Rishikesh, India (May 10 - 26)
As I drove in my tuk tuk towards the Laxman Jhula area of Rishikesh, the ugly city opened up to reveal the misty shadows of the Himalayans, divided my the roaring greyish-blue Ganga. The strong current creates whirlpools and rapids around the grey rocks that peak out and pile up the sides of the cliffs. The Ganga in Rishikesh comes straight from the mountains so it is wonderfully cold and clean, unlike the body and garbage infested Varanasi section.
I scoped out a hotel and went to meet up with my friend Nikki, a girl I knew from Hampi. The next morning, she took me to one of the best yoga classes I have been to ever, then we decided to go and visit the Beatles ashram before lunch. It is technically closed, so we had to jump over a crumbling wall to get in. After we jumped the wall, a man started following us and saying that we had to pay 50 rupees and something about calling the police. We just ignored him; that tactic usually works well in India. I found out later that they will let you in without jumping the wall if you pay. Only in India do illegal businesses threaten to call the police on YOU for doing something illegal.
The compound inside is huge and has as least 20 buildings, some as tall as 5 stories high. It is hard to believe that all that is just sitting there unused while people are sleeping on the streets. They strangely don't seem to have an actual plan for it other than to keep it shut up and let it grow over with trees. I don't think I am the only person that selfishly loves what they have done though, since it adds to the mystique and makes it such a cool place to visit. There are chunks of broken cement and glass everywhere and all of the buildings are grown over with broken vines and trees. It has become kind of a tourist art project to go in and paint something somewhere in the compound. Painted all over the walls is everything from profanity, to inspiring mantras, to artwork, to beatles quotes. There were only a few other tourists in there at a time so it had this forgotten-city feel. My favourite building was this old and collapsing warehouse where a bunch of artists squatted for a while and made music and art until they were eventually kicked out. They made this beautiful graffiti all over the walls and wrote their story for future visitors to read.
Across from the artists building was the tallest building in the compound. We climbed the steps over the broken glass and rubble, past the long and empty hallways to the top. The rooftop was amazing. It was entirely covered in white mosaic tiles that glistened in the sun and made the meditation huts running down the centre look like igloos. That contrasted with the overgrown forest and the towering mountains behind us to make a pretty spectacular view.
When we walked up the stairs, this creepy man started following us and yelling things in Hindi. He was sitting and patiently waiting inside one of the igloos on the roof, so I decided to see what he wanted. He clearly didn't speak any english so he started making this exagerrated hand movements that involved smoking and his head exploding. It probably took me longer than it should have to realize that he was trying to sell us drugs. It still wasn't entirely settling that this weird man was following us around the deserted compound trying to sell us drugs, but knowing he had a business purpose for following us made me feel strangely better.
Next to the ashram, we found a temple that was walled entirely with smooth stones. In back was a huge building that had been almost completely demolished, with two hallways extending on either side. The hallways were filled with meditation dungeons and except for a few small windows, were almost completely pitch black. Outside the doorway of each hallway was written "blood was spilled here." The first one we walked through looked like individual washroom stalls extending all the way to the end. At the second one, Nikki refused to walk through so I went through on my own. It is hard to say for certain whether it was the creepy writing outside the doorway, or the fact that Nikki told me her friends had gotten a really weird vibe from the place, but something felt very strange. Something about it just gave me this feeling of dread like something bad was going to happen. Even the wind felt sinister. I actually had to psych myself up a second time to make it all the way to the end.
We went to Freedom Cafe for dinner and the waiters played rave music and disappeared all night. I am pretty sure they were all high. On our way out, I bought a bottle of water for the night. I peeled off the outer plastic seal and noticed that the inner seal on the bottle was broken. I figured it was fine since the outer seal was on there and just decided to drink it: big mistake.
I suppose, being in India, there are hundreds of things that could have made me sick, but it seemed a strange coincidence that it all started right after that bottle of water. I was bed ridden for two days before I finally decided to go see a doctor. A friend sent me to one in Ram Jhula who proceeded to look at the colour of my eyes and check the heartbeat of my pancreas. I asked him if he was going to perform any actual tests and he said no because he was an ayervedic doctor. I thanked him for his time and said I would be more comfortable with a western doctor.
I found out that I had to travel all the way to Rishikesh town to see a doctor so I got a rickshaw and headed to the hospital. After I checked in at the front, they sent me to a room filled with about six beds and a desk where the doctor was sitting. I waited my turn and sat down at the desk to speak to him. There was another man sitting at the desk, staring at me intensely. As the daughter of a doctor and having some experience working in a doctor's office, I have had the patient confidentiality thing drilled into me since I was a child. I was slightly horrified at this creepy random man eagerly awaiting a description of my illness. After my request, the doctor sent him out and brought me over to the bed so he could examine me; I looked down to examine the bed: there were dirt smears, blood stains, god knows what else spread all over them, and in the centre was a single curly dark hair. I started desperately searching the room for a bed that looked like it hadn't been used to swaddle the dead body of a brutally killed war victim, but there was nothing. I hated the idea of being the rich westerner who walked in and refused to use the sheets that no one else had a problem using, but I just couldn't do it. Thinking about that bed now still makes me gag a little bit. I found my limit. I asked them to change the sheets.
The doctor did the usual third world routine where he prescribed pain killers for something I wasn't even taking advil for and antibiotics for something he hadn't yet diagnosed and then got frustrated when I went down the long list of medications asking what everything was for. I have found that Indians generally don't like to be questioned and will react with either laughter or anger. He had a little of both and finally said "fine, just don't take anything." I decided to wait for my test results.
I wasn't the biggest fan of Rishikesh, I thought it was a bit boring, but I tried to make the most of it since I had to stay and wait until I got my test results back. Every morning I made the walk to Ram Jhula for yoga and would visit friends along the way back and feed the calf I named Juju. I was trying to appease the cow gods to get the cows to stop attacking me and peeing on my foot.
Hindu weddings are a several day long affair and there was a huge one going on while I was in Rishikesh. After my experience at the Muslim wedding, I was dying to attend a Hindu one. Two of my friends who owned a shop on the way to Ram Jhula invited me to go to the final night with them and the one guy's Australian girlfriend. Obviously, I went.
On the way down the street, we met with the groom's parade led by a pack of dancing people, surrounded by floats and lights, and followed by the groom riding a white horse and carrying an elaborate red and gold parasol. The reception itself was in a massive tent that was packed with people eating from the buffet that stretched almost the entire length of the back wall. I feel like all of Rishikesh was invited because we even saw these street kids that I would feed on my way to yoga. The one kid was still wearing his jeans with his butt hanging out of the hole in the back. I think they were just there for the free food.
After the meal, the dance floor started up, for the men at least. Me and my friend Lauren were the only girls on the dance floor, but sari or not, I hadn't been to a dance party since Uganda and I was going to enjoy it. It was a very strange scene. The small dance floor, complete with a disco ball and strobe lights, was packed with Bollywood-style dancing men. There were three djs that I think were some kind of relatives of the couple. They would stop the music every so often so that people could scream out requests. The women sat in the rows of chairs that I suppose had been for the reception but were set up like an audience for them to watch the men dance and have fun. At one point, two teenage girls started dancing. Lauren and I were really excited and headed over to join them. I love feeding off of other people's dance styles so it was really cool to dance with them in their Bollywood/club style. Unfortunately, that lasted about 2 songs before their mother came and dragged them off the dance floor.
After the wedding Rishikesh got hot, really hot. With the humidity it felt much worse than the 50 degree weather in Varanasi. After having to duck into the air-conditioned Cafe Coffee Day twice in one day, I decided it was definitely time to move on. On my last day, I decided to try one of the famous ayurvedic massages and went to a place that Lauren recommended. It was 600 rupees (less than 12 dollars) for an hour long massage. I did that after I had checked out of my hotel and did not fully anticipate the amount of oil they would cover me in. It was amazing, but I came out coated in oil and only had about an hour and a half to get into Rishikesh town to catch my bus. I ran down to the river to take a Ganga shower on my way, but it was going to take a lot more than a little water and scrubbing to get that much oil off of me. I hopped on the bus to Dharmshala looking like I hadn't showered in weeks.
As I drove in my tuk tuk towards the Laxman Jhula area of Rishikesh, the ugly city opened up to reveal the misty shadows of the Himalayans, divided my the roaring greyish-blue Ganga. The strong current creates whirlpools and rapids around the grey rocks that peak out and pile up the sides of the cliffs. The Ganga in Rishikesh comes straight from the mountains so it is wonderfully cold and clean, unlike the body and garbage infested Varanasi section.
I scoped out a hotel and went to meet up with my friend Nikki, a girl I knew from Hampi. The next morning, she took me to one of the best yoga classes I have been to ever, then we decided to go and visit the Beatles ashram before lunch. It is technically closed, so we had to jump over a crumbling wall to get in. After we jumped the wall, a man started following us and saying that we had to pay 50 rupees and something about calling the police. We just ignored him; that tactic usually works well in India. I found out later that they will let you in without jumping the wall if you pay. Only in India do illegal businesses threaten to call the police on YOU for doing something illegal.
The compound inside is huge and has as least 20 buildings, some as tall as 5 stories high. It is hard to believe that all that is just sitting there unused while people are sleeping on the streets. They strangely don't seem to have an actual plan for it other than to keep it shut up and let it grow over with trees. I don't think I am the only person that selfishly loves what they have done though, since it adds to the mystique and makes it such a cool place to visit. There are chunks of broken cement and glass everywhere and all of the buildings are grown over with broken vines and trees. It has become kind of a tourist art project to go in and paint something somewhere in the compound. Painted all over the walls is everything from profanity, to inspiring mantras, to artwork, to beatles quotes. There were only a few other tourists in there at a time so it had this forgotten-city feel. My favourite building was this old and collapsing warehouse where a bunch of artists squatted for a while and made music and art until they were eventually kicked out. They made this beautiful graffiti all over the walls and wrote their story for future visitors to read.
Next to the ashram, we found a temple that was walled entirely with smooth stones. In back was a huge building that had been almost completely demolished, with two hallways extending on either side. The hallways were filled with meditation dungeons and except for a few small windows, were almost completely pitch black. Outside the doorway of each hallway was written "blood was spilled here." The first one we walked through looked like individual washroom stalls extending all the way to the end. At the second one, Nikki refused to walk through so I went through on my own. It is hard to say for certain whether it was the creepy writing outside the doorway, or the fact that Nikki told me her friends had gotten a really weird vibe from the place, but something felt very strange. Something about it just gave me this feeling of dread like something bad was going to happen. Even the wind felt sinister. I actually had to psych myself up a second time to make it all the way to the end.
I suppose, being in India, there are hundreds of things that could have made me sick, but it seemed a strange coincidence that it all started right after that bottle of water. I was bed ridden for two days before I finally decided to go see a doctor. A friend sent me to one in Ram Jhula who proceeded to look at the colour of my eyes and check the heartbeat of my pancreas. I asked him if he was going to perform any actual tests and he said no because he was an ayervedic doctor. I thanked him for his time and said I would be more comfortable with a western doctor.
I found out that I had to travel all the way to Rishikesh town to see a doctor so I got a rickshaw and headed to the hospital. After I checked in at the front, they sent me to a room filled with about six beds and a desk where the doctor was sitting. I waited my turn and sat down at the desk to speak to him. There was another man sitting at the desk, staring at me intensely. As the daughter of a doctor and having some experience working in a doctor's office, I have had the patient confidentiality thing drilled into me since I was a child. I was slightly horrified at this creepy random man eagerly awaiting a description of my illness. After my request, the doctor sent him out and brought me over to the bed so he could examine me; I looked down to examine the bed: there were dirt smears, blood stains, god knows what else spread all over them, and in the centre was a single curly dark hair. I started desperately searching the room for a bed that looked like it hadn't been used to swaddle the dead body of a brutally killed war victim, but there was nothing. I hated the idea of being the rich westerner who walked in and refused to use the sheets that no one else had a problem using, but I just couldn't do it. Thinking about that bed now still makes me gag a little bit. I found my limit. I asked them to change the sheets.
The doctor did the usual third world routine where he prescribed pain killers for something I wasn't even taking advil for and antibiotics for something he hadn't yet diagnosed and then got frustrated when I went down the long list of medications asking what everything was for. I have found that Indians generally don't like to be questioned and will react with either laughter or anger. He had a little of both and finally said "fine, just don't take anything." I decided to wait for my test results.
I wasn't the biggest fan of Rishikesh, I thought it was a bit boring, but I tried to make the most of it since I had to stay and wait until I got my test results back. Every morning I made the walk to Ram Jhula for yoga and would visit friends along the way back and feed the calf I named Juju. I was trying to appease the cow gods to get the cows to stop attacking me and peeing on my foot.
On the way down the street, we met with the groom's parade led by a pack of dancing people, surrounded by floats and lights, and followed by the groom riding a white horse and carrying an elaborate red and gold parasol. The reception itself was in a massive tent that was packed with people eating from the buffet that stretched almost the entire length of the back wall. I feel like all of Rishikesh was invited because we even saw these street kids that I would feed on my way to yoga. The one kid was still wearing his jeans with his butt hanging out of the hole in the back. I think they were just there for the free food.
After the meal, the dance floor started up, for the men at least. Me and my friend Lauren were the only girls on the dance floor, but sari or not, I hadn't been to a dance party since Uganda and I was going to enjoy it. It was a very strange scene. The small dance floor, complete with a disco ball and strobe lights, was packed with Bollywood-style dancing men. There were three djs that I think were some kind of relatives of the couple. They would stop the music every so often so that people could scream out requests. The women sat in the rows of chairs that I suppose had been for the reception but were set up like an audience for them to watch the men dance and have fun. At one point, two teenage girls started dancing. Lauren and I were really excited and headed over to join them. I love feeding off of other people's dance styles so it was really cool to dance with them in their Bollywood/club style. Unfortunately, that lasted about 2 songs before their mother came and dragged them off the dance floor.
