Heaven after Delhi

After Delhi we hopped on a night bus, and after a bumpy 8 hour journey we arrived to Rishikesh to see the sunrise over the great Ganga. Rishikesh is basically a yoga and meditation center and became famous due to the Beatles, who came here with Maharishi in the sixties. After that it grew rapidly, and now it's full of people from all over the world. Compared to Delhi it's a nice and peaceful little town spread on the two sides of the river, connected by two hanging bridges. It's full f ashrams, temples, yoga and meditation centers and it's fully vegetarian (there's only one restaurant where you can eat meat).

Laxman Juhla Bridge with 2 temples in the background

 Our hotel was on the hillside, we had an amazing view from the balcony over the valley. After a short walk among the bazaars and ashrams we quickly found our favorite restaurant/café right over the Ganges. We sat there for hours admiring the river, listening to chill music while eating garlic nan (it's kind of a pancake bread) with lassi (salty/sugary kind of milk) and banana shake. Unfortunately we totally forgot about the time, and we were late to see the ganga arti, which is a religious ceremony performed at sunset on the riverside, so we went home and listened to the chants coming from the riverside, while admiring some kind of glowing bugs on the tree right in front of our balcony.

Waiting for Matyas to pack / unpack his cr*p

The next day we rented an Avenger motorbike and set off to Chamba, a small town in the mountains 60 km from Rishikesh. The ride took about 2 hours, and it was legen- ... wait for it. Oh, and while in Romania the traffic is halted by passing through cows, here we had to slow down because of monkey herds sitting around on the road. The first section of the road was surprisingly good, with little traffic and we enjoyed the a 1000m ascent through the jungly side of the mountain. Then we hit sections where waterfalls were almost on the road, with water flowing across it, and where landslides damaged the way, and mud took over the pavement. Putting aside one little slide, where I let down the bike on its right side (while almost standing... in the mud), everything went smooth. Moreover the trip taught me how to use the honk properly:

1. If you see a pedestrian / cow / goat / rickshaw / monkey / anything that moves : HONK
2. If you start to pass by a car / bike etc. : HONK
3. If you don't see what's around an upcoming corner / curve: HONK
4. If the road is too narrow, allowing only one car to pass, then HONK, and step on it !
5. If you're happy and you know it, and you really want to show it, if you're happy an you know it HONK-HONK !
   
   

   

   220ccm of joy (Note: the most powerful bikes here are 550ccm, majority are <=250ccm)

    

Back to the trip : we arrived to Chamba(1645,294m), and as a good tourist had a coke, and since we had other plans headed back to Rishikesh. Krishna helped us wash down the dirt of the road, and we had a warm 30min monsoon shower, but nothing that we couldn't handle (at 15km/h). The last 15kms dried up our clothes, and we got back to Little Buddha Cafe, where we shared a plate of tasteless veggies – but the view & accompanying music made up for it. … -dary!

The awesome view from Little Buddha Cafe

The evening ended with us falling asleep. Good night !

But ! Before we got to that desired part of the day (evening) or of the room (the bed), we were eyewitnesses of a Hindu evening ceremony : Ganga arti, that took place at sunset, in the Ganges. During it, we clapped hands and nodded to whatever they were singing, and some people let candles and flower baskets down the river. Though my guess is that very few people really knew what was going on, it was a heart warming experience (we didn't, but our heart was warm ~ 36.5C warm).

Ganga Arti Ceremony in Rishikesh (Clap your hands everybody! Everybody just clap your hands! This is Curtis Blow and I want you to know that these are the breaks!)

On our last day in Rishikesh we set out to go trekking to a beautiful waterfall on the steep mountain side, which at first was a quite tiresome walk, but the resulting bath under it deserved every teardrop Ems shed during the climb. The explorer in us suggested that we should look for a second, even more beautiful waterfall, that is even further up the mountain. The hike was tough, and all in all a total failure, because after 30mins we met a baba (holy dude in orange pajamas), who said “[Indian accent] No waterfall mister. No no. Here no.”. On the road (both up & down) we were blocked by fighting ibexes which we found pretty cool until we noticed (on the way back) how afraid Mr. Orange Indian was of them. We returned to the lower waterfall, where we bounded with another Indian shaman, that told us how he knows about Nadia Comaneci and Ilie Nastase for some change, and with other locals & backpackers and had a great shower. Then we descended to the main road, where a local whom we met earlier took us in his already full car, and gave us a ride home and mumbled a something about drinking in different countries and dog sex, while having some watery whiskey. Anyway thanks random Indian for the 4km ride back to Rishikesh.

The well deserved shower after the hike

Having arrived back, we got our backpacks, and after a short meal and a 15min wait for the monsoon rain to stop, we bargained a rickshaw from 200INR to 80INR to take us to the bus stand from where we headed out to Haridwar, the next stop in *le journey.