On Thursday, the last day of lecture, I left the farm early and in good company [one Brazilian guy, one American guy, one British guy and one British girl] to head out to Rishikesh... a small city located on the Ganges river quite close to the source!
One of our party had already been there for quite a while about a month before so we had bookings to stay at the Swiss Cottage (very Indian) when we arrived. We got in at night and woke up to a gorgeous view looking down on the Ganga with a background of Himilayan foothills! I spent all of the next day getting lost with Anna, the British girl. We walked across the Ganges on the footbridge, went down to the water and put our feet in, washed our faces, and relaxed on the sacred river for a while. Then we walked for EVER, got REALLY lost, got stuck in the middle of a dog fight [really scary], and then returned finally to our hotel and went for our ayurvedic massages at Baba massage center! That night we found some Israelis and had a spiffy little Chanukah celebration! [menorah made out of candles stuck onto a metal plate]
The next morning we awoke at the crack of dawn to grab breakfast and head out to the bus stand to catch a bus to Haridwar = another city on the Ganga but a bit further down... every 12 years there is a MASSIVE pilgrimage to haridwar and it is considered one of the holiest cities in India! It was quite different than rishikesh because it was not touristy at all... in fact, we hardly saw any other white faces! We spent the whole day wandering around by the river, taking a cable car up a mountain to a temple, relaxing until sundown. Then we planned to go down to the river and participate in the Aarthi (sp?) ritual in which you buy these amazing little boats made of betel leaves and filled with flowers and camphor candles and light them and float them down the river! Imagine hundreds if not thousands of people praying and floating their candle boats every night! We were super excited to join in [and i even brought some of my hair to put into my little boat because i was told to put it in the ganga]... but this peaceful moment was not to be. We were harassed endlessly by people claiming to be Brahmin who wanted to say a prayer for us, women trying to attack us by splotching big red bhindis onto our faces, kids asking for money, little boys handing us cups of white liquid to put into the river, and many more! It was so stressful that we were practically beating people away from us and had to settle for a crazed little ceremony. Bummer... but still lovely.
Anna went back to Rishikesh and I waited in the train station for about 5 hours for my train to Delhi where I took the metro [AMAZING and like the london underground] to meet up with some friends I had met on the Navdanya farm and stay overnight with their friends who live in Delhi!
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