After rafting, I went to a local orphanage for the second time during my visit and watched a movie and had pizza for dinner. It was my last night in Rishikesh and it was a nice way to end the time there. Until I woke up the next morning, facing a train journey that night, with the obvious signs that I was having tummy issues once again. I think it might have been the orphanage food. And I had eaten something there before the second time I was ill as well. Hmmm... That would suck if they had something bad going on with their food. It tasted really good.
Dreading what the train ride could turn into, I headed into Haridwar around 1 in the afternoon. I went by public rickshaw as no buses were stopping for me. I don't what's up with that. I have lots of trouble like that. Anyway, at the rickshaw stand, I had trouble with them as well. I wanted a public one, which would cost less, but I kept running into jokers who wanted to take me alone for a much higher rate. And they played dumb when I said I wanted a shared one. And they would snicker behind their hands when they would do it. I don't know what they think they are accomplishing when they act stupid like that, pretending they don't understand me and treating the guy they are dealing with as though he or she is stupid as well. They are just making sure that they absolutely won't have any money from me, ever, and they are making it harder on their fellow drivers, who might want to be good, by having me distrust them. It does nobody any good, but they don't seem to get it at all.
Anyway, I did eventually find someone who took me in to Haridwar in a shared auto-rickshaw, for a good price. And the farther I got from Rishikesh, the better my stomach was feeling. It was probably just that my tummy troubles were just sorting themselves out fairly quickly, but maybe it was actually Rishikesh that was making me ill.
By the time I got to Haridwar, I didn't even feel that I would need to just hide in a room for the few hours until my train, hanging around a toilet. That was a welcome feeling. And I was also happy because I could go out and see some things in this city before moving on.
Where Rishikesh is foreign tourist holy city of yoga and Ganga holiness, Haridwar is the holy city for Indians. Many an Indian Hindu pilgrim goes to Haridwar to find the holy Ganga. In fact, earlier this fall, 80 or so people died by being trampled during some kind of stampede at the edge of the Ganges during this year's pilgrimage. It was kind of sad. There is a temple on the hill above the Ganges, and at the edge of the Ganges there is a daily aarti puja, much like the one in Rishikesh. So there were some things to experience in my few hours in the city.
First I tried to find the Ganges. I thought I had been told that it was at the base of the hill/mountain with the temple on it, so I set out in the direction of the temple. Shortly after starting out, I found myself alongside a parade through the streets. There were floats of various gods and goddesses. It was loud and noisy, but it was kind of fun. And someone gave me a banana as I was walking by. That was nice.
I wasn't actually planning on climbing to the temple because, although it wasn't really really high, I was a bit weak from not eating much over the past few days and it was still high enough. But I couldn't find the Ganges. I thought it might be on the other side of the hill, so I started climbing to see if I could find the way. And before long, I was halfway up to the temple. I went all the way since I was so close. But along the way, I lost my banana. There were lots of monkeys on the path up the hill. And I had made the mistake of carrying the banana in my hand, as I contemplated whether or not I was going to eat it. A monkey saw it and came barrelling along towards me. I didn't want to have any trouble with the monkey, so I just threw the banana to it and solved my problem of whether or not to eat it.
The temple wasn't actually that impressive. It was kind of small. It looked bigger because of the gondola that people could ride up to the top. But really, I have decided that most temples (if not all) here in India are pretty much the same. (This excludes the ones that are out in the forest, or are obviously really old. Not many people go to them and they don't have lines of devotees coming to visit. I'm talking about the ones that have lots of people coming to visit and offer prayers and other offerings.) There are little alcoves with an idol of some god or goddess. People come up and bring some kind of offering. They make their little prayer, put some money in the offering plate and move on. It really is possible at times to just change the idol, put the temple on the top of some other hill and it's a different one, even though it's just the same. So, unfortunately, I was not particularly moved.
But I did get a good look at where I needed to go to find the riverfront. I headed down and arrived there just in time for the aarti ceremony. However, I had to wade through literally dozens of people who may or may not have been volunteers with donation books, asking for donations to cover costs of the ceremony being public. I'm sure the costs are real. With hundreds of people coming to watch the ceremony every day, there must be lots of garbage and scuff marks and all sorts of other things related to lots of people being in one place at the same time day after day, that needs cleanup and maintenance. And I'm sure there were some genuine volunteers. Maybe they all were. But it is just impossible to tell the fakes from the real ones here. And there were donation boxes all over the place anyway. If you are going to make something free and appeal to the charity-mindedness of the attendees, then the charity boxes should do. It should not be necessary to hound the spectators with volunteers asking for donations. And I was asked at least twenty times for a donation. If there is that much of a problem with people not contributing, then get it over with and put an entrance fee on the ceremony.
But after wading through them, I did watch the ceremony, and I found it more interesting than the one in Rishikesh. And mostly that was because I could see it better (it was across the river from the main viewing area), and it was much, much shorter. It was over in about 10 or 15 minutes. But it was quite a beautiful sort of ceremony.
After that, I was feeling so much better, I wanted to eat something substantial before getting on the train. I met one of the people I met at the waterfall the day I hiked it. She came with me. She was going to be on the same train, in a different class. We had some dinner and then went to get the train.
And for some reason, the farther I got from Rishikesh and, consequently, from the insanity of the whole manic tourist scene of the Golden Triangle, the better I was feeling again. It was quite odd, actually.
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