Back From Haridvar/Rishikesh

This weekend Roxy, myself, and five others left for a weekend trip to Haridvar and Rishikesh (I'm probably not spelling that right). We had taxis pick us up at 8:00am on Saturday and made it to Haridvar by about 11:00.

In Haridvar we wound up staying at this amazing hotel; it was a four bed hut that we fit all seven people in that opened up to a garden with steps that led down into the Gangees. Very cool. We got kinda lost, bathed in the Gangees and went to a fire seramony that they do every evening at sundown.

The part of the Gangees that is next to the town is a holy place in Hinduism because it was said to have been made when Vishnu stepped off of the world. Thousands gather every evening to dunk themselves in the river 108 times (a lucky number), send bowls made of leaves and filled with flowers and candles down the river, and run their hands through holy fire. It was realy amazing. I can't bellive that that many people show up to it every day.

The next day half of our group when back to mussoorie, but Roxy, Jen and myself when to Rishikesh. Rishikesh is famous for being the place that The Beatles stayed in India and where they wrote most of the White Album. It is the self proclamed "Yoga Capital of The World" and is one of the most touristy places in the country. We wound up just walking around town and stopping in a cool cafe where we met a guy from eastern europe and two Indian guys. We realy didn't have the time there that we needed to see anything and all of Rishikesh's many temples went unseen by us.

One really cool thing about the trip was that we all wound up using our Hindi a lot. Our taxi driver didn't speek any English and we had to order food off of menues written in Hindi script. Roxy left her water bottel at the restorant and when she came back a few hours latter she had to ask for it by saying, "pani bartan."

I have about 150 pictures from the trip, but I haven't resized them yet so they won't be posted untill tomorrow.