Haridwar

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The six hour drive from Delhi to Haridwar resulted in a severe case of sensory overload for me! A million fantastic photos and I couldn’t take any of them because we had to keep up with traffic or get run over. I tried to relax and just enjoy the scenery (as much as you can relax with two huge trucks or buses come at you in both lanes of a narrow two lane road!) but it was very frustrating. The only way to take all of those great photos would be to walk across India and I don’t have that many years left!

We are in Haridwar where the Ganges (or Ganga as they say here) River flows out of the Himalayas. It’s a holy city which means only vegetarian food and no alcohol. There are lots of ghats, or stairways leading to the river, where pilgrims of several religions come to bathe in the holy waters of the Ganges. At sunset there is a ceremony where hundreds of people light candles in small boats made of leaves in filled with flower petals. They float these boats down the river while priests have elaborate rituals on the banks.

I got lots of photos, but when I was downloading them, Lightroom crashed and I can’t get it to restart. The photos are fine and saved on two hard drives but I can’t process them tonight without Lightroom so no photos to show for today! I think I can figure it out tomorrow but it’s way too late to work on tonight.