We left for Gangotri at 6.  Our bus soon lost its power steering and then the cooling system failed.  We looked at monkeys and waited until a fleet of four taxies arrived and then continued our ten hour trip to Gangotri.  The ride took us along the tops of mountains on the Tehri Road past apricot and apple orchards and pine forests to Chamba from which we began the long descent to the Ganga.  The huge Tehri dam began to fill three months ago and now a blue lake, 43 kilometers long fills the steep valley leaving the occasional still green treetop.  We drove along the lake, past the place where the Ganges, a brown, roiling, rocky river enters the lake and then on and on up the churning river to Uttarkashi (northern Banaras).  At that point the ride became beautiful in the late evening light as we traveled the road cut into the rock walls of the ravine carved out by the Ganges and through thick pine forests.  And then it became dark and rainy and the road from then on was a one lane dirt and rock road that our taxies bumped along hour after hour.  We could hear the Ganges roaring below us as our drivers pulled far to the edge and inched past oncoming traffic, often with only a few inches separating vehicles.  The road was closed at 8 but after “tipping” a police checkpoint we arrived in Gangotri at 11 and fell in bed.