Advertisement
Published: January 9th 2007
Colours, Pushkar
Different powders can be used for things like staining the part of the hair, or dyeing the hair. Men dyeing their hair orange with henna is fairly common in northern India.5/1/07 Pushkar, Rajasthan
After a delightful breakfast at ‘Honey & Spice’ of oregano cheese and stuffed green olives on home-made brown bread, we wandered around the crumbling old town and soaked up the uber-cool neo-hippie atmosphere. Interestingly, there are many Israelis who come to Pushkar and there is a lot of graffiti present directed at them, including the peculiar slogan “AIDS is cured.” No-one I spoke to seemed to know what it was all about.
In the afternoon we took a camel safari through the fine-sand Rajathani desert. At first it seemed that the trip was going to be a plastic dump safari, but the further we got from Pushkar the less plastic there was and it was extremely beautiful. At our destination we had picnic rugs laid out for us, and, before long, steaming metal cups of chai materialised out of the desert along with to-die-for Indian sweets. The sunset was beautiful, albeit behind clouds, because as the sun went behind the clouds, the rays poked through and formed a beautiful fan-like pattern in 360 degrees.
6/1/07, Pushkar to Delhi
Andrew and I rose at the extremely leisurely hour of 8:30am and wandered into town for
A Man's Best Friend
This musician is sitting in front of his camel in the Rajasthani desert outside Pushkar. breakfast (I had organic mulberry yoghurt with cashew nuts, bananas, pineapple, mandarins, apples and pomegranate seeds, accompanied by steaming hot lemongrass tea with ginseng and a freshly squeezed orange juice - all for $2 - hey, at least these hippies know how to eat properly!)
We returned to the hotel and sit by the poolside reading until our transfers to the train station were ready. Andrew finished “Middlesex” by Jeffrey Euginides and I finished “Lajja Shame” by Taslima nasrin, which is about the persecution of the Hindus in Bangladesh by the Muslim majority subsequent to the destruction of the Babri Masjid (masjid = mosque) in Ayodhya, India in 1992.
On the 6 hour train trip from Pushkar to Delhi I also started (and finished!) “Untouchable” by Mulk Raj Anand, written in the 1930s, which is a very disturbing insight into the life of a lowest-of-low-caste sweeper boy around that time. I found it incredibly moving and here is a section about how the boy, Bakha, wants to be able to read and write: “Bakha noticed the ardent, enthusiastic look that lighted up the little one’s face. The anxiety of going to school! How beautiful it felt! How nice
Maddy's Violin
Within a few minutes of "trying" this instrument I was accused of knowing how to play the violin. Damn, busted! This photo was taken on our camel safari outside Pushkar. it must be to be able to read and write! One could read the papers after having been to school. One could talk with the Sahibs. One wouldn’t have to run to the scribe every time a letter came. And one wouldn’t have to pay him to have one’s letters written…. His uncle at the British barracks had told him when he first expressed the wish to be a sahib that he would have to go to school if he wanted to be one. And he had wept and cried to be allowed to go to school. But then his father had told him that school was meant for the babus, not for the lowly sweepers. He hadn’t quite understood the reason for that then. Later at the British barracks he realized why his father had not sent him to school. He was a sweeper’s son and could never be a babu. Later still he realized that there was no school which would admit him because the parents of other children would not allow their sons to be contaminated by the touch of the low-caste man’s sons… But the masters wouldn’t teach the outcastes, lest their fingers which guided the
Pushkar Lake
This lake is of significance to the Hindus and is dedicated to Brahma. students across the text should touch the leaves of the outcastes’ books and they be polluted.”
7th January 2007, Delhi
Shopping, shopping and shopping in the market at Carol Bagh! Lauren and I got some new jeans and they even take them up using the original hem for free! I also bought one traditional Indian outfit for the wedding, consisting of beige, traditional pants with a dark green kaftan-type arrangement embroidered with gold and blue sequins. I also have a nice scarf and jewellery to go with it. The whole ensemble cost AUS $60, how I love India!
Andrew and Cliff also had their final fitting for their suits and Andrew for his custom-shirts. Andrew looked so handsome in his suit, just so handsome, just so incredibly handsome! We went through and chose five different fabrics for his five shirts. After having seen custom-made clothing on Andrew I don’t know how I will ever cope seeing him in anything ready made again. Did I mention he is handsome?
Now I must tell you one of India’s latest surprises for us: the valet parking system at the Carol Bagh market, Delhi! Imagine a narrow street, about 7
Coffee to die for - or from.
Back in Delhi we needed to regain our strength for shopping shopping shopping. Here we are at Costa's coffee on the outer circle of Connaught Place, Delhi. metres across, and brimming with market stalls. Never perturbed by a crowd, the Indians still drive down this street, and yes, they even park in this street. Where, you might ask? Well, first cars are parallel parked all along the side of the road, as per usual. But then the plot thickens. A SECOND layer of parallel parked cars is parked next to the first ones. And how do the first row of cars get out? Simple! The second row people leave their keys with a parking attended and just leave their car in neutral. When cars in the first row want to leave, the cars in the second row are just bumped along (yes, into the rear-end of other cars) to make enough room for the first row to leave. Easy! Why didn’t we think of that in Australia?
At night we took the 12 hour train ride from Delhi to Varanasi, in 2-tier air conditioning which was quite luxurious! Unfortunately Andrew’s bed was just across from a heavy sleeping, overweight snorer and Andrew swears he did not sleep between midnight and 4am. I know Andrew must have been very exasperated because he started shaking the chains that
supported the man’s bed, then started stomping on the ground and finally started clapping in front of his face to wake him up. I don’t think the snoring man ever woke up but he did roll onto his stomach where he snored relatively less.
Irritated and tired, Andrew was awake at 6:30am and so was I, so we tidied our beds and packed up and watched the scenery out the window together. I truly love traveling on the trains in India and I am always reminded of a wonderful essay someone in my high school English class wrote called “Next time I travel on Indian trains.” It is incredible - at one point we passed an immaculately laid-out mission consisting of kilometers upon kilometers of neatly spaced tents.
8th January
Finally we pulled into Varanasi, not that we knew it was Varanasi, because there were no signs in English that we saw. But I had a careful eye on the Japanese tourists on our carriage who I knew had an Indian tour guide and were headed for Varanasi. I was very worried when I saw them all moving and so we all scrambled to jump of the
train (we weren’t fully prepared because we had arrived early). Racing to get out the door before we ended up in Calcutta, I waddled with all my luggage to the carriage door, and, because there was at least a foot gap between the train and the platform, and I was likely to die trying to jump with all my luggage, I threw all my luggage onto the platform ahead of me, only for it to be caught by a well-dressed Indian man. Oh great, I thought, how much baksheesh am I going to have to pay to get my luggage back. “Hotel Rashmi, madam?” the man asked, and, too bewildered to work out how my transfer had managed to find me amongst thousands and catch my luggage, I put it down to mystical India and we hurried along to our car. A half hour later we were showering in our hotel, safe and sound!
After lunch we wandered through the maze-like lanes and lanes off lanes formed by the crowded ruins of old Varanasi, stacked up against the banks of the Ganges. While Varanasi is thought to be the oldest continuously inhabited place on Earth, there are barely any
Andrew ignores tout
The downside of Varanasi and indeed much of India is that you are oppressively hounded by the touts. We find the best way to handle them is to ignore them, as you can see here. They are very sneaky and in one case we have actually had a mock argument played out before us and then one of the actors leaves and the other one comes and says 'sorry about all that noise...' as a way of approaching you. Sigh. buildings over a couple of hundred years old, after Emperor Akbar, the 3rd Mughal (muslim) leader came through and destroyed it. Nonetheless the buildings that remain are astonishingly beautiful, if you happen to like old buildings, and the laneways are surprisingly clean and free of noise (Indian standards). We found a tailor recommended to us by our tour leader we left in Delhi and Lauren bought a fancy skirt that can be wrapped in 8 different ways. We also went to a silk shop, also recommended to us by Paula, and Lauren and I bought beautiful sarees - my second outfit for the wedding (three are needed as the wedding takes three days!) Mine is satin, not silk, because the silk sarees look quite dull to me - this is because real silk is so delicate that it cannot be embroidered. Mine had been thoroughly starched for display purposes and therefore looked quite boxy on and I rudely protested that my bottom is nowhere near that size, in fact I don’t have a big bottom at all and how can this saree make it look this way? The poor salesman explained that the saree needs to be washed to remove the starch, and so I promptly admitted my saree to the hotel for emergency dry cleaning with the special instruction of “no starch”, which I circled several times and drew arrows to, which the hotel man thought was hilarious, to which I responded well not everyone is as clever as you and might not be trusted to read instructions! Anyhow, the good news is, I have finally learnt how to tell real silk from synthetic materials, and all you have to do is take one thread and set it alight - if it crumbles to ash and smells like burnt hair, it is real silk.
9th January 2007, Varanasi
After a late breakfast the four of us took a stroll down the ghats which line the Ganges. A highlight was seeing a cremation ceremony at one of the burning ghats. Basically, the body is wrapped tightly in a fine white cloth and then decorated with gold shiny materials and other decorations including flowers. The body is then dipped in the water whilst the undertakers, if that is their term, sing a chant in Hindi. Then a pile of fire wood is made, right next to the water, about three or so feet high. The gold decoration is removed and the white fabric opened at the face. The body is placed on the wood pile and then more wood is placed on top of the body. It is then set alight. Some members of the funeral had their heads shaved fully except for one piece at the back immediately prior to the ceremony.
Children and pregnant mothers are not cremated. Instead, they are taken to the middle of the Ganges, which is about 500m wide, and tossed over board. The bodies sink at first and then float.
A Note on India
Frequently in India we have come across people who hate it. In fact there were a few people in our tour group who had well and truly had enough of it all, even after one or two weeks. India is indeed a very confusing and confronting place. Much like a pregnant nun, it is a number of things simultaneously that it seemingly shouldn’t be. Where there are oppressive beggars and touts, there are also acts of profound honesty and decency. Beneath a gleaming billboard depicting the latest Bollywood uber-star enjoying the fruits of a technological society, lies a giant pile of rubbish complete with plastic-eating cow, symbolic of a country that is at a loss as to how to cope with its plastic. Through a centuries-old temple runs electrical cabling to supply the flashing neon lights which entice buyers to purchase Vishnu or Kali idols. While risking death or injury to cross a road in one of India’s bursting-at-the-seams cities, where there is not enough room to walk, where old rivers are now overflowing drains, where electrical poles are dangerously over-utilised, it is easy to wonder where there is room for India to put a single extra human being. And yet you can climb a mountain in a national park and spin in circles and see no other sign of human existence. While sitting in a Hindu temple you can often hear Muslims at prayer.
India also teaches us to confront the possibility that I believe frightens all human beings more than any other, or which at least frightens the heck out of me: that luck and chance might influence our existence more than our own actions do. Why, why, why, against all the insurmountable odds, was I born in my beloved Australia, into that wonderful, precious democracy, into a country where we all have a chance to make something of ourselves through hard work, where we take it for granted that we can read and write, where being female presents no unusual disadvantages, where we are free to criticize our politicians without fear of persecution, where free health and free education are a way of life, where all important medicines are heavily subsidized by our world-envied PBS system, where we are blessed with abundant natural resources, where our biggest concerns are more likely to be that we don’t like the artwork on those new freeway barriers rather than there IS no freeway and a trip which should take 15 minutes is going to take an hour on an unsealed road - why, why WHY, was I born in Australia when I didn’t do anything to deserve it, when that young Indian girl on the street carrying a pot of vegetables on her head and a baby on her back and a goat in her left hand and a toddler in her right arm could just have easily have been me?
And yet, if you can acknowledge and finally accept that, as much as it pains us, we are not completely in control of our lives, and that probability and chance play a much larger role than we would like to admit, you can start to deal with the guilt of having so much for having done so little.
And yet still, it would be wrong and indeed arrogant to presume that the Indians are miserable with their lot. At least from my outsider’s point of view, there seems to be a lot of happiness in India; even the most downtrodden cycle-rickshaw walla who has to rent the very bicycle which he also calls his bed, can give you a dazzling smile, the kind where, if you are attuned to these things, you can see a brilliant soul glimmering back at you, bedazzling as a mirror faced at the sun, through his eyes.
India has also taught me what it means to be middle class, as I have often wondered, irrelevant as it may seem, what does it mean to be middle class? If you were born to an impoverished farmer, and become a nuclear physicist, does that mean a leap from lower class to upper class in one generation? No. India has taught me that the middle class are those people who want their children to do better in life and to have more than they did. The upper class are rich and have always been that way and the lower class are unable or unwilling to better their lot. But the middle class wants the next generations to be better off. India has the world’s largest middle class, with over 400 million people.
Do I hate India? No. Does Andrew hate India? No. I love India, I love it a thousand times over, it is in my heart and my soul. But India is not perfect, and the Indian people will tell you this themselves. Before I came to India, everyone seemed to say, you will either hate or love India: it is the ultimate litmus test for travelers. This is far too simplistic for me. I love India with all my heart while acknowledging her shortcomings. This is a truly wonderful country, and unbelievable country, an incredible country, if only you can try to see past the dirt.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.073s; Tpl: 0.021s; cc: 8; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0413s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 3;
; mem: 1.1mb
Keep Smiling
Mike Fossey
Keep Smiling
For one so young, your note on India admirably sums up the feelings of many who visit this fantastic land and encounter its even more fantastic people. Thanks for reminding me of how fortunate those of us in the so-called developed world really are. Keep smiling! Mike