We should have paid heed to the old saying "don't speak too soon". After months of dining on foreign cuisine (save for being spoiled by Ray and Noeline in Jeju) with no ill effects our luck finally ran out as the fearsome "Delhi Belly" caught up to us during our stay in Rishikesh. As uncomfortable as it was, it could have been much worse (No, don't say that, have you learnt nothing!?) and we were still able to get out and about and see the sights while trying to shelter from the heat as much as possible.

We spent four days split between Haridwar and Rishikesh. These towns are located close to each other at the point where the Ganges river descends from the Himalayas.

Haridwar is a popular pilgrimage site for Hindus. It was packed with people travelling from all over India, although we only saw a handful of non-Indian tourists. We attended an evening ceremony at Har-ki-Pauri where thousands of pilgrims gather on the steps on the banks of the Ganges and send floating lanterns (leaf boats with flaming flowers) down the river. The ceremony (ganges aarti) was nice but the most impressive part was the sheer number of people gathered for the ceremony which is held every dawn and dusk.

We took a cable car ride up to the Mansa Devi temple, which was not quite the experience that we expected. The cable car certainly wasn't a Swiss Alps design, but ignoring any personal safety concerns (and after a quick scan through the insurance policy) the short ride up was actually quite exciting and offered some good views of the Ganges river and surrounding area. The temple itself was a very strange experience, mostly spent navigating between the countless people making demanding requests for donations then finding we had just walked through the entire temple. Not quite the peaceful environment that we had expected.

While Haridwar was a fairly intense experience Rishikesh was much more laid back. Targeted more at the backpacker market there were plenty of foreigners and Indian travellers wandering the streets filled with yoga, self enlightenment and... adventure sport centres. We took the opportunity to dip our feet into the cold clear water of the Ganges, in preference to waiting for Varanasi, where we are headed in just over a week. We also broke our "Indian food only" mandate and sampled some delicious tortilla chips and guacamole :p

Talking about monkeys... there were monkeys everywhere! Climbing up under and over the bridges and eating bananas at the train station. We were going to smuggle a baby monkey from the train station but Alana didn't want to share her bananas :(