Day 117. Sema Kui - Rishikesh

An easy day today, our destination is Rishikesh only 65km away, haha, the first 40km were all built up area, then we had about 5km of nice dual carriageway then the rest was a lovely windy road through beautiful bush and not too much traffic so the total trip was only 2.5 hours!

Always something interesting to see along the way. 

Rishikesh is now the self styled yoga capital of the world. Every year they have a yoga festival that attracts devotees from around the world. The town itself is split in two and has parts on both sides of the Ganges river. It is very picturesque. On one side where we are there are a lot of hotels and on the other side there are many ashrams or yoga retreats. The town rises steeply from the river and the buildings are mostly perched on the sides of these ridge.

Rishikesh first came to prominence to the world when the Beatles came here in the late 60’s and their time here influenced their work of the time with George Harrison playing the sitar.  The ashram they stayed in has fallen into disrepair but has been restored a little bit apparently. There are also Beatles memorabilia cafes. We will explore these places tomorrow. 

This afternoon we just lay around the pool. 

At about 5:30 we wandered down to the banks of the Ganges with our hotel manager to see a Ganga aarti river worship ceremony. The river here is quite swift, you could not swim across it, we had a paddle and it was refreshingly cool, no doubt of its origins. 

Mark looking thoughtfully at the Himalayan foothills. 

I kept thinking about Ed Hillary, Graeme Dingle and I think Jim? Hamilton and a few others jet boating this river from the mouth to the source, what an adventure that must have been.  

As we waited we looked up the river and could see a wall of fog slowly working it’s way downstream. Soon it reached us and with the low cloud and mist about the place it was a bit spooky. Then the heavens opened and it absolutely bucketed down, we took shelter under a nearby canopy. 

Looking back towards the town and temples. There is a swing bridge connecting the two parts of the town. 

I guess it was too wet for the river worship so we hiked back up the hill to the hotel. 

We were like drowned rats, soaked to the skin but it was quite refreshing. A change of clothes, we headed for the restaurant for an excellent Tandoori platter for dinner.