There
are great plains stretching hundreds of miles around Delhi. As it
was hot at the time of year I visited I decided to go stay in the North in
the foothills of the Himalayas. My first stop was in Rishikesh where
there is a postcard view (right) of the Ganges snaking its way out of the
mountains. 
The British built some impressive
suspension bridges over the river which you
can see in the view from one of the 13 story
temples on the left. You can see that the Ganges has beaches on it,
the is one on the right bank in both pictures. The sand is a strange
grey colour
with
glittery speckles.
Other things to see in Rishikesh are
the waterfalls. 
The
one on the right was good for a quick shower to
cool down after a long hot walk. The one on the left is just a pretty
picture...
I took a couple of pictures of a
waterfall in the Kullu valley as well. There
is much fuss made about rubbish being brought by tourists in India.
Many of the streets in India are dirty and
littered, some people believe many of the more beautiful areas
are being spoilt as well. 
On
the left is the waterfall above the bridge I was on and on the rig
ht
is the stream below. You can't see it too well, but the waterfall
has lost none of its beauty where it counts whereas the people have just
dumped a lot of rubbish beside it on the right. Why, I don't know -
maybe there is too much rubbish there, maybe the Indians see rubbish as
being a part of life and therefore not as ugly as westerners do. What
I do know is that it didn't really affect the scenes of the valley which
still very impressive. Unfortunately it
was cloudy on the day I decided to go out with
my camera so I didn't g
et
many good shots. The best is the view
down the valley. You can't see it, but
there are 6000 metre mountains sticking out over the hills on the left
side of the valley in the picture on the right.
I didn't get many pictures in McLeod
Ganj. It is a small village above Dharamshala where the Tibetan
government in exile is located. 
The Dalai Lama lives there with many other Tibetans (more on this on the
Religion page). Well, on the
left is a picture of me on the steps in the hills.
On
the right is a picture of Manzoor who is from Kashmir. Manzoor
reminded me of Ali G's other character, Borat from Kazakhstan. He
also tried to sell me Kashmiri scarves, Saffron and a visit to his home
state while I stayed in his hostel. As usual there is a mountain
sticking out above the hills behind him, but they didn't come out very
well in the pictures and less well once I'd scanned them in.