Paravati Steps In

We had several goals for this weekend, but first and foremost was to secure our train tickets to Rishikesh.

A few backnotes:
We are planning on traveling to Rishikesh from Thursday June 16th to Sunday June 19th (if you are a regular Skype buddy of mine, please be aware that I will not be on during this time, limited email only). Rishikesh is the town where the Beatles hung out and supposedly wrote most of the "White Album". It is also the self proclaimed "Yoga Capital of the World" and is populated with hundreds of ashrams, where one can take a lengthy yoga retreat. It is cradled between green mountains cut by the holy Ganges river. We hear that this far up river the water is fairly pure and clean since it sits above most of the cities that pollute it so.
After spending nearly a month in a crowed, crazy city, it will be nice to escape to the mountains and greenery Rishikesh has to offer.












(picture courtesy of Google)

So Rishikesh=great. Getting there...a whole other issue.

Booking trains is India is terribly complicated for poor little foreigners like ourselves.
Waiting lists (WLs) abound during summer break season, which is now. And often you are WL 120/WL 121. With numbers like that it is highly unlikely that you will acquire a seat. Or are the tikal tickets, which require that you show up to the station two days in advanced very very early and wait in what I am sure is a vicious line.
There are also numerous different types of trains and different cars you can book on said, trains from CC to 1A, 2 tier to 3 tier, sleeper, first class, second class, A/C, non A/C.
Needless to say we were in a bit of a confused tizzy.












(picture courtesy of Google)

Then all of a sudden, Ben, a wonderful and informative past intern, let us in on a little secret.
There is a tourist quota!
Even though all of the trains we were looking at were completely booked, there were still a fair amount of tourist tickets available. Hoorah!
With this information at hand our weekend adventure began.

We headed out to the New Delhi train station on Saturday afternoon, after lunch, then cup of homemade chai and cookies with Laxmi and her auntie.
It was a little bit of a shock, emerging from the sleek, clean, cool and modern metro into the stereotypical India you hear about in the US. It does exist.
We found it. It is the train station, in and of itself. It was the truly hot (somehow 10 degrees hotter than other parts of the city), crowded, smelly (from the open urinals on the street) part of town. The good news is that we, after asking directions numerous times, found the Indian Tourist Bureau Office. The bad news is you need your passport to book these tickets, which we neglected to bring. Defeated and tired from the crowed, smelly heat we retreated back to the metro and headed to the center of the city, Connaught Place. Here we found a much needed Post Office and decided to wander around until is was dinner time.

Connaught Place is a series of circular streets, the inner most surrounds a park and the metro station. The column lined buildings contain very western styled clothing shops (like Adidas and H&M), but there are also a fair share of people set up on the street selling small trinkets, jewelry, statues, cloth, and fruit.

It is among these people that we found our new Indian mom.


She is a sweet woman who sells beautiful statues and jewelry on a carpet in Connaught Place. She was the kindest, least pushy sales person I have met thus far. Her tactic seems to be to win you over kindness. When we told her what were doing here, she called it "God's work". To her were were very sweet girls, she called us daughters and said she would be our Indian mother, since ours were so far away.
Her goods were also stunning.
I've had in mind to buy a statue of a Hindu goddess since I arrived and on her carpet I saw the one who called to me. She was a dark, alluring alloy-cast Paravati; goddess of love and devotion, second wife of Shiva, who was won over when Paravati matched his extraordinary asceticism by going without food, shelter or clothing in the forest until she mastered her physical needs. She called to me with her dark skin and glowing gold face. An aura of serenity surrounded her.


Saturday Paravati stepped into our lives. And Sunday would turn out to be a very productive and uplifting day.
(The orange flower was given to my by a student and yes that green-blue feather is real, I found it on the ground at our apartment complex, awesome, no?)

Sunday morning we ventured out early to make our first day at the climbing wall.
Finally!
Once we arrived we quickly befriended two French climbers.
One, we could tell, from his build and tanned complexion, was an experience climber. Gerard was easily approachable, open and inviting. When we told him that we were from the US, he said that his dream was to climb in the US. I said mine was to climb in France. At that he immediately extended an invitation to come stay and climb with him in southern France if ever I should be there. I was thoroughly delighted. Unfortunately, for us Gerard will be going back to France for vacation (he teaches at a French school here in Delhi) on June 21 and won't be back until the end of August and we will be in Rishikesh from the 16th to 19th, so we won't get to climb with him this weekend, but we hope to see him at the wall him some morning this week. Luckily, though, his climbing partner, Feni, a quiet, yet kind-faced young women, asked if we would be here and climbing in July. We said yes, of course, and agreed to climb together then.

Socializing was great, but we came to climb.
And climb we did. I feel pretty good, I wasn't as out of shape as I would have thought. We climbed for several hours, also getting to know the regular Indian climbing instructors a bit. Also we were fortunate enough to have our monthly passes given to us that first day, usually they ask that you come for two days to a week before they give it out.
Either our mad climbing skills or Paravati must have influenced them.

After we got good and pumped it was time for train station foray take two. Riskshaw, metro, walking. We made it. And after an hour of waiting with passports in hand we did it! We got our confirmed tickets to Rishikesh!











After our success we decided to explore this part of Delhi and ran into the Main bazaar where we wandered, lunched and tried a curious creamy pink drink that is passed out for free on Sundays for some reason. It was good. Tasted like rose water and milk. Yum.