After breakfast today we got water from the bus and hopped into three smaller vehicles for our jaunt over fourteen kilometers to the caves where Siddartha meditated for six years as an ascetic living on one grain of rice or wheat a day.
We turned off the freeway onto a narrow dusty road that snaked its way through rice and mustard fields. We bumped along and the caustic contents of my cement mixer of a stomach (malarone and ibuprofen) combined, making the ride rather uncomfortable and the cool breeze through the window was a welcome break from the stifling air inside the van. As far as I can see are green mustard plants with neon yellow clusters on their tops stretching out on either side of the raised roadbed. We drove out of the fields and into a grove of palm trees where small red brick and mud houses dotted the dry yellow and red landscape and images of village life flashed by: A child played on her mother’s stomach. Goats ran around in the dust. Two men walked between buildings, a baby laying on one of their shoulders. A small girl runs away from her mother, tears flowing down her cheeks.
Our vehicles stop at the base of a long curved path that lazily meanders its way up to a wooded spot two-thirds of the way up the mountain. After going into the small caves, Adam and I went off into a sea of prayer flags and into the mountainside. Crounching under and walking through the enveloping colors is almost magical. We entered the space with the same wonder as that of a child crawling into a fort of their own creation; the space is private, quiet and tranquil. Sunlight filtered through the stained glass of the thin cotton prayer flags, shining down onto the rocky scree of the mountainside.