You wish you were with me in the Himalayas right now. Well I know many of you do. The question I keep asking is why haven't you? I know. You have "stuff" going on and you think I will be doing this trek again next year. Well you thought wrong. I am not. I don't know if I will do this trek again, and if I do, it won't be for another three or four years. yes I will probably take groups back to India, but not this trek. But who knows. Honestly, it really does puzzel me. How do some people end up being the kind of people who live their lives fearlessly, while others don't. If I look at my family, none of them are like that except my mother. And she was the black sheep. So does one need to be a "black sheep" in order to live life? Hmmmm.... In the meantime, you can read about my previous journeys to India by click here. Below is a book you can also read that almost (after a fashion) parallels our own experiences. My hope is that this book will inspire you in your own life. It is the kind of book that you never want to put down. But inspiration gets very dull if there is never any action to back it up. Get off the couch and go see life. :) "Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans." Shanti and peace Aaron Star {sidebar id=25}Join writer Stephen Alter as he journeys up the waters of the Ganges River to its source in the Garhwal Himalayas. This book highlights in great detail the wonders and majesty of the Himalayan mountains.
This is an account of a journey taken in India. The destination is the source of the Ganges, the holy and most famous of Indian rivers. It is a physical journey, involving train rides across the vast plains and passages on foot far into snow-covered valleys and mountains. It is also a spiritual journey, taking a man deep into the heart and soul of the ancient religious culture of India.
Stephen Alter, who was born in the Himalayan foothills, crosses many miles, and several millennia, to search for the source of Indian religion. Along the way, as he reaches one holy spot after another, meeting grounds for pilgrims, remote towns, and forgotten temples, he delves into the myths and traditions of an antique land. He explores the tales of heroic derring-do, evil and good, and recounts the great stories of death, warfare, passions, and sacred wisdom that animate the vibrant history and religious traditions of India. As every pilgrim learns, a spiritual search involves travel but ultimately returns to the inner self. Sacred Waters is a richly told narrative of a beautiful land and of a man's interior journey, and is for readers everywhere who seek to plumb their own spiritual sources.
Stephen Alter was born and raised in the Garhwal Himalayas. "From childhood I have had a fascination for these mountains and for the flora and fauna of this region. Hindu mythology associated with the river Ganga has always held a personal significance for me," Alter explains. "The mountainous landscape of Garhwal is rich in lore and legend, just as its lush forests are full of animals, reptiles, birds, and insects. In this presentation I will discuss the many ways in which this natural world and the world of spiritual imagination are entwined."
From Publishers Weekly
In his latest travel memoir, Alter (Amritsar to Lahore) tracks the inexorable path of "progress" and various human responses to it. Progress is embodied in the roads and new dams that exist where before there were only footpaths for Hindus traveling to the "four main sources of the Ganga a journey known as the Char Dham Yatra." The once arduous mountain pilgrimage used to take devout Hindus up to four months, but now, in public buses or air-conditioned coaches, it might take a couple of weeks. Alter begins his journey on foot, traveling through the Himalayas, in whose foothills he was born. Seeing himself not as a mountaineer but as a pilgrim who "becomes one with this terrain," undertaking "tapasya," Hindu for surviving on "whatever the forest provides," Alter, writer-in-residence at MIT, describes political, socioeconomic and ecological changes in the terrain and people he encounters. One man calls a series of dams in Tehri "temples of the future," while another describes the same as "sacrilege, modern technology obstructing the inexorable current of a holy river." Well-versed in Hindu mythology, Alter (an atheist, himself) infuses the book with spiritual tales. It was the author's goal to evoke a fast disappearing way of life and topography, to show spiritual interests eclipsed by material ones. With vivid descriptions of the many people, villages, dharamshalas, shrines, ashrams and Indian customs so foreign and seemingly inaccessible to most Westerners, Alter achieves this end, portraying a landscape before it is effectively trampled by what is called "progress."
PLEASE READ MORE... The Preparation is the Journey The Himalayan glaciers are disappearing! India, A tale of beauty, love and compassion
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