“Rishakesh” and “Chandigarh”
Click Here for Rishakesh / Chandigarh Photos
We have taken two trips over the last month or so.
One was a private motorbike trip with some friends of ours (Dillip and Lindsey) to an ancient city called Rishakesh. It is located on a river that runs into the Ganges and so the area is considered very holy. There are lots of Hindu priests wondering around the river seeking nirvana and selling Hashish (marijuana). The bike trip was about three and a half hours each way, and it was the most fun we have had on our motorbike so far. We drove straight through one of the major protected forests in the area where elephants still wonder out into the streets, we kept our eyes open but never got to see any that day, we plan to go back to this city often and next time we will spend the night, there is so much to see - you just can’t do it in a day.
The second trip we went on was a school sponsored trip to a huge city called Chandigarh, and we were chaperones for the high schoolers. It was a whole day bus ride through some mountains and back into the flats where the temperature rose to the high 80’s (unusual for us since we live at 7000 feet here at Woodstock), and the humidity must of been maxed out. Besides sweating we had fun seeing one of the nicest planned cities in all of India. The British drew out the city plans for Chandigarh when they were still running India and the whole city is divided into perfect blocks, a lot like the US. They even had stop lights and police on the streets, and people actually obeyed the laws of the city. Rachel and I got a chance to eat at some western restaurants for the first time since we left the states. We ate at Subway, McDonalds and Ruby Tuesdays it was really good to have some western food!
I decided just to mix the two trip photos together since there aren’t that many anyway. Each photo should have a description under it explaining which trip the photo was from. I especially recommend the one with Rachel on her first Camel ride, it was really funny to see the camel run at a good sprint and seeing Rachel and her friend giggle and try to control it.