Have arrived in Rishikesh after a somewhat arduous journey. The planned 9 hour train journey ended up taking 14 hours and then we had a midnight taxi ride, crossing a swing bridge over the Ganges and then a half hour jeep ride up into the valley. Meaning that after leaving our hotel in Agra at 9 we finally crawled into bed at half two! This is partly due to the fact that we managed to time our trip here with a pilgrims festival that only happens every 12 years and sees about 12million pilgrims coming to the area over six weeks, with up to 4million at a time on particular special days (such as the one we tried to arrive on!) We did meet some lovely people on the train who took us under their wing a little, keeping us up to date on what was happening, buying us food, having a chat. Colin was most impressed with the food on offer and couldn't resist the samosas, biryani, pompaddoms, spicy tomato soup and chai. Think the wee train men knew to definitely stop each time the went past!
We are staying in a lovely little retreat though that is well away from all the madness and quite serene. Has been just what we needed, to be able to sleep in, go for a wander along the river, do washing, read and sit and watch the monkeys playing in the trees. The place we are staying cooks all food from fresh and the lady that runs it is a masseuse so will look to book one of those in for sure.
The last few days of our Rajasthan tour saw us taking in the delights of the Taj Mahal and Fatephur Sikri. The Taj was incredible but there were soooooo many tourists, it was slightly mental. Managed to find a nice spot to sit and watch the sun go down over it and the colours change constantly which was magical.
We also had a disco rickshaw tour of Jaipur with two young lads - the rickshaw was in mint condition and was kitted out with huge speakers and a mean stereo - heard some great hindi hard house - even scored the CD off them at the end of the ride. The were keen to just chat and show us some things that we may not have seen on the regular tourist route which was very cool.
Plan to spend the next few days in our little haven away from any form of transport or hordes of people before we brave the train back to Delhi and our flight down south to Mumbai.
GGTTFN xxxxxx
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Sounds like you guys are in the right place to have a little chill out.
ReplyDeleteAll very exciting Redfearns, the disco rickshaw sounds wicked bring on that hindi hard house wooo hooo!!!!
Nothing that exciting here but lovely Quinn is keeping me busy. Miss you but great keeping up with all your travels.
Take care lots of love and SMB xxooooox
PS Maybe you could learn how to say SMB in hindi???