How I Forgot the Naked Monk

In recent years, Encounter’s work with Road Scholar has granted me the tremendous benefit of travelling to far-flung places around the world to teach travellers about the religions of the place they are visiting. Cairo, Japan, Bangkok – good gosh, it was all so wonderful.

But then…..I got to India. 

India is not a different country. It is a different planet. It amazed me and left me breathless. And I can only capture it best by saying: I forgot about the naked monk.

Image: Monkey at Hanuman ji temple, Jaipur, India. Source: Canva.com

I Blame Dave

I was going to have 8 days in India by myself and so I phoned my friend Dave. Dave is of Indian ancestry and has travelled to India and lived and worked there for about a year. Based on his knowledge, Dave gave me great advice that really improved my visit. But in addition, he genuinely wanted me to send him as much as I could every day as he was sure my background and interests meant I would see things he had not. 

So I did. Every day, I sent video clips, photos, and wrote lists of things I couldn’t believe I’d seen. It was a gift having someone on the other end so interested. And then on about day 3, I suddenly realized, “I forgot to tell Dave about the naked monk.” Sure enough, I went back and, well, it had slipped my mind. 

How, you may ask, do you forget about a naked monk? All I can say is “welcome to India.”

I Had My Reasons

I had forgotten about the monk because I had seen monkeys that day that I could walk right up to. I had encountered the most astonishing, vibrant, out-of-a-movie-scene bustling market street I have ever seen. By sheer accident, I discovered an underground temple on the side of the road with four small rooms, a couple of devotees (it was the middle of the day) and four dogs. The dogs were in the temple and looked like they lived there. I sidestepped a cow in the street. I went to a mosque and watched them break the Ramadan fast as the sun set and was offered a yogurt drink by strangers so I could break the fast with them. I walked into an amazing Sikh gurdwara (or temple) laced with gold that marked the spot of a historic martyrdom in Sikh history. In the evening, I visited a Jain temple and there was this enormous aarti ritual with packed rooms of devotees chanting and singing that made the whole place vibrate. I didn’t expect the packed rooms, I just came to see the temple. I could go on and on. 

And that’s the thing. Once you looked at everything you could do….in just one day…you started to realize India may be the only place on earth where you see a naked monk and yet when someone asks “how was your day?”, you forget to mention it.

Image: Bangla Sahib in Delhi (left), Aarti ritual (right). Source: Canva.com

Um, Why Was There a Naked Monk?

The monk was from the Jain tradition. Jainism is not well known in the West but it is an ancient Indian tradition founded about the same time as Buddhism. It has two major sects and in one of these, some monks dispense with wearing clothes since clothes address trivial matters like our appearance. I had read about such monks in books. But I’d never seen one.

Sure enough, I entered the temple grounds and upon entering a small room, found half a dozen devotees with this monk who sat there completely bare naked. I was at the temple for maybe an hour and crossed paths with him again on the way out. 

The Wisdom of Others

After I got back, Encounter had a board meeting and at a break, I was asked about my time in India. Well, I was like a kid on a sugar high talking about Christmas morning (or Diwali if you will). After I finally paused, a couple of the board members looked at each other and said, “so when are you taking a group?” That had not occurred to me.

Image: Taj Mahal.  Source: Canva.com

Time to Go Back

So, we at Encounter are indeed going to take a group to India. Once we decided to go, I knew immediately in every pore of my body that we had to go in March to take part in the colourful, incredible spring festival of Holi. We will visit five cities in northern India:

• Delhi: the incredible capital (where you might forget a certain monk)
• Agra: home of the maybe the peak of Islamic architecture, the Taj Mahal 
• Varanasi: called India’s holiest city, lying on the sacred Ganges river. A city of pilgrimage, cremation fires, and sadhus or holy men. I couldn’t believe this place.
• Amritsar: home of the Golden Temple, the serene centre place for the world’s Sikhs
• Dharamsala: home to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Buddhist community in exile

Image: Dehli, India – Shop with Indian Dresses (Left), Tricycle Rickshaws Riding on a Street (Right).  Source: Canva.com

What We Will Do

We’re going to immerse ourselves us much as possible in probably the most religiously fascinating country on earth. We will experience Holi on the streets of Varanasi, visit the cremation grounds, witness an aarti from the Ganges river, see incredible buildings like the Baháʼí Lotus Temple, the Sikh Golden Temple, and the Taj Mahal. 

Image: Holi celebrations in India, Source: Canva.com

We will also join an early morning pilgrimage and, if the event goes ahead, observe a mystical Sufi musical Qawwali. And we will have exceptional guides. Our main guide is an archaeologist who makes his living translating academic learning into memorable insights for travellers while another is a Tibetan exile who can speak first-hand about fleeing from the incursions of the Chinese government. 

Maximizing the Experience

Our excursions will bring us into contact with 6 religions:

• Baháʼí
• Buddhism
• Hinduism
• Islam
• Jainism
• Sikhism

And to help folks get the most from the experience, we will prepare travellers before we leave with online classes on these traditions and on India’s history. Participants will be prepared to fully absorb all they see.

Source: Canva.com

There’s More

There’s so much more really. If you’d like to get a better sense of what we’re planning to do and see, visit our webpage which includes a brief video, lots of images and descriptions, and a wonderful day-by-day itinerary to let you feel what it will all be like.

And a confession: I wrote this blog thinking it would help alert people to the trip so folks could join us. Well, to my surprise, we filled up all the spots just days after opening. But here’s the thing – the response has been so strong that there’s a good chance we may decide to repeat this trip in 2028. So take a peek and if you’d like to know more, join the info session next week on Thursday, July 16. It might be helpful if we do repeat this to know in advance whether it suits you.

It would be wonderful to stand with you on the banks of Ganga Mata (Mother Ganges).

Image: Ganga River with Traditional Boats in India. Source: Canva.com