Steel Notes Magazine October "Halloween" Issue 2016 | Page 121
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Steel Notes Magazine
JOURNEY
TO INDIA
Chapter three: Rishikesh,
Pushkar and Beyond
Rex Maurice Oppenheimer
made it. It’s beautiful, and I still have it more than 30 years later.
Before I left Dharamsala, I bid farewell to
Peter. He had no money and was skipping
out on his 25-cent-a-night rent at the Tibetan Association Hotel to travel as a Saddhu.
He needed some cash, and wasn’t going to
take any belongings with him, so to help
him out I bought a blanket he had for 30
rupees, then about three dollars. It was a
handmade wool blanket he’d bought off the
shoulders of the Tibetan woman who had
My next stop was Rishikesh, which happened to be the village where the Beatles stayed with the Maharishi. That
had nothing to do with why I went to Rishikesh. I was at the station intending to go to Varanasi, when I met Robert. He wasn’t that friendly. He was very independent and somewhat standoffish. I think because he considered
himself such an old Asia hand, having been on the road for about eight or nine years. He’d played some bit roles
in Bollywood movies and also spent a lot of time in Thailand, where he had a girlfriend he was crazy about but
he had to leave because of visa problems.
Robert was heading to Hardiwar and Rishikesh. It turned out to be much easier to get to Rishikesh than Varaniasi, and I decided to go there first.
I don’t remember how we ended up at Swami Prakesh Bharti’s ashram. Maybe there weren’t any hotels available,
or they were too expensive, or maybe Robert knew about the place. There weren’t any available rooms at Swami
Prakesh Bharti’s, but he said we could sleep on the roof for two rupees, about twenty-five cents, and that’s what
we did.
After about a week I did get a room, and I think that was four rupees. I guess it was an ashram, but there wasn’t
any kind of organized spirituality. There was a large walled-in area, full of trees and grass. The small rooms were
along one side and there was a patio area, with a place for a fire, where everyone would smoke chillums and
drink tea. There were no meals. The bathroom was not much more than a hut in the middle of the forested area,
and there was a sign saying “no toilet paper,” which was necessary since it was really nothing more than a hole in
the ground.
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