There an extreme sect of Hindus. Think sort of puritan. There's even one lot that **** corpses so they don't get turned on, forcing them to think about Shiva as opposed to the rotting corpse their knobbing.Originally Posted by Sir C
But the normal sadhus are sound. When I bathed in the Ganga at Varanasi, one came up to me from nowhere when I'd got out, made the trident sign on my head in ash and just buggered off. I actually felt rather honoured. Most tourists won't bathe there, what with the half burned corpses from dead people that couldn't afford enough wood for the funeral pyre but didn't want to skimp on the electric cremation.
But up in Himachal, the sadhus you meet are often westernised. They'll all Brahmins, obviously (priest caste init) so they'll go to university to make their parents happy, having grown up speaking English as well as Bengali or Hindi at home, but will then feel the call of the mountains and the desire to pursue a spiritual path.
So you can chat about politics, economics, philosophy etc with them. And they're really chilled, what with being middle class, educated Hindu hippies stoned off their trolley on the best puff on the planet.
It's meeting these ones that gets people like me and the Beatles into it all. You think they're the good ones and tend to ignore the huge numbers of normal non-sadhu Hindus who support the Hindutva nazis and burn Muslims and untouchables whenever they get the chance.
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