Hot water out this morning when we woke up. Rule of the jungle, beat the opposition or wait until system recovers. In our case this was post breakfast but by that stage we were keen to get moving.
Down the hill 3km back towards Haridwar shadowing the river to the main local bazaar/shopping area of town. Hectivity plus. Bits, pieces, people, dogs, carts, birds, pigs, nut casings, smoke, rickshaws, sadhus all going everywhere....at once...passing..almost fluidly on their cycle of life. It is something to watch let alone be a dance partner with. Always watching for a step, ledge or other that you can jump across to if a particularly nasty horn sounds not far behind. Challenging because before you jump you have to make sure there is no cow poop, stagnant water or live inhabitant of the spot where you are going to jump to. I think in an earlier blog I mentioned metro coasteering and I think this is probably an appt reference.
Down in the market, or business streets we weave our way searching for a camera store, hopefully to find a short term replacement for Soph's to keep the blog visual. We worked our way through kodak printing places, electrical stores and then onto Sony / Canon / Nikon resellers. The diversity of stores in town is suprising, in fact it is consistent in a few places that first inspection was not a true reflection of what was available and communication ( Hindi/English conversion) is sometimes a weak point in locating a solution. It is necessary to hit the back streets and work from point to point rather then necessarily compromising at first light.
Across the bridge over a currently dry tributary to the Ganga we wander heading for the CBD Indian style. On the rhs is an amazing fruit and veg market that initially you perceive as being a few carts facing the road but on closer inspection has an alleyway zippering through the middle to yet more carts. Many selling very similar produce, yet slight differentiation. The produce is all looking great in a non refrigerated, disinfected stainless environment, obviously picked fresh within transportable radius of town. Beats supermarket consistency, you lose diversity but the regional varieties are amazing and soooo fresh. Long white radishes, small eggplant, ginger, carrots, cauliflower, potatoes, pears, apples, oranges, nashi, mandarins, grapefruit, pomegranate, papaya, various greens including spinach herbs (corriander etc) and some varieties that I struggle to name. Their are these spiny brown pod looking things and others that look like cactus fruit.
We turn up a side street and find an almost palatial camera shop post passed on rerouting from another camera store. Go through the reviews, investigations etc and get to line with uncertainty as to whether they are an authorised reseller or grey market. The sales guy offers to call Nikon for us on his mobile, confidence fading he makes it worse by dropping the price further, we confirm via our mobile to Nikon India and take the discounted price, decline the thrown in small tripod.
On the way back to the river we stop by a fruit cart and buy some mandarins and oranges, though the oranges look more mandarin then navel orange. Still who is to argue. Mandarins 50rup a kilo and Oranges 40rup, we go 50/50 to check out the difference. Placed in plastic bag, we are no longer in Himachal Pradesh and we hit the road. We pull over to confirm whether we have some things that we had out in the store and not longer before two primary aged boys come across and ask for some money, we give them mandarins instead. They seem happy and we are happy for the alternate to cash though still effectively cash.
Instead of returning up to High Bank we decide to make for Lakshman Jhula but via the river versus the National Highway for a bit of peace and avoid the smog. This side of the Ganga has concrete stairs all the way down to the water side which continue shadowing the river all the way to the lower suspension bridge (jhula). It would be amazing to see at anywhere near capacity. I think there is a period called Kumbh Melah? where masses of people make a pilgrimage to Haridwar, so I guess overflow comes here..
The walk across to the river from the Highway takes us through a standard residential area, middle class I am guessing. It is really nice as people are happy to see you, not hungry to see you and they are just going about their day to day lives. We shake a couple of hands and smile / namaste to many. Down on the river side stairs we make our way around the river to the bridge. A posse of young kids become chummy and try and sell some flower boats, we decline and one notices the oranges, we offer an orange for them to share. We offload but one little guy is not that keen to detach, we finally achieve via a donated banana. A little further another bunch another banana. We are down to three oranges/mandarins.
Up through a side link road we reenter the lower market that leads to the Jhula. We notice that monkeys have taken up positions on both sides of the stanchions, than notice one has a full orange ice block and is eating away while sitting watching the passing traffic. We cackle to ourselves about the audacious little buggers when no sooner had we lined up with the bridge entrance than the signal was on and the little buggers started converging.
The oranges I had just in the non descript red plastic bag hanging from my left hand, on the convergence I started to raise the bag and aargghhed the biggest who backed off at the same time that the bag was coming higher and then lunged for the bag, ripping a hole in it. One mandarin toppled out but I juggled the other two to safety. This did not satisfy the team of mugger monkeys however who continued to circle until a primary aged boy came back along the bridge with a stick yell no, no. This was quite effective and swayed the numbers. The boy passed on his stick, a thick twig and passed on his monkey deterrence knowledge before smiling and continuing off across the bridge. Two pieces of fruit left we continued.
Rather then head up through the throng we decide to follow the river along following the same route from the river ceremony from last night. We pass a smiling cross legged holy man with a beautiful face, we place a mandarin in his meal stainless steel collector. Onwards to the Little Buddha which is becoming our Rishikesh haunt. On the way a family stop us and ask for a photo, as had a family on crossing the suspension bridge. ( neither of us consider ourselves attractive, so we can only guess that we are really peculiar or faintly resemble famous westerners we have not seen any other foreigners go through a similiar routine. It is really bizarre )
One of the coolest things that I have seen around town are the really character engraved faces whether man or woman, whether in holy garb or not but with either really groovy looking sunglasses or alternatively bottle top glasses. I feel better smiling at the first rather then the latter and only hope that we do not meet the latter on the roads behind the wheel in the other direction. There are many interesting faces, eyes and stories here as you might expect in such a confluence of people. Again bummer that camera has been out of action. The rushing of the green Ganges (Ganga) and the low setting dusk sun, the amazing ashrams and Hindi temples and the craggy tree covered slopes adds to many memories. Not to mention the street scenes, the intricate metal entrance gates into the houses that we passed, the houses built around trees, trees growing out of rock walls, donkeys, pigs.. So much going on. I will miss the mango coconut shakes at little Buddha and can only hope that we are given the opportunity to visit again to this place amongst a few others where we have been.
Back to the hotel and rice pudding for Soph. Our legs are definitely getting a work out as we have avoided using Rikshaws / Tuk Tuks whilst in town.