Universal religion (Haridwar series)

You know how in big cities you run into a very heterogeneous crowd? It was like that out there in Haridwar and Hrishikesh. On one end of the spectrum we saw a bunch of foreigners (White folks) with a bunch of cameras around their necks.

(It came to my attention later that one reason we saw a lot more foreigners in Hrishikesh rather than at Haridwar was because of a certain weed that is found in abundance here. Apparently this weed grows all over the place in the mountainous regions but not so much in the valley. So these foreigners come here in search of this weed. What they do this weed I don't know. But yeah, apparently they're all fans of this weed.)

Then we saw the local as usual. We saw a Gujrati family sitting in front of us while we waited for the ropeway car. There was a Bengali family of a couple of grandparents and their teenage granddaughter. Then there was a group of loud Telugus taking pictures of a sadhu at a temple. The bus taking us back from Haridwar to Chandigarh was half-full of Kannidigas! (These guys actually got off the bus well before Chandigarh; I wonder what small village or town they all are settled in.) And we heard bits of Tamil and Malayalam as well during this trip. A very feeling to see all these people here.