Nick’s world tour

Going back via Dehra Dun, it’s only a short 2 hour ride to Rishikesh. The heat seems unbearable after so long in the cool mountains…

Rishikesh is in Uttararnchal state, a holy city on the River Ganges. It’s quite a nice place, though more of a relaxing than doing kind of place. There are lots of temples and Ashrams, including the one where apparently the Beatles (-Ringo) wrote most of the White Album. There’s also the Ganga Aarta ceremony which is performed every night with lots of singing about Krishna, and floating of burning candles down the river.

Yesterday I tried to book trains to and from Varanasi, but as all those weeks ago, different route, same story they were full. I could get there with a confirmed bed (it’s 18hrs) from a city further away, but not from here, even though it’s the same train. Fair enough, but then to get from there to Agra or Delhi the trains were waitlisted (upto about 200 people in line) for around a week!! And flights are expensive. Maybe I’ll never make it!

This morning I went white water rafting on the Ganges (the safety talk concluded with: “but anyway, don’t worry, it’s THE holy river so you’ll not get hurt!). It was really good, and we were even able to jump out of the raft and float through two of the rapids. The same company that ran the rafting run some treks, and it just so happened that there is a 9 day trek leaving tomorrow, some people on the raft were going…. you know the story. So as before, I changed my mind about what I was doing next and booked on that. It’s to a place about 9 hours drive from here, so really there is only 7 days of walking, but this trek has views of the really high peaks of Nandi Devi at about 8000m- we will reach about 4600m. (Have a look at the stuff on the web http://www.redchilliadventure.com/kuaripass.html )

 Will I ever leave the mountains?!?! So when I return, I’ll have about 3 weeks left in India to fit in Agra (I will make it to the Taj Mahal), some of Rajasthan (though a whistlestop tour maybe the best as it’s going to be upto 45 degrees there, at least it’s not humid. Then a few days in Mumbai before I fly. Thinking of which, I have yet again failed to phone up Singapore Airlines to alter my flights…. Ah well, always next week.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 26th, 2006 at 5:40 am 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.