These six days have really been an unforgettable experience. The feeling has reminded a lot about being in a camp of some kind – fun, social, but a lot of work.The first day it was just the two of us who participated in our yoga week and it felt very good as Johan never done yoga before and I hardly done yoga for the past 20 years. Our teacher Krishna began by giving us some background information on Hatha yoga, but then it was quickly time to start doing exercises, yoga Asana.
So fun, but oh what a pain and so much sweat it gained. Krishna is a small slender girl in her early twenties who is very determined but also very good at correcting incorrect moves in a smooth manner, that makes you not feel stupid. It was with a smile on our faces we left every yoga class even though it sometimes felt hard to go there.
(Rishikesh, India, 4th of Sep 2016)
We had booked the retreat from the 4th of September but after emailing back and forth with the manager we had been given a room a day earlier without any extra cost. The reception area was, when we arrived, full of people celebrating and dressed up in white clothes and orange flower wreaths, and after a while we realized that it was because this was the last day of their month-long yoga teacher retreat.
(Rishikesh, India, 4th of Sep 2016)
Arriving in Rishikesh we were unexpectedly not attacked by rickshaw drivers but could quietly choose a tuktuk ourselves. We told the driver that we wanted to go to the Ram Jhula Bridge and a few kilometers later we were dropped off at a small opening in a wall and thought the driver had misunderstood where we wanted to go but he just keep on pointing at theopening. And he was right. After 100 steps downwards we saw the bridge that would lead us over the Ganges to the part of Rishikesh where our Yoga Retreat would be. Together with a few cows, a number of mopeds, many colourful Indian people, a couple of monkeys and a few Westerners, we walked over the bridge and began looking for our retreat.
The temperature was about 35 degrees and we were both carrying backpacks, front and back, so we quickly became very warm. According to the description on the website it sounded as if it would be easy to find the yoga retreat, Rishikul Yogsala, but we had to ask several people before we finally found it. Read More
(From Dehratun to Rishikesh, India, 4th of Sep 2016)
The evening before we should take of we asked around on where the buses from Dehradun to Rishikesh would depart from and we got help from the hotel to book a rickshaw to take us there. Probably we paid way too much but the cost was not more than 20 Swedish kronor (2,2 Euros) so it was no big issue.
The road to the bus station was long and very bumpy, on some road sections all the cars and rickshaws had to drive slalom to even get around. Arriving at the station, we found, after a bit of help from the ticket office and a very friendly Indian girl, our bus stop. Read More
(Dehradun, India, 4th of Sep 2016)
We were arriving in Derhadun after five hours on the train. (Another messy train station.) We decided to go by foot to our hotel, which we booked in advance on Booking.com, even though it was 2 km away, it was over 30 degrees and we had our backpacks to carry. Derhadun is a fairly large but fun city with a large bazaar area we walked straight through. Lots of fabrics, garments, spices, fruit and vegetable items in small shops along the streets, a charming area. Read More
(From Delhi to Dehradun, India, 3rd of Sep 2016)
For the transport from Delhi to Dehradun we had booked tickets on a train to Dehradun that should leave very early in the morning. When we arrived at the entrance to the station we were stopped by a man who wanted to see our tickets. Johan just thought we would go past him as he thought he was trying to scam us but Christel, who believe that one must be a little more law-abiding and are a little more gullible, showed him our tickets. He then started raving that our train was canceled and we had to go to some kind of ticket office to buy a new ticket. We argued a bit with him (Johan wanted him to show some ID but he refused.) and then we just passed him into the train station, despite his protests. When we arrived to our trail, it turned out, of course, that our train would leave in time . (Just another scam attempt.)
After only a couple of minutes, a girl came rushing down the stairs to the track and up to us and wondered if we also had been requested to go to the ticket office to do some changes. She had had to pay 150 rupees (around 2 Euros) to them – on the advice of the guard that we did not listen to – because they claimed that she had the wrong kind of ticket and had to pay an additional fee. The only thing they had done was to write a few scribbles on her paper and we had a good laugh to guess what they had written – maybe something like “now I have cheated another stupid tourist”.
The girl was called Cam and was from Israel. We spent some time together at the platform and helped each other to find the way to the right part of the train. Surprisingly, each carriage was marked with signs at the platform and the train arrived at the right time, better than Statens Järnvägar, (Swedish train company) we would say.
(Delhi, India, 2nd of Sep 2016)
We will now soon leave Delhi. We have not seen much of the city but we have taken in a large dose of India. The smells, sounds, people, rickshaws, cows and garbage in a mess – it is altogether India. Extremely fascinating but also taking a lot of energy. Yesterday we went to visit Old Delhi to feel the atmosphere of the bazaar and the Spice Market, said to be Asia’s largest, but just when we got there, the sky opened up and we realized that the market would not be to fun to visit. Instead we took a rickshaw to the central parts of town and we finally ended up in
Connaught place where we visited an underground market full of Western clothes, electronic gadgets and Indian fabrics, and a lot of nice shops with everything from clothes to furniture.
The market was a crazy place that reminded much of a market for example in Istanbul where you get confronted by the vendors all the time. The rest of Connaught place felt almost like a shopping street at home. The houses, which are built in a circle around a park named Central Park, is apparently built by a homesick Englishman, great, white and majestic. Johan bought a kurta with attached vest and pants in a shop called Fabindia – he looked really nice!
(Delhi, India, 1st of Sep 2016)
Coming to India was just as tumultuous and fascinating as we had imagined, and as Christel remembered that it was 28 years ago (1988) when was the last time she was visiting India . All the scents, colors, sounds come so close to you and it is so incredibly beautiful but dirty and messy at the same time. There are people, cows, rickshaws, garbage, cow dung, beautiful fabrics, turbans, colorful tunics and fruit stands in a terrible mess. And all the honking, all the time.
We stay at a hotel in Paharganj, a bazaar area just outside New Delhi railway station, a place where many backpackers stay. Our hotel has become a sanctuary where we can rest for a while from all the impressions before we go out into the buzz again. Read More
Our trip to India will be 102 days long and we will be visiting most parts of the country. We start in New Delhi and will then stay a week in a Yoga Retreat near Rishikesh. The journey continues then probably to Varanasi and after that to the west to visit India’s classical attractions, including a lot of Rahajastan. Then we will probably fly from Mumbai to Chennai where we will drive a rickshaw in a 1000 km long race around a part of India called Tamil Nadu. When we finish there it will be the end of October and weprobably will set off west to Kerala and Goa. We hope to be able to cycle a bit, stay on a houseboat, stay at some Homestays and swim in the ocean. We have no deadlines to meet during our trip, except for the yoga retreat and the rickshaw race, and we will stay where it feels good and will not go to certain places if we do not have the desire. We have total freedom and it is absolutely wonderful!
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