When I first met Swami Chidananda in 2020, I remember asking him one time to “take me to India”.. What’s really ironic is just weeks before meeting a Vedic monk, I began researching ancient Indian history. I realized I didn’t know much about the nation at all, it was certainly never a part of world history here in the US.

I had been more and more curious about eastern philosophy in the last decade or so, specifically around taoism. But I had little knowledge of hinduism, Vedic cosmology or anything too specific about the ancient history of such places.

Actually it began when I wanted to prove my friends in our group chat wrong. They said there was no civilization in human history that never went to war or practiced non-violent conflict resolution. I thought surely I could find a handful of examples! Turns out they were mostly right except for the ancient Harappan Empire around 3,000 BCE in the northwestern parts of modern day India and Pakistan. They thrived on crafts like jewelry, ceramics and textiles and were the first people to sew cotton clothes and create gridded streets.

As I started getting very fascinated by all these findings, I ran into this monk. What better way to learn about the culture than through someone like him! Over the years I’ve learned so much beautiful and fulfilling knowledge and have even adopted some practices like an ancient mantra and meditations into my daily spiritual practice. I also had the opportunity to host a podcast for Swami during his time in New York City, which taught me a great deal about Sanatana Dharma or The Eternal Path.


Fast forward to 2024, and Swami let me know he would be organizing a pilgrimage to a few cities in India and asked if I’d like to join. I immediately said yes, and began making plans.

Before flying out, I had a really intense moment at the airport. It was going to be a long flight to Delhi (I decided to spend 3 days before meeting the rest of the group to explore the capital myself) and it dawned on me.. This would be the farthest I have ever traveled from where I was born. Not only that, it was the farthest anyone in my entire family had every traveled from their birthplace.. for leisure and exploration at least. How fortunate I had been to extract myself from an otherwise destructive environment which most never make it out of, and here I was about to board a flight to an ancient land to spend time with a monk who had opened entirely new ways of viewing the world to me. India was definitely the most intense place I’ve ever been and it made what I thought was the rough environment I grew up in look like a luxury resort.

When I landed in Delhi I was immediately hit with the environmental reality of pollution. The ‘morning dew’ was not actually condensation it was a thick smog that smelled of old embers in a dying fire, with a light chemical twang lol. I messed up the schedule of my flight (aka I picked a cheaper one to sacrifice convenience for my fiat) so had to wait a few hours in the airport before I was able to go check into the Airbnb. It was a bed and breakfast in the center, incredibly close to a Kali temple.. which was the main reason I chose it. Riding from the airport was a bit surreal, in one sense it had all the familiar elements: cars, roads, street lights, pedestrians walking, building.. but in another light was all together different.

No one followed the traffic lights, as if they were light suggestions instead of rules. Living in NYC I am very familiar with car horns, sirens and general commotion but the amount of honking I heard was absolutely astonishing! Almost like morse code from driver to driver at all times. I truly understood the chaos of human density.. in a way it was very beautiful too.

I really enjoy cities.. Often when I travel it is to take a break from one city to visit another and it is so stimulating. Inside me there is always this calm temple, so the intensity of the outer world in cities is a great balance. To kill some time I took a random trip to the oldest part of the city ‘Old Delhi’.. Never have I seen something more chaotic and bustling with humanity. It was spectacular. The disorganized order of the tiny streets filled with walkers and took-tooks (pedal or motorized bikes with a carriage). A fortuitous moment found me riding in the back of one getting a tour of the inner part of Old Delhi, which I hadn’t decided to go into yet and most certainly did not pull my camera out. But with my trusty guide Shiva.. I was able to document and see some very beautiful parts the average person may not have.

This was just the prelude, the actual pilgrimage started when we got to the holy city of Vrindavan. Legend has it this was the small cowherd town where the avatar Krishna grew up. Still venerated as one of the most holy places in all of India to this day. The intensity of Delhi definitely prepared me a bit for what I’d experience here but nothing has come close to the spiritual energy spewing from every street. And also monkey! There were so many monkey it’s advised to not take anything out of your pocket or have a camera, because they will steal it and barter for food. Which made an interesting dynamic. No one was walking aimlessly on their phone or distracted, it was all about Krishna!

And it is fully packed, people every single place with no end. Even though it is an ancient city it has been rebuilt many times, so the modern forms are not what it use to be. There were so many temples I don’t think it’s possible to visit all in a month or more long trip. Some were super intense and packed, almost like a heavy metal concert except the band was the Divine. I had a particularly strong experience in the only Kali temple (Krishna Kali Dham) in the city, and had some time to spend getting some local clothes and male beads which was amazing.

We also travelled to Jaipur for a few days which was a bit more organized, also a very old city that surprisingly remained in tact after the Islamic invasions in the 13-18th century. It was really incredible to see and flow through, from temples to royal palaces to small street shops and candy stores. There was a temple for Shiva with a lingam that was said to be 8,000 year old. The temple was below ground and we walked down to it and the priest informed us it had once been on a hill and everyone before had to walk up! Even Krishna has visited this site himself, and it felt that way with the calm simplicity of an ancient energy.

On a social layer I struggled a bit at first with judgment. Some holy sites and bodies of water were absolutely petulant and gross. The smell of pollution was rampant and I wore a mask quite often. Seeing little piles of plastic and sticks being burned for a cooking fire was really heart wrenching.. but when I sat with it for a while, here was a culture going through hyper development. Plastics and modern ‘common’ items like plastic bottles and bags only entered in the last 30 years or so. And without the same infrastructure we have here how else was it going to be dealt with. We may have this impression things are clean here in the US because we hide the trash, the dirty, the unsightly.. and in India there is nowhere to hide it. So rae we any better off when the problem is just moved out of sight? This line of thinking helped me bring some empathy to what I was seeing. I could only imagine how beautiful of a place it will return to once these growing pains of modernity get under control.

Excited to go back some time, probably to the south where it is a little more lush.