Day II :: 25th Sept 05 :: Rishikesh

5:00AM - We are still in the train. Ii might take another 1 hr to reach Haridwar. From there Rishikesh is another 20km. Well it is still raining, does not look like there would be any letup anytime soon.

9:30AM - After reaching Haridwar we booked a cab at a pre-paid taxi counter which is just outside the railway station. It cost us Rs 400/-. The driver charged us another Rs 60/- to take us up the hill to the hotel. Shikhar had booked us the rooms at "The Great Ganga" hotel. Name sounds bit shady the it turned out to be a very good hotel. Since it is at an elevated piece of land once could see the river Ganga and the Swargashram from here. Our check in time is at 12 in the noon so the rooms are not yet available but we were given one for getting fresh. By the time we finish our breakfast the rooms should be available.

11:00AM - At last some really good food:-) We did get our rooms after breakfast. But for some reason Anil insisted that the beds be separated!!! Does he not have enough control over himself or what? So we had to change our room. Rooms are very spacious, they have got balconies overlooking the Ganges. Just saw a news report about the Ganges flowing above the danger level. One could literally see that.

12:00PM - Had a gala time in the bathroom, read it as taking hot water bath you twisted minds. This did get my juice flowing again. When I was sitting in the balcony happen to see a naked sadhu below. Hmmm...how would it look if I wear my hat, sunglasses, trekking shoes minus the clothes? and having the Ganges as the backdrop under pouring rain. That would make a nice 3-in-1 TV commercial "Where ever you go, you need them". It is raining cats and dogs, dropping raincoat has fired back.


Ram Jhula or Shivanand Jhula

7:00PM - We are back at the hotel after totally getting drenched in the rain. I had to buy 10 rupee raincoats to cover myself. We crossed the river using Ram Jhula (Shivanand Jhula - new name) to reach the Swargashram. Lunch at chotiwala was pretty good. Soon after that Anil did a disappearing act not to be seen till late evening. Since the time I landed here had a feeling that somehow I am closely connected to this place. This was confirmed when we saw 'Mohan Laundry Club' on the way to Lakshman Jhula. Laundry is fine but a club! There are other places worth a visit in Rishikesh. 'Baba Massage Center' (Since 1961) is one such place they have been massaging people for quite some time now, so they know what they are doing! Another one is 'Tantra Mantra Meditation Center' which is crowded with hippies. Your trip to Rishikesh is incomplete without visiting these places. We pretty much covered whole of Swargashram and Tapovan area (not to be confused with Himalayan Tapovan) by foot. Tomorrow our plan is to leave as early as possible to Uttarkashi. Looks like the weather is clearing up right in time for our trek. Finally saw some blue patch in the sky:-)

Prev day :: Day I - 24th Sept - Day in Delhi

Day I :: 24th Sept 05 :: Day in Delhi

I lost my diary in 'Tapovan fiasco', but I am trying to dig out as much as possible from my already battered (why? you'll know later) memory.

8:00AM - Finally the day we have been waiting for so long has come. Out of excitement I woke up even before the alarm went off. I was the first one to arrive at the airport as early as 7:30. Our flight, Kingfisher airlines, to Delhi is scheduled at 10 in the morning. Now that it looks real "colorful" thinking of getting my return tickets booked at Kingfisher:-) Having nothing else to do, I checked in my luggage. Anil and the group arrived full one hour after I did. Somehow I kept myself "busy" all the while. We started off the day by having a bad breakfast at the airport this trend pretty much continued the whole day.

11:00AM - Kingfisher cabin crew are not bad at all. Vijay Mallya is having real taste. Apart from the cabin crew you can watch channels on your personal television. They even serve lunch and don't charge for it! Everything about the journey was good. During landing at Delhi though we got into bad weather, pilot had to circle around the airport for nearly half hour. At one point we thought the plane would make a U turn and go back to B'lore that was the last thing we wanted. Luckily the plane landed safely after a while.

2:00PM - As planned a Qualis was ready to pick us up from the airport. We learned from our driver for the day "Rajkumar" that it's been raining for a day now. Hope it clears up by the time we reach Gangotri else that would really spoil our trek. Shikhar organization is located in Connaught place in Delhi not far away from the airport. We got all the details about the trek from Mr. Mukul, with whom we have been in touch from the beginning. Due to bad weather the UK expedition team is stuck in Nandanvan for a while now and preparing to come back. News on the Japanese team is that they are also stuck but in Gangotri. They are waiting for the weather to clear up before heading to Tapovan. It was time for lunch. We chose a crappy place called Nirulas. What a mess that place was. It was so congested you can hardly move in and out of your table. Food was another horror story. Only thing that was good about the place, not for us though, was the awesome 4 digit bill!



3:30PM - It's been drizzling since the time we landed here. Looks like it is not going to change. Now we don't have any option but to roam around Delhi. Since we have a 10PM train to Haridwar we thought it was not necessary to book a hotel room instead booked a cab and that's going to be our home in Delhi. We just realized it is not just sight seeing we also need to do some real acting to get through our day. The idea is our driver would take us to some very expensive govt owned shops,needless to they have some tie up with Shikhar or to the organization he works for, all we have to do is to pretend as though we are genuine buyers. This would fetch our driver Rs 400/- and some gift!!!. Right now I am sitting in front of one such shop where as Anil & Co are "performing" inside.



8:00PM - In between such acting sessions we found time to see the Presidential house, Parliament house, India gate and Qutub minar. Here the roads are so wide,at least at the centre of the city but the old Delhi is a different story altogether, and without any potholes if you are from B'lore you would definitely feel out of place. In the evening we went Ansal plaza, it is just like any other malls. Unfortunately it was the same story here also, bad food. Whole day is turning out to be bad food day.

10:00PM - Since morning I was wondering where the hell is that 'Tom Thumb' Delhi. Finally I felt at home. We just came through old Delhi, narrow roads with potholes adding to that there were cows in the middle. This was more like what we are used to in B'lore. Only important thing that we probably missed out was Tihar Jail. Old Delhi station is needless to say a real mess. We had to see a woman jump out of the train and a man taking a leak on the platform before boarding the train. We had managed to get seats in the same coach but it was scattered all over. Somehow managed to get into same compartment.

Once I got into the train my juice really started flowing. I promptly managed to capture that in my diary but as I said earlier I lost the diary. It is really sad that such a valuable material is gone forever. May be one day it'll show up in History's Lost & Found!

Next day :: Day II - 25th Sept - Rishikesh

I am back!!!

Landed in B'lore yesterday night at 11PM. And I am already back at office...so sad. Trek was quite adventurous, though nothing went according to the plan. Lots of incidents, lots of events to blog about. Unfortunately I lost my diary in 'Tapovan fiasco' (tell you more about that later) so I lost the first 7-8 days of writings:-( Anyways I'll re-write and try to recover as much as possible from my fragile memory bank. For the remaining ten days though I kept another diary and it is intact:-) All of us are back safely but one of us came very close to saying final goodbye!!!