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An interesting few days...
Delhi - during our stay in Delhi we went sight seeing and saw Ghandi's house, a temple in the shape of a Lotus flower, as well as a few other little temples. We were very lucky to have Nick in our group, who studies history at Oxford so that he could give us a brief overview of Ghandi's life and what he did!! We then went to lunch in an Ethiopian restaurant which was delicious! We all shared dishes so that we could all try a little bit of everything -
We went to one temple in which we had to wear a orange bandana over our heads... hilarious! Lots of photos to show. The men in there kept trying to hand us this brown sugar which looks soooo dirty so none of us took it - thank god!
Later on we went to a market which was fun but total chaos and complete carnage. We couldn't really shop because we had all the Indians were grabbing our hands and shoving jewellery in our faces - a man was trying to sell Georgie a fake Rolex and whilst she was looking the face just fell off - clearly worth a lot of money! Hilarious. Ione , Georgie and Tess bought some sunglasses (of course)!! we are yet to find matching bracelets but might be better to get them in Goa.
We then were all absolutely knackered but somehow found the energy to visit a shopping mall near where we were staying in Delhi. To our surprise this place was incredible and the first sign of civilisation we had come across in a while! Obviously the first thing Tess does is run to French Connection to check out the competition in prices! All of it was pretty much out of date - no surprise really. A lot of people bought real ray bans due to them being cheaper. We then ended up in a beer cafe -standard! Which was really cool and nice to chill. (Racked up a 10,000 rupees bill, when will we ever learn about tax?!)
Tess. Emma and Ione decided to walk back a bit earlier than everyone else as they were knackered and wanted at least 4 hours sleep before the 3am wake up call to catch our train to Haridwar. They got back to the IDEX house to find the gates had been locked so had to climb over them (and it wasn't easy!) especially with a family of dogs surrounding us.
3am the next day - it was a bit of a struggle to get up but we managed it and slept on the hour coach journey that we had to get to the station.
Finally we were all on the train - it was actually quite clean to our surprise! The journey went quickly and we all managed to get a bit of sleep apart from on Tess, Ione, Emma and Steph's carriage there was a gross man who kept doing the loudest burps every 10 minutes or so, so there sleep was interrupted a bit! Tess got so fed up that she asked our guide what "stop" was in Hindi which is "Rocko" and stood up and loudly said it to the man. He then did it more to annoy us... luckily it was nearly time to get off, thank god.
On arrival we got tuk tuks to our hotel, had lunch then went to our rooms to 'freshen up' (as our guide always says!') Tess and Steph went upstairs to chat to Ione and Emma but they all ended up passed out on the bed without an alarm as we were all so exhausted!! Thank god tess woke up at 5:05 ( we were all supposed to be down in the lobby at 5pm) she has never moved so fast she jumped up from the bed and shout ' s*** wake up its 5:05!!!' we then started walking down to the Ganges to watch a ceremony. However at the moment there is a festival for men going on, where they all walk dressed in orange and we got swarmed by about 100 men all taking videos and photos and trying to split us all up - a policeman spoke to our guide and told him it wasn't safe for the girls to walk down to the Ganges so we all turned back & went back to the hotel for some food.
The next day we checked out of the hotel in Haridwar and drove to another temple which was amazing - the temple was really high up which meant we had to get a cable car to the top of the mountain. The views were amazing (even if the cable car did look a bit dodgy!!) unfortunately at the top, we were again surrounded by weird Indian men wanting photos etc so our guide said it wasn't safe for the girls to go into the temple as it would be chaos - in the end he spoke to the police and they escorted us in and out of the temple! Felt like celebs! On existing the temple there is a tradition to have a red ribbon tied around your wrist and to be slapped really hard in the back to get the bad spirits out of you... IT WAS BLOODY PAINFUL!!
We are now in Rishikesh staying in a....interesting place - a 'ashram' which is a yoga and meditation centre - we can't speak between the hours of 9pm-9am and breakfast is had in silence. We have to chant before every meal and be back before 9.30pm.
Today we took part in the yoga which was hilarious but also bloody knackering and hot! We were in all sorts of positions! They turned the fans off to conserve energy!
Tomorrow is the trek so please think of us all walking up the Himalayas in 30 degree heat!!
Lots of love to everyone and we will keep you updated as much as possible xxx
- comments
Sally Great to read about all your travels. I do worry how ione and tess survive without their 8 hours.!!! Please take care on the trek. xxx