Rishikesh

One more early morning rickshaw driver without a clue though insistant that we he had quite the clue and we wound up at in a little area called Highbank. And then, we found peace. Unfortunately, we also found stomach bugs. Ugh. Beth and Crystal spent the last of their days with us in Rishikesh and M and I enjoyed it so much we stayed a week longer. Rishikesh doesn't feel much like India. Or perhaps it does, but more like India on a tranquilizer. Its a great place to iniate yourself to India, or a great place to get away from India after you've been initiated and want out. Either way, we enjoyed it thoroughly. But little did we know this would be the start of month long stomach problems, doses and doses of antibiotics, and weight loss. Ugh. We did nothing but relax in Rishikesh. The town was split into 2 areas on either side of the Ganges which was a gorgeous shade of turguoise, though you couldn't pay us to step foot in there. It is the Ganges after all. Our days were spent lazily milking our stomach aches, though it seemed that Beth took the worst beating of all at first. M and I quickly caught up after the girls had left. Rishikesh is called the yoga capital of the world and we certainly talked about doing yoga alot. But the thought of being more than 20 feet from a bathroom at any given moment only allowed us to partake in one early morning session. We summoned enough strength and antibiotics to make it to the other side of the river for some photo shoots of magnificent temples and ashrams. We spent the evening at the ashram where the Beatles reportedly wrote most of the White Album.
The nightly evening riverside ceremony was something we will never forget. The singing, chanting, colors, and spirit of the event were very moving. We spent hours enthralled by the ceremony before the offerings were delicately placed into the river and floated away downstream. We also begrudgingly made our way to check out some unimpressive waterfalls as we all felt a bit quesy but insistant upon doing something. With no swimming costumes in hand and hordes of 40-something Indian men, we hid away in a crevice by one of the falls for a photo shoot before hitching our way back to town. No worries B. The ladies caught an early morning taxi to a hellish bus ride back to Delhi to catch their plane back to the US and so their "charatcer building vacation" had come to an end:( And M and I were alone, with no plan but a ton of time. And so the week of sitting around in Rishikesh began. We finally came up with a plan, figured out the corrupt system of buying train tickets and made our way to Chandigarh.