Lightning Over Rishakesh

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Blogging Away

The following morning I was awake for a long time before I managed to haul myself out of bed; I was feeling a bit off and so lay around for a while. To my surprise, when I got to my feet and checked the time, it was only 8.30am. No sooner was I up and about however, than I felt my stomach turn in a way that was becoming familiar. After a short while in my room it felt safe to go out for breakfast, but I stayed close by. I went to the café I'd sat in on my first night in Rishakesh, with the seating on the floor and ordered a full breakfast of toast, scrambled egg and fried vegetables. As I waited for my food, I called the ashram I'd been told about by Tamsin to ask if they had any space on their one week meditation and yoga course, starting the coming Saturday. The conversation was confused, as two people answered separate phones and each tried talking to me, but we got to a conclusion in the end; they did indeed have space and I would go and read their website and, if I still wanted to attend, email them my passport number and name to confirm the booking.

As I returned to the table my breakfast was sat waiting for me, and as was becoming the norm for that time of day, it was covered in flies. Great. I ate what I could of it, but my appetite wasn't as it could have been, presumably thanks to my stomach being off, plus the hordes of flies were a little off putting. I was getting used to having flies on me, but having them on my food wasn't getting any easier. I sat checking through my blog entries from the night before as I drank my first masala chai of the day, until I felt my stomach cramp up again and left in a hurry. The rest of the morning I was confined to a fairly small distance within easy reach of the toilet, so I took advantage of the time by sitting outside my room in the sun and re-stitching all the seams on the bag I'd bough in Delhi, which was beginning to fall apart already. I also spent some time organising my photos from the last week, picking out ones for my blog and backing everything up.

Once my angry insides had ran themselves out, I headed down to the internet café where I spent the next three hours adding blog entries and putting photos on Facebook. I was uploading my final blog entry when my phone rang out with a text message – a sound that was fast becoming unfamiliar. The text was from Tamsin, Kate and her were planning on going to Gangotri the next day to for the Gaumukh glacier trek and were off to the waterfall that afternoon, they invited me to both. I arranged to meet them and began to finish up on the computer. Unfortunately the final upload of blog photos crashed and I was really late to meet them as a result of having to upload them all over again.

Return to the Falls

That afternoon I found myself once again walking north down the banks of the Ganga, this time deep ion conversation discussing the feasibility of doing a 2-3 day trek in just one day. The glacier hike is supposed to take 5-7 days, including getting to Gangotri, the small town from which the trek starts. Tamsin and Kate were proposing we do it in 3. In the end I decided I'd have to mull it over, as it would change what I'd planned to do as a relaxed wander to a very holy place, into one of the most difficult challenges I'd ever attempted. I led the way up to the waterfall, passing the new familiar sights on the riverbank, the street stalls down the road and the small temple that marked the start of the trail to the waterfall. It was late afternoon this time, so there was no raging sun beaming down on the trail and as we reached the waterfall it too was in shadow. The crowds from the previous visit had dispersed earlier in the day and there was just 4 Indian guys up there, getting changed from their swim. Tamsin and Kate had to change, so they sat waiting for the place to empty out. I was already in my swim shorts and, sweating from the walk up, wasted not time in plunging myself into the crystal waters I'd already enjoyed so much. I bobbed around in the silver pool, sitting with my back to the pounding water as it massaged me, pushing a sea of bubbles up all around me. I'd lost my necklace the last time I'd done that and so, rather optimistically, I began to route around in the stones beneath me to see if I could find it. I didn't really expect to and predictably I didn't. Without the sun on me I started to feel the cold a little quicker, so I got out to warm up in the hot dry air and went over to see how the girls were getting on. Some of the guys were still hanging around so they were still waiting. Kate had no swimwear and had to go in in her underwear, so she was even more keen for them to leave. I went back to bathing in the pool and trying to stand under the mighty falls. I observed a secondary gush of water flowing down the rocks at the back of the pool and paddled over to stand in it. The water was pouring down the rock wall and as I leaned against it I placed my arm above my head, causing it to blast away from the rock and onto my head and down my face in a blanket of crisp, refreshing silver fluid. I sat down against the rock enjoying the water spraying all over me. As I sat there, I felt something between my fingers. I grasped it and lifted it out to see what it was. My necklace! I was thoroughly pleased to find this, as despite not mourning its loss too much a few days earlier, I'd spent a long time making it in Delhi and had intended on keeping it for a long time. In a moment of slight over excitement I stood up in the pool and raised it above my head, yelling over to the girls as they sat on a rock some thirty feet away. I'd already told them the story of how I'd made and subsequently lost it, so they understood my reaction. I hadn't been there long but I was already settling in to the more simple life, where a few possessions can be enough to keep you happy and each one means a lot more to you. I'd felt that earlier in the day when I'd finished repairing my bag. I could have bought a new one, but this was MY bag, I didn't need anew one when mine could be fixed.

Tamsin and Kate eventually managed to find some privacy as everyone else left and they came to join me in the pool. They too enjoyed the crisp water as I did, sitting under the heavy downpour, at times struggling to stay dressed as the water hammered down on them. As we enjoyed ourselves in the pool, two of the younger Indian men that had just left came back. They stood by the pool and took photos of each other. This was in fact a thinly veiled way of taking photos of the two girls in their bikinis and underwear and none of us was overly impressed. Both of the girls told them to stop, at which point one of them tried to impress upon us that they weren't taking sleazy photos of the girls by stripping down to his underpants and getting in the water. Even with the camera pointed at him though, his eyes weren't looking back at the camera. We'd been there a while by that point and it was starting to feel chilly, and with the persistence of the creepy guys we decided it might be an idea to get out and warm up. No sooner had we walked off to the rock at which the girls had left their things, than the two guys walked over to change also – right next to us. This went on for some time, as we moved so did they. They hung around and when we left, they left, walking right behind us in the woods. I had my guard up as we made our way along the quiet forest track, keeping a close eye on the girls and the two dodgy guys behind me. Eventually, as we stopped to take photos of the sun setting over the mountains, down the river from where we were, they passed us and kept walking.

Wild Primates

The walk back to Rishakesh was pleasant, in the last of the days sun I felt refreshed from the water and my skin stayed cool for a long time, despite the heat. The two guys from the waterfall pulled up beside us on a scooter and said something to Kate, but she waved them on and they left. A short while later a troupe of macaques surrounded us in the road, having spotted the crisps we were eating. As we edged forward, more and more of the big white monkeys with their black faces began to gather from the nearby trees and hillsides. The girls stashed their crisps away in their bags, I was about to do the same when a huge macaque, about the size of a 6-year old child, bounced over to me and tried to snatch the bag from my hand. I held on to it and kept walking, trying to stay tall and not appear intimidated. It seemed to work, as I walked past the edge of the group and kept going, none of them followed me. Having hidden their crisps, the girls too got through without incident. The idea of having a fight with a group of monkeys isn't great, but the fear really comes in to play when you know that a huge percentage of wild primates carry rabies.

Meditation Map

We got back to town at about 6.30pm, just in time to have a Fanta by the river before I had to leave to go and find the group meditation session that Vincent, the Spanish traveller, had told me about a couple of nights previously. As we had a drink, we again discussed the girls' plan of going to Gangotri to do the glacier trek in a day. I decided to give it a miss as it was a crazy time scale and I'd like to do it with more time to enjoy it. I paid my bill for the drink and at the last second I changed my mind about the glacier trek. Maybe it was down to the sugar spike from the Fanta, but suddenly I liked the idea of a crazy challenge. We made plans to meet at 5am the following day to get a bus.

I popped back to my room to drop some things off before heading across the Lakhsman Jhula foot bridge to the other side of town, following the crudely drawn map I'd been given to the house where the meditation was taking place. I was running a little tight on time and so I walked fast, back up the steps and past the bright shops I'd walked by when I arrived on my first night. I followed the map as closely as I could, guessing how it related to the world around me. I broke a sweat trying to make good time as I didn't want to disturb a meditation session once it was already under way. After a few wrong turns I arrived at a road that was indicated in the scribbled directions. “See sign for YOGA HUT, last house on left, red gate.” The sign for the yoga hut was on the side of a wall at a fork in the road, I took the left fork and walked briskly. I passed a red gate, but it was closed with no signs of life and wasn't at the end of the road. I kept walking, the road gave way to a dirt track, which became a thin path, all the time there were houses along it. Eventually it became so dark it was impossible to discern the colour of gates and the path showed no sign of ending. I turned around and hurried back to the fork in the road, this time taking the other road. I was now late, but surely they'd not start immediately? I tramped down the new road, eyeing each gate carefully. My powerful walking seemed to be making my foot twist in my flip flop, but I ignored it and pressed on. Once again the road became a path, it grew too dark to see and I could see no sign of the house with the red gate. Looking at my phone I saw I was now fifteen minutes late and I reasoned I should stop looking as the chance of me disturbing the meditation was now rather high. I looked down at my twisting flip flop to see it ha almost snapped. One step later and it had snapped and I was left with one bare foot, walking down a rubble covered dirt track in pitch darkness. To my right I could hear a big dog snarling at me, but thankfully I couldn't see it. I hobbled back down to the main road and along to the steps leading tot he footbridge. As luck had it, the first shop at the top of the steps was a show shop, so I was able to buy myself yet another pair of ill fitting, poor quality flip flops. Crossing the bridge I returned to the Ganga Beach café where the girls were still sitting, having just finished a meal. We talked more about the coming trek and managed to arrange three spaces on a shared Jeep for the next morning, meaning we could meet at 5.30 instead of 5.00am, a small victory.

Struck by Lightning

As I walked back to my hotel, I passed Vincent in the street; he asked about the meditation as he too had missed it – his reiki class had only just finished. He apologised to me for my not being able to find it, though I told him it clearly wasn't his fault. He would be gone when I returned so we wished each other well and parted ways. As we left, the sky began to light up as huge cracks of lightning whipped above us. I hopped back to my room, grabbed a tripod, a remote control for my camera and an umbrella. Overlooking the river I attached my “Gorrillapod”! flexible tripod to a railing and plugged the remote control cable into my Canon. Holding the umbrella up to shield the camera (not myself) from the rain I set my shutter speed and stepped down the exposure, holding on to the cable tense and poised to strike, as soon as the lightning did. I'd tried to do this countless times before and never managed it, and it seemed this time would be no exception, with big bolts striking as my camera processed the previous, empty, shot. After fifteen minutes or so, just as I pressed the shutter remote a giant purple strike belted across the mountains across the river from me, with smaller flashes spiralling off from it in all directions. I didn't know if I'd caught it or not and the time my camera took to process the photo for review seemed endless. Finally the image popped up on the screen and I was delighted to see that I'd caught it; my first proper shot of a lightning strike and it was a blinder. The storm began to dissipate shortly afterwards and I packed up my gear to take it inside.

Rather slowly I sorted out my belongings, putting to one side the things I'd need for the trek. This too about an hour and a half but eventually I had a small pile of stuff for the trek and my big bag packed to bursting point with the rest of my kit and clothes. One of the guys that ran the hotel had agreed I could leave my big bag there for a few days, so I wrapped and locked it inside the safety mesh and dropped it off downstairs. I also showed him the shot I'd just got of the lightning but he wasn't very interested. Perhaps getting that shot was much more of a private ambition than I realised. After packing my small bag for the trek I set about getting some sleep, though it was 1am and my alarm was set for 5.

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Photos

Primate People
A monkey cares for her baby by the road in Rishikesh

Striking Shot
A lightning bolt streaks across the sky overhead as Rishikesh is reflected in the Ganga