Up into Uttaranchal

Rishikesh and the Ganges.

Hemkund Shrine. Air...so...thin...

Crazy Sikhs bathing in the water. I thought about it, but chose to not get pneumonia instead.

What little money the sherpas/porters and mule-handlers make, they seem to blow on gambling and tobacco.

Just Protectin' the Roof of the World.

Poor old Jas had to stay an extra night in Delhi while I rode the rails up into Uttaranchal, to the capital of Dehra Dun. I spent the day there walking around the giant old British buildings and watching 9/11 documentaries on the National Geographic channel that mysteriously appeared in my hotel room. Jas arrived that night on the train and we quickly left the next morning to Rishikesh.

Rishikesh was put on the map when some little English band holed up here for a couple months in the late 60's and has since been the epicenter of hippy activity for the known universe. We switched hotels the second day here due to an unusually high population of Israelis at the place we originally picked, but unfortunately we found this to be the case everywhere in town. Anyone who has done some backpacking in India, Southeast Asia or South America knows the oddity that are Israeli travelers. They all come travelling after their army service is over, congregate in the same hotels, smoke all day and refuse to speak anything but Hebrew. They're not mean or anything, just hard to infiltrate and therefore usually something to be avoided when in large herds.

We spent one day poking around the ashrams (pilgrim/super hippy living communities) and wandering around the banks of the Ganges. Given that Rishikesh has been coined the yoga capital of the world, we also decided to partake in the local ritual of trudging into the woods and putting ourselves in ridiculous positions on sweat covered mats. Like Jason mentioned, we had a pact that if something should go wrong, the outside world would simply never hear of this particular adventure, but luckily everything seemed to go smoothly, to a degree. I tried to picture the whole experience much like a trip to Gibson's (the dojo I used to go to), except that we simply replaced kickboxing and arm-bars with Aum chants and meditative positions. Mr. Gibson also seemed to have been transformed into a tiny Indian man and the clientele changed from bouncers, bikers and street-toughs to hippies, Israelis and middle-aged Scottish men. For the most part it really wasn't that bad and basically amounted to doing a whole bunch of core and back exercises with brief rests in between. One part I did get a kick out of was when the instructor mentioned that "those of you who lead negative lives and indulge in toxins will now begin to expel those energies", everyone else in the room was bone dry, yet when I looked at Jason and I, I couldn't help but noticed that we were standing in pools of our own sweat and looking as if we just got out of the shower. I looked down at my pool of toxins and negativity and shed a tear for so many good times now lost. The first session left us feeling so good that we returned the next day. I must say that at this point I was really getting the hang of the whole thing and could definitely feel some of the energy. At first it was as if my mind connected with the others in the room and began to move out into the vast universe. The emptiness and endless knowledge swirled around my thoughts, I could feel spiritual enlightenment brushing against the outer reaches of my soul. Finally as the meditation came to a climax, and I envisioned and basked in the warmth of a near-nirvana state, a realization dawned on me: given this particular amount of sunlight, the strange hippy, yoga pants that all the girls seem to be wearing in this room have become nearly translucent to the point that I can make out the different styles of underwear they're all wearing. It all came crashing down as suddenly as it built itself up and I was back to the usual me.

Our last full day in Rishikesh was spent river rafting along the Ganges. It compared nothing to any previous rafting that I've done, but was still a cool experience for the novelty of it and the sight-seeing aspect, and you can't expect much for a $7 trip I suppose. It was at this point I took advantage of a karmic loophole and erased any past evilness I've bestowed to others by bathing in Ganges.

The next morning we were up at 3:30am to catch a bus for Govindghat, high in the Himalayas. The trip was only 250km but somehow took 11 hours to complete. The road was hideous and the bus was even worse, reminding both of us of our near death experiences in Bolivia along similar roads. To prevent motion sickness I started with one gravol but soon began to throw more into the old stomach as one by one the other occupants of our deathtrap spewed their guts out of the bus window. By the end I had taken around 300mg of the magical medicine (I dont remember the exact amount as at one point I began tossing random pills in my mouth during a gravol-induced haze) in an attempt to either overdose and end the pain or simply slip into unconsciousness. I tried to divert my mind by contemplating what steps I could take to further the Committee's goals in India, coming to the conclusion that the first step is to introduce vast amounts of recipe to the local populace. A few hours into the ride I passed out so violently and suddenly that I nearly put my head through the window.

After that experience (the bus looked like it had been painted with vomit by the time we reached our destination), we spent a night in Govindghat, before trekking up the 14km to our next waypoint of Ghangharia. On the bus we met a 20 year old Indian guy named Aashish who spoke great english and basically became our unofficial guide of the area. The 14km trek up to G2 (as Ghangharia was then referred to), was completely uphill, but not overly bad given that we gave both our bags to a little Nepalese sherpa fellow who whisked them away on his flip-flop clad feet. G2 is an awesome little town, nestled at the base of a few valleys and beside some massive snow capped mountains. The only way to get there is the 14km hike so it weeds out any of the weirdos that frequent other Indian towns. The main reason for the entire route (for most people) is that G2 is the basecamp for the 6km pilgrimage up to the shrine of Hemkund, a holy place for the Sikhs. The whole town was full of Sikhs (who have to be the single nicest group of people I've met on this entire trip) and once learning we were from Canada the instant reply would be "from Surrey?". Was weird having all these people know about a suburb so close to home, many of them its one of the only Canadian spots they know.

At 5am the next day we became honorary Sikhs and joined Aashish and the rest of the pilgrims for the 6km (1300m vertical) trip up to Hemkund, although we decided to differ from Aashish and wear footwear. Everyone on the trail was ecstatic to see these two strange white guys doing their holy trip and most of the day was spent talking to the pilgrims and eating the constant stream of candies they fed us. Upon reaching the summit, we declined taking a bath in the sub-zero ice water and hung out up there while Aashish did his thing, then joined him for the return trip down. We had planned to do the Valley of Flowers (original reason for going to this area) the next day, but intense rains and sickness kept us bedridden. For some reason I seem to wake up with some new ailment almost every morning, I'm really not sure what's causing it. Could it be that the food we eat is most likely grown in human feces? Maybe some kind of tropical parasite has taken residence in my body? Or perhaps my new addiction to cheap Indian chewing tobacco is to blame? Who knows. Woke up the following morning with a little sunshine, so it gave us the chance to do the 4-5km trek over to the Valley of Flowers. Although the majority of flowers were out of bloom, the place was still awesome, as it's a vast, green valley surrounded by 6500metre peaks.

As usual the altitude at this point (between 3000-4300metres) was beginning to get to both of us, and that afternoon, we hired a mule (for our bags...after the porter we hired mysteriously broke down a quarter of the way down the mountain) and made the return trip to G1 (Govindghat). From there we spent one last night, then caught an equally brutal return bus trip back here to Rishikesh.

Last night we joined a group of friendly Israelis to celebrate the Jewish new year. After obtaining some gin and other illicit products, we rang in the year 5766 to the sounds of one of the poor guys vomiting all night after introducing him to our whiskey/coke cocktails.

We hope to leave Rishikesh tomorrow in an effort to make our way to Varanasi and eventually Katmandu!