At least, that's what proud, nostalgic Indians will tell you. The matter is up to stuffy academics to debate. From my point of view, Varanasi was old. We arrived late at night at the Mughal Sarai train station, then crammed 4 backpacks and 4 pairs of woman hips into a tiny rickshaw. The rickshaw wove through the dense, polluted fog as strange images faded in and out of my perception on either side of us: Indian cows gazing at us with enormous watery eyes, scrawny men with dirty turbans and dhotis balancing baskets of vegetables on their heads, and the occasional temple.
Our driver parked his rickshaw after the streets got too narrow, and led us through the labyrinth of ancient stone corridors that supposedly led to our hostel. We might as well have taken a time-traveling rickshaw to Varanasi 400 years ago--there was no sign of us still being in the 21rst century, besides the occasional motorcycle careening around corners. The fog (or smog?) was still so thick I could barely see our driver in front of us as he wove through the mind-boggling maze of humans, entire herds of cattle and water buffalo, sleeping dogs, food-sellers' carts, and mounds of garbage and feces. All crammed into the narrowest, most fragrant alleys known to man. Have these buildings fallen closer and closer together throughout the centuries? Or were people just the size of gnomes when they designed the streets of Varanasi?
Sunday, November 29, 2009:
5:30 am. We drag ourselves out of bed, cloak ourselves in Darjeeling-purchased yak wool, and launch ourselves into the dark and grimy alleyways down to the Ganges. The ghats are home to an interesting assortment of people and animals before sunrise: homeless men sleeping camouflaged beneath piles of cardboard and trash, men wearing nothing but dirty loin cloths doing their morning stretches and puja, dunking themselves into the Ganges, along with the quintessential, bleary-eyed tourists followed by teenage boys begging to take them on a morning boat ride. The whole scene is like a bizarre, dirty 3rd world amusement park, only everything is very, very real.
We found ourselves an eager young man, and paid him 100 rupees (2 dollars) to take the 3 of us on a boat ride down the Ganges as the sun rose. The sun rose incredibly slowly through the polluted mist, first illuminating the millions of dirt particles in the air with an eerie rose-colored glowing aura. We passed ghat after ghat, where devotees (all men) were performing puja, greeting the day and worshiping the mighty river that brings life to all of India. We passed one ghat where several men were beating on drums and giggling ecstatically to themselves. When they saw us pass by, they started laughing hysterically and beating their drums even harder. Glad to be used for entertainment purposes, always. Most entertaining for me, however, was watching the enormous boats full of Japanese tourists, decked out in face masks and matching tourist uniforms, snapping photos happily of the bathing devotees. The entire experience was incredibly surreal, and since we went to sleep as soon as we got back to the hostel, I'm not completely sure it actually happened.
Later:
Estathea, Sara and I set off on an adventure to see the Durga Temple. Durga is another rather fierce incarnation of the divine feminine energy Hindus worship, but nowhere near as bloodthirsty as Kali. The temple looked like a terra-cotta red, multi-tiered palace from some fantasy world. Inside was a small idol of Durga and around 25 devotees prostrating themselves on the smooth marble floor. It was completely silent. I walked around the temple to a small Shiva shrine. After making a donation of 10 rupees, a smiling priest blessed me and the entire United States (bonus!), then hit me on the head with a strange black, floppy rod, tied a black bracelet around my wrist, and smeared a wet red dot onto my forehead.
We arrive at another temple...Tulsi Mandir? I can't remember the exact name, but this temple was bizarre. The entire Ramayana was inscribed on the walls upstairs. In the back was a strange room full of mechanical puppets acting out various scenes from the Ramayana. We got in line next to Indian parents leading their children by the hand through the exhibit, but this was no childish display. We walked through the room, gasping in horror at puppet demons twitching on the ground underneath their slayers tearing off their flesh, puppet Parvati burning in her husband's funeral pyre (which began the practice of sati, or wife-burning). There was a little guru teaching baby Krishna how to play strange puppet instruments, along with countless other surreal scenes acted out by puppets.
Back at the hotel, Sara, Estathea and I climb the steep stairs to the rooftop cafe. It's a strange transition from the grimy, chaotic streets of Varanasi. It's strange to go from that world to a cacoon of "spiritual tourists," joint-smoking white people, all with an extensive catalog of their exotic travels and metaphysical ponderings about the world. We are surrounded by people with strange tatoos, funky haircuts and beautiful fabrics that are just begging for you to ask them about. Someone is playing classical guitar. There are joints and bowls passed from table to table. Everyone looks tripped out. We are the youthful representatives of the West--not really fitting into Western society, we sit perched awkwardly on the fringe of this crazy Eastern society, trying to formulate ideas and philosophies to guide our lives, to help us fit in somewhere.
Hmm...Varanasi...It seems so bizarre to me that this place of ancient and obsessive Hinduism exists, but even more bizarre that for some it is a spiritual theme park, and hundreds of glazed-eyed white people dressed in flowing clothing and awkward bindis come in hordes to observe the spiritual madness and try their best to be a part of it.
Out in the streets again, and we can't go for more than 20 minutes without dodging a funeral procession: men chanting and weaving through the people and cattle toting a body on a stretcher, wrapped in gawdy red and gold fringed cloth. They are bringing these bodies to the burning ghats, to be cremated and cast into the Ganges, which will perhaps allow them to reach Moksha (Nirvana) and release them from the series of terrestrial lives full of suffering.
On the first day we were here, we found ourselves at the main burning ghat, Manikarnika, just 5 minutes away from our hostel. Men stood around chanting and adding wood to the funeral pyres where bodies are layed, tightly wrapped in cloth. I can see the shapes of the corpses perfectly...the heads, shoulders, bony hips, legs and feet. Who were these people? Men, women, or children? However wonderful or miserable their lives were, they are now reduced to shapes bound in bright red cloth. I feel incredibly awkward. I want to take a picture to remember how strange this scene is, but that would be completely disrespectful. We are standing on the edge of the bonfire area, gawking at them like it's some sort of exhibit. There's not really any way that we can fit in here, like many places in India. I'm so curious and fascinated by this ritual, but cannot bring myself to shift around uncomfortably any longer, while families send their loved ones to salvation or another, hopefully better life. So, we wander off down the dark and putrid alleys of Varanasi.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
Another train adventure
En Transit from New Jalpaiguri to Varanasi:
After our final meal in Darjeeling, a scrumptious Tibetan medley of steamed momos (Tibetan dumplings), brothy vegetable soup, fresh apple juice as thick as applesauce and soy sauce that tasted a little too much like molasses, my weary cohorts Estathea, Sara, Cecilia and myself crammed ourselves yet again into a dusty jeep, and made off down the winding mountain road into a pitch black, sultry night. I don't remember much of the jeep ride, because I defied the laws of nature and drifted into some semblance of sleep, waking every few minutes when we hit a bump or swerved around a corner and my skull slammed into the seat in front of me. What I do remember is Cecilia having a brilliant, hour long conversation almost entirely in Hindi with our friendly jeep driver, and feeling incredibly happy for some unknown reason, stroking my bloated stomach in a post-momo stupor.
At the train station, we watched the train pull up, but after running up and down the length of the train and realizing that our car was absent, we started to panic slightly. Poising ourselves so we could grab on to one of the cars should the train decide to leave, we stood nervously on the train platform with several other confused looking white backpackers. We soon discovered that we had no reason to fret. Our car, accompanied by a small engine but nothing else, came lurching up the track as though it had suddenly realized that the party couldn't start unless it was present. The beautiful thing about India is that things always, always work themselves out, in some way or another. I'm still undecided as to whether this phenomenon is reserved to India, or whether it's simply about the attitude one chooses to adopt in life.
The train. We're sharing our compartment with a very adorable middle-aged couple. The woman is extraordinarily petite, and has the most delicate face which is camoflouged by the enormous glasses she wears. She caresses her right arm, which is in a cast, and is wrapped in a red cardigan. I just want to give her a hug. I don't, not just because that would incredibly awkward in this land of minimal physical contact, but also because I'm fairly certain a big hug might actually crush her. I watch them interact. Her husband spends a great deal of time setting up one of the bunks for his wife, and then makes a meager, cramped bed for himself on the bunk above, with all three of their suitcases.
Exhausted, I slumped down onto the nearest bunk and pass out. I woke up several times in the middle of the night to very strange goings-on. At around midnight, I waddle over to the bathroom with a full bladder, dressed in my ridiculous cold-train outfit of long underwear and a hoodie. I stood waiting for the bathroom with a tiny adolescent boy dressed in an impeccable, crisp, British-style school uniform. He stares at me for a while as I attempt to wipe the sleep out of my eyes but only succeed in wiping mascara all over my face. Then he decides to practice his English with me, which is perfect. Finally an old, bent over woman in a sari comes out of the bathroom muttering something under her breath and shaking her head. Behind her, through the flapping door of the bathroom, I see feces smeared all over the squat toilet and the rest of the tiny bathroom. To keep from vomiting, I leave the darling little school boy to handle that situation, and I stumble in the next direction to see what the other bathroom is like. Making it down the aisle is not exactly easy, as there are literally people everywhere, and they are all staring at me in the most unnerving fashion. Down the aisle a ways, I could see an almost naked man who was being beaten and yelled at by a much larger, dressed man. Not wanting to get involved with that scene at all, I turned directly around and decided peeing was not that important.
Back in my bunk, I attempted to turn off the chaos by shoving my earplugs in and putting on my eye mask. I woke up several more times to shouting. The obnoxiously bright flourescent lights stayed on all night. Every time I woke up, I sensed people staring at me, and looked up to see at least 4 pairs of eyes glued to me. Really guys? Is watching a white woman sleep really that fascinating, that it can keep you entertained all night? Guess so.
Morning time. There are people everywhere. Our train snakes so slowly through the northern state of Bihar, that we get fairly long glimpses of towns as we pass by them. Poverty is extremely apparent, and I can feel the enormity of it even from the train. Each station we stop at looks like a refugee camp, with entire families of three or four generations laying on thin fabric on the ground. A young woman with a little naked boy on her hip walks over to my window. She has at least 8 little girls surrounding her. They are all so beautiful, with their bright colors, gold nose rings and bindis. They are all smiles as they shove their grubby little hands between the bars of the train window, pleading for money and food. I give them my sweet roll from a bakery in Darjeeling, and they run away giggling.
As we continue through Bihar, I grow more and more disgusted with the amount of trash on the train tracks. The tracks make up the humble belly of India, thanklessly digesting the thousands of plastic chai cups, empty bags of chips, food containers of every shape and size, millions of water bottles, urine, all shades of human fecal matter possible, and the ubiquitous blood-red paan spit. We pass village after village of sad looking shanty settlements, bony thin men and boys, women with naked skinny babies on their hips, all toiling away around the filthy railroad tracks. Forming manure patties out of their hands to dry in the sun, chipping away at rock, digging holes, hauling materials in baskets on their heads, they are all forced to work in the trash trough of India's middle and upper classes as we jostle through the otherwise beautiful country-side. I try to save my small trash pile (a couple chai cups, a plastic water bottle, some paper bags from the pastries we bought in Darjeeling) but the chuckling old toothless man across from me grabs it all and tosses it out the window. He thinks he's doing me a favor.
Sometimes I just want to scream, "COME ON INDIA. Get with it. Seriously."
After our final meal in Darjeeling, a scrumptious Tibetan medley of steamed momos (Tibetan dumplings), brothy vegetable soup, fresh apple juice as thick as applesauce and soy sauce that tasted a little too much like molasses, my weary cohorts Estathea, Sara, Cecilia and myself crammed ourselves yet again into a dusty jeep, and made off down the winding mountain road into a pitch black, sultry night. I don't remember much of the jeep ride, because I defied the laws of nature and drifted into some semblance of sleep, waking every few minutes when we hit a bump or swerved around a corner and my skull slammed into the seat in front of me. What I do remember is Cecilia having a brilliant, hour long conversation almost entirely in Hindi with our friendly jeep driver, and feeling incredibly happy for some unknown reason, stroking my bloated stomach in a post-momo stupor.
At the train station, we watched the train pull up, but after running up and down the length of the train and realizing that our car was absent, we started to panic slightly. Poising ourselves so we could grab on to one of the cars should the train decide to leave, we stood nervously on the train platform with several other confused looking white backpackers. We soon discovered that we had no reason to fret. Our car, accompanied by a small engine but nothing else, came lurching up the track as though it had suddenly realized that the party couldn't start unless it was present. The beautiful thing about India is that things always, always work themselves out, in some way or another. I'm still undecided as to whether this phenomenon is reserved to India, or whether it's simply about the attitude one chooses to adopt in life.
The train. We're sharing our compartment with a very adorable middle-aged couple. The woman is extraordinarily petite, and has the most delicate face which is camoflouged by the enormous glasses she wears. She caresses her right arm, which is in a cast, and is wrapped in a red cardigan. I just want to give her a hug. I don't, not just because that would incredibly awkward in this land of minimal physical contact, but also because I'm fairly certain a big hug might actually crush her. I watch them interact. Her husband spends a great deal of time setting up one of the bunks for his wife, and then makes a meager, cramped bed for himself on the bunk above, with all three of their suitcases.
Exhausted, I slumped down onto the nearest bunk and pass out. I woke up several times in the middle of the night to very strange goings-on. At around midnight, I waddle over to the bathroom with a full bladder, dressed in my ridiculous cold-train outfit of long underwear and a hoodie. I stood waiting for the bathroom with a tiny adolescent boy dressed in an impeccable, crisp, British-style school uniform. He stares at me for a while as I attempt to wipe the sleep out of my eyes but only succeed in wiping mascara all over my face. Then he decides to practice his English with me, which is perfect. Finally an old, bent over woman in a sari comes out of the bathroom muttering something under her breath and shaking her head. Behind her, through the flapping door of the bathroom, I see feces smeared all over the squat toilet and the rest of the tiny bathroom. To keep from vomiting, I leave the darling little school boy to handle that situation, and I stumble in the next direction to see what the other bathroom is like. Making it down the aisle is not exactly easy, as there are literally people everywhere, and they are all staring at me in the most unnerving fashion. Down the aisle a ways, I could see an almost naked man who was being beaten and yelled at by a much larger, dressed man. Not wanting to get involved with that scene at all, I turned directly around and decided peeing was not that important.
Back in my bunk, I attempted to turn off the chaos by shoving my earplugs in and putting on my eye mask. I woke up several more times to shouting. The obnoxiously bright flourescent lights stayed on all night. Every time I woke up, I sensed people staring at me, and looked up to see at least 4 pairs of eyes glued to me. Really guys? Is watching a white woman sleep really that fascinating, that it can keep you entertained all night? Guess so.
Morning time. There are people everywhere. Our train snakes so slowly through the northern state of Bihar, that we get fairly long glimpses of towns as we pass by them. Poverty is extremely apparent, and I can feel the enormity of it even from the train. Each station we stop at looks like a refugee camp, with entire families of three or four generations laying on thin fabric on the ground. A young woman with a little naked boy on her hip walks over to my window. She has at least 8 little girls surrounding her. They are all so beautiful, with their bright colors, gold nose rings and bindis. They are all smiles as they shove their grubby little hands between the bars of the train window, pleading for money and food. I give them my sweet roll from a bakery in Darjeeling, and they run away giggling.
As we continue through Bihar, I grow more and more disgusted with the amount of trash on the train tracks. The tracks make up the humble belly of India, thanklessly digesting the thousands of plastic chai cups, empty bags of chips, food containers of every shape and size, millions of water bottles, urine, all shades of human fecal matter possible, and the ubiquitous blood-red paan spit. We pass village after village of sad looking shanty settlements, bony thin men and boys, women with naked skinny babies on their hips, all toiling away around the filthy railroad tracks. Forming manure patties out of their hands to dry in the sun, chipping away at rock, digging holes, hauling materials in baskets on their heads, they are all forced to work in the trash trough of India's middle and upper classes as we jostle through the otherwise beautiful country-side. I try to save my small trash pile (a couple chai cups, a plastic water bottle, some paper bags from the pastries we bought in Darjeeling) but the chuckling old toothless man across from me grabs it all and tosses it out the window. He thinks he's doing me a favor.
Sometimes I just want to scream, "COME ON INDIA. Get with it. Seriously."
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Back to the land of Christmas and Carhartts...
After 2 extraordinarily long flights and 3 relatively short ones, I FINALLY made it back to Alaska, with loads of fluffy white snow and obnoxious Christmas songs to welcome me. I started feeling weird the second I landed in America, mostly because I flew directly into Las Vegas, where I waded through slot machines, stores pleading for you to give into your consumptive American habits, and crowds of people gaping at my sitar case wondering what sort of foreign bomb it might contain. But I made it. All the way back to Alaska.
The most bizarre thing about being back is that everything is so normal. I mean, my sense of normalcy had adapted fairly well to India, which means that by the end of the 6 months I spent there, I wouldn't even bat an eye at herds of water buffalo outside my room, seeing entire families clinging to each other on a motorcycle, or driving past entire villages consisting of blue-tarped shanty homes and naked brown children. But underneath all that lies the fact that I spent my entire life before India in this wonderful, cold land called Alaska, although I admit I was starting to think maybe I had invented this place after describing it to person after person and seeing them walk away, shaking their heads in disbelief. So basically now I have two competing theories of normalcy, and I feel like it's up to me to pick one to subscribe to. I'll keep you updated on how that goes.
I spent my last month in India traveling all over the North. Since I much preferred exploring the colorful, chaotic cities I was in to sitting in internet cafes and writing about them, I haven't written anything since our first stop in Calcutta. But everything I saw and experienced was so incredible that I feel it would be an injustice to not attempt to describe it. So, here's a few thoughts from my grand adventure (these are mostly taken from my journal, hence the present tense):
DARJEELING:
Morning on the Darjeeling Mail train. For the first time on an Indian train, I woke up cold! In fact, I think this is the first time I've been cold in the past 5 months, so it's an interesting feeling. The guards who sat up all night in our car drinking chai are wrapped in thick brown scarves. The man below me has a blue shawl wrapped around his head and torso like an immigrant woman. He also looks very cold, and is downing cup after cup of chai, like I'm about to do, to bring some warmth inside.
My wake up call this morning was the piercing ringing of a Shivite holy man's symbols, his eerie chants, and the obnoxious clanging of his pail as he shook it in people's bleary-eyed faces, asking for money. He was followed by 2 giggling hijiras, or transvestites, walking down the aisle in their saris and clapping in people's faces, also asking for money. I asked them how they were in Hindi and they smiled and gave me a wink. We're almost in Darjeeling!
Jeep ride from the dirty transit town of New Jalpaiguri to Darjeeling. The jeep consists of us 6 girls, two old Nepalese couples, and our driver. The women are very beautiful but silent, and they men are jolly and talkative (although they do not speak English), and they point out villages and tea plantations along the way. They all bring their hands to the prayer position when we pass temples. I keep thinking we're in Darjeeling at last as we jolt through little hillside villages, but the Nepalese man keeps shaking his head no, we're not there yet, just wait, you'll see. Although I'm squished in the back of the jeep with Cecilia, Emily and Sara, I can see the driver's hand all the way in the front, resting on the wheel. I realize he has an appendage growing off his right thumb...a finger that never was, a genetic mistake, a bulbous lump jiggling along off his thumb, complete with a fingernail. I find myself unable to keep my eyes off this amazing extra finger, even when I have all of the heavenly Himalayas to look at instead.
We stop for a snack break at a small tea shop. I go to find the bathroom, and end up in the courtyard of a tiny family home. There are chickens everywhere, and a few brightly painted but crumbling buildings. A few family members milled around, all smiles and "namaste!"s . Estathea and I sit on a bench and drink molten cups of chai and just smile at the family, because that's really all there is to do in order to communicate. We climb back into the jeep, and I use all my concentration not to stare at the driver's growth. We spend another hour or so rambling along on the narrowest, most chewed up roads I've ever seen, slamming our ribs into the seat and our skulls into the roof every time the driver breaks.
Thanksgiving, November 26, 2009:
This morning we woke up at 3:30am. Andreas and Tomas, the two European boys we met at a tea plantation yesterday were miraculously waiting for us outside our hotel in the chilly, pitch black street (Darjeeling apparently doesn't believe it street lights). Our cab showed up, and we all clambered in, wrapped up in our yak wool shawls and all the rest of our measly warm-weather layers. We rattled up a ridiculously winding road for about half an hour and finally made it to Tiger Hill. It was still pitch black when we got there, and tiny bundled up women leaped out of the darkness shouting "coffee, madam?" in our ears.
We found a place amongst the flood of tourists, a nice medley of extremely excited Asian tourists and faitful Lonely Planet devotees. When the sun, a brilliant saffron disk, first slipped out of the mist and low-lying clouds surrounding the Himalyan mountain range, all the tourists gasped collectively and started clicking away happily with their cameras and phones. The colors in the sky morphed from a faint blue through an entire palette of pastel colors, getting deeper and more vibrant until the sun appeared fully on the horizon, bringing with it light and a teensy bit more warmth. A wonderful Thanksgiving morning.
Next up: Varanasi. Stay tuned!
The most bizarre thing about being back is that everything is so normal. I mean, my sense of normalcy had adapted fairly well to India, which means that by the end of the 6 months I spent there, I wouldn't even bat an eye at herds of water buffalo outside my room, seeing entire families clinging to each other on a motorcycle, or driving past entire villages consisting of blue-tarped shanty homes and naked brown children. But underneath all that lies the fact that I spent my entire life before India in this wonderful, cold land called Alaska, although I admit I was starting to think maybe I had invented this place after describing it to person after person and seeing them walk away, shaking their heads in disbelief. So basically now I have two competing theories of normalcy, and I feel like it's up to me to pick one to subscribe to. I'll keep you updated on how that goes.
I spent my last month in India traveling all over the North. Since I much preferred exploring the colorful, chaotic cities I was in to sitting in internet cafes and writing about them, I haven't written anything since our first stop in Calcutta. But everything I saw and experienced was so incredible that I feel it would be an injustice to not attempt to describe it. So, here's a few thoughts from my grand adventure (these are mostly taken from my journal, hence the present tense):
DARJEELING:
Morning on the Darjeeling Mail train. For the first time on an Indian train, I woke up cold! In fact, I think this is the first time I've been cold in the past 5 months, so it's an interesting feeling. The guards who sat up all night in our car drinking chai are wrapped in thick brown scarves. The man below me has a blue shawl wrapped around his head and torso like an immigrant woman. He also looks very cold, and is downing cup after cup of chai, like I'm about to do, to bring some warmth inside.
My wake up call this morning was the piercing ringing of a Shivite holy man's symbols, his eerie chants, and the obnoxious clanging of his pail as he shook it in people's bleary-eyed faces, asking for money. He was followed by 2 giggling hijiras, or transvestites, walking down the aisle in their saris and clapping in people's faces, also asking for money. I asked them how they were in Hindi and they smiled and gave me a wink. We're almost in Darjeeling!
Jeep ride from the dirty transit town of New Jalpaiguri to Darjeeling. The jeep consists of us 6 girls, two old Nepalese couples, and our driver. The women are very beautiful but silent, and they men are jolly and talkative (although they do not speak English), and they point out villages and tea plantations along the way. They all bring their hands to the prayer position when we pass temples. I keep thinking we're in Darjeeling at last as we jolt through little hillside villages, but the Nepalese man keeps shaking his head no, we're not there yet, just wait, you'll see. Although I'm squished in the back of the jeep with Cecilia, Emily and Sara, I can see the driver's hand all the way in the front, resting on the wheel. I realize he has an appendage growing off his right thumb...a finger that never was, a genetic mistake, a bulbous lump jiggling along off his thumb, complete with a fingernail. I find myself unable to keep my eyes off this amazing extra finger, even when I have all of the heavenly Himalayas to look at instead.
We stop for a snack break at a small tea shop. I go to find the bathroom, and end up in the courtyard of a tiny family home. There are chickens everywhere, and a few brightly painted but crumbling buildings. A few family members milled around, all smiles and "namaste!"s . Estathea and I sit on a bench and drink molten cups of chai and just smile at the family, because that's really all there is to do in order to communicate. We climb back into the jeep, and I use all my concentration not to stare at the driver's growth. We spend another hour or so rambling along on the narrowest, most chewed up roads I've ever seen, slamming our ribs into the seat and our skulls into the roof every time the driver breaks.
Thanksgiving, November 26, 2009:
This morning we woke up at 3:30am. Andreas and Tomas, the two European boys we met at a tea plantation yesterday were miraculously waiting for us outside our hotel in the chilly, pitch black street (Darjeeling apparently doesn't believe it street lights). Our cab showed up, and we all clambered in, wrapped up in our yak wool shawls and all the rest of our measly warm-weather layers. We rattled up a ridiculously winding road for about half an hour and finally made it to Tiger Hill. It was still pitch black when we got there, and tiny bundled up women leaped out of the darkness shouting "coffee, madam?" in our ears.
We found a place amongst the flood of tourists, a nice medley of extremely excited Asian tourists and faitful Lonely Planet devotees. When the sun, a brilliant saffron disk, first slipped out of the mist and low-lying clouds surrounding the Himalyan mountain range, all the tourists gasped collectively and started clicking away happily with their cameras and phones. The colors in the sky morphed from a faint blue through an entire palette of pastel colors, getting deeper and more vibrant until the sun appeared fully on the horizon, bringing with it light and a teensy bit more warmth. A wonderful Thanksgiving morning.
Next up: Varanasi. Stay tuned!
Friday, November 27, 2009
Of flowers and goats
Calcutta. Or Kolkata, depending on whether you feel like supporting the colonial British Raj or not. When we stumbled off of the train we had spent the last 30 hours on, the sun was already setting, and the smog created an eerie dusky glow ambience. We left the train station and tried to remember what physical movements were required for walking, while observing the commuter chaos around us. Two young men came up and tried to sell us an enormous world atlas. I tried to show them where I lived on the map, but he was not interested. We finally convinced them that it would be entirely impractical for us to lug around the atlas in our backpacks, and they finally walked off. A communist rally marched by in the gathering dusk (West Bengal is the only communist state in India). Not really shouting any slogans, just sort of marching solemnly by with their hammer and sickle banners.
We began walking in any old direction, and we were immediately submerged into a sea of grimy chaos. Men and women came from every side, balancing enormous baskets on their heads filled with every imaginable item, and they all seemed to be headed directly for us. Street vendors were selling delicious looking vegetables nestled in blankets sitting right on the filthy pavement. After having several thinking-I'm-dead moments (as we so lovingly call them in India), we dodged the menacing buses, rickshaws, cows, and men, and ducked into the quiet sanctuary of the Howrah Hotel.
Next day. After eating delicious paneer and aloo parathas in a small local shop where all the men stopped what they were doing just to watch us, flabbergasted, we drank chai in mini one-use terracotta cups from a street vendor. We strolled across the Howrah bridge, in search of the flower market. We wove our way through more men with enormous wicker baskets balanced on their heads, and random businesspeople wearing adorable sweater vests, staring at us curiously. We followed a man carrying a bundle of flowers down some stone steps, and all of a sudden an orgy of flourescent flowers appeared out of all the dust and grime. We joined the stream of men and women (but mostly men) swimming down the lane between shanty villages. Men leered at us from behind gigantic heaps of marigolds and jasmine, baby sunflowers and rows of gawdy pastel fake flower arrangements. I bought some sweet smelling purple buds on a string, and asked the lady how I should wear them. She just stared at me, so I put them on as a headdress, much to the delight of the crowd standing around watching me.
Taxi to the Kalighat temple. Down a long winding alley way lined with stands selling religious paraphenalia like tikka powder, sweets, flowers and gruesome Kali drawings (Kali is the ferocious demon-slayer black goddess in Hindu faith), to the craziest temple I've experienced yet. Kali is one vicious lady, and apparently ridiculously demanding. We once again joined the stream of people seeping into the temple, slipped off our shoes, and bought some flowers to perform puja.
Somehow, we made it inside the actual temple. There were people EVERYWHERE, moaning and sighing and waving sticks of intoxicating incense in circular motions around the Kali shrines. Someone shoved me forward, and a man instructed me to throw my flowers toward the diety. I did. He asked me my name and I told him and he blessed me by pressing orange tikka powder to the goddesses' forhead and then my own. All of the incense and the hordes of people was starting to make me feel dizzy.
After leaving the inner part of the temple, we came across two dreadlocked dudes from America, the first tourists we had encountered in Kolkata so far. They had just watched a goat being sacrificed, and proceeded to describe it to us in gory detail. Cecilia, Matilda and Emily walked away in horror, but Sara and I stayed rooted to the spot, fascinated in a sort of sick way by the ritual. We watched the whole process--devotees walked into the enclosed area with their children, performing puja and showing their children how to do the same. Eventually a man and his family came in towing their goat--just a little baby. The priests washed him in holy water from the Ganges, and blessed him with a red tikka bindi. Then they put his head in the chopping block and....a horrifying sound. The goat screamed just like a human. It was gruesome. I couldn't stop watching. Sara and I just clung to each other and bore witness to the procedure. For some reason I'm really glad I saw it, although the image is definitely etched into my memory for eternity. The amount of devotion that those devotees demonstrated was just incredible--that goat may have been an essential food source for the poor family, but it was so important to them that they sacrificed it in an outstanding display of devotion to Kali.
Humans....we're such odd creatures. And we have found such different way to demonstrate our passion for the supernatural. I grew up in a faith that sits placidly humming organ songs and plunking quarters into a shiny tray that gets passed around. But I could have just as easily been born into this world, one that believes making this ultimate sacrifice is the only way to appease the angry goddess Kali and restore some order into this chaotic world.
We began walking in any old direction, and we were immediately submerged into a sea of grimy chaos. Men and women came from every side, balancing enormous baskets on their heads filled with every imaginable item, and they all seemed to be headed directly for us. Street vendors were selling delicious looking vegetables nestled in blankets sitting right on the filthy pavement. After having several thinking-I'm-dead moments (as we so lovingly call them in India), we dodged the menacing buses, rickshaws, cows, and men, and ducked into the quiet sanctuary of the Howrah Hotel.
Next day. After eating delicious paneer and aloo parathas in a small local shop where all the men stopped what they were doing just to watch us, flabbergasted, we drank chai in mini one-use terracotta cups from a street vendor. We strolled across the Howrah bridge, in search of the flower market. We wove our way through more men with enormous wicker baskets balanced on their heads, and random businesspeople wearing adorable sweater vests, staring at us curiously. We followed a man carrying a bundle of flowers down some stone steps, and all of a sudden an orgy of flourescent flowers appeared out of all the dust and grime. We joined the stream of men and women (but mostly men) swimming down the lane between shanty villages. Men leered at us from behind gigantic heaps of marigolds and jasmine, baby sunflowers and rows of gawdy pastel fake flower arrangements. I bought some sweet smelling purple buds on a string, and asked the lady how I should wear them. She just stared at me, so I put them on as a headdress, much to the delight of the crowd standing around watching me.
Taxi to the Kalighat temple. Down a long winding alley way lined with stands selling religious paraphenalia like tikka powder, sweets, flowers and gruesome Kali drawings (Kali is the ferocious demon-slayer black goddess in Hindu faith), to the craziest temple I've experienced yet. Kali is one vicious lady, and apparently ridiculously demanding. We once again joined the stream of people seeping into the temple, slipped off our shoes, and bought some flowers to perform puja.
Somehow, we made it inside the actual temple. There were people EVERYWHERE, moaning and sighing and waving sticks of intoxicating incense in circular motions around the Kali shrines. Someone shoved me forward, and a man instructed me to throw my flowers toward the diety. I did. He asked me my name and I told him and he blessed me by pressing orange tikka powder to the goddesses' forhead and then my own. All of the incense and the hordes of people was starting to make me feel dizzy.
After leaving the inner part of the temple, we came across two dreadlocked dudes from America, the first tourists we had encountered in Kolkata so far. They had just watched a goat being sacrificed, and proceeded to describe it to us in gory detail. Cecilia, Matilda and Emily walked away in horror, but Sara and I stayed rooted to the spot, fascinated in a sort of sick way by the ritual. We watched the whole process--devotees walked into the enclosed area with their children, performing puja and showing their children how to do the same. Eventually a man and his family came in towing their goat--just a little baby. The priests washed him in holy water from the Ganges, and blessed him with a red tikka bindi. Then they put his head in the chopping block and....a horrifying sound. The goat screamed just like a human. It was gruesome. I couldn't stop watching. Sara and I just clung to each other and bore witness to the procedure. For some reason I'm really glad I saw it, although the image is definitely etched into my memory for eternity. The amount of devotion that those devotees demonstrated was just incredible--that goat may have been an essential food source for the poor family, but it was so important to them that they sacrificed it in an outstanding display of devotion to Kali.
Humans....we're such odd creatures. And we have found such different way to demonstrate our passion for the supernatural. I grew up in a faith that sits placidly humming organ songs and plunking quarters into a shiny tray that gets passed around. But I could have just as easily been born into this world, one that believes making this ultimate sacrifice is the only way to appease the angry goddess Kali and restore some order into this chaotic world.
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Old Woman and the Sea.
We are slowly moving into the "Winter" season here in South India. This means that our security guards have started wearing adorable sweater vests and wool caps at nighttime, and I'm not soaked in a sheen of sweat until at least 20 minutes after leaving an air-conditioned room, rather than the usual 5 minutes. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm actually fantasizing about wearing polar fleece and long underwear.
My friends Kate, Cecilia and I traveled to the small fishing village of Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu this weekend, for one of our last weekend trips. The town had an awkward vibe...partially devastated by the 2004 tsunami, it seemed to be stuck between becoming a complete tourist resort town, a sculptor's colony, or a tiny fishing village. The result was a confusing but pleasant mix of all three. The beach was a perfect example of this confusion: groups of fisherman cleaning out their nets and shoving brightly painted fishing boats into the ocean, poor women clutching emaciated babies to their hips while attempting to sell cheap necklaces and blankets to whoever will look their way, and Western tourists stripped down to bikinis, sunbathing happily on beach towels, ambivalent to the chaos around them.
Kate, Cecilia and I spent out time on our rented bicycles, exploring the phenomenal stone carvings and ancient temples left over from the Pallava Empire. We did some bouldering too, scrambling up and down precariously balanced rocks admist herds of goats, Indian tourists, and the occasional monkey.
On Saturday night, we had henna done on our hands by a sweet young woman. Her mother looked on, trying every few minutes to sell us some random trinket from her tiny shop. They were particularly fascinated by Cecilia's foot tattoo, and kept asking all kinds of questions about it, like whether it was done by a machine or hand. Then she got all excited and called the grandmother in, an elderly, toothless, wrinkled, but entirely gorgeous woman who had been sitting outside. The old woman was all smiles when she saw us, and showed us her arms, which were completely covered in the weaving dark lines of tattoos that looked about as old as she was. Using her daughter and granddaughter as translators, she described to us how she got the tattoos when she was 16, how they were done by hand (which I don't even want to imagine), and how she had a fever for a week afterward. The old woman's daughter pointed at her tattoos and the enormous gold rings dangling from both nostrils, and said, "these are the things the older generations did," chuckling to herself. They all seemed pretty fascinated by the thought of machine-made tattoos. It seems that their are infinite ways to express ourselves through cultural practices, and those ways will always seem strange to people separated by a whole world of languages, societies, environment and history.
My friends Kate, Cecilia and I traveled to the small fishing village of Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu this weekend, for one of our last weekend trips. The town had an awkward vibe...partially devastated by the 2004 tsunami, it seemed to be stuck between becoming a complete tourist resort town, a sculptor's colony, or a tiny fishing village. The result was a confusing but pleasant mix of all three. The beach was a perfect example of this confusion: groups of fisherman cleaning out their nets and shoving brightly painted fishing boats into the ocean, poor women clutching emaciated babies to their hips while attempting to sell cheap necklaces and blankets to whoever will look their way, and Western tourists stripped down to bikinis, sunbathing happily on beach towels, ambivalent to the chaos around them.
Kate, Cecilia and I spent out time on our rented bicycles, exploring the phenomenal stone carvings and ancient temples left over from the Pallava Empire. We did some bouldering too, scrambling up and down precariously balanced rocks admist herds of goats, Indian tourists, and the occasional monkey.
On Saturday night, we had henna done on our hands by a sweet young woman. Her mother looked on, trying every few minutes to sell us some random trinket from her tiny shop. They were particularly fascinated by Cecilia's foot tattoo, and kept asking all kinds of questions about it, like whether it was done by a machine or hand. Then she got all excited and called the grandmother in, an elderly, toothless, wrinkled, but entirely gorgeous woman who had been sitting outside. The old woman was all smiles when she saw us, and showed us her arms, which were completely covered in the weaving dark lines of tattoos that looked about as old as she was. Using her daughter and granddaughter as translators, she described to us how she got the tattoos when she was 16, how they were done by hand (which I don't even want to imagine), and how she had a fever for a week afterward. The old woman's daughter pointed at her tattoos and the enormous gold rings dangling from both nostrils, and said, "these are the things the older generations did," chuckling to herself. They all seemed pretty fascinated by the thought of machine-made tattoos. It seems that their are infinite ways to express ourselves through cultural practices, and those ways will always seem strange to people separated by a whole world of languages, societies, environment and history.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Ethan comes to town.
My friend Ethan came to visit me last week to begin his Grand Asian Adventure. Having him here made me realize exactly how bizarre this wonderful country is all over again. On the day that he flew in to Hyderabad, I took him on a bike ride around campus. We biked down the long, winding road to the main campus, passing water buffalo with their young, chai canteens, monsoon lakes and about 30 dogs doing an excellent job at playing dead. By this point, all of these things seem very normal to me, but Ethan was in a somewhat state of shock after his first 15 minute bike ride in India.
The next day, after letting him sleep for about 12 hours, we set off to explore Hyderabad. Although I've been living here for 3.5 months, I've been so busy traveling and taking cooking/sitar/yoga classes that I haven't actually had much time to just wander around the city. We took a shared auto rickshaw from the small gate to the Lingampally train station. Once again, Ethan thought it was hilarious that the rickshaw driver insisted that we join his already overflowing vehicle, and proceeded to blast bollywood music the entire way to the station. A man joined us about halfway there and grabbed Ethan's hand, exclaiming, "Hello! I am Johnson!" Ethan smiled and said, "I'm Ethan!" "No, no!" The man kept smiling and shaking his hand, "I am JOHNSON!" There was nothing to do but smile, as so often is the case here.
At the train station, the fascination with Ethan continued. One man came over to us as we waited for our train, placed himself between Ethan's legs (we were sitting down) and started a delightful broken English conversation with us....something about how he was going to Delhi that very same day, and would we like to come? It's a very long distance....and that was his train right over there! We just smiled.
We got off the train after a few stops and took a rickshaw to the Hussain Sagar lake. There's a gigantic Buddha statue in the center of the lake, which we got to by taking a rickety ferry along with a handful of other Indian families. On the ferry, a group of teenagers sat right next to us. After several giggle episodes, one of the girls finally spoke, in perfect English. She wanted to know all about us, where we were from, what we were doing, etc. Then she asked for our signature, on the notepad that one of her friends had just magically produced. It may have been the first time anyone has asked me for my signature, so it was a big moment for me. After we signed, they gathered around and examined our names, and demanded to know why Ethan had written his name in Urdu (Urdu is a language similar to Hindi, but written in the Arabic script). They wanted his name in English, they kept saying. So he printed his name in parenthesis next to the signature. As we were getting off the ferry, one of the girls shoved a gaudy, rhinestoney ring into my hand. Meri dost! (my friend) she said.
At that point we were quite famished, so we took a rickshaw to my favorite Indian restaurant, Chutney's. Our rickshaw driver thought the fact that we were going to Chutney's so hilarious, that he told anybody who was willing to listen...other rickshaw drivers, people walking by on the street, security guards, etc...I decided to show off a little by busting out some Hindi. This too he found hilarious. We pulled up at a gas station to get gas and he demanded that I repeat the few feeble sentences I had attempted to the gas station attendent, who also laughed excessively. Being the butt of every joke definitely gives one a sense of humility.
For the sunset, we made our way up to the Birla Temple, a gorgeous white marble temple perched on top of a hill overlooking the whole city. We watched the sky turn to delicious shades of orange and pink while waiting in line to see the Shiva idol, and listening to a elderly women chant "hare krishna, hare shiva..." over a loudspeaker. We met an interesting man in line at the temple, who also thought everything we said pretty dang funny. After we got through the procession and saw the Shiva idol, the funny little man latched on to us and decided to show us around the museum and connecting dinosaurium right next door to the temple. He had already bought us tickets, and was pretty friendly, so it was hard to refuse. We awkwardly walked around the museum, which was completely empty, and the topic of conversation kept getting more and more bizarre, so we began to think of heading back. Note to self: always tell random men that the man you are with IS in fact your husband.
On our way back to the train station, the gods decided that that moment was the perfect time to dispense the last of the monsoon rains over Hyderabad. We found ourselves wading through 2 feet of filthy water in the streets, drenched to the bone, attempting to navigate back alleys in our mad search for the train station.
We eventually found it, and had a completely crazy yet typically Indian train journey back to Gachibowli, where we gave in to our cravings and enjoyed the best Domino's pizza I've ever tasted. All in all, it was just another day in India. A crazy, chaotic, wet, tasty, beautiful day in India.
The next day, after letting him sleep for about 12 hours, we set off to explore Hyderabad. Although I've been living here for 3.5 months, I've been so busy traveling and taking cooking/sitar/yoga classes that I haven't actually had much time to just wander around the city. We took a shared auto rickshaw from the small gate to the Lingampally train station. Once again, Ethan thought it was hilarious that the rickshaw driver insisted that we join his already overflowing vehicle, and proceeded to blast bollywood music the entire way to the station. A man joined us about halfway there and grabbed Ethan's hand, exclaiming, "Hello! I am Johnson!" Ethan smiled and said, "I'm Ethan!" "No, no!" The man kept smiling and shaking his hand, "I am JOHNSON!" There was nothing to do but smile, as so often is the case here.
At the train station, the fascination with Ethan continued. One man came over to us as we waited for our train, placed himself between Ethan's legs (we were sitting down) and started a delightful broken English conversation with us....something about how he was going to Delhi that very same day, and would we like to come? It's a very long distance....and that was his train right over there! We just smiled.
We got off the train after a few stops and took a rickshaw to the Hussain Sagar lake. There's a gigantic Buddha statue in the center of the lake, which we got to by taking a rickety ferry along with a handful of other Indian families. On the ferry, a group of teenagers sat right next to us. After several giggle episodes, one of the girls finally spoke, in perfect English. She wanted to know all about us, where we were from, what we were doing, etc. Then she asked for our signature, on the notepad that one of her friends had just magically produced. It may have been the first time anyone has asked me for my signature, so it was a big moment for me. After we signed, they gathered around and examined our names, and demanded to know why Ethan had written his name in Urdu (Urdu is a language similar to Hindi, but written in the Arabic script). They wanted his name in English, they kept saying. So he printed his name in parenthesis next to the signature. As we were getting off the ferry, one of the girls shoved a gaudy, rhinestoney ring into my hand. Meri dost! (my friend) she said.
At that point we were quite famished, so we took a rickshaw to my favorite Indian restaurant, Chutney's. Our rickshaw driver thought the fact that we were going to Chutney's so hilarious, that he told anybody who was willing to listen...other rickshaw drivers, people walking by on the street, security guards, etc...I decided to show off a little by busting out some Hindi. This too he found hilarious. We pulled up at a gas station to get gas and he demanded that I repeat the few feeble sentences I had attempted to the gas station attendent, who also laughed excessively. Being the butt of every joke definitely gives one a sense of humility.
For the sunset, we made our way up to the Birla Temple, a gorgeous white marble temple perched on top of a hill overlooking the whole city. We watched the sky turn to delicious shades of orange and pink while waiting in line to see the Shiva idol, and listening to a elderly women chant "hare krishna, hare shiva..." over a loudspeaker. We met an interesting man in line at the temple, who also thought everything we said pretty dang funny. After we got through the procession and saw the Shiva idol, the funny little man latched on to us and decided to show us around the museum and connecting dinosaurium right next door to the temple. He had already bought us tickets, and was pretty friendly, so it was hard to refuse. We awkwardly walked around the museum, which was completely empty, and the topic of conversation kept getting more and more bizarre, so we began to think of heading back. Note to self: always tell random men that the man you are with IS in fact your husband.
On our way back to the train station, the gods decided that that moment was the perfect time to dispense the last of the monsoon rains over Hyderabad. We found ourselves wading through 2 feet of filthy water in the streets, drenched to the bone, attempting to navigate back alleys in our mad search for the train station.
We eventually found it, and had a completely crazy yet typically Indian train journey back to Gachibowli, where we gave in to our cravings and enjoyed the best Domino's pizza I've ever tasted. All in all, it was just another day in India. A crazy, chaotic, wet, tasty, beautiful day in India.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Nepali Odyssey
By the time we had reached the Nepalese border town of Sunauli, riding 9 hours to Pokhara on the roof of a bus actually sounded like a sane idea. So my brave and exhausted travel companions and I climbed up the shaky ladder onto the roof of the bus where we made our selves comfortable and "safe" by burying ourselves with luggage. We were eventually joined by around 10 Nepalese guys who would leap on and off the roof at random villages and police stops. We stayed buried beneath the luggage for the majority of the trip.
Perhaps our rash decision would make more sense if I explained a bit more about our journey thus far:
Estathea, Cecilia and I left Hyderabad on Wednesday, Sept 23rd, on luxurious plane ride to Delhi. We spent the night and next morning in Delhi, and in the afternoon we boarded a train to Gorakpur. When we first hopped up onto the train, I thought it was a joke. There were probably more people in our car than there were in my graduating class. We managed to find our seats without too much trouble, but we were met by around 12 Indian men in our compartment (that seats 6) who looked like they had neither tickets nor any intention of moving. After an animated discussion in Hindi, around 5 of them left. The aisles were still so pregnant with bodies that a trip to the bathroom was a futile effort.
When we decided to fold the beds out and get some sleep, we had to kick 4 boys off of the very top bunk, where they had been awkwardly perched for the last 5 hours or so. Every time I woke up during the night (about every half hour or so), the scene enfolding in the surrounding bunks and aisles became more and more absurd. There were literally people everywhere! Grown men and women and little children were sleeping on every surface the train had to offer, and then some. There were women in the aisles with newborn babies next to them, and every bunk had at least 3 people on it, who I'm guessing didn't know each other. When I woke up to get ready to get off the train, there was some random guy perched on the very end of my bunk. And the craziest thing was, nobody was getting stressed out or frustrated by the insanity of our train car! I kept thinking that if that train was in America, it would be a train full of stressed out, pissed off, disgruntled people about to suffer from an anxiety attack from having to touch so many strangers.
But this is India, and that scene was not so strange. People here have no sense of personal space, partly because there's just so many damn people that it would be impractical, but partly because the individual is not important here. Here, unlike America, the sense of human unity (physical as well as spiritual!) is so great that people will happily suffer through a sleepless night on a train so that their neighbor has a place to lie down. Bizarre, but incredible.
As soon as we arrived in Gorakpur, 3 hours late at 7 am, we jumped into a jeep that would take us to the Nepalese border. Our jeep was full of 2 Nepalese families, and 3 Nepalese guys we had met on the train. I thought they must be joking when 3 more army guys knocked on the window, but no, of course there was enough space for them. One of the army guys was literally hugging the driver the whole 3 hours to the border.
So by the time we got to Sunauli, and bought our Nepalese visas, we were feeling pretty crazy. And the roof of the bus seemed like an incredibly good idea, considering the amount of people crowded into the inside of the bus. It turns out we got on the bus that makes a stop at every house from Sunauli to Pokhara, because it ended up taking us 11 hours instead of the anticipated 5....
......but we were finally in NEPAL!!!!!
Nepal was like a dreamland. We played all week long, going kayaking and rowing, visiting an island temple in the middle of the lake in Pokhara, climbing a mountain to a peace stupa, watching paragliders soaring above us like lazy insects, eating delicious food and strolling the streets filled with craft stores, cafes and hotels.
We went on a mini "trek," hiking up a mountain on an old trail to the tiny mountain-top village of Sarangkot. We took a guide with us from this women-run trekking company called "3 Sisters"--dedicated to "empowering the women of Nepal." We felt empowered. It was our guide, Saraswathi, who suggested we go paragliding, after noticing us staring longingly at all the tiny parachutes in the sky. We said: "Yes, why the bleep not?!?"
And so the next day, instead of trekking to another mountain top village like we had planned, I found myself being strapped into an enormous backpack by a strapping young Nepalese man in flowerly board shorts. And then, without more than a couple sentences of instruction, I was attached to the Nepalese guy and running as hard as I could towards the edge of the cliff! And then I was flying! Actually flying! It was the most incredible feeling ever and quite honestly no words will ever be able to describe it. So I will leave you to try to imagine soaring over village huts, rice paddies, and the lake surrounding by the most magnificent mountains in the world at your leisure.
Our week in Nepal completely jumpstarted me both mentally and physically. It felt so amazing to use my muscles again, hiking and rowing every day, and the clean, cool air was incredibly refreshing after 2.5 months in smoggy India. Surprisingly, I think being away from India actually made me understand it more. I've decided that this country is so wonderful and insane that you only realize what it's about until you've removed yourself from it.
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