Rishikesh. Sigh. What's the Damn Point?

What’s the damn point? There must be a point. I’ll let you know when it occurs to me. You spend a year in India learning the real nitty gritty of Indian culture. You do everything wrong that you could do wrong, and in the end you say  well at least next time  I go, I’ll really be prepared. The next time you go, you are prepared in every conceivable way. You have predicted and solved problems before they have even occurred. But as it turns out, this time everything is different and whatever you learned the last time? Through painstaking hard labor and suffering? No longer relevant. Nope. Not the least bit relevant. Which only goes to show that the more you know, the less you know. And I mean that sincerely, not just in a bumper sticker kind of way. Thinking you know stuff only sets you up for a bigger fall when it all turns out to be false. The ignorant people are doing just fine, but here you are,  trying desperately to use knowledge that isn’t even relevant to the situation. Out of misplaced vanity, I guess. And by you, I mean me.

Rishikesh, I have discovered, is a European resort. Much like Goa, it is where people come to enjoy themselves and loaf endlessly. They take raft rides on the Ganges, play beach volleyball, and engage in exotic but short-lived trysts with one another. Rishikesh is the Jamaica of Asia. Some of you, being Americans with stars in your eyes about India’s “authenticity”—and you know who you are--will not want to believe this, and I don’t give a damn if you do or don’t. It has taken me about three very confusing days to figure this out even though it is plain as the nose on your face. I saw an Israeli girl honest to god bathing in the Ganges in her underpants. And here I’ve been so careful not to show my ankles.

Rishikesh is also the Santa Fe of India. It's where people come to find themselves, only their observations of Indians in their natural habitats are so tinged with spiritual desperation that they will turn a random cow crossing into some kind of life-changing event.

Cow crosses road, conversation follows: “Cows should cross! Yes, we should all cross, just like the sacred cows! Cross to the other side of consciousness!” Etc. Some of the conversations I overhear or (gack!) am even involved in, would curdle your coffee. The danger of falling into the trap of overgeneralizing random events for the sake of so-called enlightenment looms at all times in life, I find, not just here, but this personality quirk (or whatever it is) was, it seems, born or at least weaned in Rishikesh and festers here like a perpetually infected sore.

Some of these people are really tripping, basically. But not really. If you tried tripping here, the smells would really get to you. I understand at one point, weed was plentiful here and smoked openly, but I’m not seeing it now. Though I once met some very well educated Indian dudes in a restaurant and one of them stepped outside to smoke some “hashish” while the other one explained its soporific effects to me and exclaimed what a shame it was that one wasn’t allowed to smoke it indoors anymore, like a regular cigarette. An odd conversation for many reasons—the first being he seemed to think smoking weed was something Indians had made up and kept secret all these years, and the second being that no significant odor emanated from said cigarette, so I’m guessing it was some pretty mild weed, and not what we call hashish at all. Anyone with more hash experience than I, feel free to comment here and set me straight.

In a conversation with the only truly likeable tourist here, a fifty year old Irish dude named Kevin, I informed him that Americans have no idea India is a vacation resort. He thought that was funny, since it so obviously is. So anyway, I found a hotel room with a lamp shade. Yes, I eat my words yet again. It overlooks the Ganges, which is like any old river, except it has sandy beaches, all of which have been exploited as tent camps for river rafters and beach volleyball enthusiasts. It also overlooks a restaurant that also overlooks the Ganges. I’m going to sit there a lot and work on this book. I got out of my rugged backpacker gear and bought some fun resort clothes and started going with the flow, what the hell. By the way, there is a "rainbow gathering" in a forest near haridwar, so this place may be more full of colorful and filthy characters than usual.