Rishikesh Langurs & Bandhars

The training course in Rishikesh is rather idyllic.

Mornings and evenings I climb to the roof of my bungalow for asanas and pranayam. We are in the forest at the top of a hill. The Ganga is a couple hundred meters down hill, the air nearly pollution free. This ashram has been with the Movement since the early 60's and the atmosphere is very settled. All this makes for very blissful program.

The course participants are are enjoying the atmosphere here as much as I am. We received word that we have to relocate to Maharishi Nagar and we are savoring our last few hours here.

We have 2 varieties of monkeys. The brown furred bandhars, and the gray furred-black faced langurs. The bandhars are the dominant, very aggressive species. Both species have lived proximate to the ashram all these years and are quite used to us humans. They hang out outside the dining hall during lunch freeloading for handouts. We can walk right up to them. It's almost like living in a petting zoo.

The bandhar tribe is led by the alpha male. He fights his way to the top, and then he is the chief fighter in territorial disputes with neighboring bandhar tribes. We get a turf war here every few days. The langurs quietly submit to the bandhars and never fight with them.

The athletic ability and raw power of these small animals puts to shame any human sport prowess. Just the other day the alpha male scooted past me on the road, bounded up a small tree to the roof of the bungalow next to it, leaped to a taller tree and sprinted 20 meters up in the blink of an eye. From there he leaped into space falling 7 or 8 meters and landing solidly on a dead branch, a landing space less than a meter square, hesitated for a second or 2 just to show off that he did not need to counterbalance his prodigious leap high above the ground, then leaped out another 7 or so meters to grasp the slender bushy ends of a branch which bent low under his weight, at the lowest point of this dip he made a final drop onto the fence near where I was, next to some frightened tribe members. The whole exhibition took only a few heartbeats. Each move could have sent him plummeting to his death, but his skill and agility were extraordinary. I'm not sure who he was showing off for more: his tribal members who needed a reminder of who was boss, or for us admiring humans.

Going into Rishikesh is another delight. There are all sorts of bookstores, rudraksha stores, brassware shops, dhoti/kurta/sari/punjabi shops, restaurants, etc. There are lots of westerners here digging the scene, and lots of beggars posing as mendicant sanyasis. Instead of merely asking for rupees, the beggars all say, "Hari Om", and the tourists mostly seem to help them.

The high point of the day is slipping down to the Ganga for snan. The temperature is pretty brisk, but during the day the air temp is sufficiently high that a quick dip in the Ganges is tolerable. For thousands of years the Ganga has been considered to be a source of purity. A dip removes earthly dirt and sins. Our dips are very invigorating no matter what the spiritual benefit.

Tomorrow we will take the Movement bus back to Maharishi Nagar. We will stop along the way in Harki Pauri Ghat in Haridwar, central site of the Haridwar Kumbha Mela. A quick snan, lunch, then on to Delhi.