5 march, bharata yatra 2008, amdavad to jaipur

we started to jaipur. the journey was through the fields of onion, sesame, pomegranates. the road was beautiful. once the fields finished, the beautiful waves of mountains started on either side. as we entered rajasthan, the cultivation fields almost stopped. once in a while you see some small wheat cultivation. most of the fields are used to mine marble. you don’t get water easily here. only marble. i don’t know how people live here.

it was sivaratri day. we stopped for the evening. amma started playing tamborine. swamiji started with dolak. one with kaimani, one casinet. amma will play some thing. others repeated.  later it became a jugal bandhi. everyone started clapping to the rhythm.  to me it felt like damru of siva dancing.

amma asked brahmacharis to speak on sivaratri. for the people who live in the world there may be some special occasion. but for one who is living with the divine, every day is sivaratri. you dont recognize how the days or nights passed. some times even without food and sleep. sivaratri is to remind to us to awaken to the higher state of divine.
amma also sang some siva bhajans.
there was a telephone conversation with the ashramites by amma. amma spoke to them for about 20 minutes.

on the road everywhere you could see the celebration of sivaratri. in many temples by the road, we saw akhanda (continuous) bhajans were going on.
in the morning we reached pushkar. its a sacred place. there is a temple for creator brahmaji here. its on top of a mountain. brahmaji’s temples are rare to find.
in the evening we meditated with amma. the background was nice. traditional houses with rajasthani paintings on the wall made the ambience look like in an old gurukulam.
jaipur is only another 120 km away.

~ dhyanamrita