Familiar Faces in Delhi, India

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JANUARY 21, 2013

There’s nothing like a run in with a familiar face when you’re traveling.  Sometime I go days without having a conversation with another American, let alone one I know.  Some of my run ins with people I know have been so random its impossible to explain.  I’ve been hanging out in some nook and cranny of a country I didn’t know existed a few years prior and ran into someone I met a couple weeks and a couple countries ago.  Its always a great feeling to see that familiar face.

Yesterday, as I sat in the hotel lobby in Dehli waiting to meet the group I would travel with to the Kumbh Mela, I looked up and saw a familiar face.  Though I didn’t recall her name, I knew she was from Minneapolis.  Alyssa and I eventually put it together, that we had met at a Para Yoga workshop last year and had some mutual friends.  She is the kind of warm and welcoming person that you talk to for fifteen minutes and feel like you’ve known for fifteen years.  Two days and about twenty hours of bus travel later, I felt really blessed to have a wonderful new travel buddy.

My second trip to the Taj Mahal lacked character.  I felt sorry for the group to have to arrive in the afternoon and leave before sunset.  Their experience was nothing like mine earlier in the week.  The lighting was weird and the place was packed.  I couldn’t get out of there quick enough.

As I exited the Taj Mahal I had another one of those random run ins.  This time with Ben and Angela Vincent, two of my favorite yoga teaches in the world.  We would be traveling to the Kumbh Mela together with The Himalayan Institute.  What a gift.

Alyssa and nearly 13 feet of VincentYoga.com

The following day I would by chance have Alyssa, Angela and Ben on the epic thirteen-hour bus ride from Delhi to the retreat site in Allahabad.  During this time I spent several hours talking Yoga with Ben and Alyssa.  Though I’ve had literally hundreds of noteworthy travel experiences, my conversations with those two will certainly go down as an inspiring highlight.

We arrive at the retreat site late today.  Its dark and everyone is exhausted.  I see the spiritual head of The Himalayan Institute, Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, in person for the first time.  He is standing around as we form lines for check in.  Less than a dozen of the approximately 150 of us even recognize him in the dark and go over to say hello.  He’s wearing khakis, a generic down coat and a ratty black wool hat.  There is no ceremony for his entrance.  He could have been one of the porters for all I knew.  Humble.  I like that.

After a quick meal, everyone unpacks and falls into bed.  I sneak away for a short walk around the grounds.  The noise of humanity a few kilometers away is indescribable. It is a steady hum of various spiritual groups – singing, chanting, drumming, shouting, being.  I cannot wrap my brain around what lies ahead.