Rishikesh

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I've now spent more time in Rishikesh than in any oth part of India.

There's not really a whole lot to see, so i won't really spend a lot of time writting on it. I did however find a place with a trully chilled out vibe relaxed atmosphere.

Th train ride up was itself something special (as they often are). This time we were booked on the Shatabti express, one of the all AC trains that runs from city to city through the day. This was crazy, we were treated like we were on an airliner. People in uniforms would come and offer drinks and give us bottled water free. Every stop there would be an anouncement in English and Japanese explaining what the town was known for - quite something for the tourist who was used to sticking his head out the window to see which stop the train was at were up to.

We reached our first stop, Haridwar where we planned to spend the night, in the mornng. Haridwar is a religious town significant to Hinduism on the Ganges in Uttaranchal. It is a major pilgrimage sight and mny people bathe in the water here as it's not quite as disgusting as when it reaches Varanasi. We liked Haridwar, although it ma hve been just a little big for our liking. It felt to me a lot like Darjeeling, a kind of big holiday destinationwith relatively few poor. One thing that we noticed here was that the town dealt with very little western tourism and had much less spoken an written english, which did at times make life difficult. We ony spent one day here, enough to see the Ghats and the pilgrims on the first afternoon and then take the chairlift to the hilltop temple on the next morning. This ws not the ordinary temple. It infact had a feel more like a foodcourt- whisping people around from one holy sight to the next and charging them entry fees all over the place. We were happy enough with the view though- right over the ganges as it split and erupted from the mountains.

That morning, around noon, we jumped on a bus to our main destination, Rishikesh. We had never done the bus before and i wasn't sre bout what to expect. It turned out to be as easy and cheap as anything elese. They left so often to Rishikesh that this one was half empty. This didn't stop a textbook display of the common Indian's complete lack of comprehension of the concept of 'personal space'. For whatever reason, all the people on buses sit right up the front and leave the back empty. One man followed this rule so much that he came and asked me to move my pack from the seat next to me so he could sit on it, even when the double seat one row back was completely free- not having the energy to argue i put the bag on my lap and just looked out the window

Rishikesh came only an hour later. After escaping the larger actual centre of town, we found ourselves in the more picturesque ashrams of the north. We settled into our hotel- Bhandari Swiss Cottage- and had some lunch. Wandering around the old town made us instantly fall in love with it. It included tiny winding paths that traversed the steep hill of the town, great big suspension footbridge dating back to the British colonial era, and small patches of sand and rocks resembling beaches. It was the ideal place to visit after the noise of Delhi. Our first afternoon was spent sitting on the rocks and sand on the banks of the Ganges, listning to music at dusk.

The next day was of similar occurance, we found the bigger beach further down the river and let the day pass by. Some kids played cricket (a little more seriously than usual) and every now and then someone would come to the river to lay flowers and sy a prayer. As it got darker we walked further into Swarg Ashram and saw the sun set over a chorus of school voices singing around a fire in the daily festival at the riversedge. I can still hear the tune in my head.

The next day, I decided to look at another Sitar, which I have had my eye on for the past week back in Delhi. I went up the stairs, following the clear instrutions of the street sign which said 'Sitars available upstairs', and told the guy sitting down that I was interested in buying one. He treated this request with some bewilderment. Not quite knowing how to deal with the posoion he was in, he dialed a phone on the table next to him and as soon as it was connected put me on.

"Um, hello, I'd like to look at some sitars" I very politely asked. The man answered in a very Borat style voice "I have, I have, I will be there in 20 minutes". 40 minutes later he showed up looking more like Borat than he sounded, mainly due to hislarge boof hair do and overgrown Moustache. He showed me model he was selling for 20,000 rupees (out of my price range), and it sounded really really good. It was easy to play and felt solid too. The guy invited me back for a lesson that night and i learned the basics of the instrument, hich to be honest, are pretty easy as it's all tuned to one key. I said I wasn't sure about spending that much money but I may return after thinking about it. I never returned, It was too much money and hasstle (it would have been absolute hell on a train), maybe next time.

The next day happened to be Christmas. After wandering what to do the previous day, we had gathered a band of felow homesick westeners (only one other Australian and a Canadian) and went for a big Chritmas lunch. The others didn't quite agree with my (actually Nick's) idea of eating purely western food on Christmas day, they ordered curries and I ordered pasta dish of some variety. We saw a courum board and had a few games. When we also managed to fit in five games of poker it occured to us that our food was taking quite a while to come. I was designated as the one to ask what was going on- i romptly did this and i think the cook took it on himself to start our meal. This left us enough time to try and find the phrase "you ruined Christmas" in our guide book. What came out was probably closer to 'holy festival is spoiled' or something, he certainly didn't follow.

Like any good Christmas lunch we left rather full at almost 4pm, and searched for a game of cricket. We went down to the place tht Chris and I had been the day before and made a game of our own. We were joined by some kids (one of which we were unable to establish the gender of) and a man who can only be described as Orange Jesus. We steyed there and played for the best part of two hours as the sun went down, before we made our way down to the other footbridge and over to the side of the river that the hotel was on.

It was here that we hailed an already overcrowded autorickshaw and tried to cram in. Unfortunitely there was ony enough room for two people and Craig (our Canadian friend) and I were forced to hang off the side. This turned out to be quite a lot of fun. I was able to pull off a James Bond style 'shuffle around the moving car' manouver (I was of course singing the theme song out loud) before i realised that i was probably going to be hit by a car considering that out driver didn't know where i was. So, I jumped up on the roof and sat it out. Quite fun for 10 Rupees (30 cents).

Christmas night was aided by more homesick western food, a few beers on the rooftop and a game of poker- which for the first time in my life I won. Thankfully, my body had the courtesy of waiting until Boxing day orning to throw up Christmas dinner and be sick for the rest of the day. Now that I have had my first real travel sickness experience, let me confirm the rumors and tell you that it is indeed shit (pardon the pun). The worst part is that it wasn' just that day. If it was just 24 hours of bing sick, i could happily deal with it- just get it out of my system and have a quiet day. The problem was that it dragged on for days and it took weeks to completely get my appetitte back. Believe me, if there's one thing that i don't want taken away from my in India it's my Appettite- food is half the reason i came here.

They say that hindsight is 20:20. With the aid of hindsight than, it can probably be said that trekking u the moutains to see some waterfalls the day after I was sick probably wasn't the best decision. It wasn't so bad, but I did feel this crappy chest infection the whole way and i probably should have rested. The sights were worth it though, and i wouldn't want to come to Rishikesh without seeing them.

Still not feeling 100% for the next couple of days, I made the decision to let Chris go to Mussoorie while I stayed in Rishikesh and just rested. This was a fairly god decision. I just stayed at home and read and washed some clothes, pretty much just what i needed.

After a day and a half in my solitude I made my way to Dehra Dun to meet Chris just next to the station. Apart from the most insanely crowded bus that I've ever seen (they just kept stopping and opening the doors when there were people waiting), this was hastle free. We had a quite night, watched some movies on Star Movies, and got to bed early, for tomorrow was New Years.

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Photos

Worth the climb
Even if my body hated me for it, seeing these falls was worth it.

Lady enjoying the choir
I took about 20 photos of this lady, I couldn't get enough of the detail in her facial expression- as though her child was in the choir

Meet Orange Jesus
He served up some mean out swingers