India Round 2

As the days pass and as I catch my breath and as ammenities once again become a part of my daily existence, India's intensity becomes more and more real. Being surrounded by such amazing sensory inundation made it hard to immediately assimilate the feelings and happenings. I am slowly making sense of the experiences I had both behind and in front of the veil of my eyelids. I am glad that I had a brief and relatively relaxed introduction to the country and am now eager to go back for an extended amount of time to truly see all the lavish diversity now that I am a bit versed in the extremity.

Most the pictures except for the ones at the Taj Mahal are up on photobucket. Here is a taste....

Delhi






Rishikesh











On the day of my journey out of Rishikesh towards Delhi, I finally got a bit of the gastrointestinal struggles that are so infamous in India. Bad timing. The rickshaw ride to Haridwar (where the train station is) took an hour on the way in and more than double that to get back because of the sheer number of pilgrims crowding the streets. I can't even explain the amount of commotion and insanity. I was in the back of a four seat rickshaw with a friend from the ashram and literally 11 other indian people sitting on my lap an crammed into every possible space. The ride was very bumpy due to the monsoon tearing up the road, we were surrounded by crazy pilgrims, there were over a dozen people within an arms reach from me and I was struggling between throwing up and shitting myself for two hours. It was awesome. The Haridwar train station provided little solace. I had to wait there from 7pm until 11pm. Many (many many many) people call the train station home after sundown and even the 'upper class' waiting area was jam packed full of people sweating. It was a great day to practice the aversion/craving awareness that I had been cultivating the previous two weeks. It was quite the day and I was unbelievably relieved to get on my air conditioned sleeper train for the overnight journey to Delhi.

The main platform and the first class (meaning not on the side of the street) bathroom at the train station:




India rocks
Thailand is very relaxed
Nice to have met up with Phil
We are in Chiang Mai for several days before heading to the paradise that is Ko Phangan island in the south

Love to all