Haridwar

So here I am, Haridwar, maybe after Varanasi the second-most-holy city in India. It's great and crazy, a huge center for Hindu pilgrims, especially at this time of the year--it's in the hills a bit, so it's much cooler. It has the feel of a giant shiva/ganga themed waterpark--the ganga flows just fast enough to make it fun, without rapids or rocks, and the water is cool and benevolent. It's a party all day every day, jumping off bridges into the ganga, bodysurfing, excellent Indian food, and lots of fried food, lots of blasting Hindi pop, crazy saddhus (holy men) constantly smoking ganja (why do you think it's called ganja? seriously, this is where it comes from, origionally. But it's strictly for saddhus, followers of siva). There are very few western tourists here, because they all go to their separate home along the ganga, Rishikesh. Every night, crazy crazy herds of people crowd on to the main ghat for the evening pooja, river worship, to put the Ganga to bed for the night. There's lots of chanting and fire and splashing and cheering. I'm staying in Prem Nagar Ashram, maybe 2.5 km outside of the main city, in a beautiful facility right along the river. The wife of the leader of the ashram is the Prime Minister (or whatever) of the state of Utteranchal, where I am now, in the congress party, and the ashram is sort of a seat of political power and negotiations. I'm the only forgeiner there, and my hindi is still almost nonexistant, so I just sort of walk in with a goofy grin on my face and say my namastes and then hide shyly in my room.

Although this place is great, I've made the decision to go to Rishikesh on Friday. I had earlier said that I want to avoid rishikesh because it's too touristy, but my thinking changed, and it sort of represents yet another shift in thinking about myself, tourism, and this trip around India. The reason that is easy to give for this move is that it will be easier and hopefully cheaper to set up the trek to Gangotri, which is important to me, and it will be cheaper if I get some other tourists to go with me. But there's also another reason, which it took time to admit to myself. I like the company of other tourists, and although I'm fine being alone, it's kind of boring. Things are more fun when you don't do them alone. A lot of tourists who come to india (certainly not all of them, not even the majority) are pretty good people, and interesting. Making Indian friends is great, but it's not exactly the same--there are communication problems, and always the awareness of con artists hanging over my head. I like talking with people who understand the words that come out of my mouth, who share a somewhat common background and experience, especially now, when I've been in India so long (by my own standards) and I'm beginning the countdown to my flight home, ready to go home. Tourists have an experience of India that is more like my own that we can talk about, most Indians haven't travelled around their own country, and their experience of India is hard work and family, as everyone's experience is. But this was sort of difficult to admit to myself--I'm supposed to want to fully engage with the culture, that's why I am here. I feel like I've done a good job of that, could have done better, but I got much deeper into India than most tourists do. But I think it's a product of travelling alone--if I had someone great to share this experience with, I'd probably stay in Haridwar and have an amazing time.

But I'm supposed to hate tourism in india, and I do...it's really the effect that we tourists have on the Indian economy and mentality that I hate; certainly there should be positive ways where forgeiners can enjoy the beauty and vitality of India without creating this really negative dynamic of greed and mutual exploitation. It requres an awareness of the problem on both sides--if a place decides to market itself as free of touts and commission men, such as Orchha, we could maybe foster a more positive relationship between the two sides.


So Rishikesh on Friday, then to gangotri, however I can work it out.
Om Namah Shivaya