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Published: November 25th 2007
Hello again. Feels like I haven't written in a while now so got a bit to catch up on. I've taken a bit of an aversion to sitting in internet cafes, n having spent nearly 3 hours trying to put my photos up the other evening, I've been putting off coming back to one. Was hoping maybe I'd come in today and someone would have done it for me, but no such luck! I know, I know. The less you have to do, the more the smallest things seem! The other evening I was having a real dilemna over whether to eat and then do my photos, or to go and do the photos and then eat. Rony pointed out how tough it is travelling and we both cracked up! Hard life it is over here. Anyhow, then having spent nearly 3 hours doing them, I made it back to the Namastay cafe (one of my favourite haunts here...) just in time for tofu chilli and played cards & drank whisky with the guys in there til the early hours. It's very strange here. You do spend a lot of time doing absolutely nothing. Takes a bit of getting used to, but its amazing how easy it is to slip into that way of life. The people here are lovely too. There are a few phrases regularly used over here that sum up the general mood, like 'anythng is possible', (maybe not probable, but possible!) 'same same', 'have a good day'. Its funny when you have conversations with some of the locals though as you're never sure if they really understand or not. Sometimes you can have the same conversation with the same guy a few days running and each day he'll say something completely different to the previous day! Pretty funny really.
Anyway, so what have I been up to all this time. I guess the 5 day trek is a pretty good place to start. I wanted to go trekking somewhere while I was here and I hadnt heard back from the guy I met in Dharmsala who was heading this way to do some trekking. Hence I worked my way round the many trekking shops there are over here to see what you could do. It was in one of them I met Linda from Holland who was also wanting to go trekking. We ended up looking together and headed back to a place that I'd been to the previous day which was the cheapest we'd come across. It worked out just under 20 pound a day which is quite a lot over here, but I wanted to go somewhere with a guide this time. Also, they looked after everything, food, accom, porters and I could leave my stuff in their office for the 5 days so I wasnt lugging my backpack full of stuff across the himalaya.
The first day we spent in the car pretty much. We had to meet at 6am, but then sat drinking tea for an hour or so before we walked off to where we met the car. It was just Linda & I and the guide Rama, and the driver (another name i've forgotten!). We got to Sari about 2ish and had lunch there. Saris a really tiny mountain village, maybe 300 people live there. I used to wonder what people do who live in mountain places like this, but from what I hear, it takes all day to do everything for yourself. Grow your own food, wash your clothes, cook, clean, look after the animals, the land etc. Its a pretty hard life, and they have very little. Its amazing though how happy they all seem. Complete contrast to the western world, where people have everything but most of them are miserable as sin. We watched a couple of people picking veg in a very sparse veggie plot just infront of the cafe and later realised they were picking the spinach we were going to eat. Have to say, it was some of the best spinach I've eaten!
It was there we met our porter. The road up to the lake where we were camping for night one was only short, but was flipping steep. The porter was a tiny guy, who looked like he had a problem with his eyes as well, so I'm really not sure how he managed getting up with tent, sleeping bags, bottles of water and everything. It was tough with a very light backpack! I offered to carry the sleeping bags though and he wasn't having any of it. I think its a bit offensive somehow, like youre saying he can't so his job or something.
Anyhow, made it to the top. The lake was beautiful, and you did get wonderful reflections of the surrounding mountains in the water which was beautiful. That evening we spent sitting round the campfire in front of the tent listening to Ramas tails of 'demons' in the mountains. I thought he'd said diamonds first of all, and then wondered why he was talking as though it was a bad thing! I was like, lets go find some! After realising he wasn't saying there are lots of diamonds in the mountains, Linda and I tryed to humour him by looking really taken in by it! It was funnier still, as more rum had been drunk, how as soon as the porter and the cook had gone back to the tea shop that loads of banging noises started and Rama started his wide eyed frightened look! I think they were more drunk than we were. Rishikesh is a totally dry area so I guess they don't drink that much. Rama was def pretty pissed. When Linda and I decided to head into the tent ( a very small cosy 2 man....its a good job we got on!), he wanted us to walk him back to the tea shop first! So we reminded him he was supposed to be looking after us and he made off! Not sure if he really did believe in these demons or not. We heard a lot about them from various people over the next few days.
The next day we set off. Day 2 was the best walking day. Probably about 6 hours to Chopta from Sari but we didn't see anyone else. Just Rama, the porter, Linda and I. We didn't need the porter that day, but apparently he wanted to come along with us. He was actually a lovely guy. He turned up on several mornings randomly, just to say hello. We could never work out if he'd been home and come back or what, but it was always nice to see him. He was such a happy guy and he seemed to like Linda and I. I'm not sure if they weren't used to people laughing so much. Linda and I spent most of the time laughing at one thing or another. The walk was in the middle of nowhere. Through jungle, open grass land, up and down. Many different sceneries. It was really beautiful. We stopped a few times for a rest. We found walnuts and ate them, along with biccies and chocolate Rama had brought. It was enough to keep us going til we emerged from the woods onto a road. From the road, we could see Chopta where we were headed.
The first tea shop in the village was our haunt for the rest of that day and later in the trip on day 4. The chef there Rajendra was a lovely guy and made the best food we had on the trip. It was all Indian dhaba style food we had the whole trip, so like aloo parantha for brekky, dal and rice for lunch and some kind of curry or rice again for dinner. very very nice. The paranthas for breakfast are really really good. Nothing like what you'd have in England. They're a bit like a chapati but fried and they have spicy potato in the middle. You get a dish of curry to dip them in as well. V V good. The chai too is fab. At first when I came to india I didn't like it. Its like really milky sweet tea, but its amazing how quick you get used to it. I've also sussed out that to get an england style tea, just ask for black tea with milk separate. That way you get to add your own amount and its got no sugar in it. Anyhow, on the walk the chai was good as it gave you that extra bit of energy to get you up the hills.
Having set up our tent outside Rajendra's teashop, we built the campfire and sampled the local village wine. Needless to say it wasnt long before Rama was pretty pissed again and insisted we all dance round the fire to the new tape he'd bought for the car journey.....class - dancing round the fire in the middle of the himalayas to shaka laka boom boom! he he! yep, its as bad as it sounds! :O)
Having had dinner, Linda and I were asked 'do you want to sleep now'? When we said no, we were asked again and again at 1 minute intervals untl we got the picture that they wanted us to go to bed! We realised later that the guys didn't want to eat with us girls, so they wanted us to bugger off so they could eat! Funnier still, when we were laughing about the whole thing in the tent, Rama called out 'Sleep...no laughing!', which made us laugh all the more! :O)
So day 3 dawned and our walk up the top of the hill - 4000m. We did it in pretty quick time and spent a lot of the day sitting on the top. The view from there was pretty unbelievable. Panoramic too, so you could see 360 degree view of the himalayas. Really lovely. I don't think that many people make it right to the top. We were sat there for a good few hours waiting for the sunset and we only saw about half a dozen other people. Really nice. There's a very small temple right on the top (yep another one...they're everywhere...there was even a really tiny one in the middle of the woods which we saw on day 2!). Anyhow, after waiting up the top for a good few hours we got a bit bored (having tried to while the hours away with a bit of yoga, meditation and when all else failed just sunbathing!) and headed back down to the teashop where we were staying the night. We stopped half way down to see another fantastic sunset before heading back for dinner. The mood there wasn't half as good as the night before at Rajendras, so we headed to bed pretty early with the idea of getting up to walk back up the top for sunrise.
Well, it felt like only a few hours had gone by when Rama banged on the door for us to get up. I couldn't believe it was 4 am, so I turned my mobile on to check the time. It said just gone midnight. I was pretty sure it was right, but didn't want to miss out on sunrise, so got dressed and wrapped in blankets went outside. When I got outside it was pretty obvious that sunrise wasn't even close. I tried to tell them it was only half twelve, but Rama wasn't having it and Linda, I guess, didnt' want to miss out, so they headed off. I was pretty sure I was right so I decided that the bed was a much better option - it was the first and only night on the trek that we were going to get a bed to sleep in after all! I have to say, I ddid spend an hour or so hoping the time on my mobile was right and I wasn't missing out, but soon drifted off to sleep to the sound of some creature running back and forwards over the roof. I'd found this a bit disconcerting at first, but having heard it most of the night, I was pretty sure it was just running over the roof and wasn't actually coming in.
The next thing I knew, there was a really loud scrabbling noise and a huge thud as something landed on the pillow about 6 inches from my head. I've never moved so quick in all my life! Having jumped over the other side of the bed, I realised that Linda was back and she too was wide awake with our new visitor. Having scrabbled around to find a torch, we discovered it was a jungle bunny.,... pretty much like a normal bunny but smaller - about rat size. Quite cute, but not when you're sharing a bed with it! We tried to get it out but instead it ran under the bed. So there we were at 4.30 in the morning with a bunny under our bed! Neither of us wanted to go back to sleep with it in there so it seemed pretty good idea to get up and see the sunrise. Poor Linda - it was the second time she'd walked up the mountain in a night! Rama declined the walk...funnily enough, which left Linda, me and the driver. I have to say, it was well worth the walk. The panoramic view meant we not only saw the sunrise, but the reflection of the light on the mountains all around us. Pretty stunning really.
Needless to say, the guys all felt pretty done in the next day. More so than me, as they'd done the extra trip up the mountain at midnight....just in case sunrise decided to come early! Hence we did very little walking the next day and instead went to a local village to see this religious festival at a temple there. Not really my scene really. Just a lot of people staring at the white people! Quite interesting I guess though. I think Rama felt pretty bad about getting the time wrong - if I was him, I'd probably have made a joke out of it but he didn't. Instead he promised to burn his watch, which apparently showed 3 different times, Thailand, Nepal and India. Not quite sure why you'd need 3 times, but still. That night they appeared to be making an extra special effort to make it up to us with chicken dinner, rum and beer. Linda was a bit worried about the chicken being fresh, but when she looked in the car, she came back saying we had no need to worry about how fresh it was! Say no more, I think you can probably work it out. They all found it really funny that I was so squeemish and didn't want to see it until it was on the plate in front of me! It was all top secret as well as the village didn't drink beer or eat chicken, so we were sworn to secrecy! It didn't appear to last long though as one villager appeared and went again, and then we had a steady stream of visitors to the teashop to see what was going on! The world's best kept secret for all of 20 minutes! Anyhow, all said and done, Rajendra did another top job and it was lovely.
At some point in the evening, Linda and the driver were taking the piss about the midnight run the night before and Rama, in his normal pissed state, having told us how his long lost Slovakian girlfriend had given him the watch and it meant so much to him, decided to throw it on the fire. When we tried to rescue it...I don't think Linda really wanted him to burn it.......he made sure we couldn't by moving the logs on top of it. Well, following that, he disappeared in a drunken sulk and left us all dancing.
The next day, Rama's mood hadn't improved much and we spent the journey back to Rishikesh in a bit of an awkward silence! Shame, as it kind of ruined what had been a pretty good trip! The driver guy was doing his best to lighten the mood most of the way, but Rama was pretty sullen pretty much all the way home. He only started talking again when we were nearly there. Needless to say it was a pretty long journey home and we were pretty relieved to see rishikesh again!
I spent another wk and a bit in Rishikesh after the trekking. I'm not sure exactly what I did, apart from a day's rafting on the ganga. That was pretty cool though, not adrenelin pumping or anything, as the rapids were pretty short, but nonetheless pretty good fun. We had a good crowd on our boat and spent a lot of it trying to throw eachother in! We must have spent a good couple of kms just floating down the ganga rather than being in the boat. We also stopped at a waterfall on the way down which we could get under and we were able to climb up a cliff on the side of the river and jump in. Unfortunately, I didn't take the camera as I thought it would get too wet. A Canadian lady who was on the trip took some pretty good photos which she said she'd email, but no sign of them just yet. Other than that, I pretty much spent the time chilling out. Playing cards and chatting. It wasn't until I realised the date, I decided I'd better be heading down towards the animal rescue place. I'd initially said I'd be with them at the beginning of the month, but then, having been sidetracked by Rishikesh, I'd said it would be more like the middle of the month. It was now the 13th and I wanted to see Agra on the way down, so I decided I'd better book my train ticket out of there. Unfortunately when I went to pick my ticket up the morning of the train, the travel agent (the same one that had organised the trekking!) told me the train was full and he hadn't been able to get me a ticket. So instead, I headed off to the bus station to see if I could get a local bus. It worked pretty well, as I turned up at the bus station to find one was going to Agra in an hour. I was fully expecting to have to spend a night in a hotel by the bus station and wait for one the following day. The journey wasn't great. Its about 12 hour drive overnight and I don't sleep that well on busses. We arrived at Agra about 5 in the morning. I'd been recommended a guest house which I got a rickshaw to take me to but when we got there the guy on the gate said they were full. That was ok actually, as from the ride through the dity, I'd decided I didn't want to be there that long anyhow. From the guidebook, I'd sussed that the only thing really worth seeing was the Taj Mahal, and the best time to see that was sunrise, which I was just in time for. They even have a luggage room where you can leave your bag which left me free to go in and see it without lugging my pack round. I can't really describe quite how lovely the Taj Mahal actually is. The pictures you see don't really do it justice. It's exquisite....from a distance and up close. It's well worth going to see and putting up with the rest of Agra for. The gardens around it are beautiful too and I made full use of one of the benches to catch up on some sleep! That done, and feeling refreshed, I got something to eat before collecting my pack and heading back to the bus station to head for Rajasthan.
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Jackie and Geoff
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oooh ello !
Hello Jungle Bunny !! I think I am going to call you that from now on...it sounds so cute ! It all sounds great ! Think we might sell up and do the same as you...but what about Mr Buddy ? ! Poor Poor poor mr Buddy ! :) Lots of love Jackie and Geoff XXX