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Published: March 17th 2010
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Never again...
Why it's a good idea to avoid trains around Holi time Feels like we're needing to play catch-up here on the postings: for a while we were away for internet... and now in a town where it's very expensive or very far away.
We spent our last day in Varanasi enjoying the hospitality of Raj (my old music teacher) & his family as they gave us a place to stay and keep our luggage after we checked out of our hotel. We were so excited to be able to commute to the railway station late at night in order to avoid the nightmare of traffic we had at mid-day on the way in.
The train station was bustling with many people sleeping on the ground --likely because of all the late train announcements we were hearing. It's now 2 days before Holi (which has the same grandeur holiday-wise as Christmas for us) and everyone is trying to go home. I didn't realize how many people 'everyone' entailed... until our train pulled up... and 'everyone' was on our train. Lesson # 1: the reservation system means didly when the masses are joined in a common purpose. Sardines does not begin to describe the state of the train. Getting 1/3 of the
Varanasi decked out for Holi
The spectacular lights on the way out to the train station way down the train car took a good 20 minutes. Our beds were occupied (no surprise)... by, unfortunately an elderly couple. The "oy, you: off my bed!" tactic would need a little more tact. This was one of Jeff's shinning moments, in my humble opinion. After stating to the couple (one on each of our beds) that these were our seats, the older man said we'd have to share and that I could share the bed with him and Jeff with his wife (the former, no surprise, the latter, shocking). Jeff quickly and firmly piped up that, "No, YOU can get down and share the bed with your wife and we'll take the upper bed." Go Jeff Go!!!
And so started our most insane train ride to date! A generous German woman (who had somehow managed with her husband to secure a bed each) offered to stow one of our bags leaving us a little more space as we shared our one bed with one pack. At least it was the first time Jeff and I got to (sort of) snuggle in public. Needless to say, we didn't get any sleep by the time we reached the point where
we got off to catch a bus to the boarder. Which was probably how we so easily got scammed by a cycle rickshaw driver who charged us Rs 250 to take us the distance we'd normally get for about Rs 30-50 (so frustrating).
Got through customs to problem and found out what we had to do to make sure we could get back into India with the new restrictions on re-entry into India (despite our multiple entry visas). So now, armed with 1 month Nepali Visas, we caught a local bus to Lumbini, birthplace of Siddhartha (Buddha).
Lumbini is a quiet little town consisting of very little more than a one block strip of shops, 3-4 guest houses and one restaurant. The actual sight of the Buddha's birth is about one kilometer away and off to one side of it there are numerous Buddhist monasteries and temples that have been built by the Buddhist communities of various countries (ie, the Germans have one, the Japanese, the Thai, etc). After spending an afternoon on rented bikes cycling around all the temples/monasteries, we'd pretty much exhausted all there was to do in Lumbini. Which was why it was a most
unfortunate place to be stuck for Holi.
You see, in Lumbini, Holi is celebrated one day later than in Varanasi (seems strange (note: it was celebrated yet a day earlier too somewhere else) but that's the way it works!) and the last thing you want to do in a population that is primarily Hindu, is travel on a holiday that is as big as Christmas is to us... even if the town you happen to be in is primarily Buddhist. We were warned that there would be fewer buses and that what buses there were would likely be chauffeured by drivers who were drunk. Great. Besides all the warnings we'd heard about how Nepal is one of the countries you're most likely to get into a road accident in and that that figure skyrockets higher at night... we now learn that you might as well have a death wish to add to that being on the road on the day of Holi. And so it was that we kept ourselves within the compound of our guest house with it's limited menu (where they didn't even have rice the day before (who doesn't have rice in Asia?!!?!)) and from the
Gotcha!
Brits: 1... Little Lumbini Locals: 0! roof-top watched the children and teens of the town douse each other in coloured water and powder. It was quite a fun show and Jeff and I found ourselves wishing we hadn't just lightened our packs of the clothes we no longer needed so we too could play. All the same, we lived vicariously through a pair of Brits who headed bravely out, armed with powder and buckets. Later a procession of boys and young men came by consisting of dancing and a sound system on wheels. The pictures will do it much more justice...
March 2nd, with Holi now over and our host Jupitur having convinced us that a tour package was the best way to do Chitwan, he put us on a local bus (which stopped EVERYWHERE en route) and off we went for our Jungle experience...
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