Day 11: Road trip to Rishikesh and My new Found Respect for MotoG

Bringing this up out of the turn. But I have never blogged about my experiences while on the trip. So decided to give it a shot. Right now I’m in Rishikesh and thought I’ll record my experiences on the go. So here it goes:

ROADTRIPS!! I just love being on the road. As usual, I was supposed to fly till Delhi and then take a bus to Rishikesh. Except, Chetan came up with the brilliant idea of taking his car. He did not have to convince me twice!

We left Delhi at around noon and reached Rishikesh by 6:30 pm. In between I slept, sang random songs, argued with Chetan over some political issue (or was it astrology, I don’t remember).

But all in all, I was at peace, as I always am.

There is something about being on the road that makes me feel that I … “belong” … like this is what I was meant to do. As we sped through the UP highway, I was steadily leaving behind all the worries and presentations, and meetings, of course Jain Shikanji also helped

Yeah, I kinda went shutter crazy at this place, but this delicious concoction of lemon juice, and freshly ground mint leaves is the most refreshing thing I have had on the road and we spent some time quietly relishing this heavenly drink (will be the best tasting mojito if you add the alcohol).

This was at about 3 pm and we still had about 173kms to go. I have not seen Chetan drive faster than this day. He would have gone faster if not for the state roadways bus. I named him Larry ☺

For some weird reason, there was an unsaid rivalry between Larry and Chetan and for the remainder of the journey, they tried to outdo each other. At one point, it did look like Chetan had succeeded in losing Larry, we hadn’t seen him for a good few kilometres. But just like in any action movie, Larry sprung on Chetan out of no where and sped past us, never to be seen again.

Well that was the end of Larry, but we made it in time to Rishikesh. Chetan keeps asking me, why do I like this place so much (this is my third time here) and to be honest I do not have a fixed answer to that. Just like my ever changing mood, this city also comes up with a new reason to lure me here. This city really brings together religion with traces of the hippie culture left as legacy by the Beatles. Today, this foreign culture is so soaked into the city that it’s difficult to see Rishikesh without it, and yet when you walk around Laxman Jhula or go for the evening aarti at the banks of Ganges, you will see the stark difference standing next to each other; cordial and accepting. I think this would be my number one reason to return to this holy city time and again.

We didn’t want to do much on our first day in Rishikesh, and by the time we checked into the hotel and freshened up, it was dinner time anyway. So we decided to head towards Freedom Café. This is one of the several joints that are scattered along the banks of Ganges near the Lakshman Jhula. This Café is tucked in one of the crammy lanes that is easy to miss. We knew where we had to go and yet we almost did not see it.

Freedom Café is a dimly lit eatery where you would find the regular menu, things that you will get in any other of the hundreds cafés in the area. However, what sets this place apart is the patrons who come here to play music. This 'bring your musical instrument’ place is well known for long nights of live music.

Even the guys who work here indulge in occasional performance of their own, something we found out in Laxman. Laxman was just learning to play the flute but he was already so good that I HAD to request him to sit at our table and play some ..And he readily obliged. Although not for long, since Chetan and he got talking and they bromanced over their mountaineerimg course (grrrrr).

It was nice sitting in a corner, enjoying the view and good music when it began to rain!

But no worries, since we have the umbrella right? WRONG. Because the weather had been clear the entire day, we conveniently forgot our umbrella.

Well no worries, it’s just 2 kms walk how bad can it be to get a little wet in the rain we thought…well clearly we did not think it through since within seconds of getting out of the Café, we were drenched in the torrential rain …not to mention the icy coldness that seaped into our bones. Still we put out head down and kept marching forward; a task not made easy by the stray streams overflowing on the slopes that we had to climb. If you have never walked against streams like this then here’s a tip for you; never look down and walk because the eyes play a trick on you. You can see your legs move but it feels as though you are standing in the same place… I’d like to call it the treadmill effect. We braved that too and just when we thought things could not go worse, they did (Damn you, Murphy!) Due to heavy rains and lighting…the electricity was cut off. This was at 11 in the night and there weren’t many people on the streets and we didn’t know how to navigate in the dark streets, that was rapidly filling up with water. And that’s when I realized that I have a self proclaimed water proof phone (I say self proclaimed because till now I had not really tested the water proofness of my MotoG3). After about a few seconds of hesitation, I got the phone out and switched on the flashlight…well tried to. The rain by this time was coming down so heavy that my touch screen would not respond. I tried to find the least drenched part of my T-shirt and quickly wiped the screen and it seemed to have worked, since I was now able to turn the light on. We quickly navigated through the now almost deserted streets. The phone not once dying on me, on the contrary I was now able to operate my touch screen without any effort, even in the horrendous shower. I am almost sure I activated the phone genie with my T-shirt earlier, and it transformed my phone into our guardian angel.

In Chetan’s case it really was a blessing because he had decided to walk bare foot to save his shoes and would have stepped on broken beer bottle if not for the flashlight. The 8% battery on my phone with the flashlight on lasted for the 30 mins it took us to reach our hotel. That night I realised three things:

• Never trust weather in Rishikesh (much like rest of the Himalayas)
• Never forget your umbrella at home, No.Matter.What
• MotoG3 is the best phone EVER. (Infact I’m writing this blog on it right now, you wonderful thing, you!)

PS: Forgive me if this blog comes across as rushed, it probably is a bit too, but that is because I’m bursting to type down rest of my days here, especially my tryst with the Beatles ashram!