Nine Months in Kashi: Rishikesh

Nine Months in Kashi: Rishikesh

Rishikesh

Hello from Rishikesh! For those who don't know, Rishikesh is 800-and-some odd km upstream from Banaras, where Gangaji comes down from the mountains and "crashes onto the plains," to quote my guidebook. It's the starting point for a whole lot of yatras (pilgrimages) to ashrams and temples up in the foothills of the Himalaya (ashram = monastery/sangha/religious community). Rishikesh is also a pretty big ashram town itself. It became more known to Westerners after the Beatles came to stay at Maharishi Yogi's ashram here in 1968, where they wrote a lot of the White Album. Since then a lot of Western celebrities interested in Hinduism and Buddhism have come here. It's in the state of Uttaranchal, which was split from Uttar Pradesh in 2000. The three most relevant districts of Rishikesh are Rishikesh town, Swarg Ashram, across the river where most of the ashrams are, and Laxman Jula, about 4 km above the town, where most of the trekking starts from.

Unfortunately getting here was just a little hellacious. We left the program house at 1 PM on Sunday and our train left Varanasi station at 1:45. We were told the train was going to arrive in Mooradabad, UP at 2:30 AM, but it didn't get there until after 3:30, so because a lot of people were getting on the train at Lucknow at about 10 PM most of us only got about three hours of sleep. When we arrived at Mooradabad station we found that there were a bunch of politicians arriving for the inauguration of a new town, so we sat on the curb for a good 45 minutes trying to figure out where we were supposed to meet the cars. After that we found out that the program had only hired two SUVs. As it would have been utterly impossible to fit 18 people and all of their luggage in two SUVs we sat on some boxes outside of the parcel depot for another hour while we waited for the company to get another vehicle. After we finally got on the road the car I was in got a flat. By this point it was about 5:30 AM and things were still almost funny. They stopped being funny when we found sixty of the 300-and-some km remaining between us and Rishikesh were on Very Bad Road. By Very Bad Road, I mean potholes well over a foot deep spanning half of the road, never mind the cows, buffalo-carts, and other normal obstacles. We were pretty much bounced around like ping-pong balls in our crowded vehicles for almost three hours and found it impossible to get any sleep. We stopped at some chai place on the side of the road at about 7:30 at which point most people promptly fell asleep on the tables and resolved to save Rishikesh for another day. We did however arrive at the hotel at about 10:30, only about four hours behind schedule. We found out we could have taken a train all the way to Rishikesh and skipped the whole SUV debacle entirely but it turns out the tickets *weren't reserved early enough.*

The next issue was the hotel. The place that had been reserved is in the middle of Rishikesh town, which is crowded, polluted, and not that much different from Banaras. As we were supposed to come here for our Hindi *retreat* many of us were very unhappy with the location. The fact that, while by Indian standards it’s solidly mid-range, by American standards it’s pretty dang flea-baggy didn't really help matters. There was also some concern about the safety of the food as the kitchen staff was obviously not accustomed to dealing with Westerners. Virendra-ji had to explain to them why they couldn't put tap water in the raita. Even though one should expect a certain amount of these things to happen in India and try to be flexible about it, there's no denying that all of us were exhausted and hungry, and a good number were more than a little pissed off.

After a (cold bucket) shower and a nap I felt much better and several of us decided to head up to Laxman Jula to check things out. Once you get a couple of km above the town by auto-rickshaw the air becomes about ten degrees cooler and much cleaner. You also start to get a good view of the (very impressive) surrounding hills and the Ganga below. Within half an hour we had found two slightly nicer hotels in Laxman Jula with space for all of us . This was somewhat surprising as we had been told that all of the hotels in Rishikesh were booked up for Durga Puja (of course later when we were discussing the possibility of switching hotels we were told that the current hotel would be unlikely to give us a refund as they would have trouble filling space during the "off season"). I pretty much figure that the travel agent pocketed the money he was supposed to use to come to Rishikesh to set things up and probably also pocketed a commission from the first hotel which as far as I know is owned by his brother-in-law. So it goes... Anyway, the area around Laxman Jula is very pleasant, is near everything we want to be near, has great shopping, and I am happy to say that after much persuading and politicking we will be moving there tomorrow after class. The new hotel has incredible views, cleaner rooms and a more touristy (read: safer) restaurant next-door.

Having told my tale of woe, my general impression of Rishikesh is that it's pretty dang awesome. I keep thinking to myself, "_____ would love it here!" and I can completely understand why people (mostly the young Israelis, who have a very bad reputation) hang out here for months at a time. Trekking and river rafting trips from here are ridiculously cheap, there's tons of good food and good shopping, there's lots of cool stuff to see (especially if you have any kind of New Age bent), and it's much more laid back than Banaras. The surrounding area is gorgeous and the Ganga is actually clean enough to swim in!!! It was amazing to just be able to see the bottom for once. I stuck my toes in the water (now at least my feet are free of sin?). The one cool thing in Rishikesh town is the big ghat (near which I am sitting right now). There are a bunch of big religious statues and small temples, and cows and kids wading in the sandy water. The evening aarti (fire offering, usually with drumming/music) is supposed to be pretty awesome. Two nights ago after we found the hotels we walked down some very long winding stairs lined with shops to the shore by the Laxman Jula foot bridge, where we ate too much really good food at this "German Bakery" restaurant where we sat on cushy pillows on the floor. We watched some of the aarti happening across the river in Swarg Ashram ("a really loud party for God"). Despite the day's unpleasant start, I had a really great evening. I also put my Hindi to practical use several times that afternoon, which was rather pep-inspiring.

That's it on Rishikesh for now. Unfortunately I don't have my computer with me and the modem at this internet cafe is 33.6k, so no pictures until I get back to Banaras. Phir milenge!