India travel photography by Meghan Andrews Photography

I finally have the second half of my journey through India up on my blog! I had such an inspiring time up north and saw the most breathtaking sites I’ve ever seen. My mind was blown everyday as India was an assault on the senses. There’s always something to do as there’s always festivals going on. I started my time up north in Rishikesh where I spent two weeks doing yoga and mediation everyday. I’m really glad I decided to go to Rishikesh as it’s my dream come true there: Rocky mountains, the clear turquoise Ganges, and a walking bridge separating the different parts of town. The bridge is also where the monkeys love to climb the metal structure, and observing humans to see what food they could steal. It’s a incredibly spiritual place for locals and foreign tourists as there’s a ton of ashrams everywhere. It’s also the home of the Beatles Ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi , where the Beatles recorded the White Album. So of course I visited the ruins of the Beatles Ashram, and that was a very special place. You could definitely feel the creative energy there. It’s falling apart now but that’s what I like about it, as it’s a dilapidated backdrop to be inspired in! 🙂 You can also go to the roof of the ashram, where there were white mosque tile domes which you could climb up. Very magical!

Also when I was in Rishikesh they had a street art festival which of course I loved, as there was tons of talented artists-there work just popped up overnight all over Rishikesh. Also one of the artists who painted the Beatles ashram art gallery was painting a beautiful mural as well. I just loved how they transformed boring city walls and stairways into art.

I finished up my trip up north by going to New Delhi. That was definitely an incredibly chaotic place but it was a lot better because I met a lot of great people there so I was able to enjoy New Delhi a lot actually. On the last day in New Delhi I saw Lodhi Gardens, which has some interesting fortes and mosques inside of it which are really quite breathtaking. I also couldn’t quite get over the contrasts of New Delhi and Old Delhi, New Delhi was incredibly clean and like any suburb here in North America, very organized with traffic lights and round-a-bouts, and everything is freshly paved. Whereas old Delhi was the exact opposite of that, there would be people out in the middle of the street sitting fixing car engines, chaos everywhere, no traffic signals, people crossing over top of the cars/rikshaws as there was no room to go in between the cars. The old and new parts of town were only a couple kilometers away from each other, really quite bizarre.

So as you can see I had quite the adventure in India, it’s a place where I’ll definitely be visiting again. I still need to visit the Taj Mahal, Jaipur, Udaipur, etc. Here is my blog post about my first half of my journey through India-the south.

Luckily I was able to visit all the places I wanted on another trip to India, as I got to be a tourist and experience all the culture and architecture of those fascinating places. It’s India: Round 3.