Hollywood to the Himalayas by Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati

Author:Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati [Saraswati, Sadhvi Bhagawati]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mandala Publishing
Published: 2021-08-02T22:00:00+00:00

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I have low blood pressure. It’s not dangerously low, but new doctors always check it twice until I assure them, “Don’t worry. It’s always low.” I suffer no ramifications of this in my life other than needing to keep my head down a bit longer than most when coming out of headstands or backbends while doing yoga. If I come back to the upright position too quickly, I get a head rush.

The only other occasion that this impacts my life is high-altitude trekking. When I trekked in the mountains of the United States or Europe, or in Ecuador, I knew that I could go to about 12,500 feet before beginning to hallucinate. Once, while hiking in the mountains around Baños, a few hours south of Quito, Jim and I walked a bit higher than that and the trees started gesticulating to me. The lack of oxygen at high altitude, coupled with already low blood pressure, turns lush mountaintops into my own dizzying Little Shop of Horrors.

Lake Mansarovar sits at more than 15,000 feet. The trek around Mount Kailash begins at Ashtaput, crosses through Dirapuk at about 17,000 feet, and finally crosses the Dolma La Pass at nearly 20,000 feet before descending to Zuthulpuk and finally back to Darchen. I had told Pujya Swamiji in advance that I likely would not be able to make it all the way due to the altitude.

“No problem,” he said. “We’ll send a vehicle back with you, and you can wait in Kathmandu or return to India. Just come for as long as you feel comfortable, and the moment you don’t feel well, let me know.”

That moment never came. Maharajji’s question about soup symbolized the distinction between vehicle and driver, between body and the soul. These saints live as their souls, not as their bodies. That grace was somehow contagious, and I stayed near enough to them to catch it.

On future trips, I learned about Diamox, a medicine that mitigates the effect of altitude and is recommended by doctors for people going to high altitudes. However, on this journey, I knew nothing about it, only that I was carried by One for whom altitude is irrelevant. I was blessed to rely not on my own legs and lungs, but on the arms of the Divine, in which I rested easily, to carry me.

Here are some excerpts from the journal I kept on yatra:

Here on yatra, looking out over the incredible mountains, stretching out as far as you can either see or imagine—reducing you, your van, your entire life into nothing more than a grain of sand, blowing by the side of the road. The mind, eyes, ears, and senses just dissolve into thin air, burning one minute and freezing the next.

“We’re on yatra” is the motto, making anything else seem like superfluous gibberish. Even my fears, tears, etc., dissipate into the clouds as they embrace the mountaintops, obscuring from our view the true height of their majesty.

The quiet—of my tongue, of my mind.

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