Weekend in the Himalayas

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A week already?? Only?? Seriously?? So much longer it seems..

This weekend was, hands down, absolutely AWESOME. Saturday morning we met up with 2 students from the Traditional Medicine program and the other Rural Himalayan rotation people (5 of them) to go to Rishikesh, the Yoga capital of the world (Sue will be so jealous!) and the holiest city in India. For all that, it's horribly congested and what is up with the flies??!! There were flies *everywhere*. I have no idea where they came from since DehraDun was thankfully mostly free of them, but they all seem to have decided to make that particular city their home. Anyway, we stayed at an Ashram, a sort of Hindu religious place to stay where they made us take off our shoes to enter. It was right on the Ganges (pronounced "Gong-ga" in Hindi) and we were up on the second floor with an absolutely gorgeous view. The second we got there we set our stuff down and off it was to go rafting on the Ganges! That day it was up to Class 4, and yes it was perfectly safe, we were high up, way way upstream of all the bathing/peeing/etc that happens in the holy river downstream. In fact, the water was ice cold from thawing from the mountaintops, and it felt AWESOME. You guys know me and I'm definitely not a cold weather person, but I gotta tell you, when you're been sweating from the second you step out of the shower until you step into the shower the next day and are used to having to lie absolutely still at night to get 3 hours of sleep, it was absolutely *marvelous*!!

Rafting in the Himalayas was just... AMAZING. The views here are just so different from NE!!! I mean, we've got mountains, but they're just not like these. Someone mentioned that maybe it's because ours are glacier-cut and these are tectonic-plate made, so maybe that's it, I don't know, but it was just the most beautiful non-autumn foliage mountain scene I've ever seen. You guys'll have to check out my pictures when I get back home. In any case, rafting was awesome. As on all guides they tried to raise our team spirit, in this case with a cheer of "Yo baby yo baby yo baby, yo-o-o-o-o!!" with which we'd smack the boat with our paddles with each "baby" and then in the end all meet paddles in the air, and then smack the water at the end. Then since the other boat kept competing with us (we had 2 boats total) we had another which was something like "Chimimunga chimimunga" after which we'd shout "Hoo-ha!" 3 times as we raised and lowered our paddles over our laps, which would then repeat 3 times. Personally I felt like an ape with that one, but perhaps that was appropriate since I was in the boat with the boys =P and Amber, since we only had 4 boys and 8 girls and the others were too afraid to be in the "strong" boat. =P Anyway, it was really awesome, no capsizing, and at the end we went cliff jumping!! First time ever, and I was *scared*!!! I only went after about 10 people'd already gone and no one had broken anything or killed a spinal cord or something. It was about 15 feet up, and you guys know I'm afraid of heights! I kinda looked over the edge and was like... erm... uh... In the end someone told me just not to look down and I made myself run off before I could change my mind. Still alive, all working muscles and joints so yay! =)

When we got back we all showered and ran off to see the Aarti, this really amazing Hindu ceremony that occurs every night in Rishikesh every night. At sundown all the people gather on the steps of this temple on the Ganges (right across from our Ashram!) and there's singing, fire-worshipping, and they light floating flower rafts with candles in the middle, and send them down the Ganges. It's so amazing and beautiful. I'm trying to get a copy of the music from somewhere. I also took some videos of it on my camera, so you'll all be able to hear the music and see it if you want too. It's absolutely gorgeous.

Next day we woke up to leave at 4:30 AM (on 3 hours of sleep, by the way) to drive to the top of an ~ 1900 meter mountain. We climbed a zillion steps (high altitude, no breakfast, not fun...) to a temple there to watch the sunrise over the Himalayas. Just... gorgeous. They then gave us packed brunches and said something like, "just over there there's a stream, where we'll hike to, and you guys can have your brunch." So we're like ok, cool, and off we go. And go.... and go.... About, oh, 3 HOURS later... we give up, and decide to have brunch without the stream. Honestly, distance here is terribly relative! =P It was kinda painful to me because of my bad knees (2 min into the hike my left one had already started to hurt - probably because it's all downhill) but what AMAZING scenery!! Later on in the hike we passed those terraced farms that you see in the pictures, and just gorgeous vistas all the way down. At the "bottom" there was a waterfall that we mountain-climbed up (literally, we almost needed belays to get up there!) and some people swam in the pool at the top. I really hate the wet pants feeling when you're hiking, so I opted out, but the water felt *great* on my tired meet! Only wish I could have soaked my knees a little too, since at that point they were pretty much at 6.5 - 7.5 on the pain scale with ever bend...

In total it took us about 6 hours for the hike, during which I drank about 3 liters of water without needing the restroom once, and we had 3 false finishes. First was the waterfall, which we were told was at the end of the hike, only then we continued for another good 45 min or so (the guide said 20 min...) down the mountain, till we got to the main road. Great, we thought, we're done!! Only.. no. There was still a good 2 km walk in the hot sun till we would reach the auto-rickshaws that would take us back to the Ashram. Anyway, it all turned out ok in the end, but we were *dead* by the time we got back. Pretty much took a quick shower (none of us really had any clean clothes left so we had to be a bit inventive...), and passed out on the bed.

So, that was the weekend! Amazing, absolutely gorgeous, and I think I'm going to need some serious physical therapy when I get back, my knees are not going to forgive me for this for a long, long time... Next entry, Moussori!

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