Walking down a country road

I went for a walk in the country today. I left from our house and walked for about 3 hours (taking pictures, meditating at a temple, enjoying the views and the people a bit). I’ve had a long week – politicos and hours on the road in Chanidgar, planning for and getting through the biggest holiday in India (Dawali – people have been telling us from the beginning that all the clients would simply leave and go home on this holiday), a client fell off the third floor balcony, breaking a leg and an arm (it’s a long story, actually, its several completely different stories, depending on who you talk to), families on the unit for the first live interaction with our clients (touching, heart warming), schedule changing, computers breaking, planning for the future, working on a manual, receiving guest teachers, etc, etc, etc.

I just needed to get away. Even the Golden Temple didn’t sound good; I just started walking. It was great – part adventure (have you ever tried to get lost, just for fun?), part needed exercise, part national geographic travelogue, part stepping back in time, part journey into beauty – it was great!

Very small villages separated by vast farmland, growing mustard, hay, turnips, some corn, some peppers. Occasionally in a field, under a huge banyan tree would be an altar to some Hindu Deity and I found one gurdwara (Sikh Temple) compound with the door open, but no one around. It was very small, well maintained, very clean, but very poor compared to the ones I’m used to, very simple – I liked it a lot. I went into the inner sanctum (where the Siri Guru Granth is kept) and meditated for a while; then climbed on the roof and took pictures of the surrounding mustard fields all green and yellow in the bright sunlit day.)

In the fields, a tractor or horse pulled harrow, turning the earth in preparation for planting; young fragile sprouts were coming up in one area while in another was old dried brown stalks of harvested straw; farmers harvesting hay and mustard greens with a hand sickle or pulling turnips by hand; people making bricks out of mud, by hand and stacking them in the fields to dry; women and children gathering buffalo (mudge ox) shit into pies to dry in the sun for fuel. On the roads, mostly horse pulled carts carrying sun dried bricks to the kiln for firing- full in one direction moving barely faster than I was walking, in the other direction, going fast with the driver standing on the wooden flat bed, urging the horse faster like an old cowboy movie; old men on bicycles with huge bundles of harvested mustard on the back.
My body needed the exercise, my spirit needed some time alone, the beauty and adventure was an added plus. It was a good walk.