Lakshman Julha (Rishikesh)

by Vincent

Lakshman Julha viewed from our room

The pedestrian only suspended bridge. In fact, many motorbikes take it as well.

Being a blond girl in India is like being a celebrity.

Yoga, meditation, massage, etc...

Funny monkey face

Celebration of the anniversary of the birth of Krishna

A guy making Chapatis

Sadhus. It's always hard to know if sadhus in the street are "real sadhus" or homeless people who became "fake sadhus" to be able to get some donations.

Streets of Lakshman Julha

With Francoise and Ramu, who is from the family where we stayed in Nokha.

Big fire for Holi festival!

Our faces after Holi...

Night train in India. Sleeper class! Not very comfortable with all the bags but OK.

After 18 hours and a night in the train from Nokha, we arrived at Haridwar, in the Nort-West of India. From there we took a bus to Rishikesh and then a short rickshaw to arrive in Lakhsman Julha. Famous among western people for its ashrams, meditation and yoga center (there was the international yoga festival when we were there), Lakshman Julha is a small and quiet place located on the shores of the Ganga, in the mountains, at the very beginning of the Himalayas, not so far from peaks over 7000m. The Beatles also contributes to make Lakshman Julha famous since they stayed a couple of months in an ashram where they wrote the White Album.

But when you arrive in Lakshman Julha, you wonder if it's the world capital of yoga or of rafting. There are rafting agencies everywhere! We stayed a few days there, enjoying the calm and the tranquility after the chaos of the others places we had been in India. We spent our days relaxing on the beach, on the terrasses of restaurants, cafes and "German bakeries" (for some reason, there are a lot of "German bakeries" in touristic places of India but it has nothing to do with a real German bakery). My parents, who had stayed there a week before, had booked for us a very nice room in a hotel with a great view of the Ganga.

Another occupation in Lakshman Julha is to observe the others tourists. Some of them are quite funny. It is full of western people on a kind of pilgrimage who went to an ashram for a month or so to do yoga, to meditate, or to think about life. Most of them are dressed with large and colorful pants and shirts that are sold everywhere in India. Maybe they want to try to look local like that? However, there is absolutely no Indian wearing that kind of clothes! Indians living in Lakshman Julha must think that all western people have long hair, rastas and piercing!

It's crazy what love can make you do: Berit managed to convince me to take part in a yoga class! She also tried an ayurvedic massage but she wasn't really satisfied even if it was better than the torture of Nokha.

We also met Francoise, the cousin of my father I had never met before, who organized our stay in the Indian family. She lives in Lakshman Julha a couple of months per year and knows everybody. Everybody knows her as well. She was really nice and it was good to have the advices of a local!

On our last day, it was Holi, one of the biggest Hindu festival of the year. Holi is the festival of colors: during that day, people throw scented powder and paint to each other. We got prepared and bought some very cheap white clothes for the occasion. After less than 5 minutes, we were covered of paint! It was really funny in the streets where its was like a "paint war". People were hiding in balconies and where throwing buckets of paint on passengers (and of course tourists were the favorites targets...). After some time being the victims, we came back to our hotel and that time, from the balcony, we were the ones who trew buckets! Verry funny festival!