Rishikesh - 1

'hospitality industry' - a phrase similar to 'military intelligence', famously described by Dave Mustaine as 'two words combined that can't make sense'. you can 'package tours' but unless the local population wills it otherwise, you can't do anything about the cold and impersonal feel these things have.

god bless the good people (read baba’s) of Rishikesh, they're some of the most hospitable and friendly folks you'll run into in India.

the uncharitable would say that Rishikesh can't do without the tourist rupee. you spend a day there and you'd be hard-pressed to disagree - every third building offers you 'fooding and lodging' , stuffy, crammed constructions determinedly hanging on to the mountain-side and trying to go one storey taller than their neighbors; tourist taxis with their tops and bonnets painted a bright yellow, giving the city a beehive-like feel, move bumper-to-bumper in and out of the city; every second person seems to be a travel agent, a hotel manager, a guide, a taxi driver. so far, so hill station.

where Rishikesh differs from your average 531-metre plus altitude getaway is the benevolence it seems to imbue you with. for the duration of the two days i spent in Rishikesh, i was a romantic - i had this enormous sense of well-being, in love with myself and humanity in general, an almost simple-minded contentment hitherto inspired only by the familiar (and now sorely missed!) environs of parasadam. that, coming from a person who sees himself as a complete bastard, cynical manic-depressive, is high praise.

yes, rishikesh, has one eye on your money, but to its credit, it doesn't burn too large a hole in your pocket. after all, it's absurd to think of a 'reasonable price' for a drag of the second best parasadam in the country. perhaps my enthusiastic reaction to Rishikesh stems from the fact that by the time i entered the city, just before midnight, all the bile, along with other body fluids had been sucked dry from my body.

the morning before i left for Rishikesh i felt exactly like Gregor Samsa did on waking up - angry, self-pitying but mostly like an insect. an insect on which some cruel scientist had turned on a giant spotlight.

sometimes, the question is not the figurative how much shit can a man take? it's the much more practical how much of it can he hold? after 8 hours of drive to Rishikesh i

wisely dropped Amit’s objections on-course to take a dump. unless you were a part of chris Columbus's somewhat mutinous crew, you can't even begin to understand the mixture of relief and excitement with which i greeted the pot.

maybe it's just that the drive to Rishikesh is so beautiful that it soothes vegetation-starved eyes, cools water-starved body parts and generally makes you feel human again. i chose the front-seat of the car - a seating arrangement that HMS – Amit and Ashish wanted to quench their every lasting thirst for my very good friend, Mr Ethyl Alcohol throughout the trip. with us were Arti Bhabi and Meghna Didi in the car whose not stop rambling was killing Bono down.

walking through the streets of Rishikesh - its delicious cold automatically bunching one's shoulders together, making one want to cradle hot cups of tea - we're reminded of something that we'd nearly lost sight of - this was our vacation. and it was just the beginning.....

there's nothing like 'the unbearable bondness of being bond'…… to be continued……..