Visiting Haridwar and Hrishikesh (Haridwar series)

This weekend I visited Haridwar, possibly my last trip during my Chandigarh stay. It was a fun little trip. The cities are pretty close to Chandigarh, 5 hours in fact. (That is too far to be able to go there on a day trip, and too close to have good quality buses, like sleepers, plying from Chandigarh.) Very little planning went into it. My motivation was primarily to just spend some time under the sun and on the banks of the Ganga so I would have been satisfied just going there, reading a book and coming back. I was however counting on good weather, which was granted to me. Just perfect conditions to explore a couple of cities.

Both these cities are on the banks of the river Ganga. We visited Hrishikesh first, which is upriver, probably the cleanest we ever got to see Ganga. Lakshman Jhoola, the "Apartment Complex of the Gods", Ram Jhoola and got to spend some time just sitting on the banks of Ganga. I took my only dip in the river over here, somehow taking a bath in front of a ton of people in Haridwar didn't appeal to me. Haridwar was a lot more hectic and a lot more "commercial" than Hrishikesh. We did visit a couple of temples that were up on hills. This time we didn't try to play cute (like for Vaishno Devi in Jammu) by climbing them, we just took the ropeway.

It was interesting visiting a place that I last visited about 20 years ago and trying to remember stuff. Like that picture on the Lakshman Jhoola. The dip in Ganga at Haridwar and visiting the temple up on the hill. Faint memories from ages ago. Still, it was very relaxing to visit those places and see those sights. For a last trip, it wasn't too shabby.