Advertisement
Published: February 18th 2011
(Day 1045 on the road) Let's have a vote.
A vote for the dirtiest country on this planet.The rules are simple: 1) You need to have been there yourself and witnessed the situation first-hand, and 2) Air-pollution does not count (sorry, China). After careful consideration and an assessment to all the countries I have been to in the past, my vote goes - whole-heartily - to India. Anybody who seconds that - what do you think, what are your nominations?
In any case, the level of pollution in India is nothing short of appalling. Rubbish bins or waste collection services are all but unheard of, so people drop their litter wherever they happen to be. Finished with that plastic bag of milk, this banana, that cup of tea? Into the gutter, down the river, out of the train window, don''t be shy now! And that's where it will stay forever - on the road, in the open sewage canals (if there are any that is), in the rivers.
And did I mention the countless cows, goats, pigs and stray dogs that live on and of of the rubbish everywhere? Their shit and piss mixes nicely with their human counterpart's excrements - don' expect any toilets anywhere. In
Mumbai, a city of over 16 million people, there are 17 public toilets for every 1 million inhabitants. Elsewhere, the situation is worse. People just pee and poo wherever they feel like.
Walking along any street in India thus becomes a hazardous undertaking, where one constantly has to be on full alert - unless stepping into piles of stinking garbage, cow shit or human pee with your sandaled feet is your kind of thing. It is hard for me to describe the smell that often accompanies the above scenario, but feel free to let your imagination run wild if you have never been to India.
Our shift from sleepy and peaceful Rourkela to bustling and intense Varansi, right on the banks of the Ganges, took the form of a comfortable overnight train, complete with little curtains for privacy at every berth, reading lights and power plugs. Not bad at all. If only the trains here were easier to book; typically they are booked out days, if not weeks, in advance, making spontaneous travels somewhat difficult.
But the comfy train ride could only ill-prepare us for the chaotic and dramatic city that Varansi turned out to be. Finding
ourself in this holy place, together with countless tourists sporting big cameras, Hindu pilgrims sporting white robes and shaved heads, stranded hippies sporting recycled shoulder-bags, family members sporting their dead mother on a stretcher to be burned by the river and a seemingly unlimited number of hassling touts sporting everything from boats to silk - it was quite overwhelming. It felt great to be in the middle of it all!
Varanasi has a fabulous location along the Ganges river (the view from our riverside-balcony was splendid), and is mainly famous as a pilgrimage destination, especially for the elderly. As I understand the whole issue (don't quote me on this one), it is believed that if your body is cremated here, you will escape the long cycle of reincarnations and go straight to heaven. Thus many people come here specifically to die and then to burn, whilst others are brought here by their children after their death. It is not unusual to walk around the tiny maze of alleyways and bump into four people carrying a corpse. In fact,. after a few such encounters we couldn't even be bothered any more to take pictures, as the sight had become quite
common.
For the purpose of cremation, this is done as publicly as possible, namely right by the river in the open for everybody to see. We stumbled across the place, Manikarnika Ghat, on our very first exploration without any preparation, and one of the first things we saw was a half-burned lower leg that was about to fall off from the body being flipped over at the knee and pushed back into the burning wood. Quite a sight for young Luc, whom we felt it was better to tell the truth than to make up some story, but who was nevertheless fascinated by the whole process. Long after, whenever he would see a very old man, he would say that this one would also die and burn soon. Clever boy.
Near the burning site, entrepreneurial businesses sell fire wood, and depending on your financial situation you buy as much wood as you can afford to and as is needed (to burn your mother that is). Some poor soul (apparently from the Untouchable cast, though we could not verify this) then carries the wooden branches down to the river and arranges them on the ground in a rectangular shape.
The body is carefully placed on top (after being "washed" in the filthy Ganges) and then covered with more wood. Finally a guy in a white robe and with a shaved head appears and starts the fire.
The burning itself then takes a surprisingly long time; at one stage I sat near a burning site for over an hour and in that time the flames only consumed parts of the legs of the person. The ashes are then dispersed directly into the Ganges, where they mix with all the other garbage and sewage floating here. Busy men with large sieves wash the ashes in the water looking for gold teeth or jewellery whilst the remaining body keeps burning and the family is still watching. Nice touch.
Speaking of the river: The Ganges, the most famous of holy Indian rivers, shows level of pollution that make the attribute "holy" nothing short of a joke. To employ just one statistic: Water that is typically deemed safe to bath in (not to drink, just bath) should have less than 500 faecal coliform bacteria in every litre of water. The Ganges at Varanasi has an astonishing 1.5 million! Of course that doesn't
stop the millions of annual pilgrims to bath in the river and drink this holy water. A short-cut to re-incarnation?
Leaving captivating Varanasi behind a few days later we soon found ourselves in the small village of
Khajuraho, a few hundred kilometres west, site of a cluster of beautifully kept and restored temples dating from around the 10th and 11th century, and depicting some pretty explicit sexual details about the private life of the people at the time. The image of a guy having fun with a horse might be a rather extreme example, but there were countless other, purely human scenes with varying number participants to keep us occupied for a while. The hassle-factor in the city however was even worse than in Varanasi, which was a big turn-down for us, as we had hoped for a more relaxed experience.
Next up was Agra and the famous Taj Mahal, which I had wanted to see for a very long time. And it was every bit as beautiful and inspiring as imagined. Despite the countless images I had seen in my life so far, seeing this monumental building for real was unforgettable. If you are not too familiar
with details of the story behind this amazing monument to love, which was built by a Mughal emperor in 1632 as a tribute to his third wife, have a look at
this Wikipedia article. Unforgettable as well was the immense hassle and the constant rip-offs at every corner. Poor Luc was also feeling the heat by now, as many a tout tries to use this oh-so-sweet child as an entry ticket to the tourist dollars of Jasmin and me. Coupled with the genuine Indians who keep touching him he is getting increasingly agitated, resulting in wild outbursts of "No, no, go away!" from time to time. Surprisingly, this often works much better than us adults trying to rid us of the constant flood of shop keepers, magazine sellers and rickshaw drivers, who don't normally take "no" or complete ignorance from our side for an answer and just keep following us.
One way we have responded to the constant overcharging by almost every sales man is to simply pay what we think it is worth. For many everyday items we know the real price by now, (tea on the street costs no more than 5 rupees, a street snack 10 rupees
and so forth). If in the end the seller wants, say, 40 rupees for a snack that costs 10 rupees, we just give him ten, which is accepted without problems most of times. This has proved to work much better than the endless arguments we used to have before, and not a single person has made a real fuss so far.
Unfortunately, this tactic does not work for official entry prices - for the Taj Mahal for instance, Indian nationals pay 20 rupees, foreigners pay a whopping 750 rupees. That of course does not stop them from trying to charge extra for the toilets inside the compound. Other tourists attractions are no different, albeit the differences in prices are not as huge as for the Taj Mahal, but still. Nice move, Incredible India.
Next stop: Jaisalmer (Rajastan, India).
To view my photos, have a look at
pictures.beiske.com. And to read the full account of my journey, have a look at the complete
book about my trip at Amazon (and most other online book shops).
Advertisement
Tot: 0.076s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 11; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0324s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Inga
non-member comment
Your pictures are great
I have enjoyed your blogs and pictures from your trip. The pictures from India are just fantastic. And your stories are always interesting to read. So now I don't know what to do - to avoid India and all the dirt, or go and see all the beauty. Anyway I wish you happy travels. Inga