Corbett elephant safari

Only 4 to an elephant, so I shot this from MY elephant. The ride was incredibly smooth, but it was really hard to take pictures as they never stood still and I was at the front of my elephant so I had to twist around to take any sort of picture. The safari was 2 hours - we saw lots of great scenery and some wild life. Our guide was very grumpy.

Corbett - Rhesus

These monkeys are all over the place in Corbett. They sure don't like it when you look them in the eye or come towards them. We saw one lady tell her kid to give the monkey a banana and the thing started running toward the boy, holding out his arms, hissing and screeching - scarey. Anil forgot to close the door to our room and one of the little devils went in after him! I told Devi to "shoo" the thing away, but when she came toward it, the monkey stood on his hind legs, hissed at her and started to come toward her - DON'T KNOW WHAT I WAS THINKING! SO MUCH FOR MOTHERLY PROTECTIVE INSTINCTS ON MY PART!

Haridwar - Our first rickshaw ride

Our hotel in Haridwar was absolutely wonderful. An old mansion that has been restored - marble floors, indoor courtyard, and the service and food were absolutely outstanding. The place is called Haveli Hari Ganga and the verandas hang over the Ganges river. The hotel itself is tucked away in a tiny alley in the middle of a terrific market place, but it's so small you can't get a car there - you have to park the car somewhere else and then they take you and your luggage the rest of the way by rickshaw thru the market place. We made friends with Pradeep who worked there - he took us on a 5 hour jeep ride thru Rajaji National Forest and then helped us get cable car tickets to the top of the hill to visit a temple - incredibly nice fellow.

Lunch in Corbett Tiger Reserve

Lunch was quite good here even though the rooms were freezing- no heat.

Haridwar- after the ceremony

This is what we looked like after the Hindu priest was done with us.

The Ecstasy (Haridwar- Candle ceremony)

What an amazing way to end our Christmas! More to come

     Despite the fact that "the gods" tried everything in their power to keep us from getting to Haridwar, we finally arrived (several hours late). Part of the package for staying at Haveli Hari Ganga was that they will escort you down to the Aarti ceremony. I figured I'd sit in the middle of the crowd and take great photos of all these glittering candles. Turns out, the package deal includes being part of the ceremony! We got our own Hindu priest for 30 minutes, recited all sorts of Hindi phrases, used water from the Ganges to wash each others feet and then put our arms on a priest as he held a huge flame and we all chanted the same phrase over and over. Then we put our boat of flowers and candles into the river and watched it float away with all the other glowing candles.

     There was all sorts of music and chanting and singing and ringing of bells and other people with priests and people floating candles down the river .... It was an incredible experience - we felt so totally and completely immersed in India and the culture ... we weren't just tourists watching, we were part of it. Soooooooo cool! 

     And then the priest asked us for money (pressured us for even more)! Yes, this was truly India - "Happy to Kris mass!!!".

     

The Agony (Delhi Train Station)

Story about missing our train to come later...... Here's the rest of the story .......

    Christmas day started out with so much promise. We got up at 4AM to catch the train from Delhi to Haridwar. As we were walking to the car a man said "Happy to Kris mass" & I said back "Merry Christmas". We got to the train station 30 minutes ahead of time, found our platform (despite being given the wrong directions), parked ourselves under the sign for our train (we even found our names and seat assignments on the board) and felt very pleased with ourselves for having gotten thru such a zoo of traffic and mass of people all on our own. 

     Time for the train came and went, but no train. We thought it was kind of odd that we didn't see any conductor or bunches of people wanting to get on the train, but how could we possibly miss an entire train coming and going? We searched and finally found a train attendant and found out we'd missed the train - it had been quietly waiting on the other side of the stairs/platform and pulled away on time without us! 

     It was extremely difficult to get anyone to help or speak english and some guy finally took pity on us and pointed us to the international reservation office - NOT!!!!! It was a scam!!!! Some guy in a tiny office with no official papers told us he was government (NOT!!!!!) and sat at a computer pretending to get us new tickets. I was getting nervous and Ajit noticed he was typing gobbledy-gook on the computer, so he tricked him into giving us our papers back and we ran out of there! The office is the big blue sign in the photo above. We ended up having to pay $130 to hire a driver for 4 hours to get us to Haridwar. 

     And to top things off, I had a "gastronomical emergency" on the road ..... you haven't lived until you have to use a "squat" toilet at a gas station in the suburbs of Delhi!!!!