The white house up the hill

Unless you are staying in an Ashram, Rishikesh is not as geared up for longer-term yoga students as Mysore is when it comes to accommodation. There is no Krishnamurthy or Shiva in orange robes to willingly help you on your way - for a small fee (one for the Mysore crowd).

So our search was pretty much ad-hoc, and pretty interesting. We spoke to anybody that might know anything about our finding a place with a kitchen, our own bathroom and hot water.  We saw: "the building site" a wonderful new apartment, but the only one finished in a whole block, with the JCB diggers and builders still working on all 4 sides of the apartment wall. There was the "shell up the mountain" beautiful location, but nothing in the place! Not even a kitchen sink. Then there was the one with the stinkiest bathroom, "Next," and the dark cavern one with no natural daylight.  It didn't help our progress that we were searching as the local holiday season ramps up. Even the hotels weren't willing to do us a reasonable deal for a longer-term stay.  We started to get disheartened.

Until finally we found "the white house up the hill". Which is in fact what we call it - we have no idea what the address actually is.

The white house up the hill

The white house is a private house where our landlord Navin, a pharmacist in a local hospital, lives. He rents out the upper floor of the house, and that's where we live. We don't have our own kitchen, but pay a little extra to use Navin's big kitchen, which has the benefit of being fully stocked, including a sandwich toaster and a blender! We also get to learn about and taste some new Indian dishes from Navin or his kitchen helper.

There is a huge great terrace outside our place, and another one upstairs with wonderful views of the mountains on both sides of the valley. 

Terrace view

We also share the place with four dogs (3 of which are rescued street dogs) and a cat. We're not sure of the dogs' names so we've made up our own: Norman the Doorman - so called because he mainly hangs around in the porch and greets us at the gate; 

Norman the Doorman

Blondie, due to her hair colour, and the fact that she's a little tough like Debby Harry of Blondie fame;

Blondie

Jimmy the 3-legged dog which is actually the name given to it by a previous English tenant who lived here and rescued it, and Jimmy is actually a girl;

Me and Jimmy on the terrace

Then there is the little white fluffy thing we have called ALFie, an acronym for Angry Little F…F… F… Fella.

ALFie

 The cat is just "ginger" and is way too cool to be given a cute name.

You dare call me tiddles

We know we are part of the family already as Jimmy left a dead pigeon on our door mat, and we were invited to a village wedding. 

So far so good. It is certainly the smallest space we have ever lived in during our 16 years of living together. But the outside terrace has become our enormous lounge and Navin is very generous with our using his dining area. Besides, our daily lives are currently very simple. The simpler the routine, the less you need, the less things we have, the less space we need.

Well…. we'll see if that still holds by next week

Impressions of Rishikesh after week one

To begin with.... Too small streets, too many big cars, too many squeezed in unplanned buildings, too much loud honking, too many tourists attracting too many touts, too much cow dung, ambiguous sanyasis hanging about in dusty orange robes... Spiritual or seedy?? Cafes that are good at western food, but pretty poor at good Indian food. And what? No supermarket? Do we really think we can be here for 2 months?

 

Plenty of cows and cow dung in Rishikesh too

BUT – ooooh the mountains, the fresh air once you are just five minutes up the hill, the river Ganges and all the waterfalls and streams running into her (the river is a she in Indian folklore), the dramatic scenery... It all makes up for the nasty, noisy town.

Cooling mountain water after an uphill walk

And then some good news... Our first 4 days were a peak holiday weekend, hence the craziness and congestion in the streets. We thought this was the normal state. To our relief Laxman Jula (our apart of Rishikesh) has become much calmer since the weekend - fewer people, fewer cars, mopeds, buses, rickshaws. Although those that are here are still honk-tastic.

And even better... We headed off for our first trip into the main town of Rishikesh on Tuesday. We expected the worst, given that The Lonely Planet gives it a wide berth. But we were pleasantly surprised. 

You can actually walk in the shopping streets without too many vehicles around. The people are pretty friendly, and not at all hawkish. Who needs a super market when you have a street of bric-a-brac stores, a whole host of bedding stores together, the largest shop of plastic things ever, the dhal and spice shops all huddled together, and an entire market of fresh veggies? We came home laden and looking forward to our next trip.

Add to that a very pleasant time in our new home so far. A kitchen where we can experiment with our own Indian food, and learn from our willing landlord and his kitchen "help." A wonderful yoga teacher. A friendly crowd in our yoga class. The two months are not going to be so bad at all!

The most beautiful building in the world

Guess where?

I was tiring of writing several blog postings in a row, so I turned to Erik for inspiration. "How do I start writing about the amazing Taj Mahal?" I asked. "You could say that it's a marble building with lots of details," he offered.

The most intricate details in marble

Which is about it really. Probably the millions of visitors it attracts every year are expecting something befitting a grander description, and they are surely not disappointed. We weren't. In fact we loved it so much that we went twice (which means paying twice!). Once at sunset, and once for the sunrise. 

Sunrise behind the Taj Mahal

The Taj, a colossal tribute to love (and yes, a marble building with lots of details), stands on a kind of enormous platform. So when you first come through the gates, you see the majestic, shimmering white Taj Mahal against nothing but a backdrop of clear blue sky. And kind of like the Manhattan skyline, you've seen it so many times in films that it feels familiar.  

Just as you expect

My words can't adequately describe the beauty of the building. But hopefully you can see from Erik's pictures. It felt like an honour to be there, just staring at it and soaking it all in. As we watched the sun set over the Taj Mahal in the evening, it was hard to turn our backs on the building, and not take that one final picture. 

Looking back one more time

(How many hundreds of thousands of pictures are taken daily of that building, I wondered?)

 

To make it easier, we decided to go back the next morning for sunrise. It was  sublime. We were close to the front of the line at gate-opening time. Erik knew exactly the photos he wanted to shoot. So he ran to get those precious few shots of the Taj Mahal at sunrise, with no no other people in the picture. 

No-one else in the frame

It felt like we had the most beautiful, and arguably the most romantic, building in the world to ourselves.  At least for a moment.

Doing Delhi

En route from Mysore we planned a brief stop-over in Delhi  and a flying visit  to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Our expectations of Delhi were low, and I'd prepared myself for dust, jostling crowds, ceaseless touts, scams, pollution, poverty and slums. All of that sure exists, but it really wasn't as terrible as the picture I'd painted myself. 

A jostling street in Old Delhi

We bought ourselves subway passes to get around efficiently, and power-toured our way through a small number of the main attractions in the 48 hours we were there. Here is a photo-based reportage...

Red Fort - the Mughal sandstone fort whose walls extend for 2km. 

Jama Masjid - India's largest mosque which holds up to 25,000 people. We had to wear very silly clothes to cover us up.

Passing through the street bazaars in the most bone-shaking cycle rickshaw. This is the car parts bazaar.

Gandhi Smriti - the poignant memorial and museum where Gandhi was shot dead.

Contemplating Gandhi's last steps from his bedroom window

Humayun's Tomb at sunset. The tomb of a Persian Mughal emperor, said to have inspired the Taj Mahal. Which was where we went the next day.

ERik and Lisa at Humayun's Tomb

Happy in Hampi

I can't remember the last time I took an overnight train anywhere. But that's what we did (very pleased to have our own little sleeping coupe) to get to Hampi a few weeks ago. 

Erik in our special train cabin

We disembarked the Hubli (not so) Express as Hospet and a 20 minute rickshaw drive later we arrived in Hampi, the birth place of the monkey god Hanuman.

Me and Hanuman

It is a stunning and truly mystical place so significantly important to Hindus that neither alcohol nor meat are sold there. The town itself is small. Stretching along the banks of the Yamunda River, you wouldn't think that it's more than a dirt track road of market stalls with a big temple in the middle, and a couple of blocks of back-packer enclave. 

But what attracts so many visitors to this little place is its setting and history. It is nestled in a back-drop of mountains of red boulders, that make you believe you are on Mars, making for amazing sunrise and sunsets.

... and what must be hundreds of temple ruins with the most intricate stone carvings. 

The town is a World Heritage Site. Imagine our surprise when we saw that the locals have built their homes into one particular stretch of ancient buildings by bricking up parts of the ruins. One place even had a cow living on top, heaven knows how it got up there. 

Apparently there is a plan to re-house some of the locals to better protect the buildings and we were relieved to also witness some very serious conservation work.

The ruins are amazing. You can dive into the queens baths... 

In the queen's baths

go down into secret vaults underneath temples if you dare...

visit the royal elephant stables...

imagine yourself in the coutyard of a once great temple and bazaar, or just rise above it all and enjoy the view from  the top of a nearby hill. 

We hired bikes for the princely sum of 80 cents/50 pence per day and did it all. By the 3rd day we were feeling adventurous enough to take the bikes on a boat to the other side of the river, and cycle peacefully alongside the lush green paddy fields. We climbed up the 500+ steps to the Hanuman Temple in the heat of the day, and were rewarded with stunning 360 degree views of the whole area. 

Really, really beautiful. So difficult to chose the pictures to share with you.

We left on the Hubli Express after eating the most delicious dosas in Hospet. It had been a stunning couple of days and we thank our yogi friends Alison and Richard for the tip to go there. 

By the way, there were monkeys everywhere. Erik even got into a tug-of-war with one cheeky chappie over his water bottle. Here are a couple of our favourite pic's. 

3 wise monkeys or what?

Yoga stops traffick

A Saturday morning in the beginning of March. Close to 150 yoga mats lined up outside the North Entrance to Mysore's Grand Palace.

On the first 3 rows of mats stand Indian children and women, many of whom are survivors of  slavery, domestic abuse and forced prostitution. On the rest of the mats, mostly non-Indian ashtanga yoga students from all around the world. All of us wearing our white "Yoga Stops Traffick " t-shirts and saluting the sun in time with the young Indian girls on stage leading us. 

The reason for the unusual scene was to raise money for and awareness of a worthy anti-trafficking organisation called Odanadi. Mysore based Odanadi  works for the rescue, rehabilitation and reintegration of trafficked women and children. It offers them a sanctuary and a chance to rebuild their lives.

We were joined by yogis in London, New York, Santiago and Bangkok, all putting ourselves through 27 sun salutations for the cause. 

The young children of Odanadi were a joy. Watching those on stage instructing us through the sun salutation sequence in English and Sanskrit, as well as the little ones down on the mats with us struggling through the sequences in temperatures of close to 30 degrees, one couldn't help be inspired. They have experienced so much negative in their short lives. And here they are, given a second chance, joyful, learning new skills and smiling.

We will continue to support Odanadi.

Not us - yet!

Arrived in Rishikesh

Rishikesh - the gateway to the Himalayas

I have just seen the date of my last post, officially a month since I last wrote. How slack! Surprisingly, even when we are not working, time flies. You go on a course, you do some travelling, you meet some people and do some socializing, and before you know it, your blog is neglected.   Well I hope to make some amendments with a couple of short postings now. I am no longer writing from Mysore in the South. Our yoga school has closed for a couple of months so we left Mysore on March 31st for the next major leg of our journey.

Bye Bye Saraswati

We have travelled north to Rishikesh, at the base of the Himalayas. This will be our new home for the coming month or two.  En route we visited dusty, dirty, and (surprisingly) dignified Delhi, and Agra the home of the Taj Mahal (see later postings).  

Rishikesh markets itself as the yoga centre of the Universe (not just the world!), as an outdoor activity hub and the Gateway to the Himalayas. On paper, it sounds perfect for Erik and I.  

Rishikesh - Laxmanjhula

   But first some updates on some of the events of March in and around Mysore.