Yamunotri, Part 2

Sorry for the delay in the second part of my Yamunotri post - it took forever to work through all those photos, but I'm finally done, and now we have 77 photos in the Yamunotri set on Flickr! So if you like looking at pictures of mountains (and other stuff as well, but mostly mountains), I suggest you have a look.

So, in my last post I mentioned how we (sort of accidentally) walked most of the way up to Yamunotri before turning around and heading back to the hotel. We actually made it up to this shrine, where Shaina and Jen (two other EAP students who were with us) attempted to converse with the Hindu priest who lived there. He didn't really speak English, and we all had less than two weeks of Hindi class under our belts, so very little information was communcated. But, they tried, and for their troubles he gave us all some prasad to eat. Here's the photo I took of this encounter:



We got back to the hotel just in time for dinner, and rested up as best we could (which, unfortunately, was not very well, since the beds were uncomfortable and damp) for our second trek out at 7:00 the next morning. Since we'd been up once before, and we had all day, we felt more able to take it slow and enjoy the scenery. Here are some pictures we took on the way up:







This is shrine we visited the day before:



For those who wanted to make the trip up to Yamunotri but couldn't or didn't want to walk (there were quite a few older people making the trip up), there were several other transportation options, including baskets carried on a porter's back:



and, for those who really want to travel in style, palanquins:



After several hours of hiking (and me taking a horse up for the last bit, since I was tired and it got really steep), Jordan and I finally made it to the top and could see the temple:



The temple was built on top of a hot spring, which Jordan visited - I didn't go in, since unlike the men's hot spring, the women's was underground, smelled bad and was a bit dungeon-y. Many accounts reported that the water was extremely hot, and Jordan's scalded red skin seemed to agree (he wasn't burned though, he was fine). After visiting the hot spring, we headed up the stairs where we were blessed through a ritual we didn't understand, where they stuck rice and dye on our foreheads. They then tried to extort a ridiculous amount of money out of us, but we were prepared from what other students told us, and had taken everything but 30 rupees out of our wallets.

The experience was not at all what we had expected - there were people clamoring to sell us things, and there were the ritual-providers who tried to take a totally unfair amount of money from us, and then immediately rushed us out of the way so other people could take our place. Also, there was no indoor area to the temple at all - it was prettty much just the hot spring and the upper area where we were taken through that ritual. It was honestly a bit disappointing. The river the temple was built upon, though, was beautiful and pure; it's hard (and really sad) to believe that it's the same river that becomes a noxious sludge by the time it reaches Delhi.

We spent a while chatting with other EAP students by the temple, and then headed back down. Here's a picture we took of ourselves just after we left:



The reason I look so small is because we were standing on a hill, and I was at a lower point than Jordan. It looks really exaggerated in the picture, though.

The next day, we hiked down from the town of Janki Chatti, where we were staying, to the town of Hanuman Chatti, 12 km away. We gathered in a parking lot before we set off, and a group of locals gathered to sit and stare at us:



The day was perfect for a hike, and it was a really nice, easy, 3 hour (or so) walk. We ran into an Indian family on the way, who told us about Hanuman when we told them we were headed for Hanuman Chatti. Hanuman is the Hindu monkey god, who is a servant of Rama. (I really need to get around to learning more about Hinduism.) There was a girl about our age with them, who told us she lived in Tennessee, and was in India visiting her family. It's interesting how close you feel to other Americans when you encounter them overseas, even though you normally live in a country full of them and you may not even particularly like them when they're there.

We saw some more beautiful scenery along the way:







We met our taxis when we got to Hanuman Chatti. The drive back took forever, like all travel in India does - it took about 6 hours to drive the 128 km back to Mussoorie. Driving in India is crazy, but at the same time, no one ever goes above about 35 miles per hour (either for safety reasons or because their cars just won't go any faster - I'm inclined to believe the latter) so it takes forever to get anywhere, even on flat, straight roads devoid of traffic. But even so, we were glad to be back; it was a pretty tiring trip.

This weekend, it's really nice to just have some time to ourselves for a change. The fact that I have no obligations today or tomorrow is really nice. We'll be finishing up our Hindi course on Friday and heading back to Delhi next weekend. I'm going to miss Mussoorie, beautiful, peaceful and cool as it is, but I'm excited to really get this trip started once we get back to Delhi. We'll have a lot more freedom, and I'm excited to start volunteering with an NGO (don't know which one yet, but our program director has connections to several organizations, so I'll look into it when we get back). We have a lot to look forward to!