Cheese Toast? (Dec 4)

We slept too late to get breakfast at the ashram (it's only from 8 - 10 am) so we went across the road to a small stand to get some tea and toast. When they brought the toast I had to do a double take - it looked like they'd brought me a toasted cheese sandwich. On further investigation I realized that it wasn't cheese, it was butter as thick as a Kraft single! I think maybe the butter was too hard to spread so they just cut slices off and put it on the toast. I ended up scraping most of it off. Why tempt the heart attack?

Brad was trying to ask the guy for some cinnamon to make cinnamon toast but we had forgotten our Hindi phrasebook and he thought we were asking for tin foil. Ah well, he didn't really need the extra sugar anyway.

We were watching traffic whiz by, trying to determine how people move from city to city. Haridwar is about 25 KM from Rishikesh and we are on the roadway that links the two. There are buses and shared autorickshaws that travel between so we were watching to see if it was like hailing a cab. The buses here have regular stops but they also seem to stop at random if you just stick out your arm. We figure that when we're ready to go, we'll just ask someone to help us.

We are still looking for a couple of ashrams that are listed on the Lonely Planet map. The map from the previous edition leaves a bit to be desired. We started down a road we hadn't been on yet, hoping to stumble across the missing ashrams. One key thing that would have been useful was if they let you know whether the signs you were looking for were in English or, if not, if they had given you the Hindi spelling. The Hindi alphabet looks nothing like our alphabet.

We discovered that some of the places we'd been looking for we had actually walked past several times. With the help of some locals, we found some of the things we were looking for - we even found some things we weren't looking for.

We stopped to rest at a ghat, sitting on a bench in the shade. there were sadhus (holy men) sleeping in the sun. It was quiet and peacefu. A little further on we passed a park with a large statue of (I think) Shiva. We eventually meandered along the river back out to the main road and continued on into town to do some internetting. We hung out in town until it was getting on to sunset.

At sunset, at Har-Ki-Pari, there is a nightly light offering ceremony we want to see. There is singing and bell ringing and baskets made from banana leaves filled with flowers and a burning wick set afloat on the water. It goes on for about a 1/2 hour and then some of the pilgrims splash around in the water. The book says that some of them are looking for coins that have been thrown in be the devout.

A woman approached Brad and before he knew it had marked him with a yellow and red bindi and stuck out her hand for payment. They are fast little devils! Since I saw what happened to Brad, when she came towards me, I ducked. Atleast she didn't try to push it.

After the ceremony was over, we headed back to our rooms at the ashram. We had to move rooms again since our geyser wasn't working and we had no hot water. We got some extra blankets and get settled... again.

Brad went down to the dining hall for a chai. We'd had a late lunch and weren't very hungry. While he was there, he plunked himself down with Melanie and Reif. Melanie is from LA and Reif is Dutch. They met in MBA school and are in India for a full on 4 day Indian wedding. They had experienced the same strange flight options we had in trying to book. The cheapest flight they could find was LA to NY to Amsterdam to Delhi. Doesn't make much sense...

They had been to the Chandi Devi Temple (south of Haridwar) and had purchased the combo ticket to also visit the Mansa Devi Temple. After visiting the first and discovering what a tourist trap it was, they had opted not to go to the second temple and gave Brad the unused tickets.

The wedding they are attending is semi-arranged. They are friends with the groom and his parents had "encouraged" him to meet this woman as a potential bride. It just happened that it worked out.

As advice for the young and single... or just single... you have a much better chance of finding the right person if you meet them doing the thing that you love.