Recovered in Rishikesh

After three days of dealing with varying amounts of tummy trouble, I woke up feeling much better. It truly seemed that I had passed the difficulty and could have a good day. But I still wasn't overly hungry, so I was a bit worried. I know when abdominal upset is really past when I start to feel hungry again. Until then, I usually feel that things may not be really all right. But the rumblings and gurgling had gone and I decided to chance things. I headed out for a day along the river. I went and had some lunch at the German bakery beside the river. Then I walked the only side and direction of the river left that I hadn't sampled yet. I found a nice little beach and sat down to read for a while. I watched a bunch of rafts come down after finishing some white water rafting. It looked like fun. And since I have decided not to go into the national park, rafting will make a good substitute. And feeling better, I will be able to enjoy it with no worries.

After reading for a while, I headed up to find someone to help me with reserving a train ticket to Amritsar. The first place I found tried to get on the website for India Rail, but the site was down. I didn't really mind because the guy seemed quite uninterested in helping me. Okay, I will go give the commission to someone else. (And this is something that annoys me. I would like to be able to do the reservations myself, but all the websites in the country require having a mobile phone number in India. I don't have a mobile phone, so I can't do any of these reservations on my own. A friend did give me his India Rail id and password, but I didn't think of that at the time.)

This I did. I hope it works out as his office was closed when I went back to get the ticket.

Then I headed down to see a ceremony at one of the ashram/temples down the river a ways. It is some kind of fire ceremony, and it seems to be in honour of Krishna, one of the incarnations of Vishnu. It was a bunch of chanting and singing and sitting about a fire, feeding it. And I must be in a particularly unspiritual frame of mind because all I could really think of during the ceremony was how they do this everyday. And about how much of waste of time it seemed to be. And how I doubted that any god would require that kind of time commitment (or want it) from his/her devotees. It was an interesting ceremony anyway.

Then I came up to the hotel and booked myself onto a rafting trip. It should be fun!