Anticipating to be spending my next weekend at Rishikesh - the holy city of thug monkeys, misogynistic sadhu babas, and
avant-garde architecture. Of all the commitments I've failed to meet (repeatedly) lately, Rishikesh would be there at the top. Having entertained my friends with the restrictive urban outings, and having entertained the demands of microscopic family politics, I can now briefly reveal the digit next to the index to all these factors, and go shuffle aimlessly about in the white sands, pet unpet dogs, chase away urchins, eat sooji (semolina) cookies prepared in teeny-tiny roadside ovens, and fight off monkeys (that often attack to steal those cookies). Also hope to catch on lots of narcissistic, Fritjof Capra wannabes wandering about with a predatory eye to anybody with a nice body, or a heavy pocket, or an empty expression - weekend peddlers of concepts like "light", "time", "being", "god", "oneness", "life", "death", "nirvana", and myriad others.
Last, I remember
being there with John, and hold fond memories of a bongo drum that I, sadly, couldn't steal off a weed-smoking Sadhu Baba who lives in a canvas hut near the river (the whole plan was to get him high as fuck, then run away with the drum, but we were short of time on the last day).
Before that I remember spending mere hours in Rishikesh with Saurabh, on the last leg of our suicidal retreat from
Dodital. We had Paranthas, then we rushed for our bus.
And on
the visit previous to that, I had befriended a Solvenian soul-traveler - our soulful bond born of her thin appetite that always brought forth an invitation to share, which made for my primary motivation to stick around her, especially around the meals - who was a tolerable company, until she came to sharing her spiritual quotient. In the end she was overtly joyed with our time together, I was too busy identifying the last of that banana cake on my tastebuds.
I'm already sniffling. My (pocket form-factor) scribble-book has re-emerged from the depths of my drawers. Rishikesh mode seems ON.
The Kedarnath (and Hardwar and Rishikesh) trip image galleries are out there! Me and my college classmates undertook this trip in May of 2008, right after our exams were wrapped up with. Hardwar and Rishikesh came first on our map, then Shivpuri for adventure camp + rafting, then to Gaurikund and finally trekking up to the Kedar. The days didn't go without adventure (and stomach upsets). Some left midway, some joined midway and we thinned out from 7 in Rishikesh (6 in Hardwar) to 4 in Kedarnath (Anikesh, Deepanjan, Piyush, me).
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