no toilet paper available.

  Instead, there’s a hosepipe with a hand triggered shower head fixed onto the end of it. This, I assume, is the famous Indian bum gun that I’d heard people joke about.

  Once back in my room, I lay on my bed tucked up in the foetal position, groaning.

  I’m really upset and disappointed to miss the mid-afternoon walk and meditation session on the riverbank. But right now, I have no choice but to stay here on my bed until I’m feeling better again. And I really should take Belle’s advice to eat porridge as right now every part of me feels like it’s on fire. I also realise that despite not wanting to miss out on anything, I’m completely and utterly exhausted. I’ve been living on anxiety and adrenalin since Jon died and I only manage to snatch a few hours of sleep at a time as my mind won’t let me rest. I’m constantly going over the events of the past week and how all that has led me to India.

  Once again, I’m asking myself what on earth I ever hoped to achieve by coming here and how did I ever think it might help? Clearly, ashram life is not for me. What was I thinking?

  Pia’s right. I hate all this introspective self-care stuff. I’ve never meditated before in my life. I’ve never done any devotional chanting and bell ringing and in-depth soul-searching. To me, well, it all sounds a bit crazy. But I’m not crazy. I think I’m just lost. Lost and very lonely.

  I still think I should leave here first thing in the morning. I should head back to Delhi and bring forward my flight to Hong Kong.

  I’m suddenly longing to be somewhere comfortable and comforting. I want some privacy and to be in a place where self-care comes in a bottle with a cork. Somewhere without any compulsory bell ringing sessions an
d a restricted diet. I want to be at the five-star hotel that Jon booked for us. It’s apparently the oldest hotel in the city – ‘An icon of hospitality and legend’.

  Before leaving home, I looked up the website and marvelled at the images of the harbour-view honeymoon suite and gasped at the price on the booking receipt. Forgive me, but right now, I feel I need to wallow in that kind of luxury. Surely it will be a damn sight easier for me to feel sorry for myself in a place with a double size bathtub and a ginormous bed with sky-high thread count sheets and rich linens. While considering all this I must have succumbed to my total exhaustion, because the next thing I know, I’m being woken by that damned alarm bell outside my room again. And, confusingly, it’s pitch black. I flick on the light and check the time on my phone with heavy and bleary eyes. Oh, my goodness. It’s four-thirty in the morning!

  And, I will admit, a loud swear word slipped straight out of my mouth.

  Even though I knew I was meant to be observing silence again.

  In a panic, I grabbed randomly at some clothes from my backpack – I still hadn’t unpacked – and I slid into them before joining what looked to me like the zombie apocalypse walking down the stairs and across the yard into the shala. Once there, I sat at the back of the room but soon realised there was a really cold, stiff breeze blowing down from the Himalayan mountains and through the ashram this morning. I’m soon shivering. My teeth are chattering.

  I wished I’d grabbed something warmer to wear than a pair of thin leggings and a t-shirt.

  Everyone else seems much better prepared. Most have a blanket or a shawl or a pashmina wrapped around their shoulders. I see Belle sitting just a few feet away from me. As the mantra chanting starts up, she looks my way, sees me shivering, and generously passes her shawl over to me. I feel bad taking it, but I see she’s also wearing a fleecy jumper and pantaloons. I gratefully accept her kindness. Then I sit up tall so I can observe our holy guru, who is sitting at the top of the shala, surrounded by the warm glow of candles and wearing a heavy and colourful blanket draped over his white robes.

  He’s just started making the most incredible sounds from his throat.

  The sounds quickly gather momentum and reverberate towards me like the wave of a great tsunami.

  Om Namah Shivaya Om Namah Shivaya Hara Hara Bole Namah Shivaya!

  His chanting sweeps over me and then everyone joins in with great verbal enthusiasm.

  Rameshwara Shiva Rameshwara Hara Hara Bole Namah Shivaya!

  This all seems a bit too much too early for me. I normally like a quiet start to my day.

  But then I’m probably just feeling grumpy because there’s no coffee.

  I’m a creature of habit and my normal routine is to rise at 7am and drink three cups of coffee before starting work at nine and then taking another coffee-fuelled break mid-morning.

  Om Namah Shivaya Hara Hara Bole Namah Shivaya Ommmmmm!

  I try my best to join in with the chanting and to learn the strange words.

  I’m well versed in song and can belt out a tune but to me this sounds something like a monotone rap with Hindu lyrics.

  Ganga Dhara Shiva Ganga Dhara Hara Hara Bole Namah Shivaya

  Jatadhara Shiva Jatadhara Hara Hara Bole Namah Shivaya

  Then I suddenly hear Belle’s voice. It’s an octave higher than all those around me.

  I suddenly want to giggle because I realise she’s not chanting the words of the mantra at all. She’s sing-chanting a covert conversation with me to the monotone tune of it all.

  ‘Hey, how you feelin’ this morning, Maya?’

  I sing chant back to her. ‘I’m better. Thanks for the shawl. It’s really cold in here.’

  Someshwara Shiva Someshwara Hara Hara Bole Namah Shivaya

  Vishweshvara Shiva Vishweshvara Hara Hara Bole Namah Shivaya

  ‘Hey, you wanna get out of karmic cleansing this morning?’

  Koteshwara Shiva Koteshwara Hara Hara Bole Namah Shivaya

  ‘Yes. But how?’

  Mahakaleshvara Hara Hara Bole Namah Shivaya.

  Everyone else seems so committed that they are oblivious to our rap-chat rebellion.

  And I seem to have found a friend. Or is she perhaps a partner in crime?

  A fellow flouter of the compulsory session rules?

  * * *

  After the hour of chanting comes the seemingly endless loud bell ringing.

  Then, with the air cleared of chanting but my ears still tolling, we sit through an hour of meditation. I huddle under Belle’s warm shawl trying extremely hard to ‘be aware’, to ‘do it’, to ‘clear my mind’ and to ‘let it all go’ while ‘breathing’ but also suffering a pounding headache. No doubt owing to the incessant bells or coffee deprivation … or perhaps both.

  Just before the meditation session comes to an end, while everyone else is in their deep oblivion with eyes closed, Belle and I surreptitiously sneak out of the shala together and hide behind a wall at the back of the kitchen building. Belle lights up a cigarette. ‘You want one?’

  I’m shocked. Smoking isn’t allowed. But then neither is skipping out on a class.

  And here is someone boldly prepared to break both rules at once.

  ‘No, thanks. But do you know where we could get a cup of coffee?’

  As it happens, she does, so in the shadows of the early morning half-light, we run like thieves along the line of bushes in the driveway and make sure to keep our heads down and remain out of sight. My heart is pounding with nerves and excitement. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything this daring before. Even at school, I was never one to smoke behind the bike sheds or be one of the cool kids who played truant on a Friday afternoon instead of suffering hockey.

  We make our escape through the gate and head into town.

  On the main street, we find a vender selling hot chai but with a drum of contraband coffee hidden under his stall. Coffee for which we were prepared to pay a crazy number of rupees.

  Then Belle and I sit together side by side on a low wall where we can watch what is going on down at the river while we sip our strong and delicious coffees as the sun comes up on this new day, casting its bright golden light onto us and everyone here.

  There are lots of people already on the sandbank, where dogs and goats and cows rummage around in the rotting rubbish that has washed up and lies strewn along the water’s edge. Despite this, many other people – notably students and devotees from many of the ashrams along the river in this part of Rishikesh – were sitting on the wet sand or perched on the rocks meditating. Some were enthusiastically doing salutations to the rising sun.

  Men of all ages are wading into the river wearing only their underpants.

  Women walking along the sandbank wear beautiful silk saris with flower garlands around their necks.

  I relish the scene in front of me and enjoy the rising sun and the coffee warming me up.

  Jon had enthused to me about bathing in the holy waters of the Ganges at sunrise.

  I remember him telling me how he’d immersed himself in the river every single day during his time here to benefit from the water’s magical healing properties on the mind and the body and the soul. He said that pilgrims came here in their multitudes from all over the world to wash away their sins and to receive enlightenment and moksha, which is the Hindu word for the circle of life and death and rebirth. He told me that he had really believed, just like the pilgrims and the worshipers here, that the water in the river had a special life-affirming energy force.

  He said it must permeate from the faith of the people.

  He told me it had helped him come to terms with his friend’s tragic death.

  I remind myself that I wanted to come here to deal with Jon’s death. That I too wanted to wash away my grief and my anger and my loss, and whether I believed in those mystical properties or not didn’t matter because this was about Jon and not me.

  ‘I think I should go down there and bathe in the river too,’ I mention to Belle.
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  She spurts out her coffee. ‘What? You’re jokin’, right? You do know that bathin’ in the Ganges is like swimmin’ in a soup of human excrement and all the grey powdery remains from the funeral pyres further up the river? You only have to look to see what’s floatin’ past!’

  I’m surprised at Belle’s condemnation, but I fear she’s right. Now that she’s mentioned it, the river does look awfully dirty.

  There’s a lot of trash and debris and plastic bags and bottles and what looks like decomposing animal carcasses floating in the murky water. We sit and watch a baptism taking place in the shallows and someone fishing with a small net and then we observe a large group of people with sticks and wood who are building a bonfire on the water’s edge.

  I realise that the bonfire is actually a funeral pyre.

  ‘The poor often can’t afford to buy enough funeral wood, so it’s not unusual for their dead relatives to end up half-cremated and floatin’ down the river too. Yet some people still think it’s okay to bathe in it and even to drink it!’ Belle explains to me with stone-cold cynicism.

  We finish drinking our coffee while watching a herd of buffalo wading into the river to stand half submerged, pooping profusely, in the muddy shallows while right beside them another baptism is taking place and a human body – wrapped up tightly in a white sheet – is placed on top of the bonfire like a Guy Fawkes. I also notice, against the vividly green water, large oily patches of bright red and orange are floating on the surface and I wonder aloud about it.

  ‘Oh, that’s toxic dye dumped in the river from the nearby sari factory,’ Belle notes harshly.

  Suffice to say, I’ve completely changed my mind now about bathing in these holy waters, even though I wanted to follow faithfully all of Jon’s itinerary. But, maybe when Jon was here in 1979 it was very different and the river was much cleaner than it is today?

  I must admit that looking around me I’m suffering from culture shock.

  The way of living and the extent of the poverty here is making me both queasy and nervous.

  India is a country that I can feel but it’s also a country I can smell and taste.