Rishikesh - India V Expats Begins!

When myself, Megan, Heather, Austin and Elliot (a 2 weeker from the States) decided to go to Rishikesh - the Yoga capital of the world and famous for its white water rafting - I wasn't quite sure what to expect since I'm the least flexible person in the world and not a fan of water activities! It was an interesting weekend shall we say...India tried its best to kick our asses but we came back fighting and managed a last minute draw! I shall elaborate...

We set off on our 7 hour drive on Friday afternoon ready to hit the rapids on Saturday morning and try out a little Yoga on Sunday morning. We had our hotel booked and had already told them we wanted to organise a rafting trip on Saturday. We were good to go! Or so we thought....a brief synopsis of our rafting experience:

• Arrive Friday and tell the hotel staff we want to go rafting on Saturday morning. No problem! They can arrange it for us.
• Saturday morning, we remind them we want to go rafting. We're told 'oooh, it's Saturday...everyone wants to go rafting. May not be possible. We'll make a call to the travel agent'.
• We wait for a call to be made. A call is not made. We get bored and call another travel agent that's been recommended to us.
• Somehow the hotel manage to hijack our new arrangements and tell us a car will pick us up at the hotel at 2pm.
• We go wandering and come back to hotel at 2pm. There is no car waiting...
• We call the organiser. He tells us we must drive 23km to the start point ourselves.
• We start driving and 20 minutes later, get a call to say the car is waiting at the hotel for us.
• We get pretty mad. After various calls, we get the name and number of the man who should be organising the boat for us and the name of the village we should meet him in.
• We arrive in the village and call this random man, who of course has no idea who we are!
• We call the hotel again. They tell us to go back to the village we were just in 10 minutes ago and a yellow boat will be waiting.
• We sigh and reluctantly head back to said village.
• We arrive. No yellow boat. We call hotel. Boat left 3 minutes ago!
• Half time score is India 2 - Expats 0

Ok, ok so it wasn't exactly a 'brief synopsis' but I couldn't leave any of it out! Moral of the story...India kicked our ass on Saturday and we wasted a whole day chasing a boat we never found. But all was not lost cause Austin 'the fixer' found us another rafting company who could arrange a trip on Sunday morning. So we got up bright and early, got picked up when we were supposed to be picked up and set off for the rapids. I never thought I'd be a fan of the rafting, but I have to say it was A LOT of fun. A perfect mix of leaisurly meandering down the Ganges versus adrenaline filled rapids. We even got to do a little cliff jumping which is always fun!

We came back fighting on Sunday and managed to claw back a point with a great rafting trip. With the help of the Lonely Planet we also managed to find ourselves a really tasty little restaurant to fill our bellies before we set off on our homeward journey. A last ditch draw we judged, even though we did never manage to do any Yoga...all in all a frustrating but very worthwhile trip!