rainbow parvati

then ioana wrote me sayin there was a rainbow gatherin in parvati valley 

so i set off forthwith, catchin an early bus next mornin from nainital, then gave hitchin a go on that busy road outta haldwani, havin to politely ignore all the wayfarers interes'd in my welfare who said: 

where you goin? 

you goin wrong direction, busstand busstand!

only later that evenin, after bumpin on the back of a dusty truck along the erroneous road for sev'ral hours, and havin to retrace that bumpy road on the back of 'nother dusty truck did i recognise their logic that bus is best, the bus allthesame being a nightslide with a memorable bump bump tarless section squashedlegs nosleep to arrive in chandigarh and there board the next daylong bus north now to bhunter, slowin down on the unsurfaced sections to let all the trucks past, and slowin down in the towns and villages to let the tangle of bicycles and mopeds and other buses and occasional ambulating cow slowly unravel themselves.  that night got some blissful outtabus sleep in the countryside terrain of someone's house in construction, and then next day continued hitchin up the valley - small lil roads now, mountains risin - to kasol.

i was walkin along outta kasol when this real friendly big grinnin kid greeted me from afar:

hey, hey! how are you!?  come have chai with me

one never knows when rats are lurkin around or which grin is genuine or only seems to be genuine, but a cheeky wee chai was callin and this kid was full of thusiasm, quizzin me all bout my travels, where been in india?  how long left in india?  after a while i says: good to meet you bro, im gonna head on now to the rainbow.  ah, alright, he says, but come to my guesthouse room first and meet my friends.  i follow him up the stairs and inside three muscley chaps sittin back, and there is a sorta tension in the air as i sit down and begin the friendly-shmendly rigmarole of where i been in india and who i am, then slowly the whole ruse comes to the surface as the ringleader explains they have a jewelry business in bombay and in europe they can sell for 10 times the price they fetch in india, see, but they get whopped by a mass-sized tax when they export more than a certain quantity.  this is where i could be roped in by takin back some jewelry with me, and he quoted a big sum o money which would thereby be mine.  i let his proposition sink in, and felt the tension in their smilin-on-the surface but actually cool and calculatin company

"we are not breaking the rules.       only . . . bending them"

i was soon up and outta that room, leavin the kid with the genuine fake smile and his cronies to wallow in their own moneyspinnin schemes.

i was gonna walk but a bus took me up the final 13km of bumpy unsurfaced steeply climbin twistin track to bershani.

aye, smotherin the earth with tarmac's got its perks when you're after comfy longdistance travel.

the river here at bershani valleybottom is a frothin seethin cauldron of white water speakin o glaciers and wild natural forces, and here the beauty of parvati valley commences.  a four hour trek takes you up the valley through the grandiose tally-spiring Deodar trees to arrive puffin an mighty glad to arrive at lil village khir ganga, a lil collection of low stone houses and large plasticsheet-draped constructions strung out on a meadow perched on a steep talltreeclad valleyside.  khirganga exists almost exclusively to serve the trekkers and peacesearchers with its laidback restaurants an guesthouses and lil shops and at the very top is the temple and the hot springs. the hotspring is kinda annexed to the temple so there is s'pposed to be silence.   always a beauteous sensory adventure to dip your hands into the scorchin outflow of the thermal pool, then gradually realise its not so scorchin, actually beautifully simply hot; after lettin the hot water splash thump over your head for several minutes, you climb in an let all the fatigue seep outta yer bones and float up to the trees and shiftymist-permittin glimpses of the snowy peak further up the valley.

leavin the hotspring that first lulled evenin i thrilled to hear the scottishness of fairhaired dreadlocked scot's accent, "o aye?  i'm fae auchterarder.  you goin tae the rainbow? here i'm headin back there now, come wi me if ye want.  if i mind the waai.  av been here three weeks and i think everytime i take a different route" 

twenty minutes or so up to the far end o the meadow, across a gurglin wee stream, the rainbow camp there ringed by massive soaring noble deodars.  soon s i arrived it was: 

"welcome home brother! chai? here, take this cup.  ye found a place to sleep yet? i'll show you where there are some good spots"  everyone, upon arrival, just walked into the woods and found an appealin place to make camp.  i strung up my tarp on some springy forest floor, not far from where a young russian couple were campin and not far either from pascal, a young german, who passed by to say hello every so offen.

i first heard bout rainbow years ago from lavanya, who gave wondrous descriptions of the massive gatherins in america - everyone sharin and livin together in nature, cookin and eatin together and sharin everythin and singin songs of love for everythin.   someone else told me that american rainbows were the best organised and followed most closely the spirit of the native americans:

venerate the earth

for she is sacred

when i arrived parvati rainbow was at the tailend of its proposed month duration.  the original organisers had left and things were startin to drift apart abit, i was told.  for lots o folks there - like me - it was their first rainbow.  the whole idea o the rainbow is that there is no rules, no hierarchy, no leaders, everyone knowin what needs done and doin it.  but because there were so many neophytes, there wasn't a great deal o knowin what needed done or what kinda community we were tryin to construct, part from campin there together and cookin up when anyone got hungry.  

jaya stood up durin one eatin circle and said he generally shirked the role o leadership but he wanted to make a few comments, a few suggestions as to how we could get things runnin rainbow fashion again, if people wanted to stay here for another month.  "why not?  its a beautiful place. we've got fresh water from the stream a few minutes away.  but we really must think of camp hygiene.  we can't have a rainbow without a shitpit.  it is never done.  if the whole forest becomes full of everyone's individual hole, the flies come, then they land on our food. . . lets think of hygiene, lets get some big shitpits dug!
and . . .  we have to do something to stop the cows from wanderin into the main tent and eatin the leftovers from the previous night.  i had to chase them away this mornin and its not the first time they've been at it.  we should build a fence at the entrance, let's get organised!"

jaya was maybe approachin midlife and had straggly blonde hair. he told me he had been livin outside the system for the last 20 years - by this i assumed he meant not workin or payin taxes and suchlike.  one afternoon a lovecircle was organised - where everyone sat in a circle and passed the talkin stick round.  whoever was holdin the talkin stick could talk and whoever wasn't holdin it had to keep quiet an lissen.   the topic of talkin was anythin relatin to Love; some folks had little to say; they weren't talkers, but when it came to jaya he talked for a long time. he was so thusiastic bout love, everyone was pending on his words.  he said he was so full of love but it wasn't proper to say that it was his love, it was the great Universal Love that had filled him.  sometimes though, he did feel mopey and low, and those times he would go off into the woods and tell himself to sit for an hour and write a love letter to himself, beginning: dear jaya, I Love You! then he would go on and list all the things that he loves to do, all the things that really make him feel alive.  the best times in his life, he recalls them all and writes them all down, and thereby restores in him the creative spontaneous spark that is alive and brimming within him in each moment - brimming within each one of us, truly.  that is the purpose of his life, that is the purpose of everyone's life: to love to love to love...

 jaya's whole body would become a flowing mass of dancin vibrations at singin circle moments, specially when we sang 

"every lil cell in my body is happy, every lil cell in my body is well

every lil cell in  my body is happy, every lil cell in my body is well

i'm so glad, every lil cell   in my body is happy and well

i'm so glad, every lil cell   in my body is happy and well"

then we we go back to the start and repeat, taizé-style, everyone holdin hands in a big circle jivin along to the happy boppy melody.  we always sang before eatin, and offentimes it was timeconsumin gettin the meal preparation underswing - choppin vegetables and also ensurin water'd been collected an firewood fetched - that by the time everyone had assembled for the circle, there was a good bit o hunger goin around.  but we always gave a good singsong first, atimes anticipatin the tasty meal ahead, othertimes gettin caught up in the singin.  whenever one song had taken its natural hush, someone would start up another, sometimes it was a slow one, a sacred one, a shivanamol old hindi chant or one in any other foreign tongue which everyone lissend to and gradually began to copy over the days, or it was birdie the frenchgirl singin mostly her solo sept from the refrain: ciao bella ciao bella ciao ciao ciao, when everyone joined in.  some o the songs i was a bit ambivalent about singin firstoff, but over time, with repetition, they got into my head and i began to like them all.  the first one was usually the slow sacred one:

"we are circling, circling together

we are singing, singing our heart song

this is family, this is unity

this is celebration, this is sacred"

once there was a steady lil rain fallin and most folks were huddlin around the lil fire in the main tent makin chapattis; a few thusiastic souls had gone out to boil up the rice and begin the singin.  i was a lil shivery and thought of only stayin dry by the fire, but by and by more folks drifted out into the rain and joined the circle and after a while i headed out too - and it was some scene in which to participate: a circle o forty or fifty damp figures hands held as the rain fell singin songs of love and only feelin the warmth inside.

towards the end o every circle i would usually be proactive in gettin the OMs goin - a very special  moment when all our vibrations were hummin in unison, deep bass AAOOOOOOs joined with light humming mmmmmmmmmmms - which slowly, slowly, slowly would fade then we would raise our arms skywards then separate our clasped hands for each one to join their own palms together above their heads then slowly kneel down and kiss the earth or touch forehead on the earth, and then we would begin eatin.

after everyone had been served and served a second time and those who wanted served a third time and everyone's plates had been licked clean, the magic hat would begin.  someone would donate their hat and the one who knew the chords would get the guitar and those who wanted would jig around the circle holdin out the hat for money donations singin thus (to a great swingin boppy melody; i really liked this song) :

"deep inside my heart i've got this

everylastin love that's shinin

like the sun that radiates on everyone

and the more that i give,

the more i've got to give

its the way that i live

its what i'm livin for

boom boom boom"

then back to the beginnin and on and on. 

our collections were mostly modest, but enof to buy us rice and dal (lentils) and beans and flour for chapattis, tea, sugar (and from time to time milk too) and potatoes, onions, tomatoes, amongst other veg, from the village.  prices of things in the village were a good deal costlier than down the valley cos everythin had to be manhauled up the track on someone's back. sometimes a generous magic hat would give us bananas in the mornin, and once - a memorable once - we bought a jar o nutella and melted it all and added ground almonds to make a much relished and rare dessert.

one time boris the softly-spoken very clear blue-eyed dreadlocked old russian came to the camp bringin a big bunch of wild garlic and tellin us where we could find more, and showed other tasty edible plants besides .  few times after that i swung past his abode - a kingly tarp construction nestled atween the boulders with his own porch and his own wee water source few metres away.  i shared a spliff with him then a cup o chai then we went scramblin up the steep hillside behind his house, almost to the bottom of the cliff, where the wild garlic was to be found.  he was a really gentle creature of the woods, boris.  said he didn't come down to the rainbow camp so often cos our eating hours didn't coincide so neatly with his own.  said he'd been comin to that forest dwellin for years, always in the early months o summer, afore the rains start.

usually mornins were quiet times and a lot o times folks would form their own groups and make their own coffee, etc over their own lil fire, which isn't really the original rainbow spirit, but thats what happened.  everyone was happy to do whatever they wanted - that was the liberatin aspect of being in that driftin temporary community of wandering souls; everyone participated because they wanted to participate.  an if they didn't want to participate, well, they didn't.

as the mornin got underway folks would drift down to the fire an a big pot o tea would be organised, an maybe a pot o porridge made, or previous night's leftovers warmed up.  usually at one point someone would suggest: chapattis?

if you wanted help collecting firewood you would call out: "firewood mission!"

collectin water was a constant mission called for; i would usually volunteer because i liked to spend time by the gurglin brook fillin up slowly each plastic water bottle then carryin them back to the camp in a big sack balanced on my head; i knew that cartin 20/twentyfive litres o water wasn't everyone's cup o tea.

sometimes people would organise group events like sharin circles or meditation circles or carvin a wooden spoon circle.  it didn't take me long to get a dedicated ninja circle up and running.  all you needed to do was call out: "niiiiiinja ciiiiiirrrcaaaaaal!" and the thusiasts would come runnin.

anytime you wanted somethin you would call out: "such-and-such connection!", e.g. "salt connection", "cheenee [sugar] connection", "lighter connection", "spoon connection", "knife connection", or it could be a suggestion for a wantin: "chai connection anyone?", "charras connection?"

jaya always spoke only softly, but several times a the day his holler would ring out around the camp "boom parvati!" as he lifted the chillum pipe to his lips and inhaled deeply of the charras smoke before passing it round the circle.  aye, tis fair to say smokin charras was a strong and everpresent connection at the rainbow; t'would ha' been easy to have abstained and participated in your own laidback way, but you would ha been in the vast minority there.  one mornin i had to get up early and take a big slow walk to clear my head, followin a soft springy sheephearder trail which climbed steeply beneath the towerin deodars to arrive at the top of a crest, and then observe my passage through different vegetation zones as i clumb higher, leavin the trees behind to pass through a thick grove of big redflowered sweetsmellin rhododendrons, then up and up, aiming for a rocky outcrop where plant life all but stopped, givin way to a field o boulders which lead to snow patches further up and, finally, the white iceclad peak.

after maybe a lil more than a week the nighttime rain became constant.  one mornin it didn't even stop rainin, it jus kept rainin all mornin.  also the police had come around sayin that we should be payin a hundred rupees per tent.  everyone was talkin bout leavin.  jaya talked bout holdin the next rainbow in august - on a beautiful piece o land on the banks o the ganges, a few hours shy o calcutta on the delhi-calcutta trainline.   he wrote details of how to get there on a piece o card and everyone passed it round and copied it out.

next mornin i was up early everythin packed up an trekkin slidin along the muddy path - "treacherous" i commented to mysel, steadyin mysel wi ma stick - back down the valley.