02/04/2010

I took 3 of the sleeping pills over the course of the night and had perhaps the best sleep I have ever had on any mode of transport ever, the train journey was suppose to be 14 hours, instead taking 17 to get to Haridwar where Emer and I tried to find a place to leave our stuff and see kumbhamela for the day.

Because we could not find a place to store our stuff at both the train station and public bus stand we decided to make our way to Rishikesh to find a hotel and postpone our time at the festivities for another date. We took a bus to Rishikesh and a vikram (a larger rickshaw) to Lakshman Jhula where we had to walk a considerable distance across town then across a footbridge to the location of the backpacking scene. We found a place offering only a single costing rs200 where I had to use my floor mat as an extra bed.

The scene here is much like Pushkar in the sense that it is filled with meditating, yoga-ing, instrument playing hippies, which I don’t really mind although I am missing the metal scene of Europe. I am certainly not going to find any bars playing In Flames or Wintersun here as this is the yoga capital of the world and also dry of alcohol, they don’t even sell meat here. L

Anyway, my preferences aside, it’s a lot greener here than in Rajasthan as we are closer to the mountains and right on the river Ganges separating the town into two parts with a convenient but busy foot bridge.

We wondered around town and met some English girls who we hung around with for the afternoon, chilling in a restaurant on the river before seeing a hippy song and dance shindig in a small bar where almost everyone got involved playing with various instruments, beating, plucking and drumming away; and Ill be honest, it was really good.