Last year, we had travelled in the tourist bus (KSTDC) to visit the world famous Shravanabelagola Jain temple in Karnataka State. We left at about 7.15 a.m. and reached at 11.15 a.m. after travelling about 160kms away from Bangalore. The volvo bus was convenient and we had no problem.
Shravanabelagola is famous for the gigantic statue of Bahubali, who is also known as Lord Gometeswara. The statue was sculpted with the leadership of Chavundaraya , in 978 to 993 A.D, when he came here with his guru in search of peace, towards the end of his life.
It had been a long tiring winter and a recharging vacation had been on the cards for far too long. Sushil – a close friend, suggested a new retreat in Uttarakhand – The Misty Mountains. He had been there with his wife and another couple in his friend circle. The name itself suggested just the kind of place I wanted to go to. Reminded me of the many exotic locales from fantasy books I had read over the years. I was sufficiently intrigued to check out their website at http://themistymountains.in and was sooner convinced.
It’s a long way so we took an overnight pit stop at Nainital and started for the retreat the next morning. The five hour drive through the hills was a little tiring but extremely rewarding with some amazing views all around. From Nainital, we went through Bhowali – Kainchi mandir- Khairna – Almora – Dhaulachina – Sheraghat. We stopped for 20 minutes at The Hill view restaurant at Dhaulchinna , a surprisingly neat place for its location in the middle of nowhere.
I have lived in Asia now some 21 years, arriving here in the early 1970’s as a young American sailor stationed in the Philippines and South Korea. First impressions are strong things — my exposure to both southeast and northeast Asia left me with a hunger for more experience of this world so different from the so-called civilization of the West. I missed the Vietnam War, had a peaceful experience of the East, and returned home to the drug culture I had temporarily escaped from. It took another long stretch of ten years before I could manage to revisit the East and escape the illusory reality where I was born. I had grown out of trying to escape it through the use of drugs and turned to an Eastern teacher. My life changed after accepting the teachings of a world-hopping Indian guru. This time, I arrived in southwest Asia as a more mature individual, though yet a student — and at a ‘hippie’ college as well. I began what I now realize is a life-long pilgrimage to discover the ‘Heart of Asia’. Does such a thing — this experience of Asian Divinity — exist? Others have tried to identify it with a place, a culture, a specific geography or climate (mountain, beach, or island), or an ethnic identity. Some have even labeled it — Shangrila, for example. I finally put a name to it through my own studies when I wrote my Master’s thesis on ‘Developing Appropriate Tourism for the Central Himalaya’. In the writing of such a scholarly treatise, comparing Indian domestic tourism — the religious pilgrimage — to the eco-tourism of Nepal, I discovered where that mysterious feeling resides. Of course, it can only be in the ‘heart’ of the pilgrim — the traveler who leaves a ‘polluted’ social reality behind to reside within a space that can be labelled ’sacred nature’. The beginning of my journey as a sailor — one destined to travel the earth and its seas of emotion — was a good symbolic start. (more…)
It is often said that Coorg is the “Scotland of India”. Having seen something of Coorg on this trip, and having travelled much in Scotland some years ago, I can say for sure that Coorg is nothing like Scotland. There is no way a rolling landscape of tropical forests and lush estates can be compared to the wild mountains of the Scottish Highlands, the bare isolated peaks of the Hebrides or the gentle hills of the Scottish Borders. I guess this epithet was coined by the British during colonial times and is perhaps a reflection of their nostalgia for things out of the ordinary everyday lives. (more…)
