Being spontaneous is fun, but India seemed to be the country where it was equally hard to be spontaneous as planning things ahead in advance. Regardless, things wouldn't go as your plan. The next morning it was time for us to leave Delhi and we went to the local bus station and jumped on one of the public buses to Rishikesh. Not as convenient and fast as the train, but more exciting (at least we thought, until the first 5 hours of sweating squeezed together with lots of other people had passed).
And the bus literally NEVER stopped, no breaks. After 3 hours my bladder was killing me, I had to pee so badly. After kindly trying to ask the driver to stop but without succeeding I got more and more desperate and started begging him to stop. But unlike my previous experience of Indians being helpful and kind, this guy seemed unreasonable and showed no empathy. By now I was desperate and actually scared of peeing myself. We realized that we just had to try to get off the bus even if that would mean that we would be stuck in the middle of nowhere without transportation. Basically, the choice was to pee myself or somehow force the driver to stop so we could get off the bus. Not a single other person in the bus seemed to have any need of a break, what were their bladders made of? Maybe they were just used to this; in India when you go on a bus, you never know when it will stop again.
After a while I started crying out of pure frustration, and finally an Indian woman eventually said a few words to the male driver and he magically stopped by a toilet. This was probably the biggest relief I'd ever felt in my life. I was so embarrassed by everyone staring at me in this no-shame Indian way when I returned to the bus, so I didn't dare to drink a single drop of water anymore during the whole trip.
After more than 10 hours on this bus we finally reached Rishikesh. In the darkness we found an empty hotel were we got a room, and eventually also had dinner since we couldn't find another restaurant in the neighborhood that was open this late.
The dinner at the empty hotel was good and filling. Happy to finally go to bed we were looking forward to a peaceful night of sleep. What we didn't know, was that the Delhi belly was gonna hit us as that night, showing no mercy. After all I'd heard, street food never makes you sick in India since the street food booths have no storage possibilities and veggies and ingredients are always bought fresh on a daily basis. What does make you sick, are usually the half empty restaurants where you can't see the kitchen and the hygiene standards might be poor. This was exactly what happened to us. Not many hours after the dinner, we started feeling bad. And then the nightmare started - I will spare you from the details, but you can imagine. We ended up staying in that hotel room (without windows, just to mention) for 3 days, so sick so we could barely get up from bed. It was like being stuck in a prison cell and a hospital at the same time.
Every morning the one of us who was least weak and sick at the moment had to crawl down the stairs to extend our stay for one more night. And every morning the room price magically was raised. We ended up paying more and more for each day that passed in that claustrophobic room, with no possibility to leave. Once again, my previous experience of Indians being very helpful and kind didn't seem to apply on everyone - especially not the unhelpful receptionists in this hotel. No one even asked us if we needed any help or brought us water...
Eventually, after being sick for a few days, we were well enough to check out and could slowly start recovering. Although our first days in Rishikesh hadn't started off that well, we had a few nice days exploring the town. The landscapes were beautiful with mountains and the beginning of the Ganges river that starts just a short bit up north from Rishikesh. The town had a peaceful atmosphere, many nice cafes where you can have great chai and a nice climate due to the high altitude.
However, after finally recovering enough from the food poisoning to be able to travel further, we felt relieved to leave Rishikesh. We left after 5 days with memories that otherwise could have been great from this nice town, but now were dominated by the worst food poisoning ever and an extremely non-service minded hotel.
Check out my next blog post here to read what happened after when we left to the northernmost part of India; Kashmir.
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