We arrived in
Haridwar after a gruelling ten hour journey in a sweaty car on the bumpiest
road in.the.world. It seemed as though Karam was also on a mission to put us
through the roof when my head bumped it for the fifth time. Things had also
turned a little sour with the one CD we had bought so that 'who let the dogs
out' skipped on every other (awesome) word. No matter how much Karam spat on
the CD and rubbed it on his trousers it just wouldn't work (shocker). The
journey did take a more positive spin after we convinced Karam to find and stop
at a McDonalds for us; it had been almost three weeks of curries by now.
As Haridwar wasn't included in our tour we had to book
our own accommodation. Because we are extremely stingy we wanted to pay no more
than £2.50 each. Considering how much we had paid the rooms weren't too bad. We
did have to wash under taps and use a hole in the ground but apart from that it
was a delight. We were very excited about being in Haridwar, partly because of
the Ganges- pronounced gang-ies- and partly because we were on a mission to
find the one armed and elephant babas (featured in Karl Pilkington’s, 'An Idiot
Abroad'). That night we left to go to the Ganges at prayer time. When we began
walking down to the river I was shocked by how busy it was. There were already
thousands down there an hour before prayer time. People were lining the sides
of the river and swimming in it as well as drinking the water. Karam told us
that it was especially busy as it was a weekend and people would travel there
from around India to come and pray. They were also filling up tubs of water to
spread around their homes for good luck. We felt a bit too self conscious to
get in the water here because we were the only westerners there. We also
weren't sure what the clothing protocol was; the women seemed to go in, in
their pyjamas while the men were taking a dip in a vast array of transparent
underwear. The amount of men happily strolling around, half-naked with
erections, was also at a disturbing level.
After all the enjoyment of the Ganges we decided we
wanted the take a boat ride along the river. Karam (as per usual) completely
misunderstood this and tried taking us to a white water rafting centre in a
place called Rishikesh. This wasn't a complete loss though as Rishikesh was
beautiful. It is right in the foothills of the Himalayas so we were totally
surrounded by mountains and the Ganges runs through the middle. It was a more
relaxed atmosphere here than in Haridwar and we had a really good day looking
around the town, climbing a path up the Himalayas and swimming in the Ganges.
We also managed to find a honey cafe with some nice, non-curried, food.
After leaving Rishikesh we spent a few more days in
Haridwar, unable to find a single baba. I was seriously disappointed about this
but after walking round asking a number of locals and sticking my arm in the
air to try and imitate the baba we clearly weren't getting anywhere. But I will
include a picture for those of you who aren't familiar with Karl Pilkington...
Our last stop before our tour was over was at our driver’s
village where he had invited us to stay for the night. We were less keen on the
idea of this than when he had originally invited us as he kept asking Lucy if
it was going to happen with him and 'Goonda'. He was also generally irritating
because he couldn't understand a word we were saying (I sound mean saying this
but after three weeks of trying to explain every tiny little thing my patience
was wearing thin).
Anyway we still took the trip to his village and had
quite a mixed night there. It was soon apparent that our visit had caused some
excitement as people kept turning up at his house to see us. However, everyone
was really nice and he had a cute little niece who we taught to play snap. His
sister in law cooked us a lovely meal which we ate before everyone else as is
customary for guests in India. The downside to this was that our driver was
completely hammered; he was and his mate, who had come round to the house to
fix their computer were both so drunk. We were quite used to seeing Karam drunk
by this point because he would sink back a fair bit of whiskey each night but
his friend was a complete pest. He kept saying Soph's name but couldn't speak
anymore English than that. He also offered me a piece of soggy, yoghurt covered
onion when he was eating his dinner.
In the morning things also took a turn for the worse.
I had woken up feeling a bit queasy but ignored it until Gwend said she had
been sick in the night and Soph complained that she had been feeling ill too.
After this we were all running to Karam's little hole in the ground. This was a
complete nightmare because not only were we all feeling horrendous but we were
flying that day and had to sit through a two hour journey to the airport as
well as the flight. Luckily we got through the flight without any emergencies.
No comments:
Post a Comment