Guest blogger: Mama

The robin’s egg blue waters of the Ganges, running through the middle of Rishikesh, has a magnetic pull on a person’s attention:  for some, it is the promise of spiritual awakening, for others, it is the potential adventure that it holds.  The river is big.  Right now, I would guess that it is running about 40,000 cfs, but the high waterline is way above the current river level.  One of our river guides told us that, during high water 2 years ago, it took them about 20 minutes to run an 18 kilometer section of river…  it must have been like riding the top of a speeding train.

My Anna has had kayaking on her mind since her first trip to Rishikesh about a month ago.  I was not willing to commit to a kayak trip without first scouting the rapids and giving it some serious thought.  We signed up for a raft trip the following day to check it out.

The next day was warm and sunny.  The deep water of the Ganges pulled our raft forward through a series of rapids:  roller coaster and golf course being the two biggest.  As we approached each rapid, our guide asked if we would rather take the tiger line or the chicken line.  Anna’s voice could be heard above the others as she said, “Tiger line.”  One of the German girls did not like that, but there wasn’t much she could do about it.  The tiger line took us through a series of Grand Canyon style haystacks…  class 2 and 2+.  The river was rollicking and lovely.

The next consideration for us was gear.  Most of the guides here paddle in creek boats.  A few have smaller play boats and I even saw an old boat that looked like a Dancer from a distance.  When we asked to see the boats that we would be paddling, they were either being used on the river or stored somewhere else.  hhhmm   I did not want to disappoint Anna, but I also didn’t want to set us up for an unwanted epic adventure.  Finally, I made the decision to go. 

We showed up at the shop one morning, signed a few papers and were whisked away by a taxi.  The driver approached two young men standing on the side of the road with 2 boats and a pile of gear.  We tried on gear and loaded up, still 2 boats and 2 paddles short.  We stopped at another guide’s house and picked up another tiny Dagger.

At the put-in, there was much gear swapping and adjusting.  The gear varied from a top-of-the-line paddle to a paddle that looked like it was purchased with a rubber raft at Walmart.  Luckily, Anna and I ended up with, apparently, the better choices  After a few practice rolls we headed down the river.  Our guide looked wary.

  The first rapid was a rollicking class one+.   The waves were big and the feeling was irie.  I noticed that my boat was filling up with water…  pretty rapidly.  I think that this was a combination of a leaky boat and a porous spray skirt.  The next rapid, Roller Coaster, was a straight-forward series of haystacks.  But like many straightforward big rapids, the tricky part is at the end, where the currents can get swirly and unpredictable.  Anna followed the guide, I followed Anna and the apprentice brought up the rear.   We dropped down the first glassy wave into a series of monster waves.  As we crested the top of each wave, we could get a view of the river below as well as each other.  As I braced against each frothy wave I could get glimpses of Anna bobbing along in front of me.  Towards the bottom of the rapid, the view changed from seeing Anna, to seeing the bottom of Annas boat and her head bobbing nearby.  Anna was being blessed by the Ganges, purified by the water…  her nasal passage and eyesockets were being cleansed as she was taking in big gulps of the blessed water.  Anna was purified, cleansed, blessed and spanked by that lovely blue/green water.

As Anna was clutching her cramping stomach that evening, I was wondering if I had made the right decision and I would have to say I did.  Anna experienced the ganges to it’s fullest extent…  it was awesome in it’s power and beauty, as well as humbling.

Happy Holi

Julia and I stayed in Pune for a week after the North tour specifically for the festival called Holi. Like most others, the festival of color isn’t much celebrated in the South, and we wanted to celebrate our last one in style. It felt like Easter as we were woken up by screams of children’s laughter and went to the street of our host’s apartment building to check out the scene. Being a) the only white people, and b) the only people above the age of ten, Julia and I were unsure of how much we would be invited to participate in the celebrations. However, our little host brother and his friends made sure we weren’t left out. The 25 of them ambushed us with their water guns and refused to let up until we were forced to run away and hide an hour later. It was full-on war, and of course we came unprepared. Usually Holi is known for throwing color, but these kids weren’t allowed to use color because some of the buildings had recently been repainted.

Around town we could easily distinguish all the people on bikes who had played Holi. There would be one guy on a bike looking totally normal, then there would be a pink and blue one. Another normal looking businessman before three more pink teenagers. It was pretty funny.

Part two of the day took place with people more our age, color, and music. We found two other exchange students and a bunch of Indian friends completely covered in the brightly colored powders. After the awkward introductions to the people Julia and I didn’t know, we got to throwing some color. The powder came in bags which we ripped open and smeared on all our friends and threw in the air. The boys ambushed us with raw eggs, which they cracked on the girls’ heads, and then we broke out the watering hose. At the end we couldn’t tell who was who, and the magenta sidewalk looked like the scene of Barney’s violent death.  

Aftermath: I had pink ears for two weeks and blue feet for a few days, but other than that I was able to wash most of it off. The clothes I was wearing have been washed six times and still have irreversible stains, which I must admit I love. 

The End of the North

The purpose of going to Haridwar was to see the Ganga river arthi that took place there. It's at the higher, cleaner part of the river, and throughout the entire day you can see people dunking themselves. I can't even begin to explain how great it felt to touch water again, because rivers don't really exist in the South. Julia and I bought straw baskets filled with flowers, incense, and a lamp to float down the river when it came time. At six thirty there was a relatively large crowd around the section of river which they do the arthi. There was a man every twenty feet yelling prayers about the Ganga, although to us it just sounded like we were being scolded in Hindi. Then, they spent ten minutes collecting donations before they let us light the candle and incense and put our baskets in the river. It was so beautiful to see all the floating lights, but also kind of crazy. Everything was loud and confusing because there were people everywhere shoving things into our faces and asking for money and it was just a circus! The main thing is everyone wanted money. Haridwar is a touristy place, and where there are tourists there are beggars. It was unfortunate and sad, but it's a total Catch-22. Do we want to be the stingy foreigners, or the people who get taken advantage of? And then if we give money to one person there will be a swarm around us two seconds later. So we went back to the hotel with our pockets considerably lighter.

Rishikesh was the place I was looking forward to most on the entire trip, because I would get to be in a river again! I was expecting the raft guide to bring us on some lame rapidless stretch of river, but I was pleasantly surprised to find enormous waves and tons of cold splashing! The river is probably 30 feet wide and 30 meters deep, which means there weren't any rocks or obstacles to avoid. It was just 20 foot waves and screams of laughter. Towards the end we got to float in the Ganga for a while with our huge life vests and goofy-looking helmets. The water was moving really fast so it was easy to get away from the boat, and also freezing cold. I have to admit that I was worried about a skeleton hand reaching up and pulling me under forever, but thankfully our trip was dead body-free. At the take-out we cliff jumped 15 feet into the freezing holy river.  I keep telling everyone here about how much I miss the Punchbowl and other adrenaline-creating things, so true to form I climbed up to the top of the cliff and showed all the other scardies how it was done. Unfortunately, at the end we opened up the dry bag and my poor camera came out covered in soggy cookies and completely water-logged. Major Bummer. But still a fantastic day, and a fantastic trip. 

North Part 2

I'm not really very big into these huge tourist places, maybe because I live in one, so I wasn't absolutely thrilled to go to the Taj Mahal. (Is that terrible?) Looking beyond the gate, it was like another heaven. Slowly the Taj appeared, separating itself from the light blue sky behind. We fought our way through the tourists (mostly Indian, surprisingly) taking pictures of holding the top of the building and on through the garden. It felt like I was walking towards a big postcard, instead of a real, 3-dimensional work of art. Up close the marble was cool on our feet and thankfully not as crowded as I thought it would be. After walking around it on three different levels we went inside. To be honest, the inside isn't anything special. Two tombs, that's it. We were given 2 hours here, which was far too much, so our whole group napped in the shade behind the building. It was pretty cool. 

Next stop was Delhi where we visited the Quitab Minar which was a tall minaret surrounded by a broken-down temple. Next, we visited the Lotus Temple which looked great from the outside, but resembled a conference hall inside with every sound echoing five times. 

Stop #3 was the India Gate which was a monument dedicated to the Indian soldiers fighting with England against Hitler and the Germans in World War II. I had no idea India was involved at all with WWII, so that was an interesting piece of knowledge. 

The Akshar Dham temple was one of the most beautiful monuments we had seen on the trip. Outside it looked just like a big temple with carvings all around the outside and a beautiful, well-manicured lawn. Inside, however, was pretty unique. There was one huge gold statue of... an important man surrounded by the most glittery jewels, glass, and mirrors. There were another 8 statues of gods and goddesses around the inside of the temple which each was like their own prism of light. I had to put my sunglasses on this place was sparkling so brightly! 

Rat Temple

So there we are, 15 people waiting to go into a rat temple in Bikaner at 9pm. First, there was a metal detector for some ungodly reason, then we walk to the gate, which looks dirty but otherwise unremarkable. THEN we walk inside to find rats of all shapes and sizes scurrying around in their gross little furry bodies under our feet and pooping their hauntavirus poops everywhere! To the right we could see nothing but a surging black mass and what looked like a little rat playground. To the left were bowls of water and milk which were set out as offerings to these horrible creatures. Up ahead was the actual worshipping area. There were metal gates on either side of the line of people wishing to offer blessings, which looked like the favorite place of the creeps- they were everywhere! I found out only after standing in this line for 15 minutes of being afraid to move forward should the rats attack, that foreigners aren't allowed to pray here. I thanked the rat gods and literally ran outside where the genius whoever built the place didn't think of a foot-wash to remove the rat waste off my feet. 

Camel Riding!

The desert in Rajasthan looks a lot like Utah, until you hit the camels. Julia and I shared one, and we were both totally freaked out when it stood up. At first we have to lean waaay back, then waaay forward, then finally settle at the general animal-riding position. Unfortunately, the camel driver wouldn't make it run, so it was slow going with a lot of unpleasant rubbing on the lower limbs, but then I reminded myself, "Anna, you are riding a camel in the deserts of India right now," and the pain went away. It was about an hour journey to the small village native to the camel boys where we met their families, may or may not have had some things stolen, and drank tea. The houses here strongly resembled the adobe houses of the Native Americans, or "Red Indians" as they call them here. The tea, however, did not. I didn't really register the quantity of goats and the lack of cows until they gave us goat-milk tea, which was absolutely terrible. It was salty with another unplaceable horrible taste that should never be in tea.  We all choked it down after our tour guide told us they would be really offended if we didn't drink it. On our way back to camp we stopped for about an hour at some small sand dunes where we took pictures and watched the sun go down. Back at camp we saw a traditional Rajasthani dance and then went back to one of our tents to chill for a while before bed. After a while, Julia starts randomly screaming and jumping around. We knew something was wrong but no one predicted that there would be a huge, yellow tarantula probably 3 inches in diameter chilling on the bed with us. We called our tour guide to kill it, but he just scared it under the bed where no one could find it. Thank God we didn't have to sleep in that particular tent, I don't know how those girls did. 

Tour d'North Part I

It all began with a train. Train #00150 from Pune, Maharastra to somewhere in Rajasthan. We were in the 3-tier section where six people squish into a 6x4 compartment for 22 hours. I was with three other exchange students and a large Indian couple who deemed it necessary to invite their entire extended family into our cramped little space. I was compressed into a 1x2 area of space in the dirty corner while our Indian friends and all of their brothers, sisters, children, and grandchildren tried as hard as they could to squeeze in. We quickly realized the problem which appeared when everyone was talking at once, each one convinced that what they had to say was the most important and therefore should be said the loudest- including the little ones.  It was a loud, cramped, and unfortunate way to begin our trip, to say the least. However, once we understood that the fam were only saying goodbye and wouldn't be staying it was easy to see the humorous side of the situation until a few hours later when they started snoring like lawnmowers under our heads.

Our first stop was Ranakpur where we visited one of the most beautiful temples I have ever seen. It was made purely from marble and everything from the floor to the windows and columns to each ceiling was intricately hand carved. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures, but I really thought I was in heaven for a few minutes there.

A full day on the bus later, we reached Jodhpur where we took one of our many fort tours. It was an enormous castle-like dwelling which was situated on the top of a hill and overlooking the city beneath it. On the left most of the houses and rooftops were painted blue, whereas on the right they were all different colors. We could see forever, and it was an amazing view helped by the setting sun. The fort was full of different rooms which each had their own theme and carvings in the walls.

Jaisalmer was our next stop, and while shopping here we encountered the most tourists of the trip so far. Julia and I are the only two white people in Coimbatore, so it was really weird seeing other foreigners. Every time we saw one we would point and say excitedly, "white person!" Sounds like an odd thing for a fellow whitie to be doing, but we were deprived. Our tour guide took us to the "Golden City" fort which was by far my favorite thing we saw on the entire trip. It was one of the few forts in India where people still live, and was comprised mainly of houses, tiny narrow paths, tourist shops, and yucky smells. We had to navigate our ways around the open sewer systems, cow pies, venders saying "madam, I will help you spend your money," goats, and cows. The cows were everywhere! I don't know how they knew how to navigate around the paths they could fit into and random drop-offs, but it was pretty cool to just turn a blind corner and there would be a cow chilling in the middle of the road with an oncoming scooter blaring it's horn. We went to these huge centuries-old family housing next. Apparently it began with one small house, then when their children grew up the parents built another house on either side, then when those children grew up they would build new floors and on and on. It reminded me of a beehive, sort of. Our guide repeated a few times the significance of there not being windows in most of the houses. In the "olden days" the women weren't allowed to participate in functions and celebrations of the village, so they made windows which were mostly covered so the women could see out but people couldn't see into the houses.