Happy Birthday Krishna

Window Cleaner Swinging on a rope

Wild Elephant Warning in the Jungle

Lord Krishna - Happy Birthday number 5126!

Cathy, our guide and Monk

Rishikesh on the Swollen Banks of the Ganges

Foot Bridge over Ganges 

Monkeys on the Bridge

New and old India side by side

Waiting for the Sun to go down at the Aarti

Sun setting on the Ganges

The Aarti Fire Ceremony

Hanuman, the Monkey God

Delicious Dinner of Cauliflower, Rice, Chicken with Spinach

Our hotel / Spa, Ananda in the Himalays

Ananda's Restaurant

Nothing could have prepared us for today. Cathy looked out of the window and saw a man hanging by a rope on a wing of our building, swinging from window to window like a monkey. He was washing windows! I guess India doesn’t have OSHA. We watched this daredevil window cleaner for a while and were amazed. Here is a short video I took.

We checked out of the Imperial Hotel (which we love and always stay at in Delhi) and flew to Rishikesh, a city in the Himalayas. This is the center of Yoga in India. This is where the Beatles spent 2 months with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi back in the 60’s. This is where Cliff and Cathy sweated like they never had before.

We left the airport and drove through the jungle towards Rishikesh. All of a sudden we were in a wild elephant reserve, with warning signs. I wasn’t expecting elephants in the Himalayas. I thought they had yaks. I didn’t expect to see monkeys everywhere. Warning do not look a monkey in the eye when are near one, they see it as a challenge.

It was hot, it was humid (so what else is new?), the driving was ridiculous. I expected winding twisting roads, I expected rain (but we haven’t encountered any monsoons yet), (oh I wasn’t expecting a power failure - it just happened now as I write this – hey the lights just came back on). What I wasn’t expecting was the constant viewing of helicopters bringing stranded and injured people from the floods into Rishikesh as they rescued them. I wasn’t expecting cows pushing their way in front of us on narrow streets, I wasn’t expecting motorcycles zooming down the same narrow streets honking their horns and narrowly missing the cows and us, I wasn’t expecting to walk on across the Ganges River on a narrow foot bridge with monkeys on either side of me ready to steal anything I was carrying. Most of all I wasn’t expecting to be driving on narrow mountain roads with landslides covering half of the road, or major portions of the road washed away by the monsoons. But don’t despair this story will have a happy ending.

Rishikesh was in a festive mood. Today is Lord Krishna’s 5126 birthday! What a cake with all of those candles he must be having! He is the blue god often shown with a flute. Our guide took us to a huge Ashram where we bought some books on spirituality, taking advantage of the Ashram special humid summer sale. Everyone has an angle on sales in India. We spent some time talking to a lady monk about her spiritual path that led her to spend her life at this Ashram.

We went to a Krishna Temple, and spent about 30 minutes inside it, listening to singers sing “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna”. We knew the lyrics thanks to George Harrison. It was quite pleasant, even with the bats hanging from the ceiling. The marble floors kept the temple quite cool.

The temple had a very clean, air-conditioned restaurant attached, it was a perfect spot for light lunch. We then returned to our car for a harrowing ride up the mountain and then back down and across the river on a bridge to get to the other side of the Ganges for the Aarti Ceremony. The Ganges, is of course India’s most sacred river. Rishikesh is down river from the melting glacier start of the river. It is swollen now, from the monsoons. This is a good thing, India’s agriculture depends upon the very polluted Ganges. Modi has promised to clean the river up. We will see. Rishikesh is considered a sacred city and like Varanasi, farther down the river, is a pilgrimage site for Hindus. At sunset, just as the sun sets over the Ganges, people gather on the steps leading down to the river and priests in their saffron robes chant and pray and light golden candelabras which they hold up as an offering the Ganges. It is quiet a spectacle.

Here is a short video I took.

After the ceremony we proceeded with the long, extremely hot and humid walk back across the bridge to our car. We were drenched and exhausted.

One thing about the humidity, living in California we don’t have humid weather. We aren’t used to being soaked with sweat. You basically learn to give into it. It  evaporates very quickly. 15 minutes after we are in our air-conditioned car we are dry again.

We then proceeded to drive up the mountain towards the resort / spa we will be staying at for the next few days. The ride was just like the other mountain rides: curvy narrow roads, landslides, washed out sections of the road. There was one new element for us - it was dark, the sun had sent during the Aarti ceremony. A thing about driving in the Himalayas – it is an experience I don’t want to ever have to do. But wait, there is good news, I don’t have to do it! We have a driver. That’s what his Dharma is: to safely drive people in the Himalayas. That’s what he was reincarnated to do. To our driver and guide this is absolutely no big deal. They do it every day. They even would be driving us if it were raining.

The higher we climbed on the mountain, the cooler it got. We eventually reached our destination: Ananda in the Himalayas – one of the worlds great Spas. This Spa is set towards the top of a mountain in what used to be an old palace. It is a beautiful setting, it is cool, it doesn’t have mosquitoes, it has wifi, it serves wine, it has a great kitchen. We are in for a few days of ultra-spa treatment, yoga, massage, wine. We are warned however not to leave our patio door open, for monkeys will come into our room and reek havoc. We ate dinner outside in the cool weather, on a deck high above the jungle floor. You could hear the typical sounds of the jungle. The food was wonderful: we choose from an extensive menu, my favorite gobi (Cauliflower) and chicken in a spinach sauce. A bottle of rose wine, and I had forgotten how we got up the mountain. Life in the spa was looking good. It was enhanced when Cathy read to me a passage in the hotel guide book that stated they have a private helicopter landing pad for use to evacuate us if a landslide closed the road. On the other hand, who would want to leave this place?