Rishikesh-Delhi-Agra

Dear Blog,

Oh how I have neglected thee. How many moons has it been since I made a report? Five? Six? Far too many. I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to write anything. Part of it was that I became engrossed in the book Three Cups of Tea, but I also think I just needed a break from writing. I realized that I haven't been writing very much about the geography of my travels, and that all these different names of cities may be a bit confusing. Here is a map of where we've been since we came back into India from Nepal:

MAP BROKEN COMING SOON!

I'm currently in Agra, which is about three hours south of the capital city of Delhi and is also home to the Taj Mahal. Less than an hour ago we were having lunch atop a modest roof top restaurant just south of the Taj, one of many such restaurants in the unexpectedly run-down backpacker enclave known as Taj Gang. We had just finished our thalis when Mimi let out an urgent gasp, followed by an onslaught of pained, blood-curdling barks from a lone stray dog. I turned my head away from the Taj Mahal and down to the busy street below, where a small pooch lay spasming and screaming on the ground, his leg clearly broken. Several other strays gathered around him caringly, but they were hopeless to help him. Apparently, Mimi witnessed an auto rickshaw drive over the small dog, rendering it crippled for life. A small group of people gathered around the writhing dog in a sympathetic manner, but eventually lost interest and moved on. We watched as the dog limped around in circles and finally made its way under a parked truck, where it tended its wound in solitude.

I'm not really sure why I just related this story. There are countless stray dogs all over India, and now that I think about it, all over Asia as well. Like so many things here, they are initially intriguing but gradually melt into the background. Nowadays, I hardly even notice the strays as they wander aimlessly through the streets. But seeing this crippled dog totally helpless on the street served as a quick reminder of their sad existence. Stray dogs in the United States are quite rare, but in Asia they are as common as the heaps of garbage that provide their sustenance. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, but boy did we feel bad for that pooch.

Leaving this sad tale behind, let me bring us up to speed. When I last wrote, we were en route from Amritsar to Rishikesh, a sure destination on any backpacker's list of places to visit in India. Ahhh Rishikesh. It's the city you love to hate and the city you hate to love. It's the self proclaimed yoga capital of the world and is accordingly overrun by hippies and new agers from all around the globe. The lower half of the city is a grimy, impoverished city virtually indistinguishable from any of the other cities we rumbled through on the train ride from Punjab. The only reason a foreigner might go to this lower part of town is to catch a bus. "Upper Rishikesh," however, is considerably cleaner and better maintained and was composed nearly entirely of yoga ashrams, traveler's cafes, new age bookstores and hippie-oriented clothing and craft stores.

This area spread out along both sides of the Ganges river, which cuts through the city and winds down to the holy city of Haridwar and eventually down on to Varanasi, where we had been just a week before. Unlike Haridwar and Varanasi, Rishikesh is not an especially holy or historically relevant place for Hindus. It has, however, been home to a scattering of ashrams (yoga and meditation oriented spiritual retreats), one of which was run by a man named Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. When a band called the Beatles stayed at this ashram in the winter and spring of 1968, it put Rishikesh on the map for Westerners, and I don't think things have been the same here since.

Now, Rishikesh, is the place to come in India for spiritual seekers, yoga enthusiasts, and let us be honest, pot smoking hippies. If you want to surround yourself with like minded individuals and escape a lot of the filth and hassle that plagues travel in India, Rishikesh is the place for you. People come here and seemingly never leave. As a result, there is quite a wacky cast of characters floating around Rishikesh, which has more Westerners than any place we've been to in India. The "peace and love" contingent here makes itself quite present, with their dreadlocks, poofy colorful pants, and rainbow headbands. But among these silly looking people are many hard working yoga students who have come here not for the late night conversations in traveler's cafes, but for the very serious yoga courses at the ashrams.

Part of me wanted to write Rishikesh off as a ridiculous enclave of New Age bullshit separated from the "real India." How can we sit around talking about peace and love over our ayurvedic teas when people are living in shantytowns made out of tin less than two miles from here? But nothing is ever that simple, and after a few days here I concluded that the place had merit. People were dedicated here and very serious about their spiritual development, and it was a place to truly interact with and learn something from Indians. The sadhus here, of which there were many, were not stalking tourists looking for a handout. They were here for spiritual reasons only, and I saw more Westerner/Indian interactions in Rishikesh than anywhere else we have been.

So where did Mimi and I fit into all of this? For our part, we took a few yoga lessons and did what we do best, which is to walk around and soak up the vibe. We were lucky enough to be in Rishikesh right at the tail end of a two-week long free yoga and music festival. First, this enabled us to see two concerts, one featuring the sitar and one featuring the tabla. Despite some frustrating sound system issues, both concerts were quite excellent. The sitar player was a bit flashy for our taste, but the tabla player was fantastic. Still, Mimi and I agreed that nothing would compare to that first tabla concert we attended in Kolkata.

One hilarious highlight of the sitar concert involved an aging hippie from the Czech Republic who, armed with an acoustic guitar, somehow managed to hijack the stage just before the concert started so that he could play us his "Mantra for Peace," a corny sing-along whose sole lyrics were the (heavily accented) phrase, "World peace starts with peace inside." While this statement may have some truth, I struggled to keep the laughter inside as the audience reluctantly sang along. It was moments like this where the "anti-hippie" found in all of us came bubbling up to the surface. I'm for world peace just as much as the next guy, but singing about it? It's just not my cup of tea.

The potentially vomit-inducing spiritual new age vibe continued during the yoga session that we attended through the festival. The lesson was led by a white woman from LA who had adopted an Indian name and dedicated herself to teaching an obscure sect of yoga that, as we learned, involves "poses" as varied as aggressively marching in place, hugging as many random people as you can, doing leg squats for ten straight minutes while smiling, and linking arms and singing about peace and love. This style of yoga had an Indian name, but it might as well have been called "Calisthenics for Hippies."

For the most part, we took our three and a half days in Rishikesh quite easy. We had been running around and doing quite a lot in Varanasi in Amritsar, and it was great to use these days to recharge our batteries and take it easy. On one of the days, we took a walk down to see the "Beatles Ashram," which has been closed for many years and is now part of a national forest. After a bit of searching, we finally found the entrance. I was disappointed to find that the gate was protected by a lone guard wearing military fatigues. I asked him if we could go inside to look around, to which he responded that we could, as long as we gave him an unofficial "donation" of 50 rupees each. The park surely should have been freely open to public, so out of principle, we decided to forgo the extended tour. We took a picture from the outside, waved goodbye, and walked back towards town.



As we walked back, we wandered off the path down towards the river, where we saw some of the buildings of the ashram. As you all probably know, I went through an intense Beatles phase just before I left America. A good chunk of the White Album was written while the Beatles were here in Rishikesh and it was a bizarre feeling to be there in the flesh. Looking at the buildings where John Lennon wrote songs like Dear Prudence, Julia and Happiness is a Warm Gun, it felt nearly surreal. I thought about the Strawberry Fields monument in Central Park, where Beatles fans congregate and sing their favorite songs. Then I looked around at where some of those same songs had been written. I saw some abandoned buildings beyond a fence and a lone sadhu walking away from a ramshackle tent, perhaps where he lived. Monkeys and cows wandered aimlessly around us. There's India, and then there is India.



On our third day, we did something quite random and signed up for a half-day white water rafting trip down the Ganges river. Despite its holiness, the local authorities have begun allowing people to raft down the river, which has some surprisingly turbulent and exhilarating rapids. I hadn't gone rafting since I was a little kid, so I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I can assure you, rafting is incredibly fun. We had a really cool guide and shared our raft with some friendly people from Wales and Canada. We went far enough upstream that the water is clean enough to swim in, and at one point we hopped out and swam around through the rapids. To my protective parents, if you are reading this, fear not, for we were wearing protective helmets and life vests.

And that was Rishikesh. Our next destination was Delhi, the capital of India. But we first spent one day in transit in Hardiwar, a very interesting city about an hour south of Rishikesh. We had a bunch of time to kill before our overnight train left, so we watched Hardiwar's Ganga Arti, which is sort of a river worship ceremony similar to the one we had seen in Varanasi. Unlike in Varanasi, however, we were the only Westerners among perhaps a thousand devout Hindus, many of which seemed to have come to Haridwar as pilgrims. The ceremony was simpler and shorter and didn't feel like a performance as the one in Varanasi had. Everyone sat along the river ghat. To protect us from the grime, local boys sold us uncut bulk sheets of candy wrappers as makeshift blankets to sit on. And, as always, there were some monkeys, who I can assure you, were up to no good.


photo by Mimi



We arrived in Delhi early the next morning after a smooth overnight train voyage. We had heard from numerous other travelers that Delhi was an overcrowded city full of hassle but no worthwhile sights. "You'll want to leave as soon as you get there" was the general consensus. Our guidebook warned of devious train station touts and untrustworthy auto rickshaw drivers who whisk you away to their brother's silk shop instead of your destination. I personally had spent a decent amount of time mentally preparing myself, and the preparation paid off. Yes, Delhi was chaotic and if you gave me a dollar for every time a rickshaw driver asked me "Hey where you going my friend?" then I would be a very rich man. But in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't any more chaotic or pushy than any other city we'd been to. I am fully convinced that by popping my "India Cherry" with Kolkata that everything else just pales in comparison. Delhi wore me down a bit and made me just a bit homesick, but it was nothing that we couldn't handle. And on the plus side, there were a few real gems.

We had also read that the budget accommodations in Delhi were pretty grim, so we "splurged" and upgraded to an AC room at the Ajay Guest House. This cost us about $7 per person, compared to the $4 a night that we've been averaging here in India. The extra money was well worth it, as we had clean sheets and bathroom and even a flat screen TV with over a hundred channels of hilariously incomprehensible Indian programming.

(By the way, I am no longer in Agra but am now in the wonderful small town of Bundi, which is in Rajasthan.)

We had gotten a pretty decent night of sleep on the train, so after a quick breakfast at our hotel, we headed out into Delhi to look around. We decided to spend the first day exploring "Old Delhi," which is where many of the ancient bazaars are, tucked in and around a wide array of complex alleyways.

I don't have anything particularly exciting to report about in regards to our wandering around this day. The bazaars were predictably discordant and numbing to the senses. The bicycle rickshaw drivers were on point as ever, flawlessly weaving through the pedestrian traffic before being pushed aside and overtaken by the auto-rickshaws that honked there way through the dense, slow moving chaos. We also had some delicious jalebi from an apparently very reputable sweet shop.

Jalebi is an absurdly sugary sweet (as desserts are called here) made by dropping fresh dough into scalding hot oil so that it forms pretzel-esque squiggles. The hardened dough is then transferred into a giant vat of hot liquid sugar, which soaks into and saturates the dough. Think of funnel cake, but a thousand times more decadent. Here are a few pictures from Old Delhi. Note the mystery man who sneaked into the third photo down.








photo by mimi.

The next day we decided to take Delhi's brand new metro system out to the outskirts of Delhi to visit a reportedly magnificent modern Hindu temple that had been highly recommended to us. The metro ride out went quite smoothly and by late morning we had reached the entrance way to the massive complex of Akshardam Temple. At this point, we were subjected to one of the most thorough security checks I've experienced outside of Ben Gurion International Airport. We had to leave our cameras, cell phone, digital clock, and just about everything else at the cloak check.

After clearing security, we entered the temple grounds. Sadly, I have no photographs to show, but I can assure you the temple was magnificently decadent. Boasting over 20,000 individual stone carvings, including something like 120 elephants which lined the main temple's perimeter, the temple was stunning. The place was relatively uncrowded as well, with only a few other foreign tourists. Mostly there were just massive school groups out for a field trip.

At one point, while Mimi and I were sitting on a bench, a school group of adorable young boys walked passed us. As they walked, each boy would timidly peer over at us in curiosity. Finally, one brave soul walked up to me, stuck out his hand for a shake, and proclaimed, "Hello!" I shook his hand and returned his greeting with equal enthusiasm. The ice was broken. Before we knew it, dozens of excited boys were swarming around us, waiting for a turn to shake our hand and say hello. They had formed a firm semi-circle around us and it quickly became clear there was no escape. The hellos went on for a solid five minutes, before their teacher came over and saved us. "Hello!"

The temple was architecturally impressive, but having been completed in 2005, it lacked the ancient charm and historical mystique of some of the other places we have visited on this trip. To make up for this, the temple offered a hall of animatronics explaining the history of Hinduism, as well as a Disneyland style boat ride through the life of the temple's saint. Unfortunately, these rides had steep admission prices, so we bade farewell to the temple and headed back to Delhi.

Our next destination was the completely underrated Humayun's Tomb. Humayun was an important Mughal emperor and his tomb was accordingly impressive. Lucky for us, the admission fee was waived that day, so we got in for free. Inexplicably, the grounds of the tomb were nearly deserted, despite the free admission. In fact, we practically had the entire place to ourselves. We found the place quite serene, and Mimi particularly enjoyed it. It boggled our minds that Humayun's Tomb wasn't a more popular destination for tourists. Here are a few pictures:



 





After an incredibly delicious lunch of South Indian food at a local canteen recommended by our guide book, we walked over to Delhi's most important Sikh shrine, the Gurdwara Bangla Sahib. Ever since my visit to the Golden Temple, I've been fascinated by Sikhs and have been reading up on their history. Guru Gobind Singh anyone? The day before, we had stumbled upon another Sikh temple in Old Delhi and went inside to check it out for a moment. The inside of the temple was modest and not particularly nice, but for reasons beyond my comprehension, the rituals of entering -- removing the shoes, washing my hands and feet, covering my head -- excited me. Why do I enjoy this? I am not religious!

I had the same sensation the following day. As we entered the Bangla Sahib, shivers went down my spine. Inside, three men sat cross-legged and sang the holy hymns. We sat down and listened for a little bit, but somehow, it just wasn't as magical as the Golden Temple. I guess they only let the really good guys play at the Golden Temple. There was a nice amrit (holy pool) outside of the temple and we did a quick lap around. The courtyard had some beautiful marble insets, but in the grand scheme of things, this temple paled in comparison to the eloquent beauty and mesmerizing devotion found at the Golden Temple. Here are some pics:









The next morning, we took at 7am train from Delhi to Agra, which took just over three hours. Since it was a short journey, we had booked our tickets for the second class compartment, which is the cheapest ticket you can buy. I was a little bit nervous about this, but it turned out fine in the end. However, when we arrived at our seats, a family of five were already sitting there. We asked them if we could have our seats, but they acted as if this was a strange request. We made a compromise and all squeezed in. This confirmed our assumptions that it is much more a free for all when riding lower class trains in India. A conductor never even came and checked our ticket.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this entry, we stayed at a nice budget place just south of the Taj Mahal, and someone from the hotel even came and picked us up at the train station for free even though we were only staying for one night. It even had a few of the Taj from its roof!



To our dismay, the Taj Mahal was actually closed on Friday, so instead we walked over to the Agra Fort. The walk took us along the dismal Yamuna river through an area that, judging by the constant stares, doesn't see many foreigners despite its proximity to the Taj.

Agra Fort has undergone quite a bit of restoration over the years. Although it had some very cool buildings, compared to the amazing fort we visited today in Bundi, the Agra Fort felt a bit sterile. It felt less like a historical site and more like a museum. I don't know that much about the issue of restoration, but I couldn't help but feel like Agra Fort had been unnecessarily refurbished. Here are a few pictures:






sepia!

After checking out the fort, we walked around Agra's main bazaar, which actually may take the cake for the most oppressively busy place we've been to in India. A still, silent picture doesn't really do the place justice, but here is one shot anyways. The big building in the distance is one of Agra's larger mosques. I took some cool videos as well, and hopefully I can get those uploaded as soon as I get a solid connection and a few hours to spare (and some patience).



One interesting thing about Agra was the high number of Muslims. There were many mosques (called masjids in India) throughout Agra and hearing the calls to prayer throughout the day reminded me of my trip to Egypt last year. One mosque's loudspeakers sounded as if they were positioned directly at our window and I was not particularly happy when the 5am call to prayer woke me up.

Agra was also interesting for the same reason that so much of India is interesting. Amidst the tourist destinations and ancient sites, life in India simply goes on. Walk just a few steps away from the Taj Mahal and you won't find any other white people with cameras. Instead, you will find Indian people living their lives. You will find motorbikes, wild dogs, burning garbage, men selling bananas, rickshaws, chai stands, an occasional woman in a bright colored sari, cows, men holding hands, sadhus, fabric shops, but more than anything, you will find a hell of a lot of Indian people. For us in the west, Agra is synonymous with the Taj Mahal. But in reality, beyond the Taj Mahal, it's just another crazy Indian city, albeit one with substantially more charm than Delhi or Kolkata. And yet, the following picture serves as a decent summary of Agra beyond the walls of the Taj.



The next day, we got up early in a failed attempt to beat the crowds and walked over to the Taj Mahal. I had purposely kept very low expectations for this visit, because I didn't want to be disappointed. We were already a bit miffed at the comparatively expensive admission fee of 750 rupees (about $15). And I have to be honest, the Taj simply did not blow me away. It wasn't that I was disappointed, it just didn't blow me away. We've all seen pictures of the Taj Mahal, and in the flesh it pretty much looked just like the pictures, only in real life you don't have the Taj to yourself. Instead, you share it with thousands of other tourists. These are the tour group tourists that we rarely run into unless at a popular site like this. And while I understand the benefits of traveling with a tour group, it still doesn't change the fact that they make visiting these popular sites less enjoyable for everyone who isn't in a group.

Still, the Taj Mahal is an undeniably beautiful monument. I'm no architecture expert, but I am a big fan of symmetry, and in this regard the Taj does not disappoint. But in terms of its magnificence, I didn't understand why the Taj Mahal is so famous and other places in India are not. People say a picture is one thing, but to see it in the flesh is something totally different. When it comes to the mountains of the Himalayas, I couldn't agree more. Pictures simply don't translate. But in regard to the Taj Mahal, I think you can basically get the idea just from a picture. So without further ado, here are a couple of classic Taj Mahal shots, taken by yours truly. I threw one in of some Indian tourists just for the hell of it.







After about two hours of walking around and taking photos, we had had our fill. There wasn't anything else to do! So at around 10am, we said goodbye to the Taj Mahal and walked back to our hotel. We took it quite easy for the rest of the day, and took a train that night from Agra to Bundi, where I am now.

Bundi has been amazing (way more fun than either Delhi or Agra) and I can't wait to write about it. More soon!

Back from the Dead

Hello Everyone,

It has been a week since I last made a post! My goodness. Well, sadly, I don't quite have a new post ready, but I have been working on it. Since I last wrote I've been to Rishikesh, Haridwar, Delhi, Agra, and I'm not in a wonderful little town in Rajasthan called Bundi. I will tell you guys all about it, but it will have to wait until tomorrow. Check back soon!

Love,
Michael

Amritsar: The Golden Temple and the Wagah Border

Thinking back over my various entries in this travel blog, I realized that I often use the phrase, "Never in my life..." to begin describing many of my experiences. It makes sense that I would use this phrase, given that I have never been to any of these places before. These are in fact new experiences in my life. But I must admit that I also use this phrase to dramatize my writing, to elevate an experience -- walking through the Himalayas, for example -- to the level of something special, unique and unforgettable. I realized that I do this at the risk of overusage. If all of these experiences are special, than none of them are. If every sentence ends in a superlative, my descriptions lose their meaning and simply become hyperbole.

It is with this prelude that I would like to tell you about the Golden Temple of Amritsar, fully aware of the risks of using such grandiose statements. Ahem. Never in my life have I been to such a special, unique and forgettable place. I will never forget this place for as long as I live. As much as I enjoyed visiting Varanasi, I am sure that with time my experience there will gradually fade from memory. Like a city I've been to on tour with Genghis Tron, I will know that I've been to Varanasi, but I will not be able to recall with detail my emotions and observations relating to that city. The Golden Temple was different. I will never forget this place or the sensations I felt there.

I should begin by mentioning that outside the walls of the temple, Amritsar is, with all due respect, just another crowded, hectic Indian city. This is now the fourth city in India I've been to, and the chaotic grind of these urban jungles no longer overwhelms my senses. When I first arrived in Kolkata, I could barely even walk outside with feeling completely paralyzed. But with time and more experience, the shock has faded and I now feel like I have a firm handle on traveling through India cities. Amrtisar is marginally cleaner and more organized than Kolkata or Varanasi, and has considerably fewer cows, but on the whole, there is nothing particularly remarkable about the city.

But once I entered the gates of Sikhism's holiest place, the Golden Temple, everything changed.

To enter the temple grounds, you must first remove your shoes and socks and store them in a little locker. Everyone inside the gates is barefoot. Everyone inside the gates has also covered their head in deference to God. Since I did not have a turban or a scarf, I used one of the free bandannas available for those who have come unprepared. The final step before entering the complex is to wash your hands and feet. After washing our hands, we walked towards the entrance, where we found a little man-made river specifically designed for cleaning our feet. We rinsed our feet and began walking towards the entrance. Ahead of us, people bent down and touched the frame of the entryway, touched their face, and then walked through the archway into the Golden Temple. We followed.

Once inside, I came upon a vast reflecting pool, with the Golden Temple itself sitting right in the middle. The perimeter of the reflecting pool was composed of a wide marble walkway, which extended out into the pool on one side, forming a causeway that led directly to the entrance of the temple. Instantly, I was struck by the grandeur, elegance and purity of the place. (As I write this, more than half of my entire train car has spontaneously broken out into song, singing some type of Indian folk song.) We had arrived just before sunset, and the unadulterated white of the surrounding courtyard's buildings provided a wonderful contrast to the shimmering gold of the temple and its reflection along the water. The place was beautiful.









Behind me, Sikh pilgrims poored in through the entrance and immediately fell to their knees and kissed the clean, marble floor. Indeed, the place was immaculate. We would eventually spend hours walking around the complex and not a speck of dirt could be found on the bottom of my feet. The contrast between the pristine temple grounds and the filthy streets of Amritsar was astounding. I would be shocked to find a cleaner place anywhere else in the entirety of India.

As we walked around the perimeter of the pool, a Sikh sporting a large turban and even larger beard approached me with a smile and shook my hand. "You are welcome here!" he said. He then asked curiously, "Which country you're from?" When I told him I was from America, he smiled even more and said, "Wowwww. Great country!" As it turns out, this wouldn't be the only time that I'd have this exact conversation. Apparently, the American dream is far from dead here in Amritsar.

I also took note of the peaceful, ceremonious music emanating from the numerous loudspeakers found throughout the complex. Led by a soothing voice reciting simple prayer songs, this magnificent voice was accompanied by the tablas and an organ-like instrument called the harmonium. I immediately latched onto this music and often found myself focusing in on it as we walked along the water.

Eventually, we arrived at the portion of the walkway that extended out into the water, took note of the NO PHOTOGRAPHY INSIDE THE TEMPLE sign, and began walking towards the temple itself. As we came closer, a strange aroma wafted over us, perplexing both me and Mimi. We would soon learn that it was the smell a ritual food offering, a nutty paste whose ingredients we were unable to discern.

When we finally arrived at the entrance of the temple, its doorway was clogged up with people bending over to kiss the foot of the door frame, just as they had done at the initial entrance. As we slowly inched towards the door and eventually through it, I was astounded to find three men sitting crossed legged to the left side of the small interior. The man in the middle was calmly but intently singing the prayer song into a microphone as he simultaneously played the harmonium. His eyes were closed. He was flanked on his sides by a man playing the tabla and another man playing a second harmonium.

I couldn't believe it. The music coming over the loudspeakers was being performed live, continuously, all day long. From outside the temple, the music had sounded so timeless, like the man's voice had always existed. And yet here I was, watching its creation. I couldn't connect the two. To my own surprise, tears welled up behind my eyes. Why did I feel the urge to cry? I couldn't explain it. I swallowed the frog in my throat and kept the tears inside.

The inside of the temple had no discernible hierarchy or centerpiece. Sikhism has no idols and God has no physical manifestation, so there was nothing inanimate that was worth looking at. That wasn't to say the temple's interior, with its elegant gold plates and deep blue drapes, wasn't worth admiring. But the focus was clearly on the musicians. Behind them sat about ten men, all with turbans and impressive beards, who sang along to the hymn with varying degrees of intensity. On the opposite side of the room sat a similar number of women, also singing along either audibly or under their breath.

In between these two groups sat an old man with a gray beard and grave eyes. He wore a deep blue turban that matched the colors of the drapes. He presided over a massive book, that I would later learn to be the most sacred copy of the Guru Granth Sahib, Sikhism's holy book of prayer hymns. As the music poured out, people continually shuffled through temple, repeatedly kissing the ground and throwing money before the holy book. A low echo of the prayer song seeped through the room. It was then that I realized nearly everyone was singing quietly along with the hymns. These were songs that everyone knew by heart, songs that were ingrained into their minds since childhood.

So, why was I, a person who openly and enthusiastically rejects religions of all stripes, so moved by this scene? Why did it bring me so much joy to be there? Why did I feel so at home and connected in such a religious environment? The Golden Temple of Amritsar exudes an aura of legitimacy and authenticity that I've find absent in so many other places. In comparison, the ghats of Varanasi have been demoted to what Mimi referred to as Hindu Disneyland. The sadhus may have been real, but there was something about the evening puja ceremony that reeked of performance. It felt like a show. The hordes of tourists, both Western and Indian alike, certainly didn't help.

There was no performance at the Golden Temple. Only sincerity, equality, warmth, and devotion. Oodles and oodles of devotion. And it seems that a key component of this devotion is openness. I am not a Sikh, and yet I felt welcome and included. Every person we spoke to, and there were many that approached us, was kind, welcoming and inclusive. At the same time, no one proselytized and no one preached. I never felt an agenda was being pushed on me. People were just happy to share the place with us.

This openness is epitomized by the Guru-Ka-Langar, the Golden Temple's free dining hall. Eating at the Langar, which apparently feeds between 60,000 and 80,000 pilgrims every single day, was an unforgettable experience. We washed our hands (again), received a metal thali plate and spoon, and walked upstairs to the large dining hall. Here, we found everyone sitting cross-legged on the floor in long lines. Volunteers carrying large buckets hurried down the lines, doling out cupfuls of potato curry, stewed lentils, and rice pudding. Other men handed out chapati (bread), which we quickly learned is always to be received with two open hand cupped together.

Given the quantity being produced, the food was surprisingly delicious and we got more than enough to eat. It was a wonderful and humbling experience to eat alongside the other pilgrims. The bearded man next to me looked after us. When he saw me eyeing one of the curry dispensers, he gave a quick yell and before I knew it my plate had been replenished. He finished before us, but before he left he turned to me and said, "Have you had enough to eat?" I had. On our way out, we peaked into the kitchen and saw what may be the largest pot on the face of the planet. Impressive.





After dinner, we decided to walk around the perimeter once again and return to the inside of the temple. This time, there was a much longer line to enter the temple. While we were waiting online, a middle-aged Sikh caught my eye and gave me a smile. I thought nothing of it, but once we were inside the temple, he tapped me on the shoulder and began making friendly, if not slightly awkward, conversation.. For better or worse, we ended up spending the next two hours talking with this man, whose name was Chani.

Chani was an interesting man. After giving us a short tour of the less-frequented upper floors of the temple (nothing in the Golden Temple seems to be off-limits), we sat down on the roof and began chatting. I didn't mind talking to him, but at the same time I felt like Chani had cornered us into having the conversation. To put it more bluntly, I felt like Chani was following us around the temple. At any rate, he asked about our background, where we came from, what we did back home. And we asked about him.

We learned that Chani was a devout Sikh. We learned that he had a brother who was killed during a robbery at a petrol station. We learned that he absolutely loves pro-wrestling and that one of his dreams is to come to America and see the Undertaker wrestle live in the flesh at a WWF event. When I gave him a dubious look, he assured me it was true and asked me to feel his muscles. Sure enough, Chani was completely ripped. Funny, I thought. Here I am, sitting on top of the Golden Temple, squeezing the flexed arm of a middle-aged turban-clad man.

Over the course of the conversation, a conversation for which I had no clear exit strategy, I began to sense that Chani didn't have many friends. He was turning into the guy who latches on to you at a party and doesn't let go. Chani was stalking. He told me about his membership at an exclusive swim club and invited me to come swim with him at 6:30 the following morning. He told me about the wealthy 86 year old man I would get to meet if I joined him. "What hotel are you staying at? I will come pick you up on my scooter." Mimi and I looked at each other. Abort mission! "Uhhh, I forget the name," I awkwardly replied.

Chani was a kind-hearted, friendly man and deep down I felt that he meant no harm, and that had I gone swimming at his pool it probably would have been awesome. But I was in a foreign city talking to a man I had only met a few hours before, and I knew it would be reckless and potentially unsafe to accept his invitation. He gave me his phone number and address and told me that I should call him on New Year's Eve so that he could wish me a happy 2010. At several points, we said our goodbyes, only to find out that Chani was always planning to walk in the same direction that we were. After several more awkward interactions, Chani finally got the point, and said goodbye for real. Phew!

We spent the morning of the following day walking around Amritsar for a bit, including a visit to a memorial park that was established to commemorate a massacre that the British unleashed on Amritsar's local population in 1919. A wall ridden with bullet holes has been preserved over the years, serving as a brutal reminder of the British colonial legacy. After wandering aimlessly around the busy streets of Amritsar, Mimi and I decided that we had seen enough of the city and returned to the Golden Temple. We had already spent about 5 hours there the day before, but somehow, we hadn't gotten enough.

After storing away our shoes and washing up, we entered the temple once again. A husky guard with a big beard pulled me aside and asked me if I had any smokable devices. (Smoking is forbidden in the temple grounds)  I told him no, and that we had come yesterday and knew the rules. He gave me a big smile. "You like it here. You are weclome here!" As he talked to me he put his hand on my hand and began intertwining our fingers. Male-to-male affection is extremely common in India and Nepal and unlike in America there is no homosexual connotations to holding hands with another man. As we held hands he asked me, "Which country you're from?" When I told him I was from America he let out a big smile. But then his face turned very serious and he whispered to me, "9-11. Very sad." I agreed that 9-11 was sad and told him how happy I was to be at the Golden Temple. He smiled again and we said goodbye. Here is a picture of me with this guard and his buddy.



Inside, we once again walked around the perimeter of the pool, soaking up the magical feeling of the place and enjoying the wonderful view of the Golden Temple. Before I knew it, we had another new friend eagerly making conversation with us. The difference this time, however, was that the short old man trying to befriend us hardly spoke a word of English. It didn't stop him though from taking my hand and giving us a tour of one of the buildings that line the perimeter of the complex. At several points, he kindly asked if we would take a picture with him and said him a copy. He handed me a piece of paper with his address. "Just one copy, please," he kept saying. Other than this, the rest of his complimentary but compulsory guided tour was given in a language completely incomprehensible to us. It didn't matter though. He was happy to show us around and we were just as happy and curious to have him lead us. Eventually, we said goodbye. "One copy of photo, please," he reminded me. Here are the photos that I will send him.





After another free lunch at the communal dining hall, we went back to our hotel. We spent the remainder of the day taking a share-taxi out out to the India-Pakistan border at Wagah. Why, you might be asking, would we ever want to go this border, which is about an hour outside of Amritsar. Well, for some unexplicable reason, there is an extravagent border closing ceremony that occurs each night at sundown in which border guards from both Pakistan and India march around in ridiculous costumes and bark at each other from their respective sides of the border. I'm not sure how this tradition arose, but it has become an incredibly popular way for people to enjoy a late afternoon.





I wasn't sure what to expect, but we had heard this ceremony was quite a spectacle, and indeed it was. When we arrived at the border, the mood was remniscent of a college football game. The bleachers on each side of the border were filled with their respective country's patriots. We didn't have much of a view of the Pakistani side, but it was an utter riot on our side, with kids dancing to patriotic songs and Indian flags waving in the air. Each day, literally thousands of Indians come to the border to watch the ceremony and celebrate their country. Given the deep emnity between the two countries, it was an interesting but bizarre display of harmony.

On the walk back to our a taxi, a young boy approached me and asked if he could "have a snap" with me using the camera on his cell phone. He couldn't get a good picture though so I took down his email address and promised to send him a photo. Here is the picture:



But truth be told, my mind was back at the Golden Temple, and after the taxi ride back from the border and a quick dinner, we went back to the Golden Temple for the last time to say goodbye. We stayed until about 9:00pm, right up to the last round of prayer hymns, before they ceremoniously wrapped up the holy book and returned it to its storage case for the night. We walked once more around the perimeter and said goodbye to what may be the cleanest, most peaceful and welcoming place in all of India.

Don't worry, I am not going to convert to Sikhism. I don't believe in God and certainly don't believe in organized religion. But if I had to pick a religion, Sikhism might just take the cake. After all, the religion was founded specifically to reject the inquality of Hinduism's caste system. And sure enough, within the gates of the Golden Temple I found a genuine display of love, generosity and devotion to the religion's founding tenets of equality and openness. Plus I love big beards. I'll leave it at that.

VARANASI + TRAIN TO AMRITSAR

Varanasi is one hell of a city. History indicates that it is one of the oldest contintually inhabited cities in the entire world. Pilgrims come here from all over India to bathe and pray in filthy but holy water of the River Ganges. Because of the river, Varanasi is also one of the most auspicious places to die in India, and a continual, endless series of cremations takes place at Manikarnika Ghat, which is known among tourists simply as the Burning Ghat. Sahdus (wandering holy men) clad in orange robes line steps of the main ghats, spending their days praying, reciting religious verse, and true to their name, wandering. To top of it all off, the city is swarming with cows, hundreds and hundreds of cows. Like I said, Varanasi is one hell of a city.

Yesterday, I had written about Varanasi's reputation as an aggressive city that can gnaw at you and wear you down. And sure enough, despite my boasts of having the city's relentless touts firmly under control, by the end of our second day here my patience had worn thin. I was ready to leave. But the touts -- boatmen, rickshaw drivers, would-be masseurs, silk shop owners -- were only part of what wore me down. Sure, I had grown wary of pushing them aside, telling them for the fifth time that, "No, I still don't want a boat ride, I haven't changed my mind in the last eight seconds."

But that was only part of it. Much of my exhaustion was caused by the life and pulse of the city itself. Yesterday, I had written that Varanasi emits a mysterious but distinct aura of positivity, and I still stand by this observation. But this chaotic charm comes at a price, and that price might have been my sanity. The endless commotion, the constant haggling, the music blaring from shot sound systems, the motorcycles that speed down pedestrian alleys, honking all the way, the begging children who tug at your arm, point to their mouth and rub their bellies, the cow manure landmines that plague the streets -- it all added up at a staggering pace and before I had even really settled into the pace of the city, I felt the need to escape. Now this may be hard to grasp, but it is exactly this paradoxical sensation of both admiration and disgust that makes Varanasi worth the visit.

We spent the remainder of our first day in Varanasi wandering around and (surprise, surprise) getting lost in the complex labyrinth of narrow galis (pathways) that make up Varanasi's Old City. With out any specific destination, we were content to simply walk around and soak up the vibes of the filthy but vibrant city. Indeed, there is no way of getting around this simple fact, a fact that I kept returning to as we explored the city. There is no way to beat around the bush or to find a nice way to say it: India is outright filthy.

Varanasi's streets are strewn with a vile combination litter, dirty puddles of water, and fresh cow manure. Its skies yield a constant haze, the product of an endless barrage of cars and motorbikes. My nightly shower (getting hot water in India or Nepal is worthy of another post entirely) left trails of black water on the bathroom floor. Alongside, cricket, littering appears to be one of India's national past times, and it seems to be a perfectly reasonable thing to do, given that there aren't any public garbage cans. Wild animals stroll the streets like they own the place, and in the case of the holy hows, this might actually be true.

Because you cannot kill a cow in India, there are a shockingly large number of cows wandering around in India. They block the roads and shit everywhere, but there doesn't seem to be much anyone can do about it. It's just part of life here. I unwittingly stepped in cow droppings on three separate occasions during my stay in Varanasi. As I said though, it just comes with the territory. Life goes on. 

The cows are remarkable to me because they don't DO anything. They just kind of hang out, vaguely in search of something to nibble on. There was a cow on the platform of the train station this morning and no one even seemed to notice it was there. Mimi and I thought this was hilarious, and more than anything, we just wanted to know how the cow had even managed to get onto the platform. If I had to guess, it probably just walked through the front door along with the other passengers.

The point remains, however, that Varanasi is impressively, astoundingly filthy. And yet, I can't write off Varanasi as I did Kolkata. Despite my temptation, I can't file Varanasi under S for Shithole. But what is stopping me? Again, it is because of this tangible positivity among the city's people. While Kolkata was downtrodden and resigned, Varanasi is upbeat. People are proud to be from here. And once again, I think it has everything to do with the river. The Ganges, at least how it presents itself in Varanasi, is in my opinion an unremarkable river on all accounts. It is broad and slow moving, a bit like the Hudson only far more polluted. And yet, people here love that river and the whole city seems to revolve around the ghats that line the Western bank.

A prominent feature of these ghats is the large population of sadhus. We first encountered sadhus in Kathmandu. These are the wandering Hindu holy men of the sub-continent who grow dreadlocks, dress in orange, and subside on the donations of those wishing to improve their karma. In Kathmandu, the sadhus hanging around Durbar Square felt distinctly inauthentic. They wore elaborate, clean costumes and seemed to be generating a healthy flow of income by posing with tourists for photos. (Guilty as charged.) The majority of sadhus in Varanasi, however, were authentic to the core. Sure, there were a few here and there that clearly didn't mind posing for the tourists for a small tip, but the majority of these sadhus really did appear to have given up their earthly possessions in pursuit of a purely spiritual life. They were dirty and thin. Many simply sat around and meditated. Others mumbled to themselves. They were mysterious and intriguing. I wanted to get inside their minds. 

On both nights we spent in Varanasi, we walked down to the main ghat to have a look at the city's main ceremony, a citywide puja (religious offering) to the holy river Ganga. The place was a mad house. Present was an interesting mix of sadhus, tourists, pilgrims and locals. The ceremony consisted of ringing bells, lighting candles and incense, and chanting some prayers. We watched from the steps of the ghat, but many people, tourists and Indians alike, watched from the boats that were parked on the river at the foot of the ghat.

I wasn't sure what to make of the ceremony because I didn't really understand any of its significance. I am not a religious person, and it has always been difficult for me to connect with religious rituals, whether they be Christian, Hindu or anything else. Still, the experience was one to remember. The deafening ringing of the bells, the smoke of the incense, and blare of the prayer coming over the loudspeakers overwhelmed me. I hadn't seen anything like it before.

And apparently neither had any of the other tourists, who took picture after picture after picture after picture. I will do my best here not to allow my commentary to devolve into yet another anti-tourist rant, but I can't help but make a brief comment. It isn't that I hate tourists. After all, I am a tourist myself and I don't hate myself for visiting another country. It's just that I hate the way the majority of tourists act. I hate their presumptuous demeanor and their sense of entitlement. I hate how they treat other living people like an exhibition in a museum. Sometimes I sense that tourists feel, and accordingly act, like they are at Disneyland, or worse, at a zoo.

After the ceremony came to a conclusion, many of the tourists, ourselves included, turned their attention to a group of sadhus that were sitting on the steps of the ghat, chanting and praying, but also posing for the camera. After all, it had been their choice to come to the tourist epicenter. It was then that a balding, pudgy man tapped me on the shoulder, held up his camera and made a waving motion that implied I was in his way. I had already been feeling a bit disgusted by the spectacle of it all, but this really rubbed me the wrong way. Oh no, I thought, I've disrupted this man's photo shoot! The sadhus were there so that this man could take photos of them, and I was ruining his plan. I rudely told him to move around me if I felt that I was in his way. He looked at me sadly as if he didn't understand why I had been so rude and I immediately regretted what I had said. I'm being self-righteous and over analytical, I thought. This guy just wants a photo of the sadhus and I'm flipping out for no reason. I let it go and walked away. But the more I thought about it, the more this man's actions bothered me. The whole experience, the spectacle, bothered me. I needed to get away from all this commotion.

On the second day in Varanasi, we did some more wandering. At some point, a young boy whose name escapes me began walking alongside us and asking me various questions in what I considered to be pretty decent English. Before we knew it, the boy had latched onto us and was following us no matter which way we went. I didn't really mind it though because we made interesting conversation and he seemed nice enough. We wandered around the old city with this boy for an hour or two, taking breaks here and there. He even taught us a little bit of Hindi. We also watched the Burning Ghat for a while, curiously and perversely eying the wrapped corpses as they slowly disappeared into the flames. Eventually, we told him we wanted to be alone. As I expected, he asked for some money and I obliged. It is this kind of experience, I thought to myself, that makes places like Varanasi great. The boy meant no harm, he just wanted to practice his English and make himself a little money. No hassle, no scam.

Later in the afternoon Mimi and I decided to each take a course. Mimi took a two hour yoga class at a highly recommended yoga center, and later told me that the class was wonderful and that it really hit the spot. I decided to have a Tabla lesson. The tabla, and the larger bayan drum that accompanies it, together form the quintessential Indian drum set. As I have written previously, I really like the way these drums sound, especially the deep, undulating bass tones of the bayan, and I thought it would be fun to mess around with a set.

My teacher was an eccentric man who went by the name of Babloo. When we arrived at the music center we found that the doors were locked. An elderly man who lived in the building asked if we wanted a music lesson and I replied yes. "One moment," he said. He then roared at the top of his lungs so that the whole building would hear, "Baaa-BLOO!! Baaa-BLOO!!" A few minutes later, a somewhat haggard, unshaven man came down from the stairs and told us that he was just about to take a bath but that I could have a lesson. 

Above the entrance to his studio was a faded picture of a young, clean-shaven man happily playing the drums. I presumed this to be Babloo. But the man before me now bared no resemblance to the man in the photo. He looked older and more unkempt. "Is that you?" I cautiously asked, pointing to the picture. "Of course it is. I am Babloo." I guess that settles that, I thought.

The lesson was fun enough. I very quickly learned that the tabla and bayan are incredibly difficult to play. Even obtaining the most rudimentary sounds proved an insurmountable challenge for me, but the lesson was still a memorable experience. I would describe Babloo's teaching style as more intuitive than structural. He told me the drums were a spiritual instrument and that I needed to loosen up and channel my energy. I more than anything wanted to just whack away at the drums at my own pace and leisure, but out of respect, I patiently awaited further instruction from Babloo. Gradually, the lesson devolved into a series of lectures on Babloo's greatness as a teacher and on my need to buy a set of expensive drums from him. I politely declined and before I knew it, our time had run out. I gave one last little pat on the drum, thanked him for the lesson, and said goodbye.

We got up early the next morning to make sure we had ample time to catch our train out of Varanasi. Our destination was Amritsar, a city more than half way across northern India all the way in Punjab. When we arrived at the hectic Varanasi train station, however, we were dismayed to find out that our train was running nearly two hours late. The voyage was slated to take 22 hours as it was, and at this rate, we wouldn't get into Amritsar until 11am the following morning. Not the end of the world, but not the best news either. But when we found out that the train was now scheduled to arrive at 12:30, a full three hours after its original departure time, we began to get frustrated.

Indian train stations are not the most fun place to hang out. Like the rest of India, they are crowded, hectic and dirty, only more so. We remained as zen as we could, however, and patiently waited for our train to arrive. The Punjab Mail didn't roll into Varanasi station until 2:45 in the afternoon, and as I write this, at 1:00pm the following day, we still seem to have hours to go before we get to Amritsar. The latest news is that we will arrive in Amritsar at 4 in the afternoon, a full eight hours late. I had read that Indian trains are some of the most efficient and reliable in the world, but this experience has left me wondering how true that really is.

The train ride has been fun though and I actually got a pretty decent night of sleep. I managed to read the entirety of The Kite Runner on this train trip as well as write this entire blog entry. The Indian men across the aisle from us have been loudly farting with regularity for the majority of the trip's duration, providing Mimi and I with just enough entertainment to stave off our boredom. Food vendors regularly parade down the aisle offering a modest but sufficient selection including samosas, omelets, candy bars and chai tea.

Despite all this, I am beginning to get a bit stir crazy, and having been on this train for nearly 24 hours, I am eagerly awaiting our arrival in Amritsar. We only slotted two days here, and one of these days has already vanished before our eyes. Still, we are going to make the most of our time here. The dominant religion of Punjab is Sikhism, a tolerant and relatively liberal spin-off of Hinduism that is mostly known in the Western world for the beards and turbans of its male population. The highlight of Amritsar is undoubtedly the Golden Temple, which is Sikhism's holiest temple and whose architectural splendor apparently rivals that of the Taj Mahal.

In any event, I can't wait to get off this train and get out to the Golden Temple in time for sunset! Enough writing for now. More in a few days!

Here are a few more pictures from Varanasi:


Baby goat on a Ghat.


Man drying cow dung in the sun.


Street cows.


Sadhu on the Ghats with cows. (Guilty as charged)


Baby goats.


Me chatting with our unofficial tour guide.


Tourists photographing sadhus.


Bored on the train to Amritsar.

LOTS OF UPDATES!

I have made several updates in recent days, so please scroll down to make sure you don't miss anything.

Also, Mimi and I both posted a bunch of photos from our trek on our facebook pages, including many that I didn't post on the blog. There is some overlap between the two galleries.

Here are the links:

Michael's Trekking Photo Gallery

Mimi's Trekking Photo Gallery

Also, I want to give a big "shout-out" in general to Mimi, who is the best travel-mate ever. I think it's important to mention that many of the observations and insights I post on this blog are often the end results of conversations I've had with Mimi. She isn't as a prolific poster as I am, so I end up getting all the credit, I suppose. I've also been stealing some pictures Mimi has taken and putting them on my blog, so from here on own, I'm giving credit where credit is due.

Ok, Party on!

---- Michael

Nepal/India Border + Day 1 in Varanasi, India

Hello friends!

I still have more journal entries to transcribe from the Annapurna Trek, but in the mean time, I wrote a blog today about our voyage from Nepal to India and our first day back in India. Lots to report! Since writing this blog earlier this afternoon, we've had even more crazy experiences in Varanasi. This city is drenched in an unmistakable intensity. Hopefully more soon....

Today is Sunday, November 8, 2009. I am currently lying on my bed in an overall decent room at the Sahi Riverview Guesthouse in Varanasi, India. I woke up yesterday morning at 5:15 am in Pokhara, Nepal and spent the ensuing 24 hours traveling by land to get to my current location. Having only gotten a few hours of sleep last night, I laid down to take a nap. But the there is just too much floating around in my head right now. India has overwhelmed me. I must write it all down before I forget!

Before we left for our trek, we had penciled in a solid three days in Pokhara that was reserved for resting up and planning the coming weeks in India. This was a much needed break and by the third day, I felt like I was nearly back to a fully charged battery. By the third day, I had also become thoroughly sick of Pokhara and its endless stream of shops selling postcards, trekking gear, knock-off Tibetan arts and crafts, and "multicuisine" food. Since our goal was to rest, we didn't venture very far off from the tourist area, and by the end of our time in Pokhara I was more than ready to leave. The supposedly soothing "Tibetan chant" music that casts an unrelenting auditory blanket over all of Lakeside (Pokhara's tourist district) had evolved from a comical annoyance into the eternal soundtrack of my own personal hell. Just thinking about the ever present semi-tonal melodies of this music makes me shudder.

The one thing Lakeside had going for itself was a string of solid bookstores, many of which had great second-hand selections. I traded in some of the books we had already read for a decent amount of Rupees and picked up Jurassic Park, an Isaac Asimov novel about robots, and Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which I somehow have never read. I'm already almost finished with Jurassic Park and I can only say that it's not quite as impressive as I remember it being as an "eager to read big books" ten year old. I would however, like to take this opportunity to quote a line from a rap about Jurassic Park that I wrote with my grade school chum Chris Dunlap for a literary fair contest. Ahem: "From T-Rex chases to Raptors in cages/This book's totally awesome it's 400 pages!"

But alas, I digress. We began yesterday morning by walking about twenty minutes to Pokhara's interestingly named "Tourist Bus Station." Sure enough, it was a bus station entirely populated by tourists heading in one direction or another. As those of us heading to the Indian border piled into a bus that in size and condition was no different than any other bus we'd taken in Nepal, a Frenchman began complaining that someone else was in his assigned seat. Mimi and I both looked at each other and thought, "This bus has assigned seats?"

Everyone else seemed to know that assigning seats on a bus in Nepal was an exercise in futility, but this one guy kept at it long enough to hold up our departure. On top this, another French couple began arguing with yet another European couple because they both had the same seat assignment. We shared glances and rolled our eyes with a middle-aged American couple sitting across from us. Their accents strongly suggested a Brooklyn upbringing and their eyes spoke to me, "What's with this fuckin' guy? It's a bus in Nepal. Sit down and shut up!"

At this point, the bus depot's coffee and tea vendor barreled up to the side of the bus, clearly vexed. He approached the French couple from their window and began yelling, "Why wouldn't you pay me for your coffee and pastry? This is so unfair!" The French couple looked at each other as if they didn't understand the problem, to which the vendor countered, "It is always French people who did this! What is with you?" Meanwhile, the initial Frenchman was still complaining about the seating situation. At this point, Mimi and I could barely contain ourselves, but we managed to keep our lips sealed and laughs to a minimum. So this is life on the tourist bus, I thought.

Eventually, we got on our way. Despite only being only 180 kilometers away, the trip to the border would ultimately take us seven windy and bumpy hours. Additionally, despite being advertised as a "tourist bus," the driver and his trusty assistant nevertheless began picking up Nepalis along the way and cramming them into the aisle of the bus. By this point, we'd taken enough buses in Nepal that the insanity of experience barely even registered. In fact, I spent most of the ride tearing through Jurassic Park.

By 2pm, we had arrived the dirty, dismal border town of Sunauli. Over the course of the past seven hours, we had gradually weaved our way out of the foothills of the Himalayas and down into the flat, fertile land of southern Nepal, a broad region known as the Terai. For some reason, the bus didn't take us all the way to the border, so we pushed aside the aggressive bicycle rickshaw drivers and eventually found the local bus. Unfortunately, the bus was packed to the brim. The conductor pointed to the roof of the bus and gave us a smile. We had done this once before in the Kathmandu Valley, and we knew the border wasn't far, so we threw our bags up top and climbed up. As we drove along the road, we kept getting smiles, screams and waves from rooftop Nepalis coming in the other direction, who seemed ecstatic and proud that foreigners were riding the bus Nepali style. 



Immigration at the border was a breeze on both sides, and before we knew it, we were back in India.



Actually, now that I think about it, finding immigration on the Indian side was a bit tricky. Let's play "Find the Immigration Office," shall we?



India was instantly overwhelming. Maybe it's just because it was a border town, but India was a shock to the senses. It was at this moment that Mimi made a very astute observation. It isn't that India is poorer than Nepal. In fact, the statistics show than Nepal is actually one of the poorest countries in all of Asia. It's just that India has so many goddamn people. I don't know how else to put it. India is insane.

Following the border crossing, we hopped on another bus that would take us from Sunauli to another town called Gorakhpur. From there, we would take an overnight train to Varanasi, which is purported to be one of India's holiest, and consequently one of its craziest cities. The train station in Gorakhpur was a bit overwhelming, but we had cut our teeth in Kolkata, so we were pretty much ready for anything. Our train didn't leave until 10:30pm, so we had a solid five hours to kill at the train station. A decent dinner and 150 pages of Jurassic Park later, it was time to board the train.

Once aboard, Mimi and I instantly passed out. Our train was scheduled to arrive in Varanasi at 4:40am, and I woke up five minutes before my alarm at 4:20. We packed our things, held a brief pep rally, and hopped off the train. Both our guidebook and a steady flow of fellow travelers had warned us that Varanasi is chaotic, aggressive and relentless; a city that takes no prisoners. Its touts and scammers are world renowned. And yet, tourists flock here to catch a glimpse of the mystical aura that emanates from the holiness of the Ganges River. We gathered it was the kind of city that you simply have to visit, but that you wouldn't want to stay in any longer than you needed to. Our plan was to get the vibe, and get on.

We exited the train station and negotiated a fair price to our guesthouse. To get a better price, we took an "autorickshaw" instead of a taxi. An autorickshaw is something between a golf cart and an oversized motorcycle, but it got the job done this morning. That being said, I was a nervous wreck for the entirety of the fifteen minute ride. Would he take us to the right hotel, or would he take us to his buddy's hotel for a commission? Would he drop us off in the middle of nowhere and demand money to take us back? Or maybe he'd take us to the right place, and then claim that we had agreed on a different price. The fact that it was still dark out and his route included what seemed like a play-by-play tour of Varanasi's most deserted streets and sketchiest back-alleys didn't help. But sure enough, he pulled his vehicle over, led us through a few more alleys by foot, and pointed at a sign that said Sahi Riverview Guesthouse. We had made it. Perhaps next time I should be slightly less suspicious.

It was only 5am by this point, and we had to wake up an attendant to unlock the gate for us. He groggily but kindly told us that because the place was fully booked (which, by the way, is always a good sign) that our room wouldn't be available until 11:30. I had expected to this might happen, and we had already formulated a plan. We had read that the best time to take a rowboat tour along the Ganges was at sunrise, when many devotees of the river come out to pray and bathe in its holy but dangerously polluted waters. So we asked the attendant if he could store our bags and possibly arrange a boat for us. He told us that someone would be there at 5:30 and could arrange a boat for us.

A few minutes later, a very nice man arrived and told us that if we didn't mind waiting for another couple from the hotel, that we could all go down to the river together. A few minutes later, two Canadians showed up and we all walked down to the river. We agreed to share a boat with them and before I knew it, we were out on the river just as the sun was coming up.

Varanasi is known for its 80+ "ghats," a diverse collection of broad stairways that lead down to the water of the river. As our boatman propelled us down the immense Ganges, we watched as the local people went about their business in the river. Some had come to pray. Others had come simply soap up and take an early morning bath in the river. Others still had come to do their laundry.

I tried not to think about the pollution and the unhealthy paradox of a city's primary water source also serving as its main sewage dump. When our boatman pointed to a ancient looking cylindrical building that rose from the water and told us it was the city's main water purification center, I witnessed a collective cringe among us and the Canadians.

Beyond the pollution though, there was something special about the ghats and the way people went about their business. As Mimi pointed out, Varanasi seemed just as dirty and poor as Kolkata. And yet, it somehow projected an unexpected warmth and positivity that Kolkata unquestionably lacked. Here are some pictures from this morning's excursion:








The boat ride lasted two hours. As we crept along the ghats, we took many pictures and chatted with the Canadians. Native to Calgary, they both worked as engineers in the oil and gas business, but the husband had recently been laid off so they took a year off to travel. As always, it was nice to chat with fellow travelers, exchange stories, and pick up tips. On our way back up the river, we past one of Varanasi's two holy cremation sites, which are casually known as the "Burning Ghats." On the way down, there had been no activity. But now we saw a large fire emanating from the pyre. Upon closer expecation, we discovered a lifeless hand creeping out of the flames. As I looked even closer still, I could make out the contours of an entire ashen body slowly disappearing in the fire. I had never seen a cremation before.

After returning to the guesthouse, we ate a much needed breakfast. We still had over two hours before our room would be ready, so despite our low energy, we decided to go back out into the city and wander around. I really enjoyed this walk. We didn't understand what all the fuss about. Sure, there was a steady stream of persistent boatsman, not to mention a few children who begged for money, but Varanasi seemed no different than any other city we had recently been to. On the contrary, there was a positive energy that we couldn't quite place our finger on.    

Among the highlights was the constant presence of India's holy bovine community, not to mention a bizarre wall that someone had laboriously plastered with manure, or to use a phrase borrowed from Mookie Singerman, doodle pies. We also saw some surprisingly "hip" graffiti and a cool collection of abandoned bicycle rickshaws.




PHOTO BY MIMI.


PHOTO BY MIMI.



After half an hour of aimless wandering, we found ourselves at a large, ragged field where some young boys were playing a pickup game of cricket. I am perplexed and amused by cricket, a game whose rules have continually eluded me. We decided to watch for a bit.




After a few minutes, some of the boys wandered away from the game and began chatting with us using the few English words they knew. They seemed very curious about us and where we came from. You could tell that they wanted to ask us a million questions, but lacked the necessary vocabulary. We chatted for a while with a young boy name Sadu and before we knew it he was happily taking pictures of us with our camera. Gradually, one by one, the boys quit playing cricket and came over to us to see what the fuss was about. Before we knew it, we had 5 or 6 boys vying to take photos with our camera.





Finally, one of the bigger boys came over and said something to the rest in Hindi. I couldn't understand it but I imagined the translation to be, "Come on guys! Forget about these stupid foreigners. Let's get back to the game!" Several of the boys reluctantly went back to the game, but a few more hung on.

We hung out for a bit longer, making stilted small talk and looking at the map of India in our guide book. This experience really made me happy. I had come to Varanasi expecting endless hassle, but what I found was a variety of friendly, curious people. We'll see what the rest of our time here brings us, but thus far, I'm having a complete blast here. This afternoon, we will go back out and explore more.