Post 2
It’s been a pretty crazy weekend. I don’t even really know where to start. It’s seriously like being on a different planet over here, nothing I can say or do can encompass it all. There are just so many freakin people and there is no better way to describe everything we do outside of work as absolute mayhem. I’ll talk about work at the end and just go ahead and start with the weekend. Sorry about the spelling and bad writing, I’m just trying to get it all down.
Indians work 6 days a week, but Mimo encourages interns to take Saturday off as well. They understand we learn just as much traveling as we do in the office. Every weekend after this one we will probably head out on Friday night, but we used this weekend to see some local stuff and some confidence on how domestic travel works in India. I woke up early Saturday and met Tyler, a new American intern who goes to school in California, and his dad at Dehradun’s main bus stop. We took the bus to Mussorie, a village at the top of the nearest Himalayan peaks. The drive up there was insane. There were seriously over 50 switch backs, no boundary to keep us from driving off a cliff, and cows and monkeys every where. We had to stop several times for people to get off because they were puking from the turns. It was pretty cold once we made it up to the top, around 40-45, and rainy. We stopped in a coffee shop and I got some tea (I’m trying to do a little coffee detox while I’m here) and then walked in the direction of a school Tyler wanted to see because the President of his school went there. The walk was nuts, this place is incredibly interesting. There were bunches of houses stacked on top of each other in the mountain crevaces and it was just shop after shop of interesting small business. I couldn’t even tell you what a bunch of the businesses were, but there were 8 guys crammed into these tiny cubbies working hard at something. They also love white people so we got our picture taken a few times. The race of the people was very interesting up there as well. That’s getting pretty close to Tibet and it was more of a mughal/gorhkan look thank an Indian look. After we explored the town a bit and had a good Indian lunch we took a taxi to a nearby waterfall. It was actually the first waterfall I have ever seen, I’d say a huge waterfall pouring out of the side of the Himalayas was a pretty good start. There was a huge carnival around Khoti Falls so again there were a lot of people(again). It’s cool because none of this stuff is geared towards international tourism. Some of it is aimed at domestic tourism but most is very raw. It’s cool to see that. In between all these things are long taxi rides that are one of the best parts of the day. The view from Mussorie and Khoti Falls were out of this world. You could see 5-6 Himalayan Mountain ranges and all bunch of other stuff, like temples perched on a hill with no road access or random pigs roaming the countryside. Tyler has a really good camera so he probably got some good pictures of the area. After Khoti Falls we took the crazy descent back to Dehradun with some crazy Indian business men. They were telling us how India hasn’t been to effected by the recession because there is so much black money, I thought that was interesting. I was done for when I got home, we walked about 10 miles of mountains. I took a nap, had a late dinner, and went to bed so I could wake up early on Sunday.
On Sunday Tyler and his dad wanted to hang out because his dad is leaving Monday so I traveled alone to two nearby villages. The Italians were going to Ponta Sahib, a Sihk Temple, but I was more interested in these villages and they talk mostly in Italian so it’s no fun for me. I left my room around 6 and planned to visit Rishikesh, the Yoga capital of the world and where the Beatles spent time in an ashram, and Haridwar, the holiest city in Uttarkhand. On the way to Rishikesh our bus got a flat tire, it made a huge popping noise. Nobody seemed to be surprised, we just got off and waited 30 minutes for another bus to pick us up. I arrived at the Rishikech bus stop around 8:30 and took a rickshaw to one of the two pedestrian bridges crossing the Ganges River to the more interesting side of Rishikesh. It is a very holy city so there were all kinds of steps leading into the Ganges and Hindus bathing in the holy water. The village is tucked up into a Himalayan crevice so it was automatically beautiful. After I crossed the bridge(Ram Jhula) I realized I was at the less interesting bridge and started a 2 mile walk along the beach of the Ganges to the other bridge(Lakshman Jhula). On the way I passed many yogis, gurus, monks, and westerners who seemed to have lost themselves in yoga. There would be no other word for them than hippee. I actually got stopped by a monk who spoke English and we talked for a bit. He told me, son, it is not the spoon that bends, it is your mind. No, not really, we just small talked for 7-8 minutes, it was just cool to talk to him. The walk was full of nature and random ashrams and when the other bridge came into the clearing it was pretty amazing to see. It was just this packed bridge, monkeys running around, and a huge wedding cake temple on the bank nearby. There were invited to Yoga everywhere and random beach side tea shops. I walked around there for a bit and then headed back in the direction I came to visit the Beatles ashram. I have some video of their ashram and the streets of Rishikesh, its impossible to capture it all in words. Usually you can just focus on one or two things when describing something to get your point across, but every step I took all day had something interesting come with it. There are giant statues of gods everywhere, interesting Hindu ceremonies, a babbling yogi with a giant beard, or some crazy river rafting trip screaming down the river. That was actually the main reason I wanted to visit Rishikesh and Haridwar, most of the treks and rafting trips leave from there and I wanted to see how that worked. After I had walked around Rishikesh for about an hour I headed back across the bridge to eat at a recommended restaurant called Madras and head to Haridwar. While I was crossing the bridge this 17 year old kid named Preyshawn started talking to me. I thought it was a little weird but I figured he’d leave soon and I’d be on my way. He had lunch with me (I had an amazing mushroom cheese curry with veg-bread) and it turns out he was from Haridwar and wanted to take me around the city. I was a little freaked out because he made a few comments that made me think he wanted to be a little more than friends, but he was a little guy who seemed harmless enough so I went with it. I had plans to try to lose him in Haridwar but he had us get off somewhere different so I didn’t really know where to go. It turned out to be a very good decision to stay with him, I got to do some stuff I never would have done otherwise.
The bus ride there was about 2 hours with traffic the whole way. Picture the worst road you’ve driven on and multiply it by 4 and that’s every road here. There are two branches of the Ganges running through the village, one was a pretty fast moving branch. When we arrived Preyshawn (that’s spelled wrong, he was Indian, not black) took me to his house in the backstreets of Haridwar. I made sure my legs were loose in case I had to run but his family was incredibly hospitable. We stayed there to cool off (it’s about 90 degrees, not to bad) and then we headed to a temple called Monta Devi. This temple was on the top of a Himalayan Ridge and I figured we’d take the little chairlift they had to the top. Preyshawn had other thoughts and we pretty much scaled the side of a mountain for 30 minutes to reach this temple. On the way up Preyshawn had to ward off the locals who apparently legitimately thought I was ‘Captain America’. Haha, that was kinda cool. When we got to the top, finally and drenched with sweat, we took our shoes off and were given a coconut. I thought were going up to take pictures and head out but Preyshawn marched me right into the temple and into the middle Hindue worship service. I might as well walk around these towns naked I stick out so bad, you can imagine how many looks I got participating in Hindu worship service. We walked around barefoot with an ocean of people giving rupees and bowing to different gods’, followed by them giving us the little marks on our forehead. I had 15 different shades of paint on my forehead before the day was over. I filmed some of the walk through, the main event was giving your coconut to Monta Devi, a women gods, and receiving some coconut milk back to drink. I promptly pretended to drink it and poured it all down the front of my shirt. There were about 30 shrines in the temple and we walked around to each and Preyshawn explained what they were and how they were all connected. We talked a bit about Hinduism, a faith I have always had a hard time understanding. Preyshawn spoke good English but he seriously didn’t understand what I meant when I asked him ‘what do you want to do for a job when you grow up?”. He went on to say that in Hinduism, work is worship and he does not care what kind of work he ends up doing. He said they worship the gods because of all the great things they have given the world, when I asked him if he liked Muslims he said ‘well, not how they act, but Muslim is man too so we love them. Love is blind.” Pretty heavy stuff, I asked him what he knew what a Christian was, he loved that I was a Christian because he believes in Santa Claus and asked me a few times ‘since you are Christian, do you know when Santa Claus comes to Haridwar? I wait every year but he never come!” I was cracking up. To add to that, he loves the “Narnia picture” so we were like two pees in a pod. This, of course, is all happening on the steep walk down back to the city overlooking the ganges river and several ranges.
When we got back to the bottom we went back to his house to drink chai and watch cricket for about an hour. At 6 we left to go the a really cool ceremony on the ganges but visited a 5-6 smaller temples on theway .This ceremony was the main reason for my visit, it on the Har-ki-pairi (The footstep of God)Ghat and a place where Vishnu is said to have dropped some heavenly nectar and left a footprint behind. Hindus come from all over the world to wash away their sins in this ceremony. The ceremony is a worship service for the ganges, the ganges is very sacred to Hindus. I have some film of the ceremony, it was one of the craziest things I have ever seen. There were Indians absolutely packed around the river lighting candles on a bed of leaves and pushing them down the river. Many men, no women, were swimming in the river and just having a good time. I have never been so uncomfortable in my life, there must have been 10000 people packed in 100 yards around the ganges. People were screaming and doing chants, it was absolutely nuts. I wish I could explain it well but words just don’t do it justice, watching the video will help. I was right in the middle of it all getting tossed around like a rag doll by the absurd crowds. Things you would never do in the states, like blatantly push someone out of the way, are common place even among the elderly in India. I’m getting used to it and its kind of fun once you realize it’s not rude. I’ll get the video online soon, there’s really know way to explain it. When the ceremony ended it was like a football game trying to get out of there. You aren’t supposed to wear your shoes during the ceremony so we took them off and left them pretty much in the middle of the sidewalk near a temple. I was shocked to see that they were still there among the huge crowds stampeding over them. After we got our shoes were shouldered our way through the crowd and into the back streets of Haridwar. Being a local, Preyshawn knew the back roads so I got to see some genuine local scenes. We went back to his house for my backback and I had a ‘cold drink’ (soda) with his dad, who spoke no English. Preyshawn negotiated a cheap rickshaw back to the bus station and I was on my way. I was shocked by their hospitality, he spend the entire day showing me town and I was very grateful. The bus ride home was about 2 hours and very uncomfortable. I was exhausted from all the walking and had only eaten some trail mix and mushrooms all day. I arrived back at my house around 11, it was a pretty crazy day. I was trying to use this weekend to get some traveling confidence for some longer trips starting next weekend, I never expected the nearby towns to be that insane. If all my weekends are like that then I am going to need the week to recover for sure.
So that was my weekend, work is going ok. I spent all last week enter business card information into their database and was expecting a project that never came. I’m being given the annual report today which (I think) means I will be writing their financial statements. Tyler and I are developing our own side project for Mimo, probably having something to do with different types of loans their lendees might want and how to go about structuring them. Every day after work we go play soccer or cricket at a nearby school and it is always very fun and pretty competitive. There is a full time American here named Peter Westman who is kind of taking me under his wing to make sure I get the work I want, I appreciate that. Tyler starts today and I am very excited to get to hang out with him, he is the President of his school and it seems like we are going to get along really well. I felt like I was a part of the ground pretty soon after arriving, but it will still be nice to have another American my age around. I’m going to read for a bit before breakfast and then go to work, I’m looking forward to getting some good work. If the work part of this trip is anything substantial then this next month is going to be insanity 24/7. It is totally different over here and I’m having a lot of fun. I miss everyone really bad though and am already excited to get back to see you. Hope everyone’s summer is going well and I’ll write again in a few days. I think we are planning to visit the ‘golden temple’ and the Pakistan border next weekend. There is some cool ceremony at night on the border that is supposed to be pretty cool. I miss you guys.

Love,
Matt