Only one more week in India. We leave next Saturday for a month of backpacking in Nepal. Looking forward to being off the grid for a few weeks, though dreading the inbox on our return. India has been a bit much in the past week or so. It does that sometimes.
We did spend a few days in Rishikesh after our brief fancy pants life in Delhi. Rishikesh is an interesting place. Built up on two sides of the Ganges, in the foothills of the Himalaya, it has long been a base for trips to the holy sites deeper in the hills. Now it is a holy city in and of itself, swamped with both western and local seekers of various sorts.
The wedding cake on the left is a temple, which you walk up clockwise ringing bells at each pillar, and every room has a different idol(s). The view is from our hotel. The Ganges, the most sacred river in India.
Every pilgrim needs to bath/drink in the Ganges. We washed our feet. North India has been flooding pretty badly the past month or so, and the river was running dangerously high.
Rishikesh has been on the tourist circuit for awhile now, in no small part due to the Beatles. This is where they found their guru, Maharishi Mahesh (creator/marketer of transcendental meditation), and hung out at his ashram writing the White Album. Now, the ashram is in ruins. Unclear why exactly. We kept hearing about drug scandals, but nothing solid. Either way, the land is abandoned now and supposedly it can't be developed because no one knows who owns it. The jungle is happily reclaiming it. We walked out there and paid some guy $1 to ignore the "No Trespassing" sign and unlock the gate for us. There was an overgrown road leading into the jungle, and we had to fight our way through spider webs and foliage to get to the buildings. We climbed into a main building that was in shambles; broken glass, graffiti. It was huge. We passed room 468 at one point. Eventually we got to the roof, and found these.
On top of the dome was a hatch, and inside was a small meditation chamber tuned to resonate with the slightest sound. It was actually pretty intense. You could feel your skin vibrate when you made any noise. I can only imagine what it would have been like to hang out in there with 500+ people living and moving below you.
Kristin managed to get this great close-up of me just as I cracked my head open on the rusty ladder. Yay for tetanus shots lasting 10 years.
Lots of foreigners in Rishikesh, and lots of sadhus (holy men). Sometimes the two cultures meld, as was the case with this guy:
Not sure you can see these details in the photo, but he has a topknot of dread locks about 8 inches tall, and he's wearing a pair of Crocs. This is an apt metaphor to sum up Rishikesh. Even celebrities visit Rishikesh after filming "Titanic":
Whoops, wrong photo.
I can now say that I have slept in the same bed as Kate Winslet, and not be lying this time.
Considering this IS a food blog (that was the original idea, right?) we did find some delicacies. On our walk back from the Maharishi's ashram we stopped at this guys "shop". He is cooking us a papadam over an open fire. Papadam are thin pancakes, for lack of a better word, made of lentils and spices. They are made, then dried, then roasted. Always good, but really best when cooked over a wood fire.
A few minutes down the road we bought a pummelo, ancestor to the grapefruit.
I don't know how many of you have had the pleasure of eating a grapefruit section by section, turning each inside out. I grew up eating them this way, and pummelos are even more satisfying as they are larger and you can eat each drupelet (not technically correct, but close enough) individually. They taste like grapefruit crossed with a just slightly unripe blackberry.
The transition back from quiet and weird Rishikesh to .. Bangalore was a little hard. Though, I was happy to see that my friend dog-in-a-box had upgraded and seemed to have lived the hell out of his new home.
- F. Seahorse
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