If you go down the hill from our house, you get to the noisy, congested, honking part of Rishikesh called Laxman Jhula. If you go uphill however, keep walking, and walking, and walking... In fact walk steeply uphill for 7km and you will get to the highest peak over Rishikesh and the peaceful little temple called Kanja Puri.
That's what we did a few weeks ago to get some good heart-rate training in. The ascent from our house goes from 300 or so metres to 2000 metres and our landlord told us it would take at least 4 hours. We thumped our chests and were convinced we'd do it in less, so planned for a half day trek. However, India's trekking trails are not well sign-posted so we took wrong turns a few times. And we stopped for chai (spiced tea) and a sandwich along the way, so it did indeed take us 4 hours up.
The last part took us through the most impressive mountain village, in a mini-valley of its own, where fields were unexpectedly being farmed for something that looked like wheat. Since we'd taken another wrong turn, we got up-close and personal with people doing their laundry in their back yards!
A fair bit of sweating later (by then it was 11am and over 30 degrees) and we reached Kunja Puri temple at the top. We spent a while admiring the lovely views of Rishikesh and Haridwar in the valley, and imagining what the Himalayan peaks would look like if only the clouds cleared. Erik took the obligatory monkey pictures, then we rang the temple bell as we set off down the mountain.
Joy of joys (not)... the path was mainly loose shingle and the gradient was very steep. So the journey down took as long as the journey up as we balanced and slipped down, and we got home 8 hours later exhausted. It was all we could do to make dinner, eat some chocolate and collapse into bed early that night.
There is something special about walking in the mountains though. Along with yoga and cross-country skiing it definitely makes the top of our list of favourite pastimes.
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