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Published: February 27th 2007
A friend of mine emailed me recently saying she was really enjoying my blogs but couldn't tell whether or not I'm having a good time!!! Think I may have overdone it on the 'Indian chaos' stories - it's just too tempting not to describe them in all their insane glory! - but to anyone else in doubt, yes, I am having a really good time. Incidentally, I've been talking lately with some other travellers and we've all come to the conclusion that people who've been to India go back home and embellish their tales, because it's so enjoyable to do that and also everyone trying to outdo each other on horror stories - (I know for a fact, for instance that my friend Tim did this to me, describing to me that when he ended up in hospital in Delhi with amoebic dysentery, he had rats running across his pillows. Years later, he admitted that actually he had just seen a mouse in the corridor one day). So you will have to come to your own conclusions on how close to the truth I'm staying as I regale you with these stories... :-) . Talking of my friend Tim, who is
the last person who should be suspicious of me, he keeps texting me to say he doesn't believe I'm actually out here, but that I'm sitting in Cafe Rouge somewhere in London enjoying coffee, and slope off to the internet cafe every so often to send emails about my 'travels' in India....
Anyway, on to my truthful tales!
I left you at Chennai station, just about to catch my train. It all went really smoothly, my carriage in fact stopped exactly where I was standing so that was perfect. Then a lovely English couple, Anthony and Angela, got on and were in the bunks next to me so that was even more great, and we were also sitting with a very nice Indian man, whose name I unfortunatley could not catch and felt too embarassed to keep on asking him to repeat it.
The journey through India was actually really nice - our carriage was nice and quiet and chilled out, the guards (actually don't know what to call them, but the men who serve the food and give out the sheets and blankets etc) looked after us really well : when I said no to breakfast on the
last morning, they said 'madam, train late, not arrive till 11, you eat breakfast' - (of course this could also have been Indian bossiness, which people can't help over here, whether it's telling you, no you shouldn't have chapatti with that dish, you must have rice, or you should stay 3 days and not 2 in a particular town, or you should definitely have sugar in your chai, why wouldn't you???). So we chatted, ate, read, looked out of the window, Anthony and Angela had a game of chess on the go for about a day and a half, causing lots of interest amongst the other carriage inhabitants, and soon they had a small crowd around them (with one or two reaching over to try and move pieces from time to time).
By the time the journey came to an end 42 hours later, I could happily have stayed on another day or two.
Arriving at Varanasi station was a blast but nothing like Lonely Planet tells you, which is that it's full of crooks and robbers who will try their hardest to nick your bags off the train or pick pocket you as soon as you get off; and
that rickshaw driver/hotel touting is really extreme... we didn't experience any of this really, even the rickshaw drivers accepted my first comment that I already had accommodation booked. But what did hit me were the sounds and colours. Hundreds of people sitting around the station waiting for trains, women in the brightest coloured saris that I have seen so far, with lavish picnics laid out before them, loads of different curries, and pakoras and rice and chapattis and Indian sweets; and then the noise from the road outside was completely insane (this honestly is no exaggeration!). Heading out in the rickshaw with the guy from 'Yogi Lodge', where I was staying, who'd come to pick me up, we were immediately thrust into the dusty, cowshit and mounds of rubbish-ridden roads, full of colourful cycle rickshaws all ringing their bells, smokey auto-rickshaws hooting as usual, bicycles, motorbikes, cars, cows seriously competing in number with rickshaws, and the odd handful of goats and dogs thrown in to the melee. After about half an hour of driving in near-solid traffic, the rickshaw ride ended as we had to walk the last 10 minutes or so, through the road area near the 'ghats' (riverside),
where auto-rickshaws are banned, and then in amongst the several labyrinthine alleys of Varanasi, crammed full of sari shops, jewellery and bag shops, Indian sweet stalls, carpet and fabric shops, then again cows, dogs and motorbikes, and traffic jams of sari-clad people. As you can imagine this was great fun with a rucksack on, and trying to avoid treading in the cowshit that practically smothers the paths - this is a real shame as the buildings are really fascinating but you don't dare take your eyes off the ground for an instant.
Finally we reached Yogi Lodge, which is really a great place to stay and I definitely made the right decision there. Despite the fact that there were indeed shared squat toilets (as illustrated - but I gave you the clean version!) and mice in the dorm (anyway a dead one by my bed when I first got there), being in the dorm with 6 others was really fun, and downstairs was really social as the hostel has a cafe and everyone sits around and eats together and chats. As soon as I got there, I got talkling to Jim, who'd also just arrived, he's from Middlesbrough , and
a French couple, Nicolas and Elizabeth (who I actually thought was called Isobel and was calling her that till her last day, when I realised my mistake); we had some lunch and then in the afternoon walked down to the ghats along the amazing Ganges - or Ganga, as it's known here. It was the first time I've seen it, and it really is something as from Varanasi you can see quite a long way in each direction and it's like a huge blue/green snake. However. People all along the ghats are bathing in the Ganges, which is meant to be spiritually purifying, and washing their clothes, even brushing their teeth. Jim was completely horrified and commented about a hundred times on the polluted state of the river and do people actually know?? This is true - apparently the Ganges (here anyway) with rubbish and sewage (and also dead bodies and ashes - more later) flowing directly into it, is so polluted that the oxygen level is practically zero.
As you walk along the ghats, it's like theatre: tents full of sadhus (orange robed - or, in Varanasi, some of the naked variety! (see pic of waterside yogi)- spiritual wanderers)
chanting, praying and getting stoned; monkeys, cows, buffalo, dogs, goats take up a large amount of the walking space. At one point (hmm, is this one embellished??!...) there were a group of buffalo headed towards us on the ghats, I had my back to them, and suddenly Jim yelled, 'watch out!' and shoved me up a steeply sloping wall, narrowly avoiding the stampede that had suddenly broken out as they came charging towards us. Yes that's true!!!
Disconcertingly, one of the 'sights' that touts along the ghats offer 'tours' of, are the 'Burning Ghats'. These are where open cremations take place, in full view, and anyone can watch. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go or not, and neither were the others, but we did walk along to the main one in the end. To be honest, although Jim and I at one point had a better view than either of us would have liked, a lot of what I saw didn't feel quite real, maybe because it was too real. I think different things about it, but won't say much more. Apparently only people who can afford it get cremated, and otherwise peoples bodies just get dumped in
the river.
On to other things.
We took a long walk all along the ghats and up to a mosque at the far end, then Nicolas and Elizabeth (who was still Isobel to me at this juncture) went back and I went back down to the river with Jim so he could eat the masala dosa he'd just got from a street stall, which he hadn't had before. Masala Dosa is one of my favourite dishes here, if not my favourite in fact, and I'm so happy it's still available in Northern India though it is a south Indian dish. It's like a big crepe made out of (told by one person) lentil flour or (tpold by another) rice flour, filled with spicy potato and vegetable curry, and then with two sauces on the side, sambhar, a sort of spicy thin dahl, and spicy coconut chutney, which is indescribably yummy.
We were only disturbed once by a man who had a clothes shop who we'd put off earlier by Jim saying he might meet him up at his shop as we were going that way to the mosque, coming to find us by the river, and saying in a
wounded voice, 'Sir, what happen, you tell me later you meet me up there, you come my shop and I make shirt for you'. Jim was then forced into a corner and had to admit he had lied and didn't want a shirt, or silks, and no, he really didn't want a shirt even at a very good, cheap price.
It was dark by this time and on the way back, we got to the main "Meer Ghat", to find crowds of people watching a ritual along the waterside, people standing on lit up platforms, with fire torches, and flower offerings. We weren't sure if it was a festival, as there was one coming up (of course), but an Indian man we got talking to, told us it was a nightly ritual, there were offerings to the 'Ganga'. There was a great atmosphere, and I know I shouldn't liken it to Bonfire night but that's what it felt like, as it was quite cool, everything was brightly lit in the darkness, and we stood drinking hot chai as we watched the display.
Later on we went for dinner along the main road leading to the Meer Ghat.
The next morning, Nicolas, Elizabeth, Jim, me, a German guy called Daniel and another French girl called Alex all got up at 5.30am to go and get a boat down the Ganges for sunrise. This was spectacular. It was an hour long trip, and I can't remember the last time I saw a sunrise clearly, but the sky was completely clear and it was really beautiful, as was the view of the ghats from the river, with morning rituals, chanting, and cleansing going on.
After breakfast overlooking the Ganges, we went back and chilled out at the hostel for a while, then in the afternoon, decided to get a rickshaw to Sarnath, which is about 10km from Varanasi, and has some Buddhist temples, and is where the Buddha settled for a while and gave teachings.
We had a look round and a meal there, then decided to all pile into the one rickshaw for the journey back - we'd got extra in our group by this time so 7 of us and the rickshaw driver (and this is nothing - I've seen 11 or 12 Indians in one rickshaw) squashed in. Me being the smallest, I was nominated for
the most uncomfy spot, perched on the metal bar between the front and back of the rickshaw, with my head bashing against the bar on the roof every time we went over a bump or pothole (approx every half a second), and first in line to go flying through the windscreen with any sharp braking (approx every half a second).
A few of us went and had some beers later on at a restaurant round the corner, and consequently got a bit hungover the next day and ended up staying in the next night which was the night of a major festival in Varanasi which 4 million pilgrims had come for. We sat at home eating pizza from the hostel cafe...
Bizzarely (spelling/ is it even a word?) - the next night there was a trance party on at the far end of the ghats to where we were. In one of India's holiest cities, it didn't seem to fit somehow,?! - but I went along with some young friends from the hostel and had a really great time, dancing all night in one of the rooftop cafes where the party was held. We walked home at
about 6am, just as the morning sadhu rituals were starting along the ghats, and the town was coming to life. We slept all morning and chilled out the rest of the day.
I ended up staying longer in Varanasi than I planned, as before down in Chennai, I couldn't get a train out to Agra till Thursday, but it was ok hanging out with people from the hostel the rest of the time. We took a trip to Allahabad one day, a city about 100km away, mainly because my friend Tracey's dad had worked there some years ago and I was curious to see it. Had a real fiasco trying to get a bus there, and had to change buses 3 times while we were still in Varanasi before we got one that actually started heading there. Two thirds of the way there, we suddenly stopped in a jam of about 5 chaotic lines of traffic, almost all vehicles facing different directions and no-one getting anywhere. It turned out that some work was going on at the level crossing further up the road, and this had created a bottleneck, meaning that everyone thought they should be first getting through
the bottleneck, resulting in this mayhem. Finally a policeman came along and we briefly felt that sanity and common sense might prevail, until the policeman set about beating the outside of our bus with his stick????!!!! - as if to somehow make it behave. After a while he stopped and disappeared, just in time to avoid a riot breaking out behind us, as everyone suddenly turned on this jeep and started throwing large stones at it, several of which came flying at our bus....
eventually after a very very long time we got through the traffic, and rolled into Allahabad at 5pm, having left the hostel in Varanasi at 9am that morning.
So we saw Allahabad bus station, MG Road, the inside of a restaurant, a balloon seller, a rickshaw driver, and the bus station again, and headed off back at 7pm. Luckily the journey back was ok, but it took us a whole day to recover...
So on the 22nd I left for Agra, on the 6.15 train from Varanasi junction. I was back in a 3a/c this time and fortunately, two people from my hostel got the same train and were next to me, a nice Polish
couple, living in Bristol. The train was due in at 6am the next morning, so at about 5.30 we got up and got everything together and unchained the luggage as the train didn't terminate at Agra so we'd need to rush off the train. At 5.55 one of the guards told someone that we were late and wouldn't be getting to Agra for at least 2 hours. Five hours later, at 11am, we arrived. My rickshaw driver from the station to the Shanti Lodge, where I was staying, spent the entire journey beaming with pride as he said 'All world come to India to see this!' gesturing constantly with one arm out at the Taj Mahal, on our left (which is spectacular).
Had a good view from the rooftop restaurant at the guest house, which is the only view I'd get that day as I'd arrived on Friday, when it's actually closed to visitors, though several rickshaw drivers called to me on the road when I had a walk around, suggesting I go with them for a hundred rupees to look at the back of the Taj Mahal from a distance...
I met a nice Danish girl, Kris, in my
guest house that night, we had dinner, then hung out together the next day, and spent the afternoon at the Taj Mahal, which as I said, is definitely a sight from the outside, though disappointing inside, mainly because it's so dark you can't see anything, and are given approx 2 minutes to look around.
On our way out just as it was getting dark, the touters were out in bigger numbers than the evening mosquitoes and it took about half an hour to get up the road leading away from the Taj, with boys running after us holding out boxes of plastic fluorescent earrings, shouting 'only 80 rupees! Madam, madam, 70 rupees, cheap price, madam, cheap, good price, 60 rupees, madam please' and the same with little Taj Mahal keyrings and snow globes; and we went from the 'we love India' mode to the 'we hate India' mode in about 2 minutes flat. So, sorry if anyone wanted a Taj Mahal keyring....
I left the next day for Jaipur in Rajasthan, catching a rickshaw to where my bus was leaving from. My guest house had booked it for me, so it was a 'tourist' bus (though I was actually
the only tourist on the bus). It was due to arrive at 11.30, but a bus arrived earlier and all the men in the travel agent shouted for me to get on that bus. Over the next 20 minutes, we stopped frequently along the road until the bus was jammed full, and then continued to stop to fill up with more people, and also huge bags of what looked like cement mix.?? This seemed to be a trigger for the riot that happened next. One passenger on an upper bunk on the bus started shouting at the conductor, he shouted back, then everyone joined in, and my Hindi understanding being limited to 'Namaste' (hello), 'nei' (no) and 'shukriya' (thank you), I struggled to comprehend what was going on. After about half an hour's shouting and flailing of cement mix bags, limbs, shoes etc, it died down and then the entire male contingent of the bus turned their attention to staring at me for the remaining 7 hours of the journey.
Jaipur looked amazing on the way in; fascinating old ruins of buildings snaked around a road alongside the city's rocky surrounds; we got to the bus stand and I was
halfway down the bus stairs, dragging my rucksack behind me when a loud voice called 'Welcome!', which I knew to be one of the many, many rickshaw drivers who were waiting to pounce on me. I went with him to the place Kris had recommended to me, where she had stayed: the Evergreen guest house (affectionately known by the locals as the 'Never Clean Guest House') and checked in. Actually it's a really nice place, and a real oasis in the middle of Jaipur: the building is around a leafy and grassy courtyard and good for chilling out and recovering from trying to cross the main road outside (which took me 10 minutes today).
Will say more about Jaipur on my next blog as have only been here a day but have included some photos anyway. Just briefly, had a nice day yesterday, was shown around the city by an English guy I met in the guest house who'd been here a day longer than me, and it was so nice going round with him, especially as when you're with a guy, all touting and calling go in his direction and you can wander along getting no hassle at
all. We had a look round the old city, the 'Pink city', where most of the buildings are indeed at least a dirty pink anyway, then came back through the bazaars, shops full of fabrics, textiles and jewellery, Jaipur's main wares. Last night we went and had cocktails at a rooftop bar at one of the hotels up the road.
Today was a bit of a typical 'this is India and nothing will be straightoforward or work' day. I went out to a) get some money, b) see if I could find a shop to fix my MP3 player (still a pressing issue) and c) find a medical shop/pharmacy with toiletries. So a) my debit card was swallowed by the machine, b) I found a shop and explained the problem with my MP3 player, ie it jsut displays 'hardware problem' (but when you plug it in as the battery has run down and also won't recharge). About 6 men who worked in the shop looked confused as I repeated about 4 times that the screen would display 'hardware problem' and wouldn't work. Lots of shaking and wobbling of heads and saying nothing could be done, then eventually they plugged it
in, and their faces lit up as they all said 'aah! hardware problem! yes. hardware problem', reading the screen. After about 10 minutes of them all nodding at each other and repeating 'hardware problem', I was told that there was nowhere in Jaipur that could help me with the hardware problem. c) I then asked them if they could tell me where a pharmacy was (moving away from the hardware problem) and they said go left for Lakshmi Medicals, which didn't seem to be left or right or straight on, and remains a mystery as I remain without shower gel or deodorant so will probably be eating alone tonight...
So, till next time, will be travelling around Rajasthan for a couple of weeks and have decided yes I am going to definitely do this four day camel trek when I get to Jaisalmer, near the desert - :-) so if there are no more blogs after this, assume the worst and send out a search party....
PS Inge, my Norwegian friend from Varanasi, and I came up with a good analogy to describe India (with the greatest affection for it!). That it's like being in a kindergarten where the
teacher has gone out of the room....
Scroll down for more pics! xxx
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Bonny
non-member comment
Wonderful!
Hi Debbie, I can't thank you enough for the wonderful blog. Reading it makes me feel as if I am in a small way part of the adventure! Have you thought of taking up a career as a writer? My husband is also enjoying them very much - so many thanks and keep them coming! Spring has definitely arrived here. The rain has stopped for most of this week and the daffs, primroses etc are all dancing about nicely. (Shades of William Wordsworth and 'I wandered Lonely as a Cloud'). We have just come back from a long walk over the cliffs from Ladram Bay to Branscombe. I'm not sure if you have heard about the shipwreck off the coast near us but just in case you haven't a cargo boat bound for South Africa went aground off Branscombe a small village on the Devon coast very near to where we live. Once people heard about it, hundreds of vans arrived from all over the country and people started taking the cargo off. It took 4/5 days for the Devon police to organise protection and by then there were many sad stories of people sending personal possessions to SA who had lost them. Some scavengers did have their conscienses pricked and returned stuff but much has been whisked away and presumably sold on markets and car boot sales. When we went over the tops today the cargo containers left on the deck had all been taken off onto tugs and barges to continue their journey and the work has begun to clear the hold - which is still full. The ship has tipped on the sandbank and is being restrained by tugs and ropes. The beach is littered with rubbish and damaged containers. We were very lucky though because not as many birds as was expected were damaged by the oil which seems to have been dealt with first. I'm off to London for the week this week to help with some training and to finish off some bits of DfES work. Looking forward to hearing about the next phase of your travels. Keep enjoying....til we 'speak' again. XX Bonny