Holy Cow!

I don't think it's possible for the human mind to imagine what you'll find when you enter India...

Arriving at New Dehli airport, it all seemed pretty sane. It felt like SFO - except everyone was Indian. When I disembarked from the plane arriving from Singapore, I expected the smell to overtake me. Not so much, it was a sweet smell, with undertones of smoke, burning - pollution. When I got on the free shuttle bus from the international terminal to the domestic terminal, while a little wild, the drive was OK, nothing out of my comfort zone.

Flying on a nice, new twin-prop plane into Dehradun, I was was treated to views of the Himalayas - stunning. Jagged, towering, they look like no mountain range I've seen before. Getting close to the ground before landing, I could already tell it was a different sort of India from New Dehli. No high rises, no highways. Still, Dehradun airport was quite modern and the world seemed sane.

From the moment my driver and I hit the road in his well kept, vintage car, all sanity flew out of the window. I was blown away, times 1000. It wasn't so much the smell, or the colors, or the monkeys, cows, and dogs - it was the driving, oh the driving! 

If the country road between Dehradun and Rishikesh seemed crazy, it was just a mellow warm up before entering Rishikesh proper. Going through the main street, it seemed like every time I looked up, we were mere milliseconds and just centimeters away from crashing. Passing pedestrians, cows (sometimes just sitting in the middle of the road!), motorbikes (with entire families on them), and tuk tuks, we'd swerve into the opposite lane to speed past the smaller, slower moving vehicles. TRUCK! We'd swerve back just in the nick of time, horns blazing. Left turn, a shortcut, my driver explained. The street was about a car-and-a-half's width wide lined by buildings that went right up to the street. People and vehicles, moving in both directions, all shared this "colonial" road. Wait a second, my driver has received a phone call! For the first time in my life, I missed the hands-free driving rule in California :)

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I had a pleasant morning adventure today. I bought a cell phone and watched monkeys heckle people on the Laxman Jhula bridge from the German Bakery where I got a few cups of coffee on recommendation from a friend. Breakfast was a delicious chapati filled with some mix of potatoes, spices, and vegetables - 15 rupees - about 30 cents. I'm staying with the Red Chilli Adventure guys, the rafting outfit I've been hooked up with through many friends, in a nice apartment just under their office. 

My lovely apartment

The Red Chilli office and my apartment are little abodes of peace. The street noise is muffled, cleanliness pervades, and beautiful views of the Ganges abound (expect pictures from now on, I took no pictures on day one except for mental pictures I'll never forget). 

The view from my room....the other direction is just as pretty

Quickly after I arrived, Arvind, co-owner of Red Chilli Adventures, told me that the team was going to raft the "town" section of the Ganges, in India the Ganga, down to a very nice hotel. The purpose was to meet with a hotel owner over chai to discuss doing the section as a mellow run for his guests and maybe taking kayaks around where the hotel is right on the river. It was an absolutely beautiful float during the golden hour of the day. We rafted under the two famous bridges in town built by the British, a beautiful 13 story Hindu temple, more ashrams than you can count, ghats with people getting ready to pray and bodies cremating, and watched people live their life, dancing to music, cooking, playing, and relaxing (water quality is considered here to be good, fairly high up with few towns above and not too much cremation). It was an incredible experience floating down one of the holiest rivers in the world and a great introduction to Rishikesh and India. 

After carrying the huge raft through narrow alleys to find the jeep parked in the hotel parking lot, we had chai and discussed how the hotel and Red Chilli could work together. I tuned out most of the discussion as my mind wandered far away from lite business talk. We drove back at night through the main section of town...oh the driving. I had a huge smile on my face the whole time, it is just so wild.

Laxman Jhula Bridge and the 13 story Hindu Temple 

Tomorrow, I will run the main section of whitewater on the Ganga for the first time. Big volume (35,000-40,000cfs), fun, splashy Class III. A nice change after a low-water California season. I'm finally feeling a bit adjusted to life in India. I'm walking down the street with more and more confidence, initially thinking that there was no way I'd ever leave my room deeming it far too crazy to expose myself to the rigor of a busy India street. I had lunch at a really good restaurant, Tip-Top. I had yellow dahl (a lentil dish) with rice and chapati. Way more than I could eat for 100 rupees - two dollars. Going to take it easy for the rest of the day and hopefully sleep as well as I did last night (Flow, my neighbor who is a kayaker from Austria, informed me that around 7am, monkeys starting rocking our building...I didn't hear a thing!). Looking forward to getting to know Rishikesh better as well as my new Indian friends at Red Chilli (such great guys - Veer already invited me to his wedding later in October!). Here's a funny sight I saw on the way home from the German bakery...until next time!

I didn't know that there were over 140 whitewater "companies" in Rishikesh. Really, most are
small with only one boat, run out of some tiny shop as it's very easy to get a permit from the state.
This outfit uses the greenest method of shuttling boats I've seen :)