Back To Rishikesh

This is an awesome view of the Ram Jula bridge in Rishikesh.
This is what one of the Internet places looks like from the inside.
We found this amazing little cafe up these long concrete stairs into a whole new world in Rishikesh. The view from the cafe looks down onto the Ganga. Sweeet!
Yes, it's a phone booth. In case you were wondering, this is how you make a long distance phone call from India. Just like the good old days!
One of our favorite places to eat near Laxman Jula bridge. The Little Buddha Cafe. But don't even try to rush them. They are definitley on Indian time!
This dog sitting on the edge of an overhang looks out over the Holy River, as if on duty.
Not only fast moving motor bikes cross this bridge, but slow moving cows too!


On Thursday night before we boarded our train we visited the Tibetan Childrens' Village, a place where young refugees are housed and educated. The children graciuosly stop and smile for pictures. The kids seem so happy. A little girl stops and tell us she is 10 years old and that down the steep set of concrete steps along the side of the mountain is where the girls live. We ask her to show us and she goes ahead leading the way. It seems such a friendly place with play sets and colorful buildings with animals painted on them. I suppose after what these kids have experienced, leaving their country quickly and maybe even their families and friends, even a place as sweet as this one might feel lonely at first. At the bottom of the steps is a building with long hallways and marble floors and steps going up somewhere. The young girl says goodbye and we begin to explore. We go up the stairway and find a huge room empty except for some teenage girls studying at a table opposite where we are. We ask if we can take pics and they agree. They tell us this is the eating hall for girls. The walls are tall with windows all along the edge of the ceiling to let the natural light in. There are book shelves everywhere and pictures and paintings the girls have created. Downstairs again we go around a corner and outside onto a platform where we find three girls washing their hair and a couple others doing laundry. When they see us they laugh and giggle and hide their faces. I ask if we can take pictures of them and they immediately respond, "Noooooo", and laugh some more. They're teenagers. What do I expect! The girls washing clothes are twisting and ringing out the shirts and pants against the cement ground they are perched on. Then they dip the clothes into the clean water bucket to rinse and hang the clothes on a line to dry. A long arduous labor intensive process. We notice that back inside there are three large cans for recycling. Yes!! I make a donation of toys I purchased in the dollar section of Target before I left. I was hoping to see the grateful faces who received these gifts but realized that this could cause quite a rucous. So we decide to give them to a sweet older woman in the office. Obviously this was not an original idea of mine because this is her job. I really didn't know who the gifts would go to when I bought them, but am so happy to have found this place and seen these adorable children so happy and free.

We arrived in Rishikesh rested and ready to roll on Friday morning, March 13th. The overnight train was nice and we both slept well on our upper bunks. I took pictures but a virus ate them. Bummer! Once we arrived we had a nice breakfast with friends we met at the station in a hotel restaraunt overlooking the Ganga. Laxman Jula is sweeeet!!! The bridge is smaller than Ram Jula bridge but just as crowded. This end of Rishikesh is known for the enourmous temples looming hign into the sky over the Mata Ganga. (hope you know what that means by now!)The shpping is incredible and we found, after a whole morning of walking in and out of one hotel after another, a really nice place called Topovan Resort. The rooms each have a small balcony looking over a garden. Every day there ar boys out back planting and watering. The wind whips through quite strongly from sunrise to about 10am. We planned a hike on Sunday and I was worried that the weather would hold us back since we were traveling up into the mountains about an hour by car than coming back down by foot. We hired a guide to show us through the hills. His name was Alok(a-luke), which means light. He told us that jyoti also means light but used ore frequently for a candle flame. He is a 26 year old entreprenuer. He takes people trekking, meaning they move a lot faster than we did, white water rafting, which we will attempt tomorrow, and touring through temples around the city. He says he could not make a living doing just one thing. He tells us that his family lives high up in the mountains, about 70 kilometers from here. Why are we stll not using the metric system like the rest of the world? Anyway, we had no idea what we were about to experience.

When the car dropped us off we began an unexpected climb up 300 steps to an amzing Durga Temple at the top of this mountain range. He tells us that in India Durga is known as the Goddess of power. When we reach the top there is this beautiful entry way with an ornate stone arch with golden lions at each side. Inside we enter a small temple where two older women are conducting prayers. We sit down and they place thick colored water drop between our eyebrows and some kind of small rice like peices on top. We give them the bag of sweet food offerings we bought before we climbed up and they take it, bless it, and pass it around to everyone to take and eat. They return the bag to us so we can take it home for our families to be blessed too. We give it to some children asking for sweets when we return to the bottom. Alok tells us that Rishikesh is 300 kilometers about sea level. And that where we are at the top is 1750 klometers. So our descent is around 1450. Doesn't sound that far, right?

We pass through a small village school where children are on break from their studies. We stop and take pics with them. We see beautiful indigenous trees and plants. Soaring rock formations. Monkeys, of course. The trail is covered in small white rocks that make it even more of a challenge. Each step we take is with fear that the ground will slide away from under us. Our guide tells us to push down hard when we walk but I prefer to step on the few larger rocks to keep my footing. A sudden slide of the foot here and there keeps us present. We stop occassionally to catch our breath. Our young companion says that he has guided women and men who get down the trail in and hour and a half. It takes up around four and a half hours. He says there is a beautiful water fall just fifteen minutes from where we stop and asks us to keep going untl we reach it. After a half hour we ask how much longer? Only five more minutes. I tell him he must be talking about Indian time, and he laughs. Close to an hour later we reach the water and my feet need some cooling off. My shoes definitely were not made for this kind of a hike. Priscilla's tennis shoes are better. Our guide is wearing heavy hiking boots that make it look like a breeze. The next day our bodies are feelin' it. Instead of taking our early morning ashtanga practice, we sleep. Later on we get up and decide to practice Yin Yoga instead. This helps our sore muscles stretch but we are still suing the mantra, OW, with each step today. It was definitley worth seeing the city from up hign. The mountain range is huge. Being in nature for just a brief moments away from the honking horns and screeching motor cycles helped us feel connected.

Namaste~ Lynne