It was at the time to finally visit India, after being rejected from the visa two times! I didn’t expect to even visit still in 2023, but why not? Bana, the friend with whom I went to Indonesia and Timor Leste, was in India and wanted to have someone there to spend time.
Arriving in New Delhi for the transit
I had 8 hours to kill and everything went quite smoothly. Had a sim card from an Indian friend in Germany, but it didn’t work. I had to put money on it, but it didn’t accept my credit card. Overall quite frustrating, at least the wifi worked.
While waiting for my flight to Dehradun in the North of the country, the air mattress was put on the ground and the people were very confused. It felt as if they were looking down on me somehow, but I personally don’t care about those things. One guy was helping me to get my sim card work, which was amazing. I was able to recharge it on Amazon somehow.
Dehradun
Arriving in Dehradun was more spectacular than expected, there were welcoming celebrations, and a lot of people with flowers. I felt like coming to Hawaii, but it was India. I met Bana and finally he told me what was going on. There was a big investor meetup in Dehradun, where also the Prime Minister of the country attended. Media was everywhere and we thought of waiting a bit, but the important people came from a different entrance.
We decided to get to Rishikesh and the plan was to get into a meditation retreat, to get closer to yourself. Kind of standard these days, but why not? It is great to do something for yourself and get into self healing. Meditation so far helped me a lot, to get mentally better.
We decided to do some hitchhiking in India and it worked quite well all the way to Rishikesh. People were taking both of us with luggage on the motorcycle.
Rishikesh and plan change
After we arrived in Rishikesh, it didn’t feel like a great place to be at. It was super dirty and loud, not as peaceful and meditative as expected. It was the same as you would expect in India, a lot of trash and cows everywhere. There are some cute cows though.
Bana wasn’t hyped to stay in Rishikesh, so he decided to do some hitchhiking in the Himalaya region. It wasn’t the plan originally, but I also wasn’t hyped to stay there myself.
Bana promised me that in the Himalayas there would be some temples we could enter to do some meditation. Sadly he wasn’t right, but that was something I would have figured out some later time, because I was mixing the religions up. In Buddhism there it would be possible, but in India there is Hinduism the biggest religion, well could have worked better. Basically the only thing I wanted to do in the country wasn’t possible anymore, sad. Bana seemed to know it, but he thought I would know myself.
Hitchhiking in the mountains
It was starting quite well, but both of us didn’t know what to expect. A loooong way was standing in front of us. The first guy was taking us for a while and invited us for tea, which was quite nice. He was very spiritual and we dived a bit deeper into his religion, which worked even though we had language barriers. Even though in the cities it was always easy to find good English speakers, in the countryside it was getting harder.
We were getting further and further, but even though it was getting closer to our destination, the speed wasn’t much. We didn’t even have to stop a lot, but somehow it wasn’t so efficient and the daily rate wasn’t as high. Many curves and slow speed led us to needing to stop in a little town before the mountains, with a massive temperature drop.
Srinagar
People wanted us to pay, even though we were telling, that we would not do it. I didn’t like the altitude even though they spoke good enough English. I had an issue with paying with the payment apps from India, so by showing them the error we got out.
We were checking out a temple and I was super hyped, but like mentioned above it was super frustrating when realizing it wasn’t possible to sleep in it. So we ended up getting a room which was honestly just disgusting. Bana was happy by how “good” the room was! I honestly don’t want to know what type of beds he was staying in before and how he wasn’t feeling the pain of paying money for it. With Couchsurfing it would be different, because there you don’t pay anything for it. Whatever that is not the topic, but in the personal blog section I just complain, like a typical German.
Pizza Drama
We went to eat out and get a pizza, this was basically easy to find, but I didn’t know what Indian Pizza would taste like. The store looked quite fancy for both of us, but we had a rough day and wanted to eat something nice, without getting food poisoning.
The guy at the pizza shop and Bana told me “you can’t finish a big one yourself”. I can eat quite a lot so I ordered a big one. By that time I didn’t know that I couldn’t finish a big one myself because it would taste disgusting. The thing is I ate many pizzas in my life and also some weren’t good, but this one was so bad, that I couldn’t finish it even though I was super hungry. I asked the guy if I could have it to go, he responded with “I thought you could finish it” so I responded with “I could, but I couldn’t but maybe some homeless kids are happy about eating it.” He left that one without a comment and we left. I was maybe a bit rude, but quite annoyed because the pizza was actually quite expensive for India.
Nightlife
Bana and I were exploring the city a bit and stumbled around some homeless villages. They were having their tents up right next to the river and a fire was burning as well. I was seeing many poor lifes in many countries, but this was actually quite sad to see.
I will not explain further in order to respect them a little bit.
It felt overall quite safe there, the most intimidating things out there were some of the massive bulls standing around the corners.
We knew that night, we for sure needed bigger jackets because it would be freezing when we are in the mountains.
The night wasn’t the best, there was nothing to do and also the dirty room with the high amount of fungus was not brightening it up.
Preparing for the Himalayas
After some decent breakfast we had to get some cash from the ATM and get in the city to buy some clothes. We were able to negotiate to get a decent price for okay fake products which at the end was important for what we would do after.
Getting back on the street to explore something actually nice!
Dhari Devi Temple
Visiting a temple with actual people in it. It was a temple situated in the water, connected to the mainland by a bridge. On the pictures alone it looked amazing, but in person even more! I was happy that we decided to take a quiet break before driving further.
We were joining some religious ritual and I enjoyed it a lot, it was weird because we didn’t really know how to do it. The people there helped a lot, so we were able to do it correctly. It was also perfect to take pictures of. It was the first thing I actually enjoyed so far and I can highly recommend visiting it yourself. We were getting a red dot on the forehead and were ready to continue the journey.
What’s up next?
In the next personal blog article I will write about the rest of the journey and how the time in the Himalaya region was like.
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