I went to the Himalayas!! How cool does that sound? This
remote place that always felt like a million miles away with the highest
mountains of the world and I have been there… Turns out I didn’t make it beyond
500m above sea level but I’ve checked a few times and we were in the foothills
of the Himalayas.
Let me take one step back though and actually tell you about
our first trip in India. I happened to have to travel to a place called
Haridwar with work so Indiadam decided to take some holiday to come along and
make it a long weekend. To get to Haridwar, it’s a bit of a track in European
standards. A 2h flight to Delhi, change planes, one hour flight to Dehra Dun
and then a good two hours in a car. One thing I have learned pretty fast here
is that distances work very differently. Travelling in Germany, you could be
pretty sure to cover at least 100km in an hour (likely more thanks to the
Autobahn). In India, that is probably closer to 30km per hour so distances that
don’t seem very far can actually take quite a long time. So door to door, it
took us around 8h to get from Mumbai to Haridwar – not sure we would have ever
taken 2 flights plus a couple of hours in a car for a weekend trip in Europe
but it was definitely something we were willing to take on for our first trip
since moving to Mumbai.
So while I spen some time working in Haridwar, Indiadam had a
chance to explore Haridwar. Turns out it is one of the holiest places to
Hindus. It’s right on the river Ganges, which itself is considered a Goddess in
Hindi culture and every year millions of people come to the town to take a dip
on the holy waters and perform the “Ganga Aarti” – a religious ceremony in the
morning and evenings which unfortunately I could not attend because of work so
sadly no pictures. Every 12 years, there is a special festival (Kumbh Mela if
you want to research it) and my colleague told me that 80 MILLION people come Haridwar
for that. EIGHTY MILLION – that is the population of Germany and believe me it’s
not a small place. Just type in Kumbh Mela Haridwar in Google and you might get
an idea. It sounds mental…
Indiadam had a look around during the day and went up a hill
on a cable car to visit Maya Devi Temple. He said he would recommend it. What he
would not recommend though is buying a Samosa from a dodgy looking shop that knocked
him out for the next two days. Another rule in India – if you have a bad feeling
about a place selling food, best to leave it. Most places are fine and we have
eaten at many stalls and cafes that probably don’t look great at first sight
either but if they have some proper cooking facilities and somewhere to wash
your hands, that is usually a good sign. Here are some snaps Indiadam took as
well as some from the next day when we had a quick look around before heading
to Rishikesh.
So from Haridwar we got a driver to drive us to a place
called Atali Ganga that we had booked for the weekend which is a 45min from
Rishikesh into the foothills of the Himalayas. It’s a beautiful drive as you
can see, a very well maintained windy road right on the Ganges. If you can
enjoy it… As mentioned before I get very car sick but on this journey I was so focused
on hoping we would make it around the next corner that I only realised I felt
sick when I got out of the car. The driver was truly crazy, overtaking on blind
corners, speeding, hooting and although the road is very well maintained, it doesn’t
really have barriers everywhere. Luckily we were on the “mountain side” of the
road and we made it in one piece.
Atali Ganga is an “active” holiday home with around 20
cottages overlooking the river. It serves very nice food (buffet for breakfast,
dinner and lunch) and offers different activities like wall climbing, hiking
(more of a walk) and rafting on the Ganges, something Rishikesh is quite famous
for. I first thought it was quite pricy but we called up a few days before and
got a good quote plus all food and activities are included. We had a very
relaxed two days there with yummy food and lots of chilling (Indiadam still
recovering from the Samosa) combined with a few fun activities thrown in. The
best thing though was the cool and fresh mountain air and quietness of the
nature around you. Sometimes Mumbai just consumes you with its constant noise, pollution
and heat that it becomes quite normal – so it was really refreshing to get out
of it and I just love the mountains so waking up on the morning to the view
below was just so nice.
On our final day, we went rafting on the Ganges and
it was great – we had gone rafting in Canada in the summer on Kicking Horse
river and although this was different, it was just as much fun. The cool thing
is that you can raft non stop for close to three hours without having to get
out of the raft. The rapids might not be as thrilling as some of the ones in
Canada but they were strong enough that we hit the wall pretty full on with our
raft in one of the rapids. Nothing happened but if I thought the rafting was a
bit more on the chilled side until then, it gave me a wake up call. We also got
the opportunity to swim through one of the rapids which we both happily did.
Unfortunately most other people decided to get in the water as well but hand on
to the raft which meant it took the raft about 20mins to collect us from the
freezing cold water. My feet were white…
After the rafting, it was already time to leave – 8 hours
after all to get back to Mumbai. Despite the long journey, it was definitely
worth the travel and I really enjoyed seeing a very different part of India. Not
that I have a bucket list but if I had one, the Himalayas would have been on
it. Not sure I could tick this off with Rishikesh but at least it’s a start.
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