Rishikesh and Team Orange-Week Four

Although we loved Mussoorie, the majority of us were tired of being cold and wet all the time (I mean, come on, we chose to go to India…the cold and wet was not what we signed up for!).  After the first two weeks of language school were over, we decided to take a break from the foothills of the Himalayas and come back down to the hotter parts of India. We chose the destination of Rishikesh, a holy city on the Ganga.

The captain of Team Orange,
 Lord Shiva

We had been thoroughly warned to not go to Rishikesh (a holy city on the Ganges), as it was pilgrimage season, but alas, we are American, and obstinate. So off we went into the great dirty yonder. We didn’t realize how good we had it in Mussorie until we arrived in Rishikesh. In Mussoorie, tourists are common and generally ignored-the staring is less obnoxious, and there are trash bins everywhere. People generally try to keep their town clean. In Rishikesh, every single follower of Lord Shiva decided to come out for the weekend, and the presence of 8 Americans was incredibly entertaining for all of them. Also, there were no trash cans. Or bathrooms. I don’t know about you, but I absolutely adore stepping in human excrement ;)

Team Orange bathing and
defecating in the Ganga 

As we arrived in Rishikesh, the first thing we noticed was the abundance of teenage to middle aged men dressed in a fashionable, retina scarring orange. Lord Shiva’s followers (we called them Team Orange) were in Rishikesh and Haridwar to collect water from the Ganga, bath in the Ganga, potentially eliminate waste in the Ganga, brush their teeth in the Ganga, and then take the water they collected away with them.  Team Orange was everywhere. Team Orange also had a fascination for foreigners, especially those of the fairer skinned variety. While walking, people attempted to take our pictures from over their shoulders; when we stopped, we would suddenly develop a crowd gathering around us, as if we were Shiva himself.

Us halfway to the waterfall!

Even though Team Orange was omnipresent and entirely inescapable, Rishikesh was awesome. It was neat to be in a place not during tourist season (usually Rishikesh is a hotbed of hippies, looking to yoga themselves into enlightenment, smoke a little bit o’hash, and find the ashram where the Beatles had a good time while writing the White Album) because we got to see what the city meant to Indian citizens, not just people with dreadlocks looking to get their “Om” on.

Besides constantly running interference with Team Orange, we managed to navigate, discover, climb, and conquer the Neer Waterfall using only handrawn maps and a compass. We’ve slowly discovered that when asked a question about direction or distance, a typical Indian man will either:

a)      tell you that “It’s nearby and an easy walk, no problem ma’am”.

b)      make up how far it is because he does not know and really wants to give you an answer

c)       giggle like a school girl with his friends and gesture randomly to multiple different paths

d)      draw you a map and label completely inaccurate distances and times

Map 1-From hotel to "waterfall location"

Map 2-From "waterfall location" to
actual waterfall

But we made it! It took from breakfast until dinner to do a supposed “1.5 hour walk”, but it was nice to be away from Team Orange. We then proceeded to climb the waterfall, and took many pictures. When we got back to Rishikesh, we attended a pooja at a temple on the Ganga. It was interesting to see how devoted people were to Lord Shiva, and the ceremony itself was beautiful. I made sure to purchase a miniature Lord Shiva, and after a bit more shopping, we left to go back to Mussoorie for our last week of language school.