Journey to Rishikesh

Sunset on the Ganga

I left Rhotak, where I'd been visiting the school where Tansy is working, early in the morning, on the rarest of rare beasts, an almost empty train to Haridwar. The only other person in my compartment was a young microbiologist who told me that:

"In India, when a doctor orders a test from the pathologist, the pathologist has to pay half the fee to the doctor. So the doctor always orders several tests that the patient does not need, just so that he can profit. Ideally," he told me, "I would like to set up my own lab where I only perform necessary tests, so that poor people can save a lot of money."

How he was going to avoid the doctor ordering unnecessary tests I really didn't know, but a far more pressing problem was how he was going to raise the money to build the lab in the first place.

During the three hour journey to his destination we chatted happily, the conversation covering environmental degradation, the evil Mr Modi stirring up hatred between Muslim and Hindu, out of control population expansion in India and his concern for his little two year old daughter, in a country where girls were never safe. 

"I want to send her out of India," he told me.

"And your wife?" I asked him.

"She can't work, although she is a dentist by profession, because our child is two."

"She must be bored and frustrated."

"And my mother interferes with the child care, bosses my wife around all the time."

" It must be very hard for her."

"Yes. It's the Indian custom that the son looks after his mother. It's hard for his wife. Sometimes when my wife is really fed up I send her home to her parents for a break, or I take her away somewhere, leaving my mother behind."

After he left, a loud family of Sikhs, all shouting at the same time, got into the compartment. I retreated to the top bunk.

We arrived in Haridwar at four in the afternoon. For once I allowed a porter to carry my big suitcase on his head, up the staircase and over the platforms. By the time we left the station touts were circling round us like a swarm of mosquitoes, offering rickshaws to Laxman Jhula for 500 rupees. I laughed at them. My porter proudly carrying my suitcase on his head, despite the fact that we were now on flat ground and the suitcase had wheels, continued walking beside me out of the station, ignoring my suggestions that he put the suitcase down. He smiled as I fended off the touts, now grown into a bigger, fiercer band of snapping crocodiles, all in agreement that rickshaws to Laxman Jhula cost five hundred rupees. 

"No way," I countered "shared rickshaw."

"No shared rickshaw," they chorused.

Eventually I persuaded the porter to put the suitcase down, pulling it behind me out into the main road, where the contest of words continued:

"Shared rickshaw."

"No shared rickshaw."

Until a shared rickshaw drew up, squeezed me and my suitcase in, leaving the touts still shouting

"More comfortable rickshaw," pointing to an empty one, as I left.

It was a long walk down hill from the rickshaw stand in Laxman Jhula, Rishikesh, on bumpy, twisting roads. Just as I reached the point where I needed to start looking for my hotel, Angelica called out. She had booked me a room in a hotel at the end of a narrow allay, which I might never have found if we had not met.

The day ended happily in Little Buddha cafe surrounded by friends.

Next day Angelica and I walked up the steep hill through the forest until we were looking down on Rishikesh from above.