Om sweet Om

Rishikesh, and Haridwar, were excellent, but by Krishna, I never want to see another orange person again.

By orange, I mean gaggles of young men chanting yelling "BHUM BOOM", and "hare OM" and other such holy words, giggling frantically at the western girls, and jabbering "one photo? ek photo??" There are limits, and my limits were being prodded with a big stick by having a camera shoved in my face. Who in their right minds wants a picture of me covering my face with my hand and looking intensely peed off? Mind you, they were creative. Sitting behind me on steps and then getting your mate to run in front and take a snap before the silly woman could yell was a quick move. I tried explaining that they were stealing parts of my soul, but it didn't work. Eventually we all resorted to the good ol' crossed-eyes-and-tongue-out method, and it worked fine. Not even orange people wanted photos of deranged western girls. What do they tell people when they develop the photos, though? "Here's my three western brides I picked up in Rishikesh?" "Here's a picture of me with three really peed-off women who're covering up their faces and walking out of frame?"

Anyway, we had a fantastic long weekend, spent a whopping two quid on accommodation, 17 hours in total on buses, including a local loony-bus on the way back - going 60mph down a mountain road with gorges on either side and 80-degree bends on the wrong side of the road round blind corners is my idea of a good time - and I am now proudly holy, after being dunked rather unceremoniously in the Ganges at Haridwar (mm, taste the tang of the pesticide factories upstream) by two rather large and motherly Indian women, who fought off the naked men who were alternatively trying to splash us and touch us up, or both at once. It was the best fun I've had in ages. We also made puja, and today I'm going to look up what it is. It involved touching various sacred objects, lighting those floating candle-and-flower baskets in the Ganges, giving coconuts and incense to Haruman the monkey-god (who is my current favourite, with Shiva coming up fast on the inside) and being splatted on the head with red stuff. I'll check what it means, if anyone here can't tell me. I think I was just being a Good Hindu, prompted by the Two Fat Ladies.

But yes. A great weekend. Rishikesh is backpacker-central, so we spent a hilarious lunch laughing into our lassis listening to some of them; the obligatory arrogant and too-cool-for-India Frenchman with long hair, the over-loud English teenager trying to prove himself by boasting (and saying he's looking forward to going back to London - mmm, I love people who haven't read the newspapers for weeks) and the token Aussies who try to talk about Kant and fail. Yes, we were being hideously shameful ourselves laughing at them, but we are now token Delhi-wallahs and thus can giggle.

We also did yoga, and now we all hurt, all over. Our Swami was lovely - "be happy, laugh, yes", whilst pulling our legs behind our heads. If I can do the splits and put my feet on my back when I'm his age, I'll be happy and laughing too, though.

So yes. Photos will be up online as soon as I finish a few things here. Back at work now, a slack week as the magazine's going to print soon and it's all in the last stages of production. Just tidying bits up. Coca-Cola has finally answered my questions, too - they are all stinking b*stards, and if you want to know why, email me. As soon as I'd arranged a conversation with a head honcho, they asked me what questions I was going to ask; I told them I wanted to talk about human rights abuses in Columbia and water shortages in India, and suddenly everything was cancelled and they're being very quiet and giving me a big steaming heap of PR straight from their website. And not answering any of my very carefully worded questions, that are both hard to wriggle out of and include a lot of "allegedly"s. So poo to them. Boycott Coke, for not only are they mass-murderers, they are arrogant, slimy fools.

Yay for journalism! It's not my future career, but I get something good to rant about every day. And if anyone has any fun environmental stories they can dish up for me (I've already got the ones about Eco-Sex and McGowan's tap) please email them.