After sleeping on what felt like a warm wine gum, we got the lift (you heard me correctly, LIFT) down to breakfast. I indulged in a rather snotty looking white noodle thing which tasted as bad as it looked but, as my good mum, Sian, would say, 'You won't know you don't like it, if you don't try it.' Anyway, I didn't like it. I also had a chickpea curry with a chapati which was very flavoursome and filling; so needless to say, with yesterday's calamities behind us and a nice breakfast in front of me I lent back on my patio furniture inspired chair and had a smug smile as I sipped my chai tea.

As promised a tuk-tuk picked us up punctually at 9:30 to take us to the tourism office. After checking everything through, lots of handshaking and genial nodding we got prepared to toodle North to Rishikesh.

A train wasn't available to Rishikesh so we had a private car instead, I was quite looking forward to having a bit of a zone out so that suited me like gravy!

As we rolled further from Delhi with our non-English speaking driver, who was both smily and young and adjusted his rear view mirror so as to continually have Chelsea is his eyeline, the noise seemed to melt away; there was still a high volume of cars on the road but somehow everything just seemed more relaxed.

The further we went from Delhi's commercialism and bustle, the more agriculture started to pop up and shops were heavily geared toward more industrious pursuits. Every shop and home seemed to either have towers of thick, bundled bamboo outside it or tumps of sand and gravel - people seemed to be knocking up their own homes when and where they pleased - good on them! An abundance of cows and horses also appeared outside of Delhi. As many people know, in Hinduism (incidentally the oldest religion in the world) the cow is considered sacred or at a minimum highly respected. I didn't altogether understand why this was so had a gander at a book in my current hotel; I'm clearly now going to talk about what I found, so if you're an apathetic dweeb then skip to the next paragraph. The principle teaching of Hinduism is not to harm another animal, the cow represents this through her gentle nature and so is held in very high esteem. Hindus and Indian's also rely heavily on cows for agricultural befits such as: butter, ploughing fields and using their dung as fertiliser. Due to this the cow is often seen as a maternal figure and is often portrayed with the goddess Bhoomi, who represents the Earth.

On our journey we drove through Roorkee, a busy town with lots of fruit and vegetables piled high on carts - it would seem that they splash them with water in order to keep them fresh in the sun. Due to its narrow roads and rotund lorries the continuous beeping started up again. What did make me titter was that any type of bigger-than-average vehicle would always have 'horn please' or 'blow horn' painted on the back of it in colourful letters, if this was done in my home country of Wales I feel that this would loosely translate to: 'I can't be bother to use my mirrors so let me know where you are son.'

As our exasperated driver, who clearly had a dead bum from the long drive as he kept shuffling from one cheek to the other, got us masterfully out of Roorkee I noticed another little peccadillo between our two unique countries. In Britain (though I can't vouch for the Scots) if a man is bursting, and I mean bursting to the point of a serious rupture of the bladder, he may sullenly and tragically move his car slowly to the side of a busy road, fight his way though the foliage at the roadside edge and daintily just tip the very top of his appendage out of his fly in order to relieve himself - all the while absolutely dreading being seen. In India, on a hectic, dusty road, in plain sight of everyone, I saw a man dropping trow and evacuating his bowels. Well obviously my eyes fell out of my head! Thankfully, Chelsea was looking out of the other window so doesn't have the torturous image burnt into her retinas but I wouldn't be surprised if I had another sleepless night. Then for the rest of the journey I couldn't stop seeing people weeing (no more number twos thankfully) all over the shop and non of them were batting an eyelid, incredible.

Next, we whisked through Haridwar and saw a colossal statue of Shiva, holding a trishul (trident) with a cobra around his neck. Because the statue is near the start of the river Ganges I assumed that his trishul had some connection with water, similar to the Roman and Greek gods, Neptune and Poseidon. It doesn't. It represents the three states of which Shiva is above: waking, dreaming and sleeping. The statue was also home to a large troop or rhesus monkeys - I got too close to one and it went for me! I foolishly forgot my SAS training and left my jugular exposed. Unsurprisingly, Chelsea didn't come to my aid and our driver found it hilarious.

Finally, after a 7 hour drive we arrived at Rishikesh. It is a very beguiling place cwtched under the toes of the Himalayas and surrounded by green shrubbery and trickling streams. Rishikesh is also renowned for its yoga and meditation, which naturally means that I'm being made to do it for the next two mornings of our stay.

I can't wait to have a good explore tomorrow and dip my feet into the famous Ganges river!