We went to Igatpuri for a couple of days for persuing one of my passions - meditation. This was organised by Yogoda Satsanga Society.
We started at 7 am from my residence. Getting out of the city didn't take too much of time and by 7.45 we were on the Nasik Road. We took a break at Hotel Parivaar ( after Bhagat Tarachand) which was a mistake as the service was pathetic. If you're in a hurry, you should not stop here. Then got into a big jam because of a narrow bridge on which only one vehicle from each ways can go through. Finally reached Igatpuri at 10.45. There I took a left diversion after Manas Resort (after Manas Lifestyle), crossed Mahindra factorty, railway bridge, took a left turn, crossed Vipassana Institute and then reached the Ashram. The property is anything but an ashram of the tradional stories. Its a nice property with great care taken for cleanliness. The whole ambience was just brilliant and you can actually feel the silence only broken once in a while by train bugles .
The session had already started and a lecture was going on when we reached. This went on till 11.30. We had the registration after that. We had lunch at 12.30 which was organised in a tent with seating arrnagments of more than 300. The food was not lavish but tasty. The session restarted at 2.30 pm with another lecture which went on till 4.00 pm. Then we broke for tea. At 5 pm we reassembled for Energisation exercise on an open ground. This went on till 5.20. Then we went inside and had prayer, chants and then 1 hour of meditation. Meditation in such as silence was a completely different experience than doing it in Mumbai. At 7 pm, there was a video show on the visit of Guruji to India from 1935 to 1936. It had its share of technical snags but otherwise it was interesting. We had dinner at 8, again a very light dinner of khichdi and achaar. My wife's accomodation was arranged in one of the rooms in the sadhanalaya while mine was arranged in a nearby school called MBS. We went to our respective places, made the bed on the floor and quickly fell to sleep. In my hall there were 20 other people, from different places in Maharashtra and Gujarat.
The next day started with an alarm clock going off at 3 in the morning. After that there was continuous chirping of people and finally I had to kiss goodbye to my bed at 5. Of the daily chores, I would like to mention the coordination that was there for taking bath. It was cold and they had arranged a water heater operated by cooking gas. There was 2 bathrooms with each bathroom having 2 buckets. One had to be quick enough to grab hold of one of the buckets to take the hot water from the water heater while the bathroom is engaged. The time taken to fill the bucket was just about same as one was taking for taking the bath, essentially meaning very little wait-time. It was fun.
We started the session at sadhanalya with energisation exercise at 7 am which went on till 7.20 pm. It was followed by prayer, chants and mediation for 45 minutes. Mind finds the reason to get disturbed and in the silence, it found neighbours's breath to get disturbed. We had breakfast at 8.30 am. At 10 we had the session to review Haung-Sau meditation technique. At 11, we had the session to review the Aum technique. we had the lunch break at 12. After we had the lunch, we had sufficient time before the post-lunch session and hence decided to go the nearby Vipassana Institute.
We parked our vehicle just inside th campus and walked all the way to the institute. On the way we saw an under-construction Buddha Park. The institute is on a hill - the half a km climb was not too steep. There we realised we could have brought the car till that place. Unfortunate for us that on that day registration for a 10 day course was going on and hence no one was free to tell us the details. When we were reading the daily schedule of the course at one place, one gentleman politely asked us to leave the place as it was forbidded section for visitors. I was miffed and left the place.
Our session restrated at 2.30 pm and this was a review on the energisation exercise. This went on till 4 pm. Since we wanted to cross the Kasara Ghat while the daylight was still there, we left immidiately after the session. To our surprise, they have made a new road on the Kasara Ghat and we never realised that we have crossed the ghat while we were expecting it. The drive was so smooth that I didn't take any break and reached my home by 7.30 pm.
We have decided that we would go there more often as the whole environment was so entrapping. The silence, the hill, the plants.. everything is just what you long for after staying in Mumbai.
