Rishikesh

In Uttarakhand province I got closer to the Himalayas than ever before in the holy city of Rishikesh. It got a little bit international attention when the Beatles came here during the 70s to talk with the local guru. I was still sick from Delhi and spent 3 days in bed and with a small radius eating little.
I got to know Betty from Mexico who was great fun. She is married to a Slovak. She came to India to find answers from meditation. Marieke and her boyfriend Hendrik also arrived and joined us. I joined them for one session of Yoga, which proved to be very exhausting with a lot of muscle ache for a couple days to come.
We celebrated Hendriks birthday with some white water rafting on the Ganges. Wow, this is different then the river Aare I am used to in Switzerland. There were some serious waves on the way, that almost threw us out of the boat. We were accompanied by a Muslim from Kashmir and to Tibetan girls from Delhi. All of them work in a call center. The Muslim guy and one of the Buddhist girl are in love with each other, but there families don't agree. So they are confronted with the choice of running away or separating and live with the prearranged marriages their parents propose. You can read on any given day in the newspaper about parents or brothers killing their loved one to secure cast order. Terrible.
In the evening we found some illegal Alcohol and illegal meat and celebrated (Rishikesh is a holy place). On my birthday we walked to a waterfall and built a dam. I think its a healthy thing to do on your 28th birthday. Next day we were off to Manali. Which eventually took 22 hours on a government bus.