Rishi
Rishikesh was a great post-Delhi break, worthy of its own post. Whereas Daz and Katie left yoga, the Beatles and the Ganges behind and moved on to Missouri, Tom and I ended up spending an extra night (total of 2)
It hadn’t started out great. Having finished up the previous post, we went out for the worst dinner we’ve had since getting to India. The “ice tea” we were served was foul – a murky brown colour and a taste to match. I hypothesised that someone had run down to the Ganges and scooped some up into a glass. The rest of the food was rubbish – and frequently had nothing to do with what was ordered. “Never order the Waldorf Salad!” had warned Tom, quoting Fawlty Towers. I found out why when ‘it’ arrived – the dish I was eventually served, I believe, was a WonTon Soup. Even the amazing location of the restaurant – a platform built over a cliff-face with the Ganges 30m below – couldn’t make up for just how bad the meal was. A beer (Kingfisher) cost as much as a night’s stay for 2 people in our hotel.
The next day (as Daz and Katie went off to Missouri) Tom and I went to take a look at the Beatles’ isolated ashram (spiritual community), the fertile grounds credited with the White Album’s conception. It was abandoned in 1997 and the tropical forest has been rapidly reclaiming it ever since – Tom and I walked right past it at first, and noticed throughout that it was covering the traces of previous tourist visitors faster than they could carve paths through it. For a modest 100 Rupees a half-dressed man – ostensibly a caretaker – opened the rusted and creaking gates to us, and after a half minute’s incomprehensible garble (probably some ground rules, duly disobeyed) we were left to our own devices in the huge hillside complex. The feeling of freedom and and adventure we enjoyed as we clambered around the crumbling, vegetation-strewn ruins is difficult to put into words – but it’s a deep-felt liberation when less than a week ago we were in Britain, where rules are king and all visits are perspex-framed, path-defined and velvet cordon-bound.
It was in this complex that we made our first on-the-road acquaintances – a strange ad-hoc bunch comprising two Israelis traveling the world after compulsory military service; a mute Finn woman, and delicate Swede, and a swarthy – but totally barmy – Iranian university professor. He was familiar with the layout, leading us through dense vegetation to a now hidden auditorium, the dilapidated roof echoing the Israeli’s weak Beatles renditions. We stopped for a smoke and shared backgrounds, musical tastes and racist jokes, and scheduled a meetup at a local cafe that night.
With one of the Israelis acting as our guide, we watched the village’s daily riverside ceremony, a pooja delivered in honour of Shiva (the creator/destroyer of worlds). Dozens of small candles were sent twinkling down the Ganges as locals and pilgrims burned petals in a central pyre. As night fell and the ceremony drew to a close, the clouds rolled in from the Himalayas and opened up, dispersing the pilgrims. Tom and I ran back to the hotel across a vast footbridge over the Ganges, as solid sheets of rain came down and bolts of lightning over the mountains lit up the suspension wires in the night. The power in the hotel was off so my shower was taken in the flashing glow of my strobe bike light – a decent approximation of what we’d just experienced!
Related:
- India – a summary
- Time spent in India: 31 days Summary itinerary: Delhi – Rishikesh – Missourri – Agra (Taj Mahal) – Jaipur – Pushkar – Udaipur – Goa (Palolem Beach) – Hampi – Goa – Mumbai (Bombay) Delhi: we stayed in the crawling, winding, buzzing streets of central Delhi. Came to grips with the more extreme aspects of [...]...
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