When I was a child like most kids I avoided eating my greens – enjoyed white meat never been keen on red – one of my nieces is like that now.
I always use to say I couldn’t live without eating meat every day, couldn’t picture myself being a vegetarian and living on just greens.
During my travel to India for the first time way before I embraced yoga – I did the “Golden Triangle” in India.
I thought I could handle backpacking with my partner for a month travelling from Delhi to Bombay with lots of various pit stops. We went to a place called Pushka (Rajasthan) with its hippie vibe, and imagine our surprise when we couldn’t eat meat and to my partner’s surprise no alcohol allowed either. Only vegetarian food was permitted full stop!
We stayed there for few days and I must say that I have never come across such a menu full of vegetarian dishes, the street food being freshly cooked in front of you – just delicious! Well that was my first 3 days of being a vegetarian and I actually didn’t want to leave that place it was so vibrant. When we left Pushka and ate mostly vegetarian meals we didn’t actually miss eating meat which was a bit of a surprise to both of us.
Our intention had always been to travel by local train and I had heard so much about a particular train called the Rajdhani Express that we wanted to board it to travel from Delhi to Bombay. Our flight back to the UK was from Bombay we had even booked our first class ticket.
We ended up in the wrong station – apparently there are two terminals and we were in the wrong one. We had to rush for a taxi and told the taxi driver the situation we were in – only a few minutes to get to New Delhi railway station for the train’s departure. My god! I have never to this day witnessed a taxi journey like that! My heart was in my mouth by the time we got to the right train station with minutes to spare and my partner quickly pushed me into a train that was just about to leave telling me to ‘get in quick’. I was protesting that this may not be the right train and, you guessed it, – it wasn’t! In fact it was heading in the opposite direction and the train we were supposed to catch was still at the station on the next track behind us. I wanted to cry because we didn’t have the right tickets and we had to stand for hours. The ticket conductor was very understanding and managed to arrange to get us back to Bombay on another train hours later – phew!
After my vegetarian experience in India, I decided to only eat fish and not meat because I loved my seafood. During my 30 days in a Vedanta Centre during my teacher training we weren’t allowed out expect on Sundays after morning Meditation and had to be back for evening meditation. We were given only vegetarian meals every single day which I absolutely loved. When I left the centre and got home I couldn’t eat fish either. So, I have been a vegetarian for over 10 years now and my health has been never better.
“Accept what is, Let go of what was and have faith in what will be” – Buddha
To eat is a necessity but to each intelligently is an art
“People eat meat and think they will become strong as an ox, forgetting that the ox eats grass.” – Pino Caruso