From camp back to travelling

My last week with the kids was amazing, and of course, the longer I stayed the more in love with them I fell. It really is amazing how quickly you adjust to the lifestyle. I never did figure out the clothes washing thing and once and a while I would sneak a half a bucket of rain water to wash my hair. They asked me to stay a bit longer as they were having a "lice free" party the day after I was to leave. But there were a few times in the week where I wasn't able to go to the "lice free" party anyway. I had started to learn some of their Bollywood dance moves that would have helped at the party, but I had already made plans to meet up with Nicola and Stewart in Rishikesh, the yoga capitol of the world. And I am sure most of you know how I feel about changing plans after they have been made.

I headed out from Almora by myself on an over night government bus. I really had no idea what this meant before getting on. Thank goodness I had gone early to reserve a seat, as they stuck 65 people on a 45 seater bus for 12 hours. It was pretty horrible and cramped but the whole journey only cost $5! Which really was little comfort at 3am when you can't sleep or move your legs and you are not quite certain if the man in front of you is stroking your leg and why the guy sitting on your arm rest is not responding to the constant elbows to move over.

Rishikesh was my first experience of the Holy Ganga river and their were people everywhere bathing and washing in it. I stayed at an Ashram, which yes sounds really cool, but was really just a hotel with more rules and they offered yoga classes. I met up with my friends and made some more and we all discovered together how hard "real" yoga is. I swear our yoga instructor was made of rubber and seemed very confused that I could not even remotely get my body in the same position as him.

We spent one morning rafting down the Ganga which I am sure was not even close to the rafting at home but still a lot of fun. Very hard to see the Indians in the raft with us filling up their water bottle with the dirty polluted water and drinking it. I some how expected Rishikesh to be more quaint and starting to doubt the LP's description of things. But alas it still is India and no matter where you are there are a LOT of people. Despite being in the mountains it was still quite hot and we decided to head out to Manali to cool down and hopefully trek in the Himilayas...