The train ride really wasn't that bad. I read the first book of The Hunger Games. Even though I had seen the movie (and loved it), the book was still fun to read. I like the book and movie equally, which is unusual for me, but I think it might be because I saw the movie first and so my imagination of the hunger games couldn't be tainted. I also got kicked out of the seat I stole around 730 pm, so I got a good 9 hours of alone time. I went back to my real seat and then got to share it with the newlyweds. They were really sweet and shared their dinner with me. We even talked marriage. Since I'm so used to telling everyone in India that I'm married, I had accidentally told her I was married. This led to me giving her marriage advice. Enough said.
So after dinner, I wanted to curl up in bed and finish the hunger games. My seat had been dolled out to an older woman with a knee problem, but at least I got to sleep up top on the 2 high and close the curtain for some privacy. That awesome seat just wasn't meant for me (and I'm not bitter at all.)
I actually slept really well. I got a solid 9 hours in. I had 2 sheets, one between me and the blanket, and a NorthFace on to prevent any unneeded face touching. I didn't even get up to pee since I had not allowed myself much water since getting on the train (a healthy tactic I've learned from my OR days- no way can you ask to scrub out of a 10 hour case to pee when the surgeons don't.)
When we arrived in Hardiwar at 1030 am, Ale and I were both relatively alert. We had planned to stay in Haridwar for the night, but decided we could stomach the one hour vikram ride north to Rishikesh. We called ahead of course to see if we had a place to sleep, and Swiss Cottage, where we were going to stay the next night was full. Luckily, I had a backup saved in my ipad (I'm getting good at this spontaneity)- Divine Ganga Cottage. They happened to have their budget room open this night, so we headed over there. An hour or so later, we got dropped off on a tiny road with signs to Divine Ganga Cottage and as we were walking up, we get offers for a room in a bunch of yucky looking places. I had in my mind that Rishikesh would be this zen zone where I could do my yoga with views of the ginormous Ganga River, with Enya playing in the background. Let's just say, Rishikesh is not exactly what I imagined. It's actually one of the dirtier towns we have stayed in. The views are sort of nice, but it's not really my idea of "finding myself." So a short walk later, we get to Divine Ganga Cottage and are showed to a 1133 (1000 plus taxes) rupee dumpy room. Ale and I look at each other and read each others minds. If I'm gonna stay in a gross room, I'm not spending more than 500 rupees for it. So we head back down the little winding road and end up in one of those dumpy looking buildings. When we see the room in this family run guest house/hotel (that looks like it saw its better years about 100 years ago) it's actually a little bit nicer (it wasn't hard) than Divine Ganga Cottage. For 450, we were sold. This gave us a day in between getting to my zen zone Swiss Cottage with yoga and meditation and pretty views. The good news is that the shower was burning hot for my whole shower. This was a first for me in 6 weeks in India. I enjoyed it so much, I actually took a second shower that evening (which is saying a lot considering sometimes we don't shower for days.)
We headed out to the middle of Laxman Jhula (the part of rishikesh that we were in, on the west side of the river) and found ourselves at a decent little hippy cafe where we got some lunch. The views were spectacular of the Ganges, so things were looking up. When we were connecting to wifi, I saw The60sCafe as a network and got excited. We had been told by our SanFran friends in Jaisalmer to go there. So after lunch, we walked outside and realized The 60s cafe was next door. And it was awesome. It's had even better views and even better seating. Big day beds that you can lay on (we like to lounge while we eat) and comfy little tables - all open air. The service was really awesome and we found ourselves wishing we could sleep there. Since we didn't have much planned for the day, and the 23 hour train ride was starting to hit us, we spent most of the day lounging. Eating rice pudding and banana fritters (ale ordered and I ate way too many of these little fried banana heaven fritters) and Lassis and tea. Wifi is kind of bad here in Rishikesh, and by bad I mean you can maybe read one email per hour. So I mostly read and laid and ate.
Around 5 pm, Ale and I decided we should probably go get my cell (I had left it in the room to charge) and maybe figure out where we wanted to go after Rishikesh (as in I volunteered to take an overnight bus out of here ASAP.) We called Swiss Cottage to confirm and found out that the person that was supposed to leave, didnt, so we didn't have a room. We both proceeded to whine and then decided since we had about 2 hours before it got dark, that we should head up to The High Bank (where Swiss cottage is) to find a new zen zone. We found out The High Bank is just a 10 minute walk up and west. I soon realized this is the backpackers zone, not the zen zone. We checked out a few places and found the best gross room for 500 rupees. But this cottage had yoga and meditation and a rooftop restaurant and wifi. Ale convinced me that Rishikesh is all about a vibe and that we were not getting any vibe at our yoga lacking unnamed hotel (not unnamed because we don't want to name it, unnamed because it was unnamed.) So we booked a room for the next night. This area also had more restuarants and touristy stuff like yoga and meditation, massages, and travel agencies. With a room booked, our next decision to make was about which hill station to go to after Rishikesh. We went to a travel agent to find out how to get to Shimla. We usually type in a destination in makemytrip.com and it tells us our bus options, but Rishikesh to Shimla was not showing up. Hence the travel agent, who confirmed that the only way to get to Shimla would be a combo of 3 buses or trains and about 10 (aka 15) hours. So this made our decision to go to Musoorie, a hill station just 3 hours away, that much easier. So much decision making in just 2 hours!
We then headed back down to Laxman Jhula for dinner at our fav- The 60s cafe followed by round 2 of burning hot showers at unnamed hotel.
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