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| Ganga Arti fest Haridwar |
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| River side bazaar view |
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| Photo-shooting session #148 |
Side info: Haridwar is considered a
holy city, ever since Mr. Vishnu all mighty left a footprint here.
Therefore a lot of people & pilgrims visit it, because it is said
that the fast current of the Ganges washes away sins (like watching
dirty movies, when nobody is around). So we are forgiven. Thank God!
– whoever that is around here.
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| The Third Tallest Lord Shiva statue in the World(100 feet high) |
The night passed by quickly and after
a Supernatural episode in the morning, a quick breakfast and
checking out we set out to see two mountaintop temples, that were
approachable by foot (duh!) and cable car (for the lazies). Since we
both felt a bit out of shape, after a week of going here-and-there,
always on the move, we opted for the cable car. The sight was
breathtaking nice, and on the top we got into a line
of people chanting and going from statue (?) to statue giving them
little baskets of flowers / food / money and at every statue an
orange robed guy gave us a pat on the back, a dot on the forehead and
might as well baptized us again while urging us to pay some r€$p€ct
to the Gods (they seem to run
pretty low on cash and food nowadays).
Some priests kept us on our knees until the amount of the donation
pleased the upper neighbors. The
temple in itself wasn't that much of a beauty, nor were the people
rushing from statue to statue like sardines on a conveyor belt. After
descending to the city, a quick bus ride and a rope-car (rest of the
world: cable-car) hike we were on the other mountaintop, from where
we had a better view over the whole town of Haridwar. Accompanied
by several monkeys we walked until both entrances of the temples, but
after seeing that the ritual is the same as before we decided that we
will only enjoy the view and the sunshine.
Matyas:
While I stopped to snap some photos of the monkeys, I've lost Ems for
half a minute, only to find her in the center of a 20 person+ Indian
group, all of whom were fighting over who to take a picture with her.
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| Paparazzi attack #216 |
Ems:
Now I guess I can imagine how stars feel when going out in public. At
first it is overwhelming, but after you get stopped in every 10
meters for “Just one photo please!” then it starts to get on your
nerves since you can't enjoy whatever sight you went there to see.
According
to our travel guide (lonelyplanet India book) the main attractions of
Haridwar were checked on our list, therefore after a “Big Ben
Special” Indian meal – that was hard to swallow at the end, we
headed to the railway station, to catch the 7pm ride to Ambala. At
the station we had our first encounter with a thief, that stole our
bag of bananas that we stockpiled for the ride. Unfortunately we
couldn't catch the little bastard, because Mr. Rhesus Macaques was
too fast climbing up the closest tree. Yes, you might have guessed:
it was a monkey. Up until this moment our reaction to them was a
“touristy” one: “Oh look at that, how cute, let's take a photo
to send to mum put it on Facebook, I bet my friends will like the
monkey”.
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| Sneaky bastard |
The train ride to Ambala was a usual one, if you find a
couple of cockroaches and a mouse as travel mates nothing out of the
ordinary. But hey: they didn't bother, so neither did we. We arrived
pretty late (11pm – compared to the nightfall that occurs at
7:15pm), and just crashed into the bed in the previously booked room.
The 20 minute walk from the train station to the hotel was a bit
scary, because some of the streets were totally empty, and sometimes
only the bypassing cars shed lights on the road. But all went well
and in the morning after waking up the receptionists we managed to
check out and board the train to Kalka.
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