Rishikesh & Haridwar

The day trip to Rishikesh and Haridwar was terribly exciting. It took a few hours to reach Rishikesh, a town known as the yoga capital of the world. In the 60s, the Beatles rocked out at the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ashram and wrote many songs for their White Album. We didn’t see any rockers around, but we saw plenty of random foreigners.

To venture into the town, we walked down, down, down a pathway to reach the Lakshman Jhula hanging bridge. Of course it was raining most of the way, so we purchased 10 rupee (25 cent) ponchos to keep our items dry. By the time we reached the bridge, the rain increased and the wind picked up. We kept walking forward on the swaying bridge as people screamed and we all wondered if the bridge would flip over. Hilary later informed us that had we drowned in the Ganges River below we would have gone straight to heaven… not exactly a comforting thought.

When we reached the other side, we crammed into a small shop to escape the rain. Lucky for us, the shop was filled with delightful shawls and clothing. The prices were unbelievably low. So just about everyone bought something. We had to pull Sherry out of the shop in order to find the rest of the group and reach our lunchtime destination. Unfortunately for us, the day got a little worse when everyone realized that our guide had no idea where the restaurant was and everyone was still soaking wet. The guide decided that we better eat at the “little budd restaurant.” Well our group of 20 was beyond their capacity. So lunch was postponed and everyone was given about 2 hours to shop and make it back to the bus on the other side of the river (via the foot bridge).

Thankfully, the rain stopped. Krys, Becky, Hilary, and Sherry decided to visit the huge 13-storey wedding cake temples of Swarg Niwas and Shri Trayanbakshwar. To enter, we removed our shoes and walked barefoot through the muddy street which was simply GROSS. The temple was surprisingly clean. We walked around and around to see the various deities and shops housed in the temple. As time progressed, we rang a few bells, left offerings, and collected our shoes. Now it was time to walk across the bridge to our bus.

The walk back was not that bad. Our guide almost led us the wrong way (again) but we ignored him and followed our instincts to the correct path. Our bus was thankfully full of delicious Italian food that we consumed on our way to Haridwar.