09.09.2009 to 18.09.2009
Rishikesh, the so called ‘Yoga Capital’. This was one of the destinations we were looking forward to, especially Janet to have some time to meditate, study and practice Reiki.
The bus ride took us less than an hour. Once at the bus station we opted to catch a ride with an auto-rickshaw from there… a mistake we rarely do. We asked the driver to take us to Lhaksman Jhula which he agreed to for a good fee. It turned out that the place he stopped us was marked as the road leading to Lhaksman Jula… but about three to four kilometers away!! To add it all up we had to walk all this way with our heavy backpacks and under the blazing sun… nice!
Once in Lhaksman Jhula we tried our luck with three guesthouses before ending up at the ashram.
We had a look at three rooms, and for the first time since we had been in India (apart from our anniversary in Darjeeling) we spent a lot of money in a room (a lot in our budget terms)… Rs400 (6 euros). We could not help it though… Janet just fell in love with the room… actually the room in itself was nothing in particular, we had rooms in better conditions for a lower price, but the view was capturing. It had a balcony which directly overlooked the Ganges, with a full sunset view. Yakof could do nothing but consent to her wishes.
We spent eleven peaceful days in Rishikesh. Janet had time to read her Reiki books (most of which where new purchases from Rishikesh), practice hands on her Reiki and apply her Yogi diet. This was the ideal place to do all this… the place emanated spirituality from all pores. Here we must put a note though that our ashram was not true to its name. It was anything but holy… people smoked marijuana where it should be strictly prohibited and the manager was not a nice person at all. When he greeted us the first day he was all nice and smiling… hiding his true nature.
We discovered the real him when we decided to book the train ticket to Agra from the ashram. We had asked him for specific seats on the train, Yakof knew exactly which seats were situated where, and we always preferred the two in the corridor. When he came back with the reservations he gave us two seats which were totally the opposite of what we had asked for. When we asked whether we could change them he said it was not possible as the computer booking assigns seats automatically… which is true but you can give it your preferences and tell the system not to confirm the tickets if these preferences are not available.
Whilst reading the details in the tickets Janet came across the possibility that the ticket can be cancelled. Once again she asked the manager whether this could be done. On his negative answer both of us made it a point that he contacts the agent who did the booking and cancel the reservation… giving back our money. This is what he did in the evening, failing to give us back the commission he charged on the ticket. Eventually he gave up and gave us a full refund. After this happening we decided to go down to the train station ourselves and book our ticket from there. In fact we ended up booking three trains : one from Haridwar to Agra; another one from Agra to Varanasi; and the last one from Varanasi to Kalkuta. In RIshikesh we found a great place to eat, Little Buddha.
This place is owned by a very friendly Nepali, with a beautiful white dog named Tommy, which we occasionally also saw in the Ganga, either bathing on a hot day or playing with a fellow dog… mostly female. We made this restaurant our habitual eating place… it had the best pizza we ever tasted in India (well this statement is not giving much credit considering the pizzas in India), so to rephrase it, it was one of the best pizzas we ever tasted since our travelling. But all the rest of the food was equally great. A couple of times we also visited Swarg Ashram. On one of these visits we visited the famous Beatles ashram. Nowadays the ashram is no longer in operation and is quite run down. It should not be open to public but with a small bribe one can manage to get in, like we did. We had to visit the place… all Beatles fan had to do it. The ashram, though in very bad conditions, still showed sign of its grandeur in its old days. Here the Beatles wrote some of their best songs. The place is huge and used to have different kinds of accommodation, ranging from rooms with balconies, without balconies and cone shaped huts. We could make out some other places like the kitchen, the yoga/meditation room, etc. The gardens are huge, swallowing most of the steps in the ashram as well as some of the rooms. During our walk we also encountered some very big species of spiders.
During our stay we also gave a try to a yoga class, but was not really in the mood for that. Rishikesh is also a host for monkeys. We had two particular experiences with them. One was on our balcony. We saw these two big monkeys, male and female, on the balcony next to us. We decided to call them into our balcony by bribing them with some cookies. They immediately took the plunge. It was funny watching them taking the cookies from our hand and eating them. The female opened them, licked the insides first and than ate the rest of the cookie, similar to what we used to do when we were kids. There was no chance in touching them though, because as soon as you moved close to them they showed us their full set of sharp edged teeth.
Our second experience was next to the Beatles ashram. There was a whole big family of monkeys on a tree. The young ones cradling in their mothers’ arms… others were just playing with each other. After spending some twenty minutes looking at them, we realized that one of them was moving quickly on top of us and luckily realized on time what was happening… the monkey was peeing on us!!! The bastard!! He totally, metaphorically and literally, was talking the piss out of us… well technically on us!! We also accidentally ran into a friend of ours, Maltese, something quite rare for us when travelling given the small amount of Maltese who travel, especially around Asia. It was nice meeting him and we spend a lovely evening with him and his Italian girlfriend Daniela, which we also knew back in Malta.
The days here went by pretty quickly, considering that life was so slow. So one beautiful sunset after another, our last day arrived. This time our packing was quite heavy… we took out all of our things from our backpacks and tried to find a way how to pack our staff… mostly our twenty two books!! In fact most of our weight was books which we could not leave behind. Once fully packed we could not believed how heavy are bags were… the road with them will be quite hard!
We had a look at three rooms, and for the first time since we had been in India (apart from our anniversary in Darjeeling) we spent a lot of money in a room (a lot in our budget terms)… Rs400 (6 euros). We could not help it though… Janet just fell in love with the room… actually the room in itself was nothing in particular, we had rooms in better conditions for a lower price, but the view was capturing. It had a balcony which directly overlooked the Ganges, with a full sunset view. Yakof could do nothing but consent to her wishes.
We spent eleven peaceful days in Rishikesh. Janet had time to read her Reiki books (most of which where new purchases from Rishikesh), practice hands on her Reiki and apply her Yogi diet. This was the ideal place to do all this… the place emanated spirituality from all pores. Here we must put a note though that our ashram was not true to its name. It was anything but holy… people smoked marijuana where it should be strictly prohibited and the manager was not a nice person at all. When he greeted us the first day he was all nice and smiling… hiding his true nature.
We discovered the real him when we decided to book the train ticket to Agra from the ashram. We had asked him for specific seats on the train, Yakof knew exactly which seats were situated where, and we always preferred the two in the corridor. When he came back with the reservations he gave us two seats which were totally the opposite of what we had asked for. When we asked whether we could change them he said it was not possible as the computer booking assigns seats automatically… which is true but you can give it your preferences and tell the system not to confirm the tickets if these preferences are not available.
Whilst reading the details in the tickets Janet came across the possibility that the ticket can be cancelled. Once again she asked the manager whether this could be done. On his negative answer both of us made it a point that he contacts the agent who did the booking and cancel the reservation… giving back our money. This is what he did in the evening, failing to give us back the commission he charged on the ticket. Eventually he gave up and gave us a full refund. After this happening we decided to go down to the train station ourselves and book our ticket from there. In fact we ended up booking three trains : one from Haridwar to Agra; another one from Agra to Varanasi; and the last one from Varanasi to Kalkuta. In RIshikesh we found a great place to eat, Little Buddha.
This place is owned by a very friendly Nepali, with a beautiful white dog named Tommy, which we occasionally also saw in the Ganga, either bathing on a hot day or playing with a fellow dog… mostly female. We made this restaurant our habitual eating place… it had the best pizza we ever tasted in India (well this statement is not giving much credit considering the pizzas in India), so to rephrase it, it was one of the best pizzas we ever tasted since our travelling. But all the rest of the food was equally great. A couple of times we also visited Swarg Ashram. On one of these visits we visited the famous Beatles ashram. Nowadays the ashram is no longer in operation and is quite run down. It should not be open to public but with a small bribe one can manage to get in, like we did. We had to visit the place… all Beatles fan had to do it. The ashram, though in very bad conditions, still showed sign of its grandeur in its old days. Here the Beatles wrote some of their best songs. The place is huge and used to have different kinds of accommodation, ranging from rooms with balconies, without balconies and cone shaped huts. We could make out some other places like the kitchen, the yoga/meditation room, etc. The gardens are huge, swallowing most of the steps in the ashram as well as some of the rooms. During our walk we also encountered some very big species of spiders.
During our stay we also gave a try to a yoga class, but was not really in the mood for that. Rishikesh is also a host for monkeys. We had two particular experiences with them. One was on our balcony. We saw these two big monkeys, male and female, on the balcony next to us. We decided to call them into our balcony by bribing them with some cookies. They immediately took the plunge. It was funny watching them taking the cookies from our hand and eating them. The female opened them, licked the insides first and than ate the rest of the cookie, similar to what we used to do when we were kids. There was no chance in touching them though, because as soon as you moved close to them they showed us their full set of sharp edged teeth.
Our second experience was next to the Beatles ashram. There was a whole big family of monkeys on a tree. The young ones cradling in their mothers’ arms… others were just playing with each other. After spending some twenty minutes looking at them, we realized that one of them was moving quickly on top of us and luckily realized on time what was happening… the monkey was peeing on us!!! The bastard!! He totally, metaphorically and literally, was talking the piss out of us… well technically on us!! We also accidentally ran into a friend of ours, Maltese, something quite rare for us when travelling given the small amount of Maltese who travel, especially around Asia. It was nice meeting him and we spend a lovely evening with him and his Italian girlfriend Daniela, which we also knew back in Malta.
The days here went by pretty quickly, considering that life was so slow. So one beautiful sunset after another, our last day arrived. This time our packing was quite heavy… we took out all of our things from our backpacks and tried to find a way how to pack our staff… mostly our twenty two books!! In fact most of our weight was books which we could not leave behind. Once fully packed we could not believed how heavy are bags were… the road with them will be quite hard!
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