Rishikesh

We moved out of Karnaprayag before the clouds died their gruesome deaths. We were going back over the same road we had taken while going so there were no real surprises waiting for us. Just crazy bus drivers who would run us off the road in a cloud of dust & honks.
I had briefly played around with the idea of venturing into new roads by heading south to Almora & stuff. But probably the only reason that I decided to make it back via Rishikesh was for the river rafting.
I have been diving for the last couple of years , but somehow, never got around to river rafting, which is just about 5 hours from Delhi. Something like procrastinating some work in your back yard.

On the way to the hills, we had passed Rishikesh a bit early in the morning. We had had breakfast early in the morning & been out of the town in 15 min. Now we were finding a place to stay there early in the evening. Now it seemed to be more of the type of Indian city I had expected to find here. Cow’s, Israeli’s, assorted white people in Indian clothes & assorted Indian people in Western clothes. All with a generous sprinkling of Sadhu’s & other unshaven fat people who were busy commenting on all of the above.

Because the GMVN accommodation was so neat at Karnaprayag, we moved into the GMVN place out there too, bit more expensive then the other places on offer, but the place was nice.

Since it was dark already, there wasn’t much to do. Went down to the Ram jhula. It’s a bridge across the Ganga, that actually moves as you walk along it. I read somewhere that marching on bridges is banned because of the harmonic vibrations that are set in & stuff. Reminded me of that.
Across the bridge, is where the actual old Rishikesh is. Here you have small streets, more cows & of course more white tourists. I whiled away the time a bit by taking photographs of tourists. I figured that might give them something to talk about. :)

Also found an internet café there & sat on line for a while. A few people had replied to my queries about rafting that I had put out before I had left on the trip, so I took down the numbers & made a few calls. The programme set for the next day, I went back & dropped off to sleep. Tomorrow, I was to river raft. And I still had my reservations about the cold water.