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Phil's Mondo India Slide Show
The Sights of Rishikesh

Rishikesh is one the holy cities of India, the hatha yoga capital of the world, a totally vegetarian town made famous by the Beatles' stay at the Transcendental Meditation ashram across the river in the 70s. It's about a 4 hour train ride a taxi ride from Delhi, and Rishikesh is also a major gateway to the Himalayas. It's also much hotter than Delhi, to my great surprise.

OK, now let's count all the items that are wrong in this picture. First, there's a large cow in the middle of the street something you don't see in the West, but a most common sight in India. Cows rule the roads, and vehicles make their way around them. Another thing is that 'they're driving on the wrong side of the road!', one of many British legacies. Those liittle yellow and black vehicles in the distance are auto rickshaws, three wheeled taxi that spew gargantuan amounts of obnoxious black smoke, an awful annoyance to say the least. But you have sadhus walking around everywhere, The Himalayan foohills around, and the Ganges River nearby.



This is a typcial street scene in Rishikesh - storefronts are about 10-20 feet wide and display their wares onto the street. There are tons of motorcycles in the streets and these can be most dangerous to the toes of pedestrians, Indians having a much smaller sense of personal space that those of us in the west. Notice the skirted fellow walking towards the camera, a common outfit outside of most major cities. In South India, where it is much hotter, the men roll the dhoti up in half, creating a mini-skirt type look.




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