Why I Returned To India After 20 Years

good morning it's 7 a.m. in Ladakh I let this lady pass before I continue would you let you live as I was saying the 7 a.m. in the dark was a bright cold morning in Himalayas and I'm about to set off for my motorbike for the Indus River I know it's here somewhere I just need to follow the highway and I find it and the reason why I'm looking for the Indus River might surprise you and it explains the reason why I'm in India after 20 years why I've come back and it's probably not the reason that you'd be thinking so whilst I set off now in search let me explain to you why I'm here ok so just over 20 years ago when I was still a young man with a young a full head of hair I flew into Delhi's Indira Gandhi Airport on a hot afternoon in March at the start of what was supposed to then be just a one-month backpacking trip around India and after a week visiting the usual sites and cities Agra Jaipur bushka I flew south to Bombay and I checked into a hotel in the well the bustling heart of the city anyway the morning after my arrival in Bombay I woke up in my hotel room with what was in fact a raging fever I was in a terrible condition didn't know where I was a doctor was called and medicine was prescribed for what he said was well what he thought was probably malaria or maybe dengue fever he actually wasn't sure but over the next few days that people continued to slowly get worse and I was alone in the city and no no I was a little bit scared to be honest with you but anyway as I drifted in and out of consciousness over those first feverish days I noticed in my rare moments of clarity when I was awake that there was an elderly man who was dressed in baggy white cotton clothes coming into my room on occasion whereupon he would look at me with a concerned look wipe the sweat from my burning forehead and mutter mutter Hindi words over my body that of course I didn't understand that only been in the country at that point just over a week but I instinctively knew that they were some kind of prayer any - to my relief eventually the fever started to subside whether that was due to the medicine all the prayers that the man was mustering I didn't really know or really care I was just so happy to have survived really and I slowly regained enough strength to sit up and talk to the old man who kept visiting my room and bringing me fruit and water and he turned out to be the hotel's owner and was a devotee of the Hindu god Shiva and had in fact been so concerned for me that he'd been praying to his God for my recovery at regular intervals so over the next few days as I started eating again and feeling much better the old man would sit on the end of my bed and tell me about the God he believed him about the mystical Mount Kailash where Shiva resided with his wife Parvati and about the poison he drank the demons he slayed and importantly about the mighty river Indus which flowed from its source at Mount Kailash where she believed was the river from where Indian people first began worshipping Shiva and in fact where India as a concept in history began and i sat there taken all in and was absolutely fascinated by by the story that the man told me anyway on my last end hotel the old man came to my room clutching a small paper bag from the market and he handed it to me and when I opened it inside there was a small metal frame containing a picture of Lord Shiva his God who was sitting on a tiger skin blanket wearing just a loin cloth with a Cobra wrapped around his neck which is of course an image that every Indian will know well and he said to me he said whenever you have problems on your trips through India just say these words and he said the words on the mushy wire and he promised me that everything would be okay and I'd be looked after by Shiva on my trip around India and so I took the picture and with great thanks and I left the hotel okay let's break off in a story for just a minute so I can show you this epic place that I found on my search for the Indus I've just accidentally discovered this pretty awesome place which is just at the bottom of a mountain range just stupa after Stoffer after stupa it's stupid look at them hundreds of them just everywhere ancient ones everywhere you look and I doubt if you can see it on top of there you can see the old four top of the mountain well this place incredible but the problem is I've just got the bike stuck in the sand because this is what I'm driving through and I've come off road and searched at the river and I'll find a way out on to hard the ground now I see over here a bit of a drop maybe that is the River down there maybe that's the Indus feeling have a good feeling we made it no unless seen this is dried up which I don't think it has so that must be that's a riverbed that just must be a tributary that when the snows melt up in the EM in the high peaks of today it flows down here okay let's continue looking but Wow amazing place really incredible okay let's continue so I left the hotel and continued my journey around India and what was supposed to be a one month journey actually turned into four years I fell in love with India completely and ended up opening my own hotel in the country which is a story I'll go into another time but the picture of Shiva was always with me always looking over me always protecting me in times of trouble in India and there was a lot of times of trouble and hardship in India I must say times of great struggle bit Shiva the picture of Shiva is always with me and I'd always whisper the prayer the old man had told me anyway eventually I left India and returned home to my life in England and all the world a picture of Shiva is by my side watching over me he was there when I got married and he was there when I got divorced he was he was there when I faced bankruptcy and financial ruin through the good timesand about times he was there and what I believe was keeping an eye on me making sure that no matter how things how bad things got in life as long as I repeated the words on the mushy wire things would slowly turn around and improve and they always did as the man had promised me okay well searching for the river Indus was taking longer than I expected so let's stop for a little food break Julie Chavez couch Apple jjigae cello bow challenge anybody I've just stopped so Holloway to you mr. play doll chapel Bell Chapel asleep classic dish that will beat you all across the country when you travel cost about 20 cents per plate especially delicious like some local I mean some small town event where are you no choice at miss Park just make these people we wish to learn what suppose I am talking to myself okay let's continue and so the years slowly turned into decades in the West and I kept repeating the mystical words and times of trouble and then not long ago some 21 years since my last visit to India I started to develop the idea of thanking Shiva in some way for his help now that might sound a bit strange to some people after I'm not Hindu but I had developed some kind of let's call it a bromance with this little slowly fading picture that I possessed and I wanted to do something return I suppose after all friendship is a two-way thing so I decided that if I really wanted to thank Shiva for all his help over the past 20 years then what I should do was return to India and take him to his homeland in Himalayas and the Indus River in particular and let him see the Mighty River from where he came from and where Indian civilization began it was the least I could do Gillette subtly optimum Kihara induce induce rekha induce induce induced Rekha seemed funny funny GG ah okay and so recently I booked a ticket and flew to Delhi and then almost immediately took a flight the next day up to lay in Ladakh and immediately set off in search of the Indus with Shiva in my backpack and this is the journey that I'm showing you now so I found the Indus which wasn't that hard to be honest a few little twisting side roads about 20 kilometers outside of the city and here she is the river Indus which rises in Mount Kailash and then flows through Tibet India before entering out down at the bottom of Pakistan Wow so this is the Indus and I need to find a place to do one of these I'm the mushy bum don't you mess up anybody now I'm gonna take some water from the Indus which is flow down from Mount Kailash and sprinkle it on Shivaji and now my puja is complete let's get out of here [Music]

Channel: bald and bankrupt

Views: 529,521

Rating: 4.9292068 out of 5

Keywords: india, shiva, travel

Id: 7ZjgtHhKBQw

Length: 11min 55sec (715 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 15 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/hak33m]

Jai Bhole ki