Journey to Rudraprayag

The morning of August 30th we got up at 6 am and started our drive to Hemkunt Sahib. Our first night we would stay along the way in a place called Rudraprayag. I took the opportunity to take pictures of things that may be considered mundane to people who've been to India, but make up a picture of the typical sights to those who haven't been.

All the trucks in India are painted bright colors and most of them are of the Tata brand.

There's always animals in the road, sometimes they're actually serving a purpose (like to pull a cart).


A typical view of the countryside is fields under cultivation with a row of Eucalyptus trees along the road.

Distances between passing cars are very narrow.

Tractors are another common sight, this one is pulling sugar cane harvest.

Sugar Cane.



Typical stalls selling whatever, in this case vegetables with a side of exhaust.

This is where our driver, Akshay, stopped for chai, it's a typical chai stall/grease pit.'

The kind of title of a place you'd find in India 'Central Potato Research Institute


Field hands live in these huts with their families, sometimes the whole family are field workers (men, women and children).




The place we stopped for lunch maintained a pretty nice garden for the tourists.


Lotus Flower.



A view of Rishikesh on the way up. We bypassed the town on the way in.


Pictures of the way up, everything started getting much greener, much less crowded, much steeper, and the road started becoming very winding and fractured.














Typical sheet metal huts that people live in.

We had great views of the Ganges and other rivers.

















People still grew a lot of their own food in these areas, typically done without tractors in terraces.
Another standard tea shop.

This car was practically our home for days as we spent so many hours in it driving to and from Hemkunt. It is a Tata Indica diesel. The person I arranged this with wanted to put us in an SUV for $450 to Hemkunt sahib and back. I said I didn't want to pay above $250 and that we didn't need an SUV, just four doors and AC so we got this for about $250.