The Gateway to God- Haridwar

When it comes to Haridwar, the main attraction is Ganga Arti, It’s a place where you can just sit by the banks of Ganges for hours, staring at the ripples and listening to the music of the gushing water, and maybe you can take a dip in the water to add more freshness to life and the Ganga Arathi is really breath-taking, which started exactly at 6.30 PM and prior to this the rituals started around 5 PM or so. There were close to 100-200 devotees gathered to watch the Arathi and i must say that the energy of the people gathered is very positive and exciting. There were about 20-30 pandits lined up to perform the Arathi. They were dressed in Maroon Kurtha, White Dhothi and a White band around their shoulder and waist.

To the pious Hindu, a dip in the river at the ghat is believed to wash away all the sins. There were many people, young and old, men and women, thronging the ghat and many taking a dip in the cold water of the Ganges. The local administration had made arrangements for keeping the shoes and clothes of those wishing to have a dip. There were changing-rooms and bathrooms too which one could use following a dip. Yeah, we took a dip in the holy river with the chilled water.

Indeed, Rishikesh is an awesome place to stay and enjoy the backpacker’s life. Again, the road trip from Haridwar to Rishikesh, I can’t explain by words. We both were so excited for the adventures like Bungee Jumping, River Rafting, which we had planned at Rishikesh. It was a sweaty summer still the breeze was so chilling and helped us to explore the city More. Rishikesh had the number of tourists, that to too many from foreign shores. Ohh, I wanted to do the Bungee jumping but unfortunately, I couldn’t make that happen, I failed to get a ticket. We move ahead for the sport for which Rishikesh is famous i.e. River Rafting. It was an amazing experience to be on the raft on the natural water flow of river Ganga for 2-3 hours, paddling over the amazing roller coaster rapids one after other, it’s a must try for everyone who visits Rishikesh. The team was amazing and made sure we enjoy our ride to the most. We dip into the water. It was scary but it’s a must try event if you’re planning your trip to Rishikesh.

25th Mar’18

After a day of exploring at Rishikesh, our journey started towards Mussoorie. The roads were narrow and the view of Mussoorie was amazing. It’ll make you amazed. We reached around 9 PM at Mussoorie with no hotel booking in our hand and somehow, we managed to get a good hotel at Mussoorie. The beautiful road trip from Rishikesh to Mussoorie made our small attempt fruitful and the mountains and hill are way better than anything. When I saw the mountains, my heart started jumping with excitement and I can’t help myself rather than thinking about Wilfrid Noyce, who was a mountaineer.

“If adventure has a final and all-embracing motive, it is surely this: we go out because it is our nature to go out, to climb mountains, and to paddle rivers, to fly to the planets and plunge into the depths of the oceans… When man ceases to do these things, he is no longer man.” – Wilfrid Noyce

It was about 10PM, we want to explore nearby places of Massoorie, thanks to Google.com which was with us throughout the journey, though at times the Google map disappoint us by navigating the wrong direction and there was no sync between our destination and the directed location, still it helped us. After much R&D we headed towards the mall road, a famous place of Massoorie for street yet local shopping. The streets were full of people and other travelers. I noticed most of the people were on a family trip. There was a mix of people- young married couples with toddlers, the family of four, college gang, localities, photographers, girl gang and miscellaneous. We did few window shopping and that was the time when movie Hichiki was released. Rani being my favorite actress, I couldn’t control other than heading our tiny steps towards the theater with the night show in the chilly weather. The show completed around 12am at the night and we came back to the hotel with no food, since in masso0rie all food stall and hotel were closed by 11 PM (specifically near mall road), we ended up the day by having the Baba Ramdev’s Jhal Muri; what we carried with us from Haridawar.

Ohh!!! yeah, I forgot to mention, if you are in Haridwar don’t forget to make a visit Patanjali Ashram. It’s a luxurious place expanded across horizons.

In the next day, we watched the beautiful sunrise from the hotel room, wrapping up in the blanket where we’re hungry like anything, because we didn’t have anything on the previous day. Our hungry stomach forced us to rush towards the restaurant. We had a good breakfast. Then headed towards Kempty waterfall. The Kempty falls was ultimate and the temperature of the water was chilling. We didn’t take a dip into splashing water of Kempty falls because of chilling weather. If you’re planning to visit kempty waterfall, don’t forget to take a dip; though we missed it and, probably I ’ll take a dip in my next visit.