Ghats, Erotica, and Pink Cities

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We left Birganj around 7.30am, this time on the Sundowners bus that was to take us all the way to London. Customs hassles took all of an hour, but this was mainly to check out the bus so in fact it was just free time for us paying passengers. Once again, the trip took us through some pretty dreary countryside. The occasional wells and mango orchards broke the monotony of rice fields and barren ground. We got our first view of the Ganges mid-afternoon – it was a sizable river, but we understood we would be seeing a lot more of it in the near future.

We finally reached Patna, a large, busy but drab city, around 6pm, where we booked into the Hotel Aspara. Before alighting the bus, we had a period of ‘zoo-like’ entertainment through the bus emergency window at the rear, with the locals checking out this strange brand of Europeans that had arrived in town. The hotel was nothing flash, with the meal once again poor value for the money. There was a 7.30pm curfew in the town, but we had little inclination to travel around anyway.

We were delayed in setting off next morning, with one of the guys having cut his hand on a mirror, requiring it to be stitched up by our nursing companions on the trip. We finally got away at 8.15am but did not reach Benares (since renamed Varanasi) until 6.15pm due to a long delay in procuring a petrol permit. There was nothing particularly memorable to report from the trip, except for the great sunset, with rays shining up through the clouds, which we caught as we crossed the Ganges just prior to reaching Benares.

There was a pleasant surprise in store for us with our stay at the Hotel de Paris, just out of Benares. We had joked as we were driving along and approached the old colonial building in its massive grounds – “Wouldn’t it be great to stay there for the night” when next minute the bus actually turned into its driveway. It was a super flash ex-barracks, with monstrous gardens and heaps of servants, all dressed impeccably in white and calling us ‘Saab’. We had our first taste of mixed rooming, with the two Canberra nurses joining 4 of us guys in the dorm. We enjoyed a top-class 4 course meal, followed by coffee served in the lounge. It was hard to restrain a laugh or two after what we had encountered for the first couple of overnight stays in India. Total cost for the overnight was a mere 37Rp (5 bucks) full board.

The following morning, we were up for a 5.30am start, but it was well worth every minute. With our guide, we set off to check out the early morning activities on the Ganges in a procession of 3 boats. This is the holy place of the Hindus, and the belief is that bathing in the river rids you of your sins. Further, to die at Benares is an automatic admission to heaven, so bodies are brought here from afar to die and be cremated. Benares also rates 3 universities, prompting the throwaway line from our guide that it is “the centre of learning and burning”!

On our visit, we saw hundreds of Indians, predominantly Hindu, bathing off the Ghats. As well as bathing, people were filling brass jars with holy water for the home, and also doing their washing. The system of dying and cremation (except infants, holy men and the ill, who are dumped whole into the river) was explained, with examples shown. While we could see the cremation processes in the distance, fortunately non-Hindus are requested to be respectful and keep their distance. Apparently, despite all the activities, the Ganges still has a remarkably low bacterial level, so it must indeed be blessed. We had an element of doubt however, after the rather gruesome discovery of a badly decomposed corpse at the edge of the river, just as we were leaving.

One half of the Ganges River was bounded by a long row of quaint buildings, while the other was completely barren. This latter side is that on which death means reincarnation as a donkey. We checked out a couple of temples on the original side of the river before returning to the hotel for a scrumptious breakfast.

The morning tour was the standard museum and temple bit, also showing us where Buddha preached his first sermon and got his enlightenment. This gave us a further insight into the various Eastern religions. Lunch was followed by a snake charmer doing his thing. First was the intro to get the general ‘feel’ of the snakes, and then he did the standard cobra trick. An attempted staged fight between a cobra and a mongoose fizzled out. Second course was a yoga exhibition – many fascinating contortions were shown.

A late afternoon wander round the shops netted me an Indian cloth shirt and for Bob a sitar for 400Rp, which he then carried on the bus all the way to London. We subsequently spent well over an hour being entertained by the owner of the sitar shop, whose specialty was clearly his tea. We got back to the hotel for a great dinner, accompanied by much frivolity. Bob and I seemed to have teamed up with the Canberra nurses and for dinner that night, Peta and I dressed in our yellow Indian shirts and blue jeans, while Julie and Bob had similar cream tops and white pyjama pants. Could this be a sign of things to come?

For our night entertainment, seven of us took in the Hindi movie “Bobby”. Similar to my experience with Bollywood movies in Fiji, there was heaps of variety in the movie, and better quality filming. Highlight of the night was the race by our trishaw drivers getting there, with 4 abreast at one stage across the main street, and then even funnier, Andy changed places with his driver on the way home, showing a clean pair of heels to his Indian rivals!

The following day comprised a full day’s travel, setting off at 7.30am and not arriving until 4pm, along a less dense and populated section of India. It was quite a good road, although had little to recommend in the way of surrounding scenery. However, some interesting wildlife cropped up from time to time, including elephants, donkeys, camels, monkeys and vultures. Card games, including five hundred, had become a common way to pass time on the bus and would get a good workout over the duration of our trip..

We spent about half an hour checking out the Hindu and Jain temples at Khajaraho. These are famous for their nagara-style architectural symbolism and their erotic sculptures, with more positions on show than the Kama Sutra. However, the heat and humidity finally drove us out and back to the hotel for a shower and drink. The Tourist Rest Hotel was a bit of a letdown after the Hotel de Paris, but still quite respectable. The evening meal was served outside on long tables, giving a convivial atmosphere but this was not matched by the quality of the meal.

Again the bus got away early at 7am for yet another long uninspiring trans-India trip towards Agra, with the bus covering up to 400 km on many of these days. It was hot as hell outside and not much cooler inside, and there was nothing of interest to see except a huge bridge with no centre span, the result of the monsoons a couple of years earlier. It was even too hot for much activity in the bus, but Gary claimed he had been in much hotter climates in India. The temperature on arrival at Agra was 110 degF, but fortunately it was a pretty dry heat. We booked into the Jaiwal Hotel – another classy hotel for which we had full board.

We had a later rise than usual for a 9am tour of the famed Taj Mahal, which is of course an ivory-white marble mausoleum on the southern bank of the river Yamuna in Agra. It was commissioned in 1632 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan to house the tomb of his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, and it also houses the tomb of Shah Jahan himself. We spent the best part of a couple of hours around the general area, and it was worth every minute. It was a magnificent structure, with fantastic echoing inside the chamber. It was also quite an eerie atmosphere as the chatter of the pilgrims reverberates back. This tour was followed by another to the Red Fort. However, the heat took its toll on us this time, and many of the troops lost interest in this one and instead sat on the lawn for half an hour watching the chipmunks at play.

The afternoon comprised a swim at Clarks Hotel for a couple of hours, then a wander round the shops looking for gems and clothes, neither successfully. A late afternoon game of volleyball against a local team saw the locals just scrape home 15-1, 15-0! Agra had more appeal than most of the Indian cities we had seen, probably because it was less crowded. Our night entertainment included an incredible magic show featuring many slights of hand.

The next day we were headed for Jaipur. It was a hot day, travelling through near desert country, but the road was good and the speed much faster than on previous days. It took around 7 hours overall for the trip, including a 90-minute stopoff at Fatehpur Sikri, the red sandstone city built by Akbar the Great in the late 16th century. It was quite a large complex, where we were able to view old palaces, harems and courts, but for us the highlight was checking out some kids doing their local schooling. A few more bits of wildlife appeared on the road, including bears, peacocks, herds of camels, and black-faced Rhesus monkeys tucked up in the trees where we had stopped for lunch.

Our entry into Jaipur, the pink city, was interesting, with the road passing through high walls with arches and pillars, much of which were in ruin and almost all with a pink hue. The city itself is surrounded by forts and contains a multitude of crumbling pink buildings, although the famed Hawa Mahal (‘Palace of the Winds’) was clearly the centrepiece. Also, the colonnaded City Palace complex, with massive gardens, courtyards and museums, part of which is still a royal residence, was interesting but Jaipur was probably the dirtiest of the cities in this region of India that we had visited to that point, and did little else to stir the imagination. We stayed at the Laxmi Mushtan Bhandar (LMB) Hotel, which was a vegetarian hotel with poor food and drink facilities, and with the hotel staff on strike (with subsequent protest outside), room service did not exist. In many ways, it was a rather uninspiring deviation to our itinerary, given that Agra to Delhi direct is only 120 miles.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Taj
The beauty never changes.

[Nomad Old Farts]

Taj
This has to be almost the most elegant building in the universe. I remember that that day I was the first person in the queue to get in so I could actually get a photo without a million people in it.