barista was re-visited, the same guest house slept in, the same damn monkeys kept us awake at night rattling about on the roof, we got lazy and started ordering pizza to our room (what a luxury), we visited the sights during the day, ate fantastic food at a small cafe we found at night, sat in the square and visited book stores, then decided it time to head down to the promised land of rishikesh... booked our tickets (day bus) and packed again...again.
morning was an inferno of the worst monsoon rains combined with insane thunder that i had seen in years. tim, seamus and i ran like hell down the small staircases, got lost, ended up on the road but far away from the bus station, ran towards it, seriously missed a huge lightning bolt that hit a pylon 10 METERS away from us, felt the ground shake as it happened, kept running (what else can you do) and finally reached the safety, shelter, of the bus stand. waited for the bus, bought frootis and some pakoras, boarded the bus and sat for 8 hours. the bus crept at a snails pace, broke down, pulled into a garage, while it was being fixed tim and i smoked hard, saw another bus drive straight into a ditch, the horn rang, we jumped back on, hours passed, finally dehra dun appeared and we jumped off the bus and straight onto a mini-bus which took us to rishikesh.
up by rickshaw to the new bhandari swiss cottage, and there we stayed for 13 days.....
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