If how I slept last night is any indication of what today will be like, I’m not sure I want to get out of bed. Sore, cold and tired, I think I woke up 3 or 4 times last night. Also, my stomach keeps rumbling because I’m not used to eating vegan meals all day every day and my body is begging me for more protein. I think tomorrow Bhavesh and I will go out for a nice meal that includes some kind of meat or cheese or something like that. I think my body can handle it by now. In fact, now that I’m nearing the half-way point of my trip, I think I’m going to be braver and try more and more local restaurants and *gasp!* street food!!
After a tasty—but unusual—breakfast of some kind of lentil and tomato curry with toast (which Bhavesh now has me dunking in my chai tea—sooo good!), we decide to battle our mutual crappy moods by lying out on the beach. Neither of us is feeling particularly peppy today, but the sun is out and it’s heating up fast so we grab a spare blanket from my room and pretend we’re in the Caribbean. Despite the warm sunshine, glittering sand and clear, green waters of the Ganges, though, I remain feeling quite dour and, unfortunately for Bhav, uninterested in small talk. The Ganges is a beautiful river, though, and I’ve got to give it credit for being especially inviting today.
In an attempt to fill the time and feel like we’ve been productive, Bhav and I jump in a shared rickshaw and head down to the older part of Rishikesh to see Triveni Ghat and Bharat Mandir temple. On the way we stop to talk to the bus drivers at the station and a handful of local rickshaw drivers in order to find out how I can get to Raiwala train station in a few days. In a completely predictable turn of events, we get a different answer from each and every one of them. The bus drivers say that the bus isn’t worth it; nothing goes directly there so get a rickshaw for the 10-minute ride for about 10 rupees. A couple locals say it’s half an hour away, but that a shared rickshaw will only charge me 10-20 rupees to get there. The rickshaw drivers say that it’s 15 minutes and will run between 100-150 rupees. So I can plan on it being anywhere between 10-30 minutes in a single or shared rickshaw for somewhere between 10 and 150 rupees. This couldn’t more representative of India as a nation.
So now for sightseeing. A ghat is where people bring their laundry, bathe, play and, in larger cities like Varanasi, cremate/dump their dead. This being the Ganges, the holiest river in the world to the Hindus, there are several ghats in the city. Triveni is Rishikesh’s oldest, but thanks to development and expansion it now lies in the poorer part of the city. We’re not talking poverty on a scale comparable to Delhi, but it’s certainly not a part of town a ton of tourists come to often so we’re ogled, touted, harassed and stared at to within an inch of our sanity. Yes, even Bhav draws a lot of attention, but I’m not sure if it’s due to his western clothing or that he’s an Indian walking around with a white woman. Who knows.
Despite him calling me his tour guide, Bhavesh is definitely helping me get around town a lot more easily. He grew up speaking Gujarati and so can understand Hindi fairly well (and his skills at speaking it are improving every day, too). I’ve relied on him a lot these last few days to help me get good prices on things, find where we’re going and deal with the locals trying to sell us things. We both find it amusing—well, as amusing as one can find this—that when we walk around every man in this city will look me up and down like I’m for sale, but they will only speak to Bhav. To them I’m Bhav’s girl so it’s rude to speak to me in front of him, but since I’m white they can check me out all they want. Hilarious, isn’t it?
After yet another lunch of rice, lentils, super spicy veggies and chipati (which resembles previous breakfasts and dinners to a monotonous extent), we find out that not only does the yoga course not start until two days after we’d originally been told, but that we’ll only be doing one hour of actual yoga a day. While I shouldn’t be surprised, I’m still disappointed and, frankly, pissed off. Since I had only planned to attend the first 3-4 days, this now means I’m only going to be able to attend one or two. Additionally, I could have held onto my tickets to Lucknow and Varanasi and gotten to see them in plenty of time to return for the start of the course. This is why I’m disappointed.
Now, why am I angry? I’m starting to question the reliability of my ashram and exactly how not-for-profit their practices really are. They’ve canceled all of the yoga classes I was supposed to attend since I’ve arrived and today I met a woman who requested a room here but was turned away, despite the fact that the other bed in my room remains unoccupied. I was quoted one price in an email before I left Singapore and now I’m being asked to give more (all “suggested donations”). My laundry cost double what they said it would and they finally my toilet fixed after 2 days of me bothering them about it. My room has no heat, the windows don’t shut and no one seems to know exactly what’s going on around here. There is no way this is worth Rs500 a night.
To make matters worse, there are pictures of the ashram’s guru all over the place and he looks exactly like that priest who went after me in the temple a few days ago. It’s not a pleasant association to be making several times a day while I’m here practicing inner harmony. It’s kind of the final straw, and I think I’m just going to throw in the towel and see if I can find a train ticket that leaves tomorrow night. However, I will be disappointed not to learn more about meditation and proper yoga technique. I’ve enjoyed the women’s class the last couple days and already feel much more loose and calm and my sore back and hamstrings are signs that my muscles are strengthening, too.
Speaking of developing muscle, Bhav and I took a killer walk today, straight up behind the ashram to another temple up in the hills. While it wasn't that far away, the climb is what got to us. And then once you actually reach it you have to climb floor after floor after floor to get to the top. Honestly, these larger temples and the green forest they're set in remind me more of the Alps than India. Maybe it's all the German bakeries they've got in this town, but sometimes I feel like I've been pulled into an Austria in a parallel dimension. The view from the top floor is gorgeous and lays the city out at your feet. On the walk back down we end up falling into a line of monkeys walking down the sidewalk, too, stop to watch the boys training at the ashram play cricket, and pass some run-of-the-mill crazies.
Well, at least today went out on a high. Had a nice warm shower, did the rest of my laundry, made definitive plans for the next few weeks, had a delicious dinner (, a fried, puffy bread; , rice pudding with almonds; the usual beans and veggies over rice) and fell asleep while looking at photos from earlier in my trip on my laptop.
Speaking of developing muscle, Bhav and I took a killer walk today, straight up behind the ashram to another temple up in the hills. While it wasn't that far away, the climb is what got to us. And then once you actually reach it you have to climb floor after floor after floor to get to the top. Honestly, these larger temples and the green forest they're set in remind me more of the Alps than India. Maybe it's all the German bakeries they've got in this town, but sometimes I feel like I've been pulled into an Austria in a parallel dimension. The view from the top floor is gorgeous and lays the city out at your feet. On the walk back down we end up falling into a line of monkeys walking down the sidewalk, too, stop to watch the boys training at the ashram play cricket, and pass some run-of-the-mill crazies.
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