When I was in Haridwar – Part one

I made this journey with one of my old young friend in 22^nd-25^th April 2009. Haridwar is a pilgrimage city in the Haridwar district of Uttarakhand, India. Haridwar is a religious holy place for Hindu. It says that single dip in the holy water of river Ganga can wash off all the sins but my intention to go there was not religious. I only wanted to see the place once more. In my childhood, I used to go there regularly, which had broken after some time. Now I planned for Haridwar again and discussed with my friend to come with me. When he gave his confirmation, I booked tickets from Nainital. We started our journey in morning 6 A.M… Though he had suggested to go by night bus because of boiling heat but as I don’t prefer night journey so despite all the problems I decided to go by morning bus. In morning, you can see many things, places, people that added extra entertainment in the journey.

Bus was on time and set off for Haldwani, big commercial and industrial city. Now the temperature was little hot but tolerable.  New passengers entered in the bus from here, which made the atmosphere full of activity. After some time everybody was settled in their seats and again it was peaceful.  When the bus was moving forward, I start thinking about my childhood. Lot of memories was crossing through my mind. Those days everything was mysterious for me and I used to ask everything to my Mom. I asked about the dense forest, about huge paddy fields, about the heron, a bird which could see in riverbanks, about the hawkers, who always came inside the bus to sell something etc etc. Now the things have changed… dense forests were not that much dense but crowd, pollution, dirt, vehicle, noise everything is increasing which was horrible… Well bus was moving forward and I lost in my thoughts…

 In one station bus stopped for a while and somebody knocked me from behind and said - Excuse me madam … I was still me in my thoughts so looked behind with wonder. One hawker was trying to sell me his ointment for headache. When I said no to him he explained me thousand qualities of his 10 rupees product as if it is something more than life savior. Well I appreciated his art but was not interested to buy so after some more explanations; he went off to other customer. I thought atleast he gave me reason to get happy, coz one thing is still there which was same but customers have definitely changed. They are more aware and smarter now… Bus start again and I again got buzy to gaze out. Scenarios were changing everytime.  Paddy fields and green forests were something, which was soothing eyes finely, but when we were crossing small towns, big cities, buzy markets dirt and pollution was disappointing …

Now the temperature heated up and bus became like sauna. Bus stopped at Dhaba (Small Restaurant) for lunch. We came out and went into dhaba but couldn’t get anything so decided to take only biscuits. Temperature was very high and I was sweating badly so turned into the bus. Water was boiling into sack but we had no other choice that time…after half an hour bus start and now we met with our first traffic jam… two trucks had stuck badly and blocked all the traffic… Almost after half an hour struggle, traffic could start again…

Around 2.30 P.M. We reached Haridwar. My friend told me to go to Shantikunj where we can get Dharamshala to stay. Though, I was not interested to go their but he had been hired a Rickshaw so we moved to Shantikunj… One the way I told him - Shantikunj is very far from here and we can find a good hotel near Haridwar Market. He realized his mistake and turned rickshaw to Haridwar… Well meanwhile, we saw some part of Haridwar…

1 hour later, we were at Har ki Pairi… From here, we took turn into market for Hotel and after some search-research we found a good budget hotel which was near to Har ki Pairi as well. By the time we entered in to the room, it was almost 4 P.M. After freshen up we ordered for lunch, which was not at all a good food… We were badly exhausted so decide to take some rest first and then will go to Har ki pairi for Arti…

To be continued…