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Greetings from the wettest part of India on record. I was expecting a little bit of rain but it's been torrential here. Let me fill in the gaps of my week.
After leaving Lucknow, I was looking forward to getting back into a touristy place, mainly because I was getting fed up with answering the same questions from my Indian buddies. Still I did have a little fun with it. By the way just incase you see some weird messages on my blog it's because of my new lifestyle that I relate to these guys. I am now a man of leisure with a wife at home who works 60 hours a week so I can travel. They are all amazed by this too which is quite funny. I'm working on another story for the next time it happens, but I digress, on with the blog
My next stop was a town by the name of Haridwar in the state of Uttranchal. It is a holy city and as a result the main activities were looking at temples and watching people take a dip in the holy ganges at sunset. To be honest, I wasn't that impressed because I'd seen the same stuff happening in Varanasi and Nepal. Still I used my time there to catch up on sleep. The sleeper train to Haridwar was bloody noisy and cold so sleep wasn't happening.
After leaving Haridwar, I jumped on a bus to Rishikesh. The town is famous for its Yoga and Ashrams, but also because the Beatles went there for a few months in the 60's. As a result the town is a major hippy hangout and has a new age vibe. I managed to get a room in aguest house with a wicked view of the valley for 200 rupees a night (£2.50). Awesome. After exploring the town I quickly realised that all it had to offer activity wise was Yoga and Meditation. As I'm not into either of those, I began to wonder if it was worth coming, when I met three other guys at the guest house over dinner. They were an interesting bunch who were into the mentioned activities, and it was quite amusing to hear their take on life. It turned out that I had arrived during a big religious pilgrimage and at sunset the climax of the festival would take place. So I headed down to the river with high hopes. Alas, my idea of the timing of sunset was different to the several thousand occupants of the town, (apparently it isn't when the sun is low in the sky, emitting a reddish colour). I managed to miss the whole bloody thing! Still I got some nice photos of the town at sunset and made do.
My next destnation was Dharamsala. I'd been told that the rickshaw to Rishikesh town was 5 rupees. This irritated me slightlty as I paid 60 ruppes on the way up. I made sure they were'nt going to give me white face price again. So I got to the town and the driver wanted to charge me 50 rupees. I handed him 10 and walked off feeling happy with my victory. After watching him drive off waving his fists out of the window and shouting away into the distance I boarded my bus to Dharamsala. The bus ride was quite funny. After filling up the bus to capacity, the driver thougt it would be ok to load another 40 people on.So my comfortable seat was shared with 3 other people and most of their luggage. Mohan sitting next to me was a laugh though. He played me some Hindi pop music and Bollywood hits for most of the way. I managed to get him to Bluetooth them to me so now I can listen to Om Shanti Om on the move. Surprisingly after all the nosie, I managed to get a couple of hours of sleep. However when I arrived in Dharamsala I realised why the bus was so cheap. The journey to Dharamsala is 13 hours by bus and it kept good time. It was only at this time that I realised that the bus arrived in Dharamsala at 3.00am in the morning when all the guest houses were closed and the conneecting bus wasn't running until 8am! Bloody India, I resolved to write a strongly worded letter to the bus company to high light the stupidity of scheduling a bus at this time! With nothing else for it, I found a few seats to curl up on and tried to get some sleep in the bus staion. After 2 freezing hours, I met another guy (Santiago) who came in another early bus. He was going in the same direction so we went looking for a cab to take us the main travellers area. After finding a cab we had to wake up a hotel manager (at 5am, he wasn't amused) and get a wicked room, which is basically a two room apartment for 150 rupees a night each! Excellent. We had a few hours kip before heading out to Explore the town.
Dharamsala (Mcleod Ganj as this part is called) is an old British hill station similar to Darjeeling. Again it felt quite homely. I'd been told that it rains a lot here, but that was an understatement. I managed to get get soaked through on the first day, so much so that I had to but proper hiking shoes and water proofs. It reminds me of the weather we have in England so I can see why the Brits came here. Mcleod Ganj is also the home of the Tibetan Govt in exile. We managed to see the Dalai Lamas gaff but he wasn't in unfortunately. Depsite the rain we managed to see the sights and get a mini hike in too. Santiago left this evening but I'm here for one more day before going to Amritsar.
Until next time, Adios Amigos
Will
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