This weekend was awesome!
Quick update of last week... we were productive at work and made a really awesome (I think) model for this fund to use when analyzing entrepreneurs. I love excel… maybe I should’ve been a banker. Not. We also saw Source Code and Ready… both good movies, go see them.
Now the weekend… me, Jason, and two of our friends from work, Rupinder and Somesh, decided to go to Rishikesh. We started at like 5am on the journey and reached Rishikesh around 12. We were going full out, camping, river rafting, the whole deal. So we got to the campsite and had lunch. Then we got ready for rafting. White water rafting in the Ganga was incredible. The rapids were tons of fun and we got to swim in the water and cliff jump. Not to mention that all the scenery was absolutely gorgeous. A quick story – when they let you out to body surf, aka swim around, in the water they have a really long rope that extends out from the raft that you are supposed to hold on to. So Jason and I go it and go out pretty far because out of the 7 people (not including the guides) on the raft we were the only 2 that could swim. Eventually the others came in too and held on for dear life to the rope. Funniest part though, Rupinder basically wrapped the rope around like 10 times and was screaming out because the raft kept coming toward her (obvi since she had the part of the rope closest to the raft). Meanwhile, the other 6 of us are holding on to about the foot of rope that she doesn’t have. We are all laughing too hard to tell her to let go of it too. Prob doesn’t sound that funny, but trust me it was hilarious. Overall, it was a 25km stretch so took about 3.5 hours. And the place where it ended was where all the temples are along the Ganga so we go to go them and shop around a little. Then we went back to the campsite where we were staying in tents. Now this was legit camping, no electricity, no running water. I didn’t think I’d be able to handle it but I was surprised because camping is actually a ton of fun. Yes the bathrooms are nasty and pretty much non-existent, but whatever. We star-gazed for like an hour at night which was beautiful. And the tents turned out to be not too bad. In the morning we went to Haridwar and then headed on back. Overall awesome experience (pictures on FB soon but below is one).
What I really learned from this trip though was a. India teaches you a lot of patience and b. I hope to keep this new impression of fun that I have. So about patience, on the drive from Rishikesh at the end of rafting back to Shivpuri (where the campsite was) the road through the mountains apparently closes at 8. This we did not know and were thus stuck in a huge traffic jam. It took us about an hour and a half till the police finally let us through. Now normally, I’d be fuming by that point but I (and everyone) was perfectly calm. In fact the traffic jam was highly amusing and I was entertained just by watching. I’ve just become so accustomed to everything being slow in some sense and there’s a certain beauty in not letting it bother me. Sadly, I think I will lose the ability to be patient the second I get to NY, but for now I like it.
Second lesson, what’s considered fun. In the last few months of college what was fun for everyone was the constant drinking and going out. Yes that is fun, dancing is fun, partying is fun. But it is so refreshing to finally do something else. I mean going to the movies, playing cards (that doesn’t involve drinking when you lose), going camping! All this awesome stuff I feel like I haven’t done in so long. And there’s so much other stuff left to do! I hope when I go to NY I don’t become lazy. I hope to go see all the things NY has to offer and do fun, non-drinking, related things. And I hope to keep up with the gym going too (questionable).
Final note – my sister has an apt in Philly!! So excited to have so many reasons to come back to Philly J. Been craving me some shoestring fries from Continental… who wants to ship some to India?? Jokes, why would I need that when I have my McSpicy Paneer burger (yep I had that for lunch).
That’s all for now!
