Todd and Lisa's RTW trip

The anticipation of our yoga retreat has been getting us through all of the tough days here. We woke up on sunday morning, headed to the train station to buy the tickets that we need to get back to Bombay after our retreat, then navigated ourselves to the place where we could get a share jeep up into the mountains. The jeep was pretty cool… until they shoved 10 of us into it!! We headed up into the Himalayas, following the Ganges river to its source. The ride was unbelievably gourgeous… and unbelievably NAUSIATING!!! (we think dramamine is the only med we didn’t pack). We got to the town of Uttarkashi (aka ubertushi). We decided to eat some dinner before embarking on the final 10 km. While we were eating we thought it would be a good idea to call ahead. Perhaps we should have thought of this 10 hours prior.
Todd spoke first with the woman at the center, who apparently had no recollection of us, not to mention that the yoga vacation we had signed up for was not happening!!!
Lisa spoke with her the second time, but had to hang up because she started crying.
We were just kinda like “HUH?? why the F- are we in ubertushi then”. It was a little much to try and understand, because this lady on the phone was like “what do you want me to do”. We had all of the information, including this woman’s name, written down in front of us, but it didn’t seem to matter. So, we did what any American couple would do… we bought lots of junk food and got a hotel room with cable TV.
We woke up in the morning, got back into a jeep and headed back down. This time we made sure to sit in the front seats with the driver. We just thought of it as a scenic 2 day jeep adventure through the Himalayas. We also learned that it is not customary for drivers to pull over when passengers are sick, you simply stick your head out the window….. NASTY. We had some serious sickness going on (not from us in the front seats).
Not to worry though, because we are back in the town of Rishikesh, which is legendary for yoga. The Beatles even came here in 1968. Lisa has been testing out some yoga classes and is determined to find another Yoga retreat to end our journey. It’s looking hopeful.
— just a little story while we wait for the pics to upload–
Rishikesh is full of people right now for some festival so here are slim pickin’s on rooms. The first one we got was to loud so we decided to move. We found a place that is set off the main road, quite and very homely. The only problem with the room was the bathroom. It was just that youth hostel kind of grunge. Lisa figured it was best to take the matter into her own hands and clean it herself. She asked for something to clean with. The guy in the front insisted that they did it for us. We were very impressed considering we are only paying 150 rupees a night ($3.50). So, the guy came in, filled a bucket with water, poured it on the floor and left. It hard to even write this story because we are laughing so hard. Lisa went out and politely asked for some soap, perhaps? The guy had to run to the store to get some. He came back with a packet of laundry detergent. Then Lisa made the bold request of a rag. The guy came back with a pair of cotton pants and scissors. Now our toilet smells better than our clothes!!

Here we are in McLeod Ganj hiking to the waterfall

This is a picture of the shiva cafe up at the top. The pic does no justice to how cool of a place it is.

These are all pics of Vashist. They dry corn on there roofs to feed there cows in the winter. We loved this town!!

This one is from the window of our scenic jeep adventure. We made it blurry to give it effect!!

This is where we are now, in the holy town of Rishikesh. The whole town is vegetarian (not even eggs) and no booze!!!

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 12th, 2005 at 12:43 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.