Rishikesh weekend

My first long weekend here and I knew I wasn't going to waste it. Narrowed it down to Rishikesh and Jaipur - ultimately white water rafting and a weekend in the foothills of the Himalayas won (i.e. Rishikesh). Also, I managed to find a friend from work who wanted to go there too and since she was providing the wheels, I didn't have much of a choice.
It was a fantastic weekend. Rishikesh is not only a holy pilgrimage town for Hindus, but also a popular backpacker destination for those who want to come learn yoga. The Beatles visited and stayed in some ashram, recorded a bunch of music too. Town is crawling with hippies. Unfortunately, I never got to do any yoga while I was there. But I did go white water rafting and do a mini 3 km trek.
It's not that far from Delhi, but for reasons I won't go into we didn't get there until 3 in the afternoon on Saturday. Ended up staying at the "Laxman Jhula Divine Resort" (everything there seems to have the word divine or holy in it's name).
Fantastic view from our room of the roaring Ganga (misty in the morning) -




The river is a bit dry at this time of the year, so I can only imagine how powerful it would look during the summer/monsoon months.
It was great to get out of Delhi for a weekend and breathe the fresh mountain air. One would think that washing away my sins in the holy Ganges would be the highlight of my trip, but the car journey back beat that hands down.
A bit about highway travel in North India (I say North India, because no where else have I seen such flagrant disregard of driving laws in India). The most interesting is when cars and trucks drive on the wrong side of the highway. We're barreling down, and coming straight at you in the opposite direction is a truck.
We left Rishikesh early evening on Sunday, which meant that we would be on the road after sundown. Unfortunately for us, the fog rolled in after dusk. I've never seen anything like it. We couldn't see more than 1 foot ahead of us. And in all this confusion, somehow we ended up on the wrong side of the highway. We couldn't even see the divider on the highway! We basically honked the car for a mile or so until we came to an opening to switch to the right side of the road (in this case the left side of the road). It was pretty entertaining. I have to thank my 2 friends for some fairly sophisticated driving and navigating. Thanks guys.

Some more pics from my trip