GypsySpirit After Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, I headed to fulfill my 2-year goal of doing an Ayurverdic treatment named “panchakarma.” After saying goodbye to Isis and Jovan in Puerto Rico as they headed to visit family and friends in California, I stayed another 2 weeks with Tristan (my 26 yo).
I didn’t do much those two weeks after we came back to the farm other than go to coffee shop to work, do some clothes shopping with Tris and eat at a few restaurants. Those are actually things Tristan and I always do when we get together. He left home to live with his dad at 14 years old (makes me wanna cry every time) so since that age, with the exception of him staying with me for a few months last fall, we’ve always had visits that last anywhere from one to a few weeks since he was that age. Plus, he moved away from both homes at 18 and has lived with roommates or by himself ever since. He grew up too fast.
We have fun though and mostly just eat, eat, eat. As a matter of fact I’m working on compiling all the pictures I have of the two of us stuffing our faces every single time. We always have a good time over food, shopping and just hanging out. I guess it’s very much like a sibling relationship. After all I’m only 18 years older than him.
I actually got really sick right after the kids left (thank God it was after they left) so I ordered more UberEats than I went out. I loved staying at Tristan’s and spending time with him in his cute casita. I watched him clean up his yard and lie on the grass in the hot evenings. We cooked one big family meal one of the evenings which is crazy because he loves to cook and although I don’t love it I go all out when cooking family meals.
We went to Ocean Park beach where he met up with a couple of friends. We ate bites of food at the beach and drank a bottle of sangria.
On one of the evenings we watched a movie. On my last day we went out for breakfast together. Just regular mom and son stuff.
I had been there 3 weeks and it was time to head to my next destination. A destination I could only go by myself so this is why I had to do it while Jovan visited California. Isis moved there temporarily until she goes to college in January.
I have to add that on that last day while having breakfast with Tristan and showing him pictures of where I was going, I realized that it didn’t look like I was going to an Ayurvedic center.
I was going to a clinic. So, where was I sleeping? Did the clinic had rooms? It looked like a big enough building. I started having second thoughts while looking at the pictures in google as opposed to the pictures on their website. [FLAG #2] I then realized that all of the places I had looked at were in Kerala, India, A southern state on the coast. Only one in Kerala had responded for me to go the dates I was going besides this one in Rishikesh. Plus, it was only a week notice I gave to both so I didn’t hear from the other three or four I emailed. I had trouble getting the visa and it was delayed a few days. That process had been extremely frustrating [FLAG #1] because I didn’t know if I needed a medical visa instead of a tourist visa. It took about 4 tries to get it and one change of itinerary. At the end I still wasn’t going to get it on time for my flight that I had already changed once. I did my usual meditation of letting go of trying to control things and surrendering to whatever was that was going to happen.
I seriously thought of changing my destination in India that last day. The center in Kerala looked like what it should, a healing center with beautiful surroundings and zen atmosphere. I pushed away all doubts and second-thoughts and my gut warning and chose to forget all the trouble getting the visa.
I left Puerto Rico on Tuesday August 16th at 10:30am. After traveling for 30 hours, 3 planes and a 5-hour car ride later I finally arrived at Rishikesh, Uttarakhand on Thursday, August 18th at 4am.
After barely sleeping on the last 15-hour flight that happened overnight, or during that 5-hour car ride, I still could not fall asleep right away. I was beyond exhausted. Too exhausted to fall asleep. I finally dozed off at 5:30 or 6am and slept until 10am. I was supposed to meet Ayurveda clinic owner in the morning but was not given an exact time [FLAG #3]. It was so tempting to go back to sleep but I knew that would take me into the afternoon and waste a day of setting everything up with the clinic.
At 11am I told the receptionist to get Mr. A. I was ready to see him.
Good call. His employee, Neha, and whom I later found out would be my therapist during the entire panchakarma treatment, came and got me at the hotel at 12pm.
We went over payment details. He seemed annoyed I didn’t have the cash on me to pay for the treatment but hey, no one told me I needed to bring cash. I had paid a deposit via Paypal so I assumed the same would happen once I arrived. I did confirm with him that I could pay upon arrival but the payment method was not discussed [FLAG #4]
ATM in India is a very slow process he said, so pulling out money every day would be a very slow way to pay him because they only allow you to withdraw a certain amount every day plus there’s a weekly limit.
Same rules for foreigners as Dominican Republic and lots of other countries. I told him I learned that in other countries they let foreigners come into the bank and pull out money out of their accounts overseas at no charge. I told him this and he said ok.
He sent me to get my first treatment at 12:30pm. I was surprised since I had not paid in full yet. Well, I did pay a deposit.
To have my entire scalp and head massaged felt amazing after all that traveling. Then my back as well very thoroughly with lots of oils and herbs. Then on to the table for a full body massage, back and front. Yes, including my stomach and breasts which is not done in US. Not in any massage places I’ve been to for a full body massage. Breasts and most of your butt is usually covered.
This treatment lasted for 1 1/2 hours. At 3pm I met with the doctor. He read my pulse using my forearms in a way no one has ever taken my pulse back home. He proceeded to tell me of the main ailments I’m experiencing. He was spot on but I found him rude and arrogant. He even got into my sex life but I feel like he was reciting a memorized script based on the dosha I am [FLAG #5]. I also remembered I had talked to the clinic owner (I didn’t know it at the time) while trying to find the taxi at the airport and he had been extremely rude [FLAG #6]. It was late and he seemed so annoyed that he and I could not find each other.
When we finally found each other- about an hour or hour and a half later, he didn’t speak a word of english. I thought I had half hour ride. I had misread the whatsapp message.
The doctor said I could just call him when I needed him. Sooooo, he wouldn’t be seeing me every day while doing this very intense detox program? [FLAG #7]
Since I drove in in the middle of the night, I had no idea where I was. I knew we were really off grid by the little bit I could see on the drive there. The taxi had such a hard time finding the place [FLAG #8]. He kept calling the hotel. He was really nice and stopped to get me water and hot cheetos which I thought was cool. My kids love hot cheetos and I would have some sometimes. He also stopped at a restaurant to get us some food. I had a really good cheese and vegetables sandwich and black team with lime. I would later find out they drink a lot of black tea throughout the day.
Arriving at the town it was very strange. It looked like buildings had been piled on top of each other like legos and the streets were filled with cows sleeping in the middle of the road. The driver even had to get out and shoo them away so we could pass through. I had heard about this in a comedy stand-up by someone who had visited India. Tristan also visited India a few years ago but he never told me about the number of cows all over the place.
I don’t want to offend anyone. This is simply my experience. I do realize there is a lot of poverty in the world and you have no idea how sad it makes me. I suffer from having too much empathy. This experience comes from my expectations due to 2 years of research. The experience did not meet my expectations. That’s the only time we feel disappointment, right? That’s what happened here.
The hotel was old. I had requested a non-AC room but they gave me an AC one anyway [FLAG #9]. It was $8 extra per day to have AC. That’s not why I didn’t want it. I actually hate AC so much. It’s so unhealthy and I’m constantly turning it down, off, up because it’s just not normal temperature to me. In Florida we hardly went under 75, and lowest would be 72 or 73 on really, really hot days. I didn’t grow up with it and I believe it makes us as sick as we are nowadays. The body needs to sweat to detox. It’s just not natural. Not to mention it keeps you away from one of the most important entities that gives us energy: the sun.
Anyhow, I was to eat my three meals per day with the yogi trainees every day downstairs from the clinic [this was FLAG#10 but I didn’t know it because I didn’t know that during panchakarma you’re supposed to have a REALLY restricted diet based on your dosha diagnosis] . My treatments (massages and others) lasted 1 /2 hours every day. From scalp to toe. I was administered oil massages and powder massages plus Shirodhara, which drops oil onto your forehead for 45 minutes. It’s a relaxation technique. I saw images and felt really different while having it.
As I started asking about the other activities on the schedule: yoga, meditation, Ganges Aarti time, etc., the owner told me there would be no yoga on Friday because it was a holiday for them (due to religious festivities). He said they would resume on Saturday. I was going to be doing yoga with the yogis in training. Weird but ok [FLAG #11]
Meditation? There would be none because there was no group meditation [FLAG #12].
Saturday morning I got up early against the wishes of every bone in my body and headed to the clinic at 6:40am. I wanted to arrive early to grab a good spot. Dogs went crazy barking. I feel like I woke up all the houses in the alleyway I had to walk through. As I was leaving the receptionist of the clinic/yoga building I had met before came to the door and let me in. He told me there is no yoga in the mornings at all. All yoga classes are in the evening. WHAT?! [SUPER FLAG #13!!!! ALL ALARMS GOING OFF!!] Of course it’s #13, my birth and lucky number all my life.
This is when I started documenting everything via email and whatsapp to whoever the person was that I had been talking to while booking this nightmare. I continued communicating with them because Mr. A would not reply to my whatsapp messages. Always a bad sign when people don’t want to document things in writing. Too much proof. That’s exactly what I always save, create, seek, and document.
When I had asked the doctor the next time he would be in he said Sunday. When I asked clinic owner he said Monday. Come at 3pm he said. As if just scheduling it for the first time at a whim. I’ll stop counting the flags. You get the point.
This always happens when I don’t listen to my intuition/gut feeling whatever you wanna call it. I had a chance to change course the day before getting on that plane. It’s not like I have to pay change fees. They’re allowing you to change your travel plans at no fee. I did see some changes did require a fee besides the one I did for free so I don’t know if I would have been able to change it again for $0.
I decided I would consult with the doctor and depending on that consultation I would decide if I was staying even though I already wanted to go. I hated my hotel room. It had been super hot and pouring outside. I had to walk through the flooding at 6:30am one day. That’s how I learned where all the cow poop all over the streets goes. The waters were brown. I was walking in cow poop water!
Power started going out and not coming back the entire day. I couldn’t do any work on my laptop. This is why it’s 4 days shy of exactly a month later and I’m barely writing about this. It took a long time to have motivation and energy again to do this. I worked one day that week that I was there. I started getting depressed and wondering what the hell was I thinking going so far for a treatment.
Besides the mountains there was nothing pretty about this place. I barely took pictures. Mostly of the cows. I took a few during one walk I took away from the main area. That walk depressed me even more because I finally got to see where the hell I was. It was a cement maze. The ground was wet from all the rain…and DIRTY!! I understood I was in a third world country but this was too much. I was supposed to be getting a healing treatment. This was not healing at all. The meals were good but even that I couldn’t enjoy because the yogis weren’t allowed to talk. Plus, they weren’t friendly at all anyway. I barely sparked up conversation with one girl the entire 5 days I was there. I don’t know how I thought I could do this for a month!
I didn’t take not one picture of myself in that place. I never went to Ganga Aarti at 6pm every evening. I didn’t want to go anywhere. I walked to the ATM twice and that was enough. I didn’t want to see anymore. Tristan had talked to me so much about the food that I wanted street food but I didn’t see too many options on my walk.
When I consulted with doctor the clinic owner told him “she wants a panchakarma treatment schedule.” When he started scribbling it on a piece of paper (as he did my diagnosis the first time I saw him along with the few things he prescribed me like the sinus medicine and the times he wanted me to wake up, eat and go to sleep. That was it) already the treatments that were supposed to happen the first 5 days I had spent there (which felt like a month) had not happened.
When I told him this he trashed that sheet of paper and grabbed another one to start over. He just moved the treatments to the next 5 days. How many flags is thatt now? Turns out one of the treatments, the Shirodhara, was not supposed to happen until close to the end of the entire program.
Then, I remembered! He had collected the entire month’s fee for the program. What about my deposit?! I completely forgot and he didn’t deduct it from the total I had just paid! I asked him about it and he said “oh just deduct it from your hotel stay.” He had done this with other things- making deals with the hotel and transferring money from clinic to hotel and vice versa.
He had told me to pay the hotel in full! Luckily, I only gave them 7 days worth with two ATM withdrawals. I told them I’d get more later and keep paying as the limit allowed.
That was it. I was done. This is bullshit. I’m outta here!
I had communicated with the other (and seemingly real) place in Kerala, South India and they had last minute opening for me. As a matter of fact, I contacted them the day before I took the plane from PR to India and they said they would welcome me [EXIT #1!]. Boy the headache and the money I would have saved myself!
I contacted them again- with screenshots of conversations with the person managing this sham of a clinic- to see if they could still take me and not only did they say yes, they also said only doctors run the panchakarma treatment in their center. I would see a doctor every morning before treatment. They still had space for me. I could come [EXIT #2]
I went back to my hotel room and started scheming on how I was gonna get out of there. More on what happened in a future post.
What I learned is that Rishikesh is best known for being The Yoga Capital of the World. Yogis go there to train and become certified in yoga. The Beetles made this place famous in the 60s. I did see another Ayurvedic center when I took the one walk. That seemed a little more legit than the clinic I was going to.
Lesson learned.
Follow my intuition.
Don’t ever shut it down.
Pay attention to all the signs!
We always get them! Always! Since we have free will, it’s still up to us to choose our course, however. This is why we can’t ignore the signs and nudges.
More importantly, I had my son’s voice in my head the whole time about how “boujie” I am and how much I complain and how I’m in a third world country what do I expect?! This is a perfect example of falling into the trap of caring more about what others think than what your gut is telling you. To his credit, and yet another flag, when I told him I was having doubts the day before at breakfast, he said “follow your gut.” HA! I didn’t even listen to him!
While at Rishikesh and trying to decide whether to leave or not he was the only person I was telling everything that was going on every day. He was really worried about me and text me every day checking on me. He was actually still encouraging me to go to the other center in Kerala, South India. For whatever reason, in my brain, I chose to play a loop of other things he had told me that made me feel like I was being “too much” or “boujie.”
So you see how our mind is always playing tricks on us? Focusing on only the negative even when in reality you’re being told something else? Along with your gut screaming at you!!!! SMH
