Day 2 - From Delhi to Rishikesh

Oh no...not another crazy driver!

For those of you who read our India blog two years ago, you might recall my last post about the driver who took us to Agra and almost forgot to take us back to the airport. After driving past all the signs to Indira Gandhi Airport and taking back roads to several different abandoned stores and warehouses, where he got out of the car to talk to some strange man and then got back in without explanation, I was pretty much completely convinced that he was going to sell us as sex slaves and I would be chained in a basement and tortured before I ever saw daylight again. My panic was only allayed when Aurora started yelling at him that we were getting late for our flight, "You said '5 more minutes' 2 hours ago!!!!!" Then he finally decided to turn around and -- for whatever reason -- drop us off in front of our departing terminal. After this entire debacle, one might think that I would never get in another car with a driver who speaks mostly Hindi again.

But I did.

We all did. After about 7 hours of shopping in Chandani Chowk, the market in Old Delhi (where I purchased a few shirts so I'd look more like a local), we all piled all our stuff ontop of two Toyotas and, with only a walkie-talkie to connect us, embarked on the back roads to Rishikesh. Why back roads, you ask? Because there's a HUGE Shiva festival going on there, with 1.5 million pilgrimagers from remote villages (read: they've never seen a western woman by herself on the street before) who are traveling to gather water from the sacred Ganges River and bring it back home. Some walk 200-300 km, up to 100km without stopping. So, they've closed the major roads to allow all these people to walk, leaving our two drivers to navigate back roads that they do not recognize. Our 6 hour drive to Rishikesh with an hour stop for dinner turns into an 11 hour drive with a stop for tea and biscuits (where we were thronged by about 30 Indian teenage boys wearing orange t-shirts and shorts who wanted so badly for us to take their picture).



Luckily, I've already experienced the mayhem of Indian "truck stops" and roads, so the two-lanes-turned-into-four-and-a-half and the two cars both passing other vehicles in opposing directions at the same time and the random cow that decides to cross the road and the stopping for NO apparent reason and turning off the engine just because and the incessant honking of our driver do not faze me at all. Not at all.

We arrive in Rishikesh at 2am. I do not know how Karen's mother, Julia, age 74 (this is her first time in India) has handled sitting in the front seat while our driver played chicken for 11 hours and is now sitting on the back of a motorscooter as she leaves her luggage with strange men with who supposedly have a luggage-ferry and is carried over a long suspension bridge that crosses the raging Ganges River. All I know is we're hungry, we're tired, and all around us, Indians in all-orange (the most holiest of colors, we're told) are screaming a chant that sounds like "Balabutagum Bol Bum" "Bum-Bum!" "Bum-Bum!" at the top of their lungs. I did not know they would continue this chant into the wee hours of the morning, nor did I realize how much I would appreciate that I packed ear plugs.

This adventure has started off with lots of sitting amongst hustle and bustle. I wonder when we'll start screaming, "Bum-Bum!" ourselves.