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No eggs, no Alcohol and all the yoga you can stand

We are now in Rishikesh, the birth place of Yoga and the site of the Beattle's "enlightenment" period... and the making of most of the White Album and what would later become Abbey Road... the most famous being "Dear Prudence" about Prudence Farrow who was also hanging out with The Maharishi Mahesh along with sis Mia in 1967.  We are stopping here becuase it come highly recommended by most hippy travelers and because it breaks up the long journey to Agra where we are headed.  We arrived in the wee early hours of the morning, about and hour and half ahead of schedual...I didn't know that this was possible in India. 

We took an all night bus from Dharamsala to Dhera Dun and hoped a local bus early this morning to Rishikesh.  The night bus was much better than I ever could have imagined.  Nice cushy seats and a smoot ride... it wasn't very full so we could spread out and I manged to sleep a good portion of the way dispite the coooooolllllddd air that came through a window that insited on creeping open not matter how I tried to close it.  Andy wasn't so lucky as far as the sleeping thing goes... I think my small stature and yogic ability aids greatly in the amount of strange bus sleeping positions I managed to find comfort in.  Waking up in the local bus to Rishikesh was really fun as well...there are monkey's everwhere... they are such little...well monkies...so mischievious!

After a morning nap we ventured out, walking the full length of the Ganga or Ganges as we say... I have to admit that the river was much better than I ever thought...it was gorgeous green blue color and not full of trasha dn muddy brown as I had suspected.  Andy said that teh town was like night and day from when he was here just a week ago. He said the streets were packed and the Ganga a dirty brown adn the noise defening.  It was nothing like this while we were there...in fact the calmness was almost disturbing and to a point boring.  It was also very strange to be back in "India"... after being the Buddhist/Tibetan town of Dharamsala the madness of Hindus and Indians was a bit overwhelming.  The cows, the sadhu's, the beggars... its so much.  We basically laid pretty low while ewe were here and didn't venture out much in fact we spent most of the day on a beach we found, and at night wathcing american television in our guest house.   It was quite strange the quiteness here at night... literally everything closed at 7:30...by 8pm the streets were dead and there was no one out...what else to do but settle in for some "Charlies Angel's" and CSI.  Actualy the break was much needed, and the beach action just wet my pallet for Goa (I can't wait to get to the beach!)

I was really hoping to get some yoga in, since this is the birth place and all, but if I learned anything from yoga school, which required women to sit out while on their mensus, its the value of taking some time off when you are on your moon cycle...not that I necessaily agree with this but I do think that honoring our body for 3-4 days and not doing anything isn't sucha  bad a idea...so it was a perfect break from everything and, as we would soon find out, provide the much need rest for the next leg of our journey.

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