A Day Off Work

Saturday is the free day of the week. Except for a very straining yoga session in the morning. After yoga and breakfast I headed out to explore the city. I read about two recommended restaurants close to the ISKCON temple. I started walking around 9.30 and it was still nice and "cool". It took me an hour to get to the temple, because the streets were full of pilgrims. Also, the city is much bigger than I had thought. I didn't go into the temple, but it's the only temple I've seen here so far with English signs and I even saw some Caucasian looking people around it. There's supposed to be a western guest house and a restaurant somewhere on the temple premises. Didn't go to look for it though. I was actually looking for another restaurant, but I didn't write the name of it downbefore leaving, so I didn't really know what I was looking for. On the way to the temple I saw some nice (means safe) looking restaurants though.

I started heading back and decided not to look at the map until I'd gotten lost. I needed to to be back by 12, so I still had plenty of time. I walked past some dozen other temples and then I came to the river Yamuna. It looked more like a lake that's flowing fast. Make it a big dirty flowing lake.

It is the largest tributary of the Ganges river and it's waters make 40% of the total water of the Ganges. But, only three percent of it's water gets to Delhi, the rest is used for agricultural, domestic and industrial needs in the states north of Delhi. But here in Vrindavan, less than two hundred kilometers south of Delhi the river flows again. How is that possible? You guessed it! It's mostly raw and partially treated sewage water from Delhi and other cities. Even swimming in it is dangerous and over 50 million people rely on it for their daily needs. I found a pamphlet telling this sad story. I took pictures of it for you to read and I'll try to upload them to my photos as soon as possible. There are some good looking proposals to change things on the brochure, but I don't know if anything's been done so far.

My walk ended at 12 o'clock and I was pretty exhausted. The sun shined all the way back and I felt it pretty heavily on me. After lunch I fell asleep for two hours.

My roommate and I went out for dinner in the evening and we actually just arrived. We decided it was time for a culinary adventure. I took him to the area where I saw the restaurants earlier. It was an adventure, but the culinary side was nothing that special. I presume that we visited the Indian version McDonald's. It was tasty, but it had a cheap feel to it. A lot of plastic for just one dinner. The adventure was walking back through the bazaars and narrow streets in the darkening evening through masses of people, motorbikes, rickshaws, cars and cows. I took a short video of the hassle and I'll try to get it uploaded at some point.

Now I'm heading to bed. Had a full day even without working.