Mon - I arrived in the holy Ganges town of Hardiwar
- I walked to the riverfront where there are ghats i.e. concrete beaches where the pilgrims can walk in to the water.
- The pilgrims go to celebrate the purity and cleanliness of the Holy River Ganges, but it seems to me that, because they are careless with their garbage then the first thing they do is pollute the river
| Go to Rishikesh
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- I made a mess of getting to Rishikesh. I crossed the river and found myself on the main road.. so there was no sense in going back to the bus terminal. I didn't realise that these days most people travel by autorickshaw so I was waiting an hour for a bu whilst all these rickshaws passed me.
- I was surpised to find that Rishikesh is not so much a town, but more a whole string ocf settlements spread over 5Km along the Ganges river. I decided to walk 2Km up and cross the pedestrian suspension bridge to an area of Ashramsas there is an Ashram to stay for $2. The place was OK mostly full of Japanese girls doing yoga classes. It is near the site of the Beatles ashram, which is now abandoned.
| Tue - Explore
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I walked north along this side of the river. There were a couple of extra tourist settlements, but for the foreigners it's low season, and being a Monday it was not full of Indians either. - 2Km down I crossed another pedestrian suspension bridge. Which incidentally as can be expected in India was full of idiots driving their motorcyles through the walkers.
- The opposite side had a steep road lined with souvenir shops. I walked up to the main road, across the other side was a suburb of real local people with a couple of small hotels. Going back south along the main road I found the bypass road which passes a place called the Ridge? which is a cluster of 5 backpacker hotels .. I thought about moving from the Ashram to here, but didn't. I walked back down and completed the circle back to the Ashram bridge.
| Wed - Thu - Planning next country
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- I guess I must have been busy on the internet working out what to do next. I guess I finished what I want to see in India and I had an idea that I should next visit Georgia. I searched and searched, but from India there are no flights to Georgia.
- So in the end I decided to take the Air Asia flight to Ukraine as it was only $300, it's a country I never visted and it's near to Georgia.
- I started thinking about flying in 2 weeks time, but the flight in 5 days was the same price, so rather than hang around more in the heat of India I decided to take this option.
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Fri - Dentist
- 5Km south of town there is a dental school so I finally got to the dentist to try to get my broken crown re-attached. I couldn't do it it I was in Dehi it was too hot etc
and it's the bloody same as last time
- "ooh looks like the root has an infection on the xray ..ooh big operation takes 3 weeks"
what !!!
- well that's not going to happen when I have just booked a flight for next week !
See this is what happens when you don't have someone to take care of you
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- One of the Japanese girls gave me a Japanese novel : Kokoro by Natsume Soseki. I read it in one day. I didn't think it was a good book
His friend commits suicide , in the end so does he
| Sat - Travel to Dehra Dun|
- I needed to do some shopping before I left India ..get new shoes and glasses etc. But in Rishikesh there was not the choice so instead of going direct back to Delhi I decided to go north to the regional capital Dehra Dun.. do some shopping and take a nightbus to Delhi from there.
- I went back to the dental school and instead of fixing my crown they did some other filling I didn't know I needed.
- Went back collected my bag and got across town to the Dehra Dun bus. Unfortunately it wasn't a town full of shopping malls. There was a big old bazaar, but not the things I needed. It was spread out,and when I got to the train station there were no seats left to Delhi that night. I went to the bus terminal 5Km out and had to hang around for 6 hours. - Again I was misdirected and only say my bus just as it was leaving at 12.30am, but I made it for the rough 6 hour journey to Delhi
| Rishikesh Opinions |
- To me it was not a special place. It's only at the very beginning of the mountains so not much cooler than Delhi, I could see the side rivers were all full of garbage from the tourist industry so I wouldn't bathe in the water. Most of the people were big groups of Indian pilgrims. There is also an industry to cater for western backpackers as it's the world center for yoga, but I'm not interested in all that stuff. I still maintin that "spirituality in India is very false and religion is really a business 99% of the time.
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