Haridwar

The Ashram family welcomes us to their Santosh Puri Ashram. Santosh means satisfaction.

Mataji came as a young girl with the hippie movement from Germany to India with many questions and in search of her guru. She found him in Baba Santosh on a remote river island of the Ganges. With him and a few cows she lived there for ten years in seclusion and in the simplest conditions. When they did not have enough food, Mataji said, cow patties were made into chapati bread. After a long time of meditation, her guru sent her back to the world because she was to gain experience as a woman in life and as a mother. But Mataji refused to leave him. The two then married and built today's Santosh Puri Ashram in the traditional Ashram district outside Haridwar. The place is today a dreamlike oasis of peace but once the encounter arose was wild. Snakes and tigers lived there. Babaji purified the place with his psychic powers and created a wonderful magical room right on the riverbank. Today there is the Samadhi of the two. Mataji left her physical body in Febraury 2014.

To walk to the Ganges, one crosses the Sadhuforest, a narrow forest of wild-growing marijuana plants, where many Shiva Babas and Sadhus have settled in tents and founded small communities.

On excursions, we roam the Sadhuforest, swim through the many branches of the still very clean Ganges and cross the jungle in the National Park. This wild area is home to free-roaming tigers and elephants, which, however, remain hidden to humans during the day.

Yogasubmarine met Mataji in Haridwar at the Kumbha Mela, a major religious festival of the sadhus. It was clear that this woman had taken a very deep spiritual path in her life that her three children continue to live on today.

At the Ashram, they hold inspiring lectures on the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras, conduct a traditional puja at 4:30 in the morning, and teach Hatha Yoga at sunset.

Even if you do not want to participate in the yoga program, which actually takes place all day long, or you prefer to sleep longer in the morning, then you will be able to feel this special vibration of the place.

And after a short while, the ashram blues set in Haridwar, this relaxed carefree feeling just to be full of dedication and to be worn.

We continue by taxi to Rishikesh.