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4 hours in
3 hours back
2 monkey feedings
2 adoptions
1 monkey attack
+ 1 amazing temple = Best day in India yet
We woke early, planning on hiking our way out to a temple 7km away. Called Neelkanth, it refers to an incident in Hindu mythology where Shiva drank some poison from the ocean and turned his throat blue (Neelkanth means "blue throat"). The morning was cool, an the day planned to be mild, reaching no more than 95 degrees Farenheit.
We had to walk a few kilometers out from Rishikesh to get to the trailhead, which was made instantly recognizable by the presence of a local businessman and a wild hilarious of langur monkeys. Langurs are large monkeys, with the males reaching 3-4 feet high, 40-50 pounds, with a very long tail. Quite a bit bigger than the rhesus monkeys I've had history dealing with, and even those can be quite difficult and intimidating at times.
Fortunately, this particular hilarious knew the score, and quite peacefully ate the nuts that we bought off the gentleman at the trailhead. It was quite thrilling, the illicit human-monkey contact that this transaction allowed.
Normally, monkeys in the wild are aggressive little things, full of a couple diseases that can quite easily kill us. To have one of thew little things grab your hand with one of their tiny black hands and pick nuts from your grasp was so much fun that we repeated the experience with another monkey feeder 10 minutes down the road.
After the second monkey feeding station, the trail decided to go straight up hill. The next several kilometers were a blur of my trying every trick I knew to convince Lucy to keep going. Finally, I decided to give in and turn back. We could hear drumming and chanting and knew that we were close, and we both got a bit of cold feet at the prospect of being unwelcome guests at a private ritual. Additionally, we had climbed quite a ways up, and were getting the amazing panoramic views that had been my goal all along. We were stopping basically every switchback, so at the end of one we took a long break and I told Lucy that I thought we should go back. She replied that it would be a shame to have come this close
and not at least see the temple, so we gathered our sweat soaked gear and trudged off once again.
Not 20 feet down the road, there was the biggest monkey I'd ever seen in real life sitting on a low stump at the side of the road. We crossed to the opposite side of the narrow path as we approached, but he still climbed down off his perch and sat in the middle of the trail. We backed off and stared, unsure of what attitude to take. I knew from previous experience that monkeys were like almost all other social animals in that they didn't want to fight and would retreat at the first sign of aggression from a much larger animal, so I made myself big and got aggressive. He bared his teeth and stood up. I made myself small, and slinked back to Lucy. Next, we decided to appease him. I took my backpack off and was rooting around in the bottom for some granola I knew was there, when Lucy yelped and I realised that he was coming towards me. Quickly. Before I could decide what to do (or where to run, screaming like a girl)
he had grabbed my backpack. Unwilling to give up, I pulled back. Then I remembered all the communicable diseases, and decided to let him just have the damn thing.
Immediately after I relinquished my prize, the monkey started throwing everything out. Hats, empty water bottles, full water bottle. Still sure that we had food in it somewhere, he started trying to tear it open. This is when I decided to throw rocks. I threw a big one near him, which made a big noise and finally put some indecision into him. I roared and advanced, but my inevitable ass kicking by a monkey a quarter my size was postponed by a family of Indians hiking up the trail behind us. The women and children nonchalantly walked past the beast that Lucy and I had found so difficult, while the men unwrapped some food and threw it off to the side to draw off the vicious beast and let me get my pack back.
Clearly deciding that our inability to deal with such a tiny problem denoted a larger helplesness in the face of India, the family told us to stay with them. Gratefully, we acquiesed, and spent the
next couple hours in the presence of our heroes. They told us of their life in Haridwar, while we told them of the fictional lives we'd created for ourselves to make things easier in India (we're English, married, and teachers in a primary school). More than an hour after our ignominous rescue from a 40 pound vegetarian, we finally caught our first sight of Neelkanth. It was much, much farther than we'd thought, and we didn't reach it until noon.
The temple itslef was amazing, although we didn't venture in. Still not clear on how offensive it is for non-Hindus to enter a holy site, we simply sat outside it and adored the small but amazinf edifice. Above the door is an amazing scene featuring about a dozen life-size carvings of gods, Shiva most prominent among them. This alone would have put most everything in Italy to shame, but the rest of the temple was covered in various other shapes, gods, nooks and crannies, all of which were painted an amazing array of colors. Truth be told, some of the amazing cathedrals in Italy would have given this small one a run for its money, but for the colors.
Spending no more than a half hour at the temple, we bid our adoptive family adieu and started the long trek back to Rishikesh. The family had told us of hotels for 30rps (less than a dollar) a person that would be able to house us through the heat of the day, and in retrospect, we probably should have taken them up on the deal. The walk back was HOT. Mostly uneventful, often downhill, but overall quite HOT. Lucy may have gotten a little heat exhaustion and we both got too much sun, and when we finally returned to Rishikesh we decided to take a taxi up to our hotel. By that time, we'd been walking for more than seven and a half hours, with the first four up a steep gradient and the last three in a pounding sun and near 100 degree heat.
Our trip back did have one occurrence: while passing a pair of Indians, one of them decided to practice his English on us. For the next hour, we were serenaded with stories of his adventures as a law clerk in Delhi. It was quite sweet and very entertaining, although his English wasn't really
good enough for him to do more than monologue. Most of my attempts to hold up my end of the conversation were met with blank stares and head waggles.
All in all, an amazing day, full of terrific mountain top views, hilarious (and frightening) monkeys, and more truly good hearted Indians than I could shake a monkey-hitting-stick at.
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