Why I love India # 1 - March 2009

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This is from my India 2009 travel - and happened middle of March 2009: I’ve travelled all night from Pushkar Rajasthan to reach Haridwar in Uttarachand. This was my first experience on a ‘sleeper bus’. These are “luxury” (!!) coaches where you book a bed with accompanying seat. The experience didn’t even come close to the smooth and constant way a train carries you across India, and of course with no facilities on board such as toilets, access to water, and constant chai and food purchasing opportunities (vs the ‘highway robbery’ prices at selected road side stops in the middle of no-where where one can only imagine the deal between the proprietor and the bus driver for bringing in the suckers), the bus trip might just be best missed in future.

Having said that - it was OK!! The thing about travel in India is that you learn ways to survive and “be”. You laugh along the way at the inconsistencies thrown up (like at the breakfast stop with the single filthy toilet with no water where you had to pay a caretaker a fee to enter and use this seeming luxury!); and you still always get to see amazing things along the way (in this case an enormous water buffalo market/ mela stands out).

I arrive around 9 am at the desolate back block in Haridwar which is the private (as opposed to the State) bus interchange. Having crossed the river Ganga coming into town and feeling a sense of arrival and belonging at the sight of her strong flow - fresh out of the Himalaya just 50 klms or so upriver, I instinctively head straight back to the bridge and the Ganga.

The streets are busy and dusty - like any place in suburban India. I have been travelling all night - with intermittent sleep - I yearn for a wash. And then - as if an apparition - there is a small space between make-shift shops next to the bridge - with stone steps leading down and under the bridge.

Once I descend, it is as if entering another world. The noise and smells of the street above dissolve as if to a great distance and another time and place. There is shelter and cool from the hot sun above. The sound of the gushing river and the freshness it throws up surrounds me. Dhobi wallas (clothes washers) are about their business on the shore - thrashing clothing on the river slabs. An elephant is having his daily wash and frolic in the shallows, lovingly caressed by his keeper (mahout).

Then the ‘piece de resistance’! Right underneath the bridge - nestled so neatly and so ‘space efficiently’ to maximise the protection of the bridge structure itself (a gift to Shiva from modern India) - is a Hindu temple adorned with white marble - and a marble mini-ghat of it’s own down to the water’s edge. There is a secure iron fenced area - like a small sea-side pool - at the shore to hang on to and avoid being swept down river in the strong current. I nod to the priest who is doing what priests do inside the small temple room - and indicate my desire to bathe in the Ganga at the ghat - and of course he motions me down approvingly and with great invitation for this holy experience, as if proud to have a foreigner drop in like this to see his secret world and experience the serenity of mother Ganga.

I strip down to my red underwear (which of course is wholly acceptable to do in India) - carefully folding my clothes on top of my shoulder bag (i.e. my luggage). I submerge myself several times in the icy but refreshing river - it’s SO nice after a 16 hour bus trip - it’s SO invigorating and SO cleansing and nice to be clean. I use my cotton scarf to dry and change under it’s cover - my underwear will dry quickly on the trip up to Rishikesh.

I emerge back to the busy street - but with tingly skin and feeling clean and ready to face all. Actually I feel like I am in a protective cocoon now - floating above the frantic pace of the street. Once on the auto rickshaw travelling on to Rishikesh - I am in another mind and world brought on by my recent baptism in the Ganga. It’s just nice!

I make a mental note of this refuge in the city for future visitation (and yes - every time I pass through Haridwar subsequently, I make this pilgrimage for my Ganga dip before proceeding!).

This is why I love India.

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Photos

River Ganga at Haridwar
THis is looking out from the temple ghat under the bridge at Haridwar