Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
I told Shri Baba that I understood the Yamuna was important because of its connection
to Krishna. But what about places Krishna had nothing to do with? What about the rest of
the world? Did Shri Baba care only for Braj?
“The importance of environment is all over the world,” he said. “Without the non-hu-
man life there is no human life.”
What Shri Baba really wanted to talk about was corruption. And he didn't mean it in the
spiritual sense. He said India was corrupt from top to bottom, especially as related to the
environment. The supreme court had decreed that fresh water should come to Braj through
the Yamuna, and yet it didn't happen. The yatra's purpose was to confront that fact.
“Not even 1 percent of India's people think about purifying Ganga and Yamuna,” he
said. “People who make efforts for sacred works are crushed.” He said a price had been put
on his head during the fight to save the hills from mining. People had been kidnapped. Shri
Baba had been poisoned.
He ran his hand over the dome of his head, his face still impassive. “But we don't fear
death,” he said. “I consider myself as dead.”
We found the yatra that night, ten or fifteen miles southeast of Auraiya. They were camping
in a grassy compound off a minor rural highway. The river was nowhere in sight. The roads
and paths along its banks, I was told, had become almost impassable, especially for the
support trucks. Sunil, the march's logistical manager, had chosen to take the yatra along
Highway 2 for a little while. We'd get back to the Yamuna soon, he assured me.
It had taken us all day to get there. Mansi and I had traveled from Maan Mandir along-
side a tall, dark sadhu with a grandly overgrown beard. He wore a plain white robe and
his only possessions were a small digital camera and a nonfunctional cellphone. He had a
kindly face, but we dubbed him Creepy Baba, for the way he kept trying to put his hand on
Mansi's knee.
The idea had been for Creepy Baba to help us find the yatra, but over the course of mul-
tiple jeeps, buses, and one badly crowded jeep-bus, he proved blinkingly inadequate to the
task. In Agra, he convinced us to board the wrong connecting bus, which we could only
un-board after a quick shouting match with the driver and most of the passengers.
Oh god, said Mansi. Who knows where Creepy Baba is taking us.
Sunil picked us up in Auraiya and drove us to camp, where a pod of sadhus descended
on us in greeting. Through Mansi, they asked me over and over how I had found out about
