Mud, Banyans & Sadhus in the Jungle

"Tomorrow I will take you both to the most beautiful place in Arambol!", Sreesh says as he finishes telling us of his days adventures.  Mere & I are enthusiastically fulfilling our mandate of doing as little as possible which in this moment, looks like sitting in plastic picnic chairs on the edge of the chaotic main drag of Arambol while sipping the best chai we've found at the Shri Ganesh Cafe where we've been watching the evening's bedlam of traffic roll by.  We had been watching the random pedestrians (ranging from dark skinned, brightly dressed locals to pasty white, beach-punk Russian princesses in bikinis and blonde dreads) dodging the scooters, trucks and taxis bombing down the dusty one lane dirt road in both directions.  Suddenly, to our surprise we'd seen a familiar face, Sreesh, who we'd met the night before around a campfire on the beach near our hut.  Sreesh is from Kerala, further South down the coast of India and is travelling with his lovely French girlfriend Elodie, whom he'd while studying art in Lyon for a year.  She is also an artist and was accompanying last night but this evening he is with 2 other similarly beautiful women.  Indeed, our suspicions that Sreesh  is flirt of the first order are becoming more and more confirmed since he is tall, dark, has long black hair in a ponytail, is well built, and we continue to see him around Arambol always talking to different, attractive, scantily clad women.  Ah, these artists.
The next day we don't see Sreesh or Elodie until dusk, when we find them in the middle of sculpting a giant head of the Indian god Siva in the sand out front of a beach side restaurant.  The face looks like it's emerging from the sand and we're blown away as it only took them an hour to do it as the sun set.  So we agree to have dinner together which consists of very fresh local fish as Sreesh orders in Hindi for us and we select the fish from an bin of the iced catches of the day.  One of the fish we pick is appropriately named "Honeymoon Fish". We pay a lot less thanks to Sreesh growing up on this coast and he knows what fish should cost when you're not an easily exploited tourista.
After a fun evening together we meet the next morning for a peeled fruit salad breakfast at their favourite stand and after polishing off a fresh coconut we head for the jungle to discover what Sreesh was referring to as "the most beautiful place in Arambol".  So we go beyond the end of the beach, beyond the mediterranean styled cliffs covered in plaster buildings, vendors & restaurants, beyond the next beach which is sandwiched between the Arabian Sea and the fresh water "Sweet Lake" to where we reach the edge of the jungle.
The heat of the day has been creeping up on us so it's a relief as we reach the sign that tells us the best karma can be found by not littering in the jungle ahead.  As we move underneath the jungle canopy, the shade it provides is refreshingly cool and calm as the sound of pounding surf from the beach disappears.
We follow Elodie, who's been here before, as she takes us up a trail that is soon following the stream that feeds Sweet Lake.  We reach some shallow pools where it's deep enough to submerge ourselves in the wonderfully cool water.  And right beside the pools is mud that she tells us to smear all over our bodies and then bake in sun with.  Now since Mere's no stranger to spa treatments and since I'm a big fan of not paying for one, we strip down to our bathing suits and slather the  mud on.  As we sit on the rocks in the sun, we're looking like we're getting ready for some kind of primal ritual and get some overly enthusiastic stares from the men of a few Indian families that hike by.
Here's Mere and me getting our mud on:

 

After washing off, our skin feels born again and amazingly smooth after a week of being covered in the salt and sand of the beach.
Feeling revitalized, we continue on the path deeper into the jungle where we've heard is an ancient banyan tree considered sacred since Buddha is said to have achieved enlightenment while meditating under one.  After following the creek bed for a while it feels very different from our familiar beach environment and we pass a few squatters camps of folks who are living in this cooler, quieter jungle.  The only sounds we're hearing now that disturb the growing stillness are the occasional breeze in the branches overhead or exotic bird calls in the distance.
We climb up a slope and emerge into a small flat plateau with about 6 or 7 other travellors sitting around a small fire under a huge tangle of branches and roots that's the banyon tree we're looking for.  I'm startled to find so many people here as it's so quiet and even more startled to find an older Indian man in amongst them wearing round glasses, a big smile, little body fat, a string of mala beads draped over his shoulder and not much else besides a sarong around his waist.  Everyone else sounds or looks like their from Israel or Russia and a couple of them have recently shaved heads so it's all got a bit of a cult-like feel to it.  But we're gestured to join the circle on some beach mats on the packed dirt floor around the fire and our apparent host, known as a Sadhu here in India, a sort of holy man, lights up an Indian cigarette known as a 'Beedie'.  Hoping something stronger will be passed around, we sit down and proceed to hang out under the Banyon tree in the coolness of the jungle as the heat of the day passes.
Here's a quick snapshot of our Sadhu and the banyan tree scene:

Not much gets said.  We watch the fire.  We admire the banyan tree.  We listen to the sounds of the jungle.  We notice prayer flags and a bell in the branches of banyan trees.  Mere & I spot monkeys high up in the branches.  I reflect on how old the stone work is at one side of the clearing.  I keep looking for suspicious behaviour but it's all pretty mellow.
I'm still wary but Sreesh looks like he's starting to do a meditatation which inspires me to do the same along with thoughts of Buddha doing this just before enlightenment was achieved.  Sadly, I don't reach enlightenment but am surprised when I open my eyes.  Directly in front of me a leaf of the banyan tree has been placed and the centre of it is a scoop of what looks like some kind of cooked yellow grain like cous cous.  Looking around I see the Sadhu is just finishing serving similar leaves out to everyone else in the circle and my fears and suspicions dissolve as I realize he's feeding us.   I'm feeling the contrast of his generosity and my paranoia and Sreesh tells us later that people usually bring gifts or offerings to him since we weren't asked to pay for our food.  On our way out down the hill we also notice a stone bowl with the engraving "Take if you need to, Give if you're able to".
We eat the food we're provided slowly with our hands and I'm again surprised as it's so delicious and tasty with hints of coconut milk.  Then we go back to sitting quietly, staring at the little fire, listening to the jungle.
I look up above the branches and see a large hawk swooping down into branches above.  Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye I see something fall beside Elodie who moves away from it startled.  She says a snake had just landed on the ground beside here and took off into the bush!  We're reassured that it wasn't a poisonous one and once again things settle down until we hear a chorus of voices coming from the hill above us where there's no trail.
Out of the jungle appears 4 beautifully dressed young Indian women in very bright and colourful saris, each carrying in their hands bundles of flowers and speaking in Hindi very quickly.to each other.  They sit down with us and Sreesh eventually translates that they've been chased off the beach by the police and ran into the jungle since they weren't supposed to be selling flowers there.  They take some leaves from the banyon tree to add to their arrangements of flowers and then, wishing us namaste, take off down the trail we'd come up.
The stillness of the jungle returns and I start falling asleep until finally we decide to go as Mere's scheduled to clothes shopping with our neighbour Naomi from Colorado.  Enlightenment definitely won't be reached today.