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Following the most comfortable nights sleep in 'Hotel Relax Inn', we had breakfast and awaited our driver to take us back to the tourist office so we can be on our merry way out of Delhi. The tourist office informed us they were not able to book trains as the tickets were sold out so they had organised a private car to take us all the way to Rishikesh and then back in 3 days time. We were pretty chuffed with that. Our driver for the 6 hour journey was a smiley young guy but didn't speak a word of English. He clearly had no idea where he was going for the first hour as we hadn't managed to leave Delhi! He stopped and asked for directions every few kms, only then to turn around and go back the way we came... But we were happy!
We passed many small towns on our journey which were incredible to see. Each town was very different from the last but still very busy with the same old constant noise of beeping horns, shouting voices and five lanes of traffic where the road had only marked for two. It was still all so new to us!
We stopped off in Haridwar, an ancient city where the Ganges River exits the Himalayas. During our pitstop, Matthew of course being Matthew got into an altercation with an angry looking monkey. Needless to say neither would back down from the stand off... our driver had to advise Matthew in broken English that he would in fact lose!
On arriving in Rishikesh after 7 hours of driving, we were shown to our quant little room at the Rishikesh Sadan Spiritual Yoga Retreat. We are spending 3 nights here before heading hack to Delhi.
That night we walked into the town using our little torches (we are chuffed we remembered them). The traffic buzzed up and down beeping intermittently as they went. We figured that here in India, the car horn beeping is not an aggressive gesture, but more a way of informing other road users that they are behind them with intention to over take or coming around a corner. This does mean that the traffic never stops, it always flows and actually we haven't seen any glimpse of road rage. It's almost like as they all do it, they're happy to allow others to do as they do.
We ate a lovely Indian vegetarian curry for 2 called pan butter curry, with rice and garlic naan, all for less than £4, unbelievable! We headed back to the hotel via Tuktuk for an early nights sleep.
The next morning, we woke for sunrise yoga at 7am. We were both keen but soon realised we were massively out of our depth when we were expected to throw our legs over our heads and pull down with our hands, all of which during the warm up! It turns out this yoga class was designed for yoga teacher trainees that are partaking in an 8 week yoga course where they train for 5 hours a day! We did our best though...
2 hours later, after 15 complicated yoga moves (attempted) and several 'ums', 'ahhs' and 'namastes', we crawled back to our room to get ready for the day ahead.
Following breakfast of porridge and fruit, we walked into the town. We met a German lady en route (also a yoga trainee) who gave us some great tips on what to do here during our stay. We spent the rest of the day in the beautiful sunshine wondering around Rishikesh. It is such an interesting place and very picturesque! We wondered across the Ram Jhula bridge and walked through ancient streets with old but beautiful architecture. There were amazing little cafes and restaurants dotted around these streets, definitely the more touristic part for travellers. India style architecture is obviously something I am not familiar with, and I find it difficult to describe. Hopefully during my stay here I can learn more about it. We found a German bakery that were selling stunning looking cakes so obviously I had to sample one to take away, they might taste different in India! We then walked back across the second bridge, the Lakshman Jhula, where a small but feisty monkey fancied his chances of attacking me for my brownie. I would love to say I stood my ground and showed it who is boss... but I didn't! I stopped dead in the middle of the bridge in front of a moving crowd and started screaming! As a white westerner, people are always looking at you anyway, but this really was drawing attention to myself! Needless to say, I kept my brownie nice and safe!
During our walk today, and on previous days in Delhi, the locals are really keen to have photos taken with you. This also happened in Malaysia and sometimes Thailand but much more so here. Even large families will ask for a photo with us, you feel like a celeb! The men love it too, they'll ask Matt to take the picture of them with their arms around me, bit awkward but for some reason we continue to oblige. We wondered what they actually do with those photos though! For that reason, Matt and I have now splashed out on fake wedding rings!
We finished our lovey day off with our new favourite thing, Chai Tea in little clay cups and headed for another early night as we have a busy day planned for tomorrow.
- comments
Trudy Sounds fabulous - You really are packing a lot in ... Glad you kept the brownie .... Good girl ! X
Jodie This is the best to and from work reading I've ever experienced... missed my stop twice! I love the monkey screaming bit! Can only imagine lol! Keep these updates coming love u sissy xxxx