Tours n Travails - Rishikesh. Part 1 of 4

The following interior monologue is based on personal experiences except the parts that might get me into trouble. Those are purely fictional.

P.S: I know not how to use a comma

I’ve never been a big fan of water. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy the occasional bath or two. A Single Malt Whiskey with said liquid and a dash of soda is beyond description. The beach too is one of my favorite places but only the sandy part not the saline.

Nonetheless being surrounded by water, with land more than just a stones throw away is not my idea of a good time. Besides I throw like a girl, girls with pigtails and not 15” biceped more-testosterone-than-me javelin throwing she-men. Add to that the fact that I can only drink like a fish but not swim like one and you’ll know why I am a land-lover.

Hence when my friend P.B suggested that we take a trip to Rishikesh to white-water raft on the holy Ganges I was more than a little apprehensive. I did try to make up some excuse about work, which worked the first weekend, but then he postpones his flight so that we could do this trip the next. If he was so intent on drowning in the holy river, far be it from me to stop him. Besides I’ll try anything at least once and I’ll eat anything at least twice but that’s a story for another day.

So I book a cab and wait for Friday midnight for it to ferry me to my watery grave. Greek souls had to pay a single gold coin to boatman Charon to carry them across the River Styx to the underworld; I get a deal for 6 bucks a kilometer. In the meantime we talk to a few people who suggest that we should go to Haridwar since its on the way and it happens to be the time of the Mahakumbh, which takes place only once in 12 years. By suggested I mean- “Don’t cross any old Babas or they’ll put an eternal curse on you and your progeny.” I don’t give two nuts about my progeny but my health and general well being is important to me. That more or less meant we’d skip Haridwar.

We invite a colleague of ours, a Mr. S.L, another one of those misfortunate creatures taken from their original habitat of South India and forced to ride a unicycle in the cruel circus that is New Okhla Industrial Development Authority. S.L flatly refused to come initially but changed his mind when we he realized that he’d be able to take a bath in the Ganges thereby washing away his sins but more on that later.

Come Friday night and the cabbie arrives- a short, pot-bellied man with long hair slick with generous tablespoons of oil, or whatever it is they measure oil in. I, like most uppity middle class men with pretensions of class, don’t bother remembering his name but in keeping with my previous analogy we shall call him Charon. He tells me that he hasn’t been to Rishikesh but has prayed in Haridwar like all god-fearing scrupulous cab drivers in U.P. As per latest government census there are just 9 left. I have started a T-shirt campaign.

Rishikesh is only 30 kilometers away from Haridwar and besides Charon had come here as a five year old at a time when his mother used only a single teaspoon to wet his scalp. Hence we had nothing to worry.

I nestle in the back seat, jacket on, and window down and we move on the dark, not quite desert, highway (NH-58), cool wind in my hair but sadly no warm smell of Colitas rising up through the air. Other than the huge traffic jam which turned our journey from a five hour trip to a seven hour one it was a largely uneventful ride if you discount the Uttarkhand state police almost shooting at us and searching my bag for drugs, alcohol and/or ammunition.

You see, while I listened to Hootie and the Blowfish on my pod, Charon, in his infinite wisdom, chose to sneak past a police check-post. All the while the police are on the lookout for terrorists who might or might not be visiting the kumbh for a dip in the holy river. Needless to say we were chased and chastised, the cops being a touch disappointed I wasn’t carry anything juicy. Too bad they didn’t catch us on the return trip.

For the parts that I was awake I remember passing by IIT Roorkee. I don’t exactly understand, but have experienced firsthand, the fascination with IIT campuses that all engineers share, while at the same time not forgetting to belittle the specimens they house.

We also pass by Haridwar and other than the lights and razzle-dazzle; I notice a lot of signboards all of which have the picture of at least one holy man. They apparently have been enlightened with the knowledge of which constructor you should buy flats from. Besides real estate the signboard Babas were also of the opinion that the locally housed religion was under threat from all sorts of forces and it was up to the red-blooded youth to protect it. Even though my two co-passengers were asleep I doubt that they’d be inspired by the message, Rafting and Sin-washing being the only things on their respective minds.

To be continued