Arrive Badarinth Hill Station, the last stop at one of three sacred hill stations. A man greets our taxi by marking its front in sacred orange before blessing each of us on the forehead. This place makes spiritual Rishikesh child’s play.
Sadhus are everywhere. Lights flicker and all the town can go dark. The electricity is sporadic. Kirtan, devotion singing with tables and flutes, can be heard in all distant directions, where men dance in revelry and women sink into pillows and blankets line the floor. pay witness to a conservatively dressed Indian woman wearing a head scarf moving ever so slowly in place.
At the main temple, along the river, is a spring which feeds a hot pool said to provide blessing and purification.
Pilgrims come here from across
At this attitude, in these waters, surrounded by the most sincerest form of devotion, beside a mountain river, hot steam rising, a dense fog streaming through the valley, the mind becomes quiet. There is harmony. The next morning I behold this Shangri La.
“The wildwood brings on mild nostalgia, not for home or place, but for lost innocence—the paradise lost that, as Proust said, is the only paradise. Childhood is full of mystery and promise, and perhaps the life fear comes when all the mysteries are laid open, when what we thought we wanted is attained. It is just at the moment of seeming fulfillment that we sense, irrevocable betrayal, like a great wave rising silently behind us.” – The Snow Leapard
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