Becoming a happy 'drop-out' in Rishikesh

Despite Nainital's beautiful suroundings I quickly tired of sitting by the lake and drinking chai, and having accepted i'd not being able to trek I was beginning to wonder just what I was going to do with my remaining 4-weeks in India.

I'd had the vague plan of spending 3-weeks in the Himalaya then a week in the state of Gujarat as my flight home leaves from Mumbai rather than Delhi. Now I had 4-weeks and a blank agenda in front of me so I started to explore the map and read up on some of the places around me.

When I was in Sikkim 2-years back I met, Daphna, an Israeli girl, who told me what a great time she'd had in Rishikesh. Looking at the map Rishikesh was 250km North West of Nainital, and if the Lonely Planet's description was correct it sounded like the perfect place to kick-back and relax for a while whilst I sorted out what to do with the rest of my trip.

Sunrise as I left Nainital

The local travel operators in Nainital we're all determined to send me back to Delhi (on their delux bus) to catch a train to Hardiwar that would enable me to bus to Rishikesh, but there was no way I was going to string the trip out to 24hrs or more when it really should be no more than 10 or 12. The next morning I got up at 4.30am and set off for the bus station. I caught a small bus down the hill to Haldwani, the regional transport hub, then wandered around the bus station shouting "Haridwar, Haridwar, Haridwar" and following the fingers of the people that pointed directions. After a couple of minutes I got to a bus with a man shouting "Haridwar, Haridwar, Haridwar" hanging out the door and I hopped on. After 20 minutes the bus was full, the driver jumped in and we set off.

I love traveling like this. The bus has no windows, the suspension gave up years ago, the seats are rock hard and there at twice s many people and bag as there is space, but it works! I know many of you think there's something seriously wrong with me for actually enjoying this but when you travel like this you get to meet people and have conversations that you'd not get traveling in a ' delux' bus with other westerners or affluent Indian's screaming into their mobile phones.

Riding the government buses

My first conversation was with a female lecturer from a local university. She asked me all the usual questions, Where was I from? Where was I going? Am I alone? Where is my husband? What is my job? and I asked her the same. During the 11-hour trip I met 5 or 6 different people, all of them curious and eager to share stories and tell me as much as possible about their home town or state. The time passes quickly and I learn a lot as I have the opportunity to ask questions about what i'm seeing around me, or about that strange food they were selling at the last place we stopped.

Having come down from Nainital at 2,200m and crossed the plains for a number of hours we finally crossed the Ganges river and for the first time I got to appreciate just how enormous it really is. The monsoon was poor and there is no snow melt at this time of the year so much of the river bed was dry but it was easily 0.5km wide, more in places, and you could see it snaking away for miles into the distance.

The mighty Ganga

Straddled across the Ganges a little higher up into the hills Rishikesh was put on the map back in the 1968 when the Beatles came to spend a month in an ashram here, the result of which was their White album. Since then its been a centre for yoga, meditation and healing, and also a common place to come and kick-back, relax and 'drop out' for a while, and this, I decided, was exactly what I was going to do.

Having found myself a great little guest house with some friendly neighbours and a great view I quickly settled into a routine of early breakfast with the English edition of the local papers, a wander down to town to people watch for a while, lunch somewhere quiet with my book dthen meeting up with Joy, James & Mike (my neighbours) for a stroll out of town to the 'beach' in the afternoon.

It's a tough life being a backpacker !

It was on one of these strolls that as a motorbike passed by us a voice called 'Kristen!' and I looked up to see Selina, a colleague from work! What on earth was Selina doing here! and what are the chances of us running into each other an a rather remote road somewhere North of Rishikesh?! I knew that Selina had taken a year sabbatical and at some point was going to be doing some volunteer work in Delhi but it was just by chance that she happened to be having a couple of days break and was staying at an ashram just outside of Rishikesk. How totally bizarre and wonderful to have run into her! It seems chance meetings were becoming a theme on this trip and honestly after running into Selina I would not have been surprised if i'd got back to my guesthouse to see Doug and Cama drinking chai in the garden or bumped into Matt, Katherine & Kaia wandering over the bridge or outside of a temple. How wonderful would that be. It is after all a very very small world.

Chance meeting with Selina (No matter how far you run you never escape the IHT!!)