I have spent the past week in Rishikesh in the state of Uttrakhand in Northern India. It is relaxed and chilled here, a backpacker backwater of the 1960s hippy trail. The town is surrounded by mountains on either side with the clear and fast-running Ganges slithering between it connected by two wobbly suspension bridges.
The dominant theme here is Yoga and spiritually along with the convenient interpretation of these pursuits by glassy-eyed, naval gazing Westerners young enough to know better. Still, when in Rome, do as the locals, so I have been indulging in some of the local Pancake Therapy. I have found the pancakes on this side of the Ganges much better than the ones on the other side. And as a seeker of truth, I know there are many more pancakes to sample, and I have yet to find my pancake Guru. If the pancake is made at sunrise, dipped in the Ganges, stretched and chanted at, and mixed with special lassie, then it is well on the way to reaching the zenith of pancake nirvana.
Yesterday (after a pancake) I did my first ever Yoga class with a charming young glassy-eyed yoga instructor. I went to the 6 PM class, but there was no one else there, it was just me and the slinky, smiley, skinny, instructor. Admittedly as a yoga nubile, I did find it a challenging, especially the breathing bit, and I almost passed out. I had spent the previous day trying to book the Kafka express train online and as a consequence had smoked two packets of cheap Indian cigarettes. But after an hour or so of hard stretching, breathing, peddling and chanting I emerged enlightened by the experience, so much so that I walked the 3 Kilometers downstream to the second suspension bridge to seek another pancake.
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