Rafting the Ganges

Yup, it's officially summer here. Over 100F every day, I think the high so far is 106. Last weekend some friends and I spent an afternoon sitting by the pool at the American club and then this week there were two holidays (Id and Good Friday) and my friend Liz had her sister and brother-in-law in town so a bunch of us went up near Rishikesh to go rafting. I had done a similar trip a few years ago and it's just wonderful. You camp on the beach, in really comfortable tents with cots. On the last night it was a full moon so three of us slept outside the tents, underneath the stars. Very cool. We saw many monkies, barking deer, the eyes of some strange sounding owl and of course cows. We went rafting both days. The first day we also went kayaking - which I love despite not being very good at it. And went for a short hike. The second day we went for a tougher rafting trip and a much better hike. That hike took us through the local hill villages, it is truely amazing how many people and animals live up in the hills - with no roads or stores or anything.

Then on Friday, the third day we left camp and went into the town of Rishikesh which is a Hindu pilgramage site. But really it's become a hippy, yoga site for westerners. It's packed with crazy looking tourists - they are more interesting even then the Sadhus (holy men dressed in saffron orange with crazy beards). We tried to go to the yoga ashram that the Beatles stayed at but its been closed and locked up. The whole of the Ganges (Ganga) river is considered holy and if you bath in it it wipes away your sins. However certain towns/places are more special than others. A town near Rishikesh called Haridwar is one of the seven holy places for Hindus (not all on the Ganges) as Vishnu was said to leave a footprint there. Haridwar literally means Gateway to God. When people die this is one of the places they go to cremate the bodies and put them in the river for good fortune in the next life. At night they sent aarti down the river (palm leaves filled with marigolds and essentially an oil lamp).

All the pictures here are of the hike (or the camp site) since I didn't have my camera when I was in the water.

Photo 1) The Ganges, at our camp site.
Photo 2) Our group - From left to right, Dana - a colleague, me, Scott, Alison(from the US) and Liz.
Photo 3) Some kids that were playing at the end of our hike.
Photo 4) Women doing laundry in a creek (not the Ganga).
Photo 5) A woman in the fields - the whole area is really dry right now but they have wonderful irrigation so we saw them growing bananas, onions, peas and all sorts of things.
Photo 6) We took the train in from Delhi to Haridwar and then drove the 2 hours to camp. These are windy twisty hill roads and if you're not used to the Indian driving, it is very frightening. A lot of close calls. The whole way are the cutesy signs in English (so I assume they are more for the people in the backs of the cars than the drivers) that say things like "Speed thrills but kills". This sign was my favorite.
Photo 7) An old man we passed on our hike. The men seem to like to have their pictures taken, the women not so much.