Years before I was born my parents left the United States and joined an Ashram in Mumbai India. That’s right, my parents were hippies...Vietnam War protesting, love promoting, Vedanta studying hippies.

I have heard stories of my parent’s experiences in Bombay my whole life. They lived in separate dorms since they weren’t married, studied for hours and hours each day, everyone but my mother got dysentery and my father lost 50 pounds and shaved his head in order to force himself to stay in India knowing that if he went home with a shaved head his mother wouldn’t let him in the house.

My parents were there to study Vedanta under the brilliant guidance of Swami Dayananda Saraswati. Vedanta “makes available the ageless wisdom of Advaita Vedanta, the knowledge of Universal Oneness, and provides the tools to realize the wisdom in one's life. "To give maximum happiness to the maximum number for the maximum time" is the tenet that drives Mission workers to uplift humanity beyond selfish and sectarian attitudes and activities. Each person's gain is manifold: personal growth, heightened efficiency, contentment, and the ability to live with others in peace and harmony.” according to the website of the Chinmayananda Ashram as it is called now.

During the summers my family would pile into our Toyota Previa van and head to Southern California to attend the summer Ashram sessions taught by the same Swami that taught my parents in India. I have the fondest memories of those days; playing in the pool with the other kids, learning sanskrit verses and sneaking meat into the vegetarian complex (don’t tell).

I have always been floored by my parent’s ability to connect to people and to the depth of beauty that the world offers and I greatly attribute this to their studies of Vedanta.

So understandably I was more than excited to visit the Ashram that my parents had studied in 30 years before. We were met by a wonderful man at the Ashram who showed us around; the study rooms, the temple, the dormitories...he even took us up to the roof where my father said he would go for a peaceful moment to himself.

I kept imagining my parents there, studying, sleeping on metal cots for a year. My parents were tough, man; boiling their water before they drank it, living in small quarters in the sweltering Indian heat without any form of air conditioning and waking up before the sun to start their studies.

It was a phenomenal experience to walk the paths and picture my parents walking there when they were the same age I am right now. Ofer and I had some great talks with our guide and were both so intrigued by what he had told us that we wanted to start looking for Vedanta classes for ourselves.


The inner city of Mumbai was built up like any other major city but the further we got from the center of the city the differences between this city and others we had seen and lived in were right in our faces. We saw people sleeping on cardboard in the streets wearing ornate saris as trucks and cars rode right by their heads. Families lived in shacks right next to the road and children ran around in groups under freeway passes together. We also saw the most concentrated amount of people urinating on the streets. The first time we saw that we were shocked but then we saw that it was in fact a very common thing to see in and out of the city.

Unfortunately I was still sick. We tried taking a Tuk Tuk around the city, I was so angry that I was in India and not able to explore it in the way that I was wanting to. Sitting in the back of the Tuk Tuk was torture and showed me just how sick I was. The fumes, the honking, the smells...everything made my headaches worse and made me feel incredibly overwhelmed and exhausted. So just like in New Delhi, Ofer and I spent a lot of time in the hotel. I guess the body is going to do what the body needs to do to recover and what I needed to do was rest.

Fortunately we were again in a fantastic hotel right next to the International Airport. It was easily the strangest hotel I had ever been in. It was built in a circular manner with a massive courtyard in the center. The courtyard had stores, restaurants, bars and coffee shops next to a meandering lagoon that doubled as a lap pool. Every night there was a laser light show and about 3 times a night there was a live belly dancing performance. Weird. By the end of our stay in Mumbai we knew the belly dancing song by heart and most of her choreography.

As a last attempt to see Mumbai Ofer and I hired a taxi for the day, packed my medicine and my tissues and drove south to see the Gateway of India. The Gateway of India is a monument that visitors arriving in Mumbai would first see as they came in from the sea and was built in 1911.

Across the street from the monument was the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower. The Palace is a five star hotel built over 100 years ago. The Beatles, Jacki O, Bill Clinton and Mick Jagger have all stayed there just to name a few. As you can imagine considering it’s guest list the hotel is phenomenally gorgeous inside and out, completely extravagant and stunning.

In November of 2008 it was one of the 10 locations of coordinated terrorist attacks. There was very high security as we entered the hotel but we felt very safe. Ofer and I had a beautiful lunch there overlooking the Gateway to India and talked about everything we were experiencing in this amazing country.

India was one of the places that I had most been looking forward to visiting on this trip. I have always had such warm feelings about my childhood years spent at the Ashram with my parents. I know that if I hadn’t felt so sick I would have had the energy to explore India in a way that I really wanted to.

Unfortunately I didn’t have the capacity to see the country that way. Now that Ofer and I have been to India we know that we want to go back and we know of so many other places that we were told that we really want to see. I am excited for that day and I hope that everyone on the trip including myself will be nice and healthy and able to enjoy the experience.