ga-ga for ganga

so trains are totally the way to do it. the 37 hour jeep-then-bus-ride from leh down to delhi was, hopefully, the last time we use tyres to cover lots of KMs. on the train up to rishikesh the ride was smooth, food decent, sleep excellent, breeze marvelous, view fantastic.

Rishikesh: we stayed a little under a week at a SUPER colorful ashram perched right on the edge of the ganges/ganga - a maaaaaassive river with whatsgottabe zillions of gallons flowing at like 100 KM/hr, or something. seriously though, just sitting listening to/staring at the ganga was quite a sublime experience.

and ashram living was, of course, quite peaceful. 2 yoga and 2 meditation classes daily in the orange/blue/purple hall in the middle of the courtyard. learned lots of mantra/songs that would turn out to be amazingly and unexpectedly catchy. but the facedown yoga positions were kind of annoying with a beard...

... so on the 2nd day i decided to get a shave at the barber shop a couple blocks from the ashram. this was NOT peaceful. it got off to a deceptively smooth start. the barber lathered in tons of cream and taking off the 2 month old beard with a straight razor was like rolling off a carpet. no problem. then he asked if i wanted a face massage. i'd seen jake get this done in kashmir and it looked like no worries. but my barber, a springy wiry white haired man, basically started beating the living shit out of me. Had me in all kinds of wrestling moves (full nelson, etc.), slapped me around like he was trying to knock the hair off my head, stuck hands down shirt, pinched hard, twisted arms way beyond even my new-found yoga-trained flexibility, cracked fingers and neck, stuck fingers up nose... not even exaggerating, i swear.

another tidbit of note was the walk through the mountains to neelkanth, which was made rather tough by the oppressive humidity and attempted mango burglaries by monkey-land-pirates, but well worth it 'cause at the zenith temple we got this sweet red and yellow holy string wrapped artfully around our wrists.

sorry for the delay before this , by the way, but the downside of trains is that booking on the whack website eats up 99% of my patience for staring at computer screens.

next up: from the mountains to the beaches: the SOUTH!! yessssssss! and new snaps.


p.s. for your spiritual benefit, here's a mantra that i like called mahaamrityunjaya. it's for healing yourself or others, even at a distance.

om trayambakam yajaamahe
sugandhim pushti vardhanam
urvaarukam iva bandhanaan
mrityor mukshiva maamritaat

leh --> manali --> delhi. + ean

even after the mind-expanding rides from jammu to srinigar to leh, the leh-manali highway was stunning. the last couple hours we kept snaking up and up and up and up and up and up and up until we were way way way way above the clouds and the snow/ice chunks got huge, like winter whales strewn about. i'm not sure why these chunks were so randomly scattered, but the melting process carved them in beautiful ways. after cresting the top and beginning the long descent down into manali, we looked far below to small villages which were at an altitude quite a bit higher than most of the clouds liked to float.

manali itself was rather carnivalesque.. wide streets packed tight with people, mostly dressed to the nines. we heard raucus music and went to investigate and it seemed to be a coin-operated mess of machinery that made lots of crashing smashing sounds. it was night, and the whole scene reminded me a lot of the part in the old pinnochio cartoon where our hero ends up banished to the carnival and i think maybe he starts to turn into a donkey (knaamsayin?).

we were way lucky and got the last 2 tickets for the bus to delhi. well, the last 2 seats anyway. the room in the aisle was not wasted. some people sat on the floor and others stood for big chunks of the 16 hour ride.

we stayed in the tibetan section of delhi and when we arrived ean was already there. the hotel was a little remote so the three of us relocated to Camran Lodge, a hotel in pahar ganj (the neighborhood that 99% of us backpackers stay in) which was also (or was formerly) a mosque. the rooftop was amaaaaaaazing.

while in delhi we checked out jama masjid, the biggest mosque in india. we also chilled out in lodhi gardens (which has a sweet bonsai park and provided a needed oasis from the hustle 'n bustle), met some fun parisians and some wild scandinavians driving a technicolor hippybus across this earth (oncearoundtheworld.com) at GEM bar, ate some way fancy thali in connaught place, and saw a somewhat lackluster bollywood film, "thoda pyar, thoda magic."

next up: 1st train trip & ashraming in rishikesh