I spent almost 2 weeks in Kolkata, and then decided to head to Nepal for what turned out to be an all too brief week. My disk with the Nepal photo's on it has cracked and my back-up copy is on it's way to Oz, so no photo's at this point. Nepal was a great a place and a great destination. The people were friendly, the towns were quite clean and pretty much beggar free and the environment of forests, lakes and mountains stunning. The fact that it is a much cheaper place to live and travel then even India AND European beer was available was just the icing on the cake. While there I tried some strange concoction of Tibetan beer where you continually added boiling water to some sort of yeasty stuff in a 1 litre mug, and yes this description is no clearer then my head the next day.
Back to Delhi, once again - there are some great places in India but Delhi is not on that list - and it crossed my path far too often. As a city I think Delhi was a bad idea that just grew too big to stop. Here I waited for Gwen to fly in from LA, we then jumped a train to Haridwar in northern India. From here on the photo's were taken by either one of us. This was the quietest and most hassle free place I'd been to thus far and was a welcome breather. Haridwar is a holy place to Hindu's and many Indian families go there on pilgrimage as the Ganges runs through it. We spent some time with a couple of different Indian families we met there, sharing fruit, photo's and in Gwen's case, make-up. The famous Indian smiles and sense of family and community was felt very strongly. I also spent time on the banks of the Ganges with an Indian priest who had taken a vow of silence, yet his communication was still eloquent.
From Haridwar we hired a 3 wheeled vikram, like a jumbo sized rickshaw with an avian beak. Twice the size of a normal Rikshaw, twice as noisy and just as uncomfortable, and headed north to Rishikesh. Rickshaws, due to their distinctive two stroke engine sound are jokingly referred to as "Indian helicopters" - they really do sound like a chopper from a distance.
Rishikesh is a beautiful town nestled at the foothills of the Himalaya and is very much the home of yoga and ashram life in India. The different yoga and meditation courses varied in quality, our teacher, Abhiv, for the physical practice was very good, a couple of meditation teachers far less so. Here we both swam in the Ganges as it was clean, clear and fast flowing - polar opposite to how it is further downstream. The Rishikesh landscape is notable for it's two large, pleasantly swaying, cow-carrying pedestrian bridges linking the banks, here's the upstream one.
In Rishikesh we met a couple of guys from Israel, Eli and Jeroem. At Eli's prompting we decided to take a trek into the Himalaya. Originally we had planned a Quori pass trek but this would have required a fair amount of time, snow gear and a mule of either the animal or low-paid human variety. It was getting to be a bigger deal then we had counted on so in the end we took a more practical option and trekked out to Chopta, we summitted Chandrashaila (spelling?) at about 4200 metres. The yellow flag marks the site where a McDonald's is due to be constructed.
Here's a lovey dovey happy snap for all those who have been asking who the hell Gwen is. The beanie I'm holding is (or was) offically the Worst Beanie in the World. It was so bad that the Nepalese guy in the shop begged me to take it and kept knocking money off the price as an apology - it somehow "lost" itself in Hong Kong.
Actually finishing the trek was a pretty good effort considering our packs and the fact that none of us had been doing any physical activity involving more then a beer and one arm in the months prior. Of course the birds, as seen here, do it easy.
Our guide for the trek was the legendary Sunil, snapped here in his patented Bollywood tough guy pose. 3 seconds after this photo was taken he suddenly jumped up and started singing and dancing with 30 mysterious Indian women who appeared in costume out of the bushes. 
On the way our accomodation varied from nice to nasty. In this picture the little white structure with a green shutter is where we stayed for one night...the four of us shared a room after the large rat in the first room exercised its veto right. Unfortunately we'd already eaten at a kitchen up the road before we saw that its cousin like to hang out there. The next day the rats voted us off the island so we walked 26km's rather then spend another night there.
All up we spent around 3 weeks in Rishikesh, the weather was great, the food tasty and there was plenty to do and see around the area. Our favourite accommodation was at the Nishant guest house which was set back from the main tourist area among an Indian village. Here we spent some good time and many laughs with Roger, Christiana, Peter and the mad Irishman Paddy - last seen heading west on a Royal Enfield motor bike.
The Beatles, of the musical persuasion, also spent some time in Rishikesh. The massive ashram where they stayed in the 60's is now in ruins, but makes from some great photo's. Walking around it had the feel of some alien ship that had run aground on Earth. This weird tiled, egg looking thingamajigs may were scattered throughout the grounds, they seemed to be used to amplify sound, or perhaps for Ringo to practice his singing...
It would also appear that this was the mysterious locale that inspired the cover art for several Kraftwerk albums.
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