Meditation? sod off!

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  Rishkesh, India
Wednesday, November 2, 2005

Left shimla on the viceroys toy train,( fortunatly it was a real train) this extended our journey, but it was meant to be a really scenic journey, i think in heinsight the direct route would have been a better one. anyways, very confortable journey, changed at kalka for chandigarh (capital of punjab), rickshaw to bus station. the whole city was developed in the 1950's by a european, and has an american block type system. here we caught a state bus (yes another one) for 7 hours up to rishkesh. we managed to get at the front of the bus, but that only saves your bottom a litlle, but we met a couple from spain, and solidarity together helped us through the journey. the bus was stoped 3 times and searched by the army (the whole place is on high alert), fortunatly mark left two weeks ago, he's just got one of those faces that gets you into trouble.

on these long bus journeys the ipod has been our saviour, sometimes caus of the bumpyness it is hard to read, or sometimes its to dark, so the music a bonus. it can almost be like having a 1000 photgraphs, caus i have so many good memories tied in with the songs. from standing in the field bouncing (sfa), to sleeping on the way to london (tracey c), to bouncing around suez (freestylers), or seeing my first gig (echobelly), or the song my brother used to always ask tom for out of the big lebowski whilst drunk (bob dylan). anyways, good times, and we're always thinkin of you, whilst clutching on to the seats and wishing we belived in god.

anyway another 2am, search for your hotel in a strange city, with a crap map, and no one about, and when you find the hotel it's closed caus your an hour late (got lost), and have to make loads of noise with your new found spanish budies, who may not even have a room anyway. bed at this time of night are comfortable, no mater how cold, warm, or scaty these place are, sleep is easy. the hotel we did choose is the cheepest so far (2 squid), average about (4 squid), but hot water by the bucket(litially go and ask for your bucket of water), and of course your hole in the floor (like being in france, but without the french people).

the plan when we came to rishkesh, was to maybe dable in some mediation for a week, with maybe some yoga (yes, very hippy bruv), but we went to some ashrams, and they felt a little bit weird, so decided we'd wait, we might not be ready for it yet. so instead we booked a 3 day river rafting trip down the ganges (sorry parents), i think we're doing around 60km. jamey is still not well, and today is worse, so i'm not sure if he'll make it now or not, and we're going on a hike with our spanish friends this afternoon to a temple (4 hours), kate alwaways gets this nervous expression when i mention the word hike.

yesterday was the first day of diwali, so lots of excitment about the place, there was christmas lights everywhere, and fire crackers and fireworks go off all day and all night. it can be scary to wake to machine gun sounds. the river rafting place, gave us a present of a big tin of biscuts for diwali. and a quiet couple of days, but the river awaits.

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Resting near Rishkesh

Viceroy's Toy Train

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