India – Rishikesh

I decided to visit Rishikesh in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. It doesn’t have its own airport so I booked a domestic flight from Jaipur to Dedradun and took a 45 min car ride into town. Rishikesh is located on the Ganges in the foothills of the Himalayas and is known in the west as the birthplace of yoga. When I described the place to Carolyn she commented that it sounded like the Sedona (Arizona) of India. That seems about right to me. Crystals and vortexes everywhere.

Boarding for the domestic flight from Jaipur to Dedradun was a zoo. Fortunately I had arrived at the airport a several hours before scheduled boarding so I could enjoy the show. There wasn’t anything sinister going on and the problem wasn’t the usual bureaucratic overload. The slowness was caused by about 30 men and women who had probably never flown before. They were dressed in matching well worn robes and turbans and carrying makeshift bundles of who knows what. They weren’t intentionally being difficult but had yet to grasp basic queuing concepts. The switchback lanes and single file queues of airport security seem almost natural to me but were completely foreign to these guys. I could read their thoughts …It’s just a little strap I can duck under that. Three of us can fit through the metal detector at a time; and if that doesn’t work I should go first, no I should, me first. Even with lots of staff encouragement none ever grasped the concept of ‘stand behind the yellow line’.

Rishikesh and the surrounding area is smoke filled. Some smog like LA but more actual smoke from wood burning for heating and cooking and brush clearing. During my week stay only a few early morning hours were clear. I suspect the geography of the area created an atmospheric trap for the smoke.

Rishikesh is known in the west as the spiritual birthplace of yoga. More recently its also known as an outdoor adventure center for white water rafting, bunging jumping and hiking, climbing in the Himalayan foothills. For fun I took some yoga classes and spent a day rafting down the Ganges with a bunch of Indian millennial. The most notable aspect of the yoga was its similarity to classes back home and the Ganges was clean and cold with not a corpse to be seen.

I’d booked a room at the Regenta Inn On The Ganges. There are hotels actually on the Ganges but the Regenta isn’t one. The river at least a 1/2 mile away and down a 200 ft cliff. This was another pretentious place where the staff runs to grab your bags and open every door as you approach. I guess the intent is to make you feel special but I’d much rather have hot water in the shower. The place was spotless, new and modern in style but the shower was lukewarm, the internet access annoying and the room was downright cold. To access WiFi they give you a code which allows access for transfers of up to 100 MB, or about 1/2 hr in my case. When you use the 100 MB the WiFi hangs and you need to make a trip to the front desk where they fall all over themselves to give you another 100 MB code..

In touring around town I stumbled onto a place with good coffee, rooms for rent and was the very opposite of officious so I relocated. Ira’s Tea Room was to my taste. They had good food served in a garden, no real office just an outdoor desk in the garden. The hot water worked, the toilet worked, no maid service but Ira spoke reasonable English and was very focused on understanding and meeting individual guests desires. The place had interesting guests too, mostly old hippies and young hippie wannabes. Guests took chairs from their rooms and put them in a sort of porch like area to see who comes by. As a bonus the place rented for $12/night. The Regenta Inn On the Ganges was $65/night.

Animals are everywhere living side by side with people. This includes truly badass but cute monkeys and hard working donkeys. The donkeys worked several days carrying rocks and debris from a demolished building past Ira’s and up a nearby mountain for disposal.

The last couple days have been quite fun. I rented a motor scooter and ventured into Indian traffic and headed up the Ganges into the Himalayas. I drove about 50 miles, stopping along the way to hike 1500 vertical feet up a path with four waterfalls. Oddly I relaxed significantly once on the bike even given the crazy driving here. After a few minutes of driving I became aware of relaxing and realized that I had been carrying some tension for days. India required me to be on the lookout for most anything so I wasn’t surprised to discover I was a bit tense. The surprising thing was how quickly it all melted away as soon as I started riding.

There were lots of police on foot patrols around the city and since I didn’t have an Indian drivers license I was concerned about interacting with them. After the guy that rented me the scooter demonstrated its controls I climbed on the bike and sat there for a couple moments thinking about the mass of people moving all around me and the intimidating flow of traffic just beyond the pedestrians. I did a virtual hawk-a-loogie drill and starting rolling. I made it literally about 3 feet when a hand appeared out of the crowd and motioned for me to stop. The hand belonged to a cop decked out in a crisp uniform. He didn’t say a word but reached around the windscreen and pushed a button on the handlebar turning off the left turn flasher and motioned me on. I drove into traffic laughing.

These guys rent scooters with empty gas tanks so my first task was to find petrol. They said the station was 100 meters down the road. Right. I drove 300 meters and saw no gas station so I pulled up alongside this guy who looked from behind like he might be helpful. I asked directions to petrol, he turned around and it was another cop! Jeez. He pointed me toward the station which he said was about a mile away. I drove off and didn’t give another thought to worries about the police for the rest of the trip.

I learned a couple Indian road rules. Driving in the left lane is really just a suggestion. I’m serious about that. I’d say that on crowded city streets a full 20% of the traffic is driving in the wrong lane at any given time. When things are crowded they drive by rules similar to how we walk on a sidewalk. Basically you just avoid hitting anything in front of you and trust that the drivers behind you do the same. This creates a fun dance-like traffic flow. The music of the dance is a continuous ‘hey, hey, hey!’ honking.

The ride could turn scary in a moment. Once I saw a big speeding bus heading straight for me in the ‘wrong’ lane. I was expecting the bus to get back into its proper lane but when it started flashing it’s headlights I realized that wasn’t going to happen. It had gotten itself boxed into the wrong lane and the headlight flashing meant ‘coming through get the hell out of the way’. I quickly pulled onto the sidewalk, zipped by a bunch of pedestrians and back into traffic as the bus passed. The pedestrians seemed to not even notice.

I had a surprising interaction buying petrol for the scooter. At this station, and maybe at all Indian gas stations attendants pump the gas. There was a short line and I pulled to the back of the line, Soon I was next in line when this guy on a motorcycle cut the line in front of me. I was annoyed, but not surprised as I’d seen many examples of Indians not getting the idea of queuing. What was surprising was the attendant chastised the motorcyclist for cutting the line. What was even more surprising was the motorcyclists got off his bike walked back to me and apologized!

Honking is continuous but not nearly as offensive as it is back home. Many vehicles have painted “Honk Please” on the back of their vehicles. There was a 4 year old kid at Ira’s Tea Room playing with a plastic dump truck which came from it’s manufacturer with “Honk Please” on its tailgate. The idea is just to let other traffic know your around. As opposed to telling them to get out of the way. Flashing headlight are for that. A tuktuk driver told me that if you have good enough horn you don’t need brakes. Local humor. I think.

I drove across town and crossed the Ganges to visit the “Beatles Ashram Ruin”. Strange place. Its been abandoned for years but frequently visited by fans leaving graffiti and notes on the walls. The Beatles visited there over a 6 week period in 1968 and wrote some 40 songs 20 which ended up on major albums and are familiar to most everybody in the world. That’s a pretty amazing burst of creativity.