Eyes on India-- Installment 9!

Today's Thoughts... A bit of the Traveler's Grumbles and Revelations

We spent the remainder of our time in Varanassi wandering the banks of the Ganges to admire and stand in awe of the hyper-involved and moving ceremony of cremation—dressing the body, anointing the body, perfuming the body, wrapping the body, decorating the body with fresh flowers, incinerating the body upon its pyre, and sending the body back to the life vein of Mother Ganga. We also managed to make two luxurious stopovers in a fantastic silk shop— Merothra’s Silk Factory (where we purchased gorgeous prints and swatches to our hearts’ desires), and at the much needed pool of a nearby hotel (a few bucks gained us a day’s entry pass for swimming, lounging, and surfing the net.)


Two days after my arrival, we were boarding yet another train, this time bound for Delhi where we would regroup, visit with a sick friend before her voyage to the UK, and then climb aboard another steam-wheeler heading to Rishikesh, the yogi center of Northern India. But not before, of course, we climbed aboard (HOW?!?) yet ANOTHER mistaken train, this time having been DIRECTED by the taxi driver of the hotel we were staying at, given a platform number, walked to the platform with assistance carrying our bags (20 rupees please) and told to board THIS train. Well, yeah, so no. At around an hour into the ride when the conductor came to collect tickets, it became frighteningly clear we were on the wrong train. Panicking, unlike my friends who were hitting the rails for the first time in-country, I started calculating what we could do or say to get ourselves to Delhi regardless. Fortunately, recognizing our plight and the strain on my paling face (can I pale?), the conductor of our train arranged with the conductor of a second train which we would board at 2am to head to Delhi. Standing on the platform at 1:30am in a random city, we waited for 2+ hours for the next train to arrive, which thankfully it did. Unfortunately, our friendly conductor was gone and his kind counterpart on the next train was nowhere to be found, though we asked and searched for him. Sensing an opportunity, another conductor allowed us to board but only after forcing us to repay for tickets and trying to charge us for pillows and blankets (which ALWAYS come for free). My friends forked over the cash, and with heart palpitations and my temples throbbing, I complied as well (though I utterly refused to pay him for free blankets and pillows). Boarding the train, we watched as he pocketed the cash, gave us no tickets, and strolled off to collect more exhorted sums from his unwittingly foolish passengers. Seething with rage, I attempted to sleep.

The next morning we pulled into a distant train station in Delhi about an hour out of the city (sigh), almost two and a half hours in creeping traffic, after arguing with swindling rickshaw drivers, again paying too much, and slowly, painfully, with damn near heatstroke, made our way back into the capital. But at least we made it, right? Sigh, at least we made it. Fast forward two days after shopping, sleeping, and recuperating in the big city, we arrived yet again at the train station to buy tickets (after two rickshaws, two cyclos, and one man on foot trying to convince us to purchase tickets at this or that “authentic” train booth for foreigners(it was starting to become a game, really, hahaha), and then marched our way authoritatively upstairs only to find that we were not in fact allowed to purchase a ticket without all parties present. A third friend, feeling rather ill, had opted to stay at home, so we sallied forth to purchase her ticket (sans her passport) on our own. Large pleading eyes, saccharine sweet voices, and an insistence not to move from the manager’s desk eventually won out and we left with three tickets for Rishikesh.


I was slowly learning that what had seemed so easy in all the Southeast Asian countries I’d visited thus far: how to click with the myriad folks I crossed paths with. I didn't quite understand with the rickshaw driver in Jaipur, nor the boatman in Varanassi any more than the train conductor from who knows where, but I was gradually gaining perspective on what was to transform my thinking and consequently my awakening to the behemoth cultural bazaar that India had to offer. It took patience, persistence, ample time, refusal to budge, and consistent appealing on a personal level: with a hard-working train station manager and likely mother who softened at hearing of a young girl (our friend and a teacher nonetheless), ill with food poisoning and unable to venture out for the day to purchase her train ticket and her two well-meaning friends (also teachers with big hearts and small wallets) who feared that coming back later there would be no ticket for our friend who would be left abandoned in Delhi all alone. Cue the chewed bottom lip and melting eyes... but in sincerity. I had the feeling that if I wasn't careful, if I wasn't genuine, unlike the plasticked grins I was used to, there was nothing to hide behind here. Not in a place where life is lived so unabashedly, when pride comes second to practicality, and artificial niceities are things you read about in books.

It was the same with the mobile credit seller who sold me 120 rupees credit in Varanassi for my Delhi sim, for which I received only 20 rupees credit that he supplemented with an additional 50 from his own stock. Much like the vendor who relented on a price drop after persistent inquiry that, no his scarves were not of pure silk. It was a whole new way of relating, at times on an emotional level I would never have appealed to in Thailand or many places I'd visited in S.E. Asia thus far. But I was learning, slowly learning, that to crack the hardened shells of many I would meet in India, it was not only worthwhile, but necessary to re-learn past-learnéd interpersonal skills.

When we eventually arrived in the Rishikesh station, complete with capering monkeys that sneered and attempted to steal whatever food items were in hand, we picked our way through the mass of bodies camped out on the ground (as it is far more practical to spread out blankets and pallets to wait in the station lobby for trains that might come early/late/or not at all), and out into the fresh-ish nighttime air. Already, you could feel the difference of ascending out of the stifling heat and lung-clogging smog of the cities. We ran into a pair of smiley backpackers and together set out, in the darkness, on foot, for the bus station that would take us to Rishikesh proper (from the city of Hardiwar as we were).


Perhaps in the daylight and not the pitch black, I would have been more enthusiastic. Maybe if I was certain we were proceeding in the right direction. Maybe still if I didn’t have several pounds of souvenirs and traveling gear piled on my back, I would have been a bit more jovial about the whole night-walk to the bus station, but as it was I was not. But, yet again, we made it! Finally pulling into Rishikesh after a hilarious and even fun bumpy ride up into the foothills of the mountains. Around 11pm, we dismounted our happy-honking bus steed and walked in the pitch darkness across a thin bridge to the ashrams of Rishikesh just as it started to pour. Haha, at this point we were beyond tired, a wee bit lost, soaked, and basking in the ridiculousness of it all. That’s when one of the girls slipped and splatted down— into a hefty pile of cow dung. That was about all we could take, and doubling over in painful laughter, we guffawed and cried in the rain.

Ah, yes, we were in India indeed.

Eyes on India-- Installment 8!

Today's Thoughts...

Varanassi, home of the coursing River Ganga, pulsing womb of Mother India. Varanassi, the oldest continually inhabited city in the world. Varanassi.
I flipped through the pages of my guidebook as I nestled atop my trundle top-tier bunk bed in my sleep sack. Occasionally, I would take a second to peer over the edge at the inquisitive faces upturned, mouths agape, watching me. I don’t know if they could tell that I was terrified of them. Particularly of the little girl chewing gum and swinging her ponytails on the bottommost bunk below me. I had marched onto the train with a show of great authority, hustled and hoisted myself onto the third bunk, ensconced myself in my sack, and hidden out to wait for the morning, a thirteen hour ride from Delhi to Varanassi. All the while, eyes and fingers pointed in my direction. I figured if I could just hide long enough, by mid-nightfall most people would have forgotten about me entirely. I was right. As the evening lights came on, card decks appeared and samosas were handed around. I managed to snag a few and a motley assortment of snacks from one of the dozens of hawkers passing by—“Hai samosa! Hai chai! Hai veg! Hai non-veg!” Literally a cornucopia of eats most of the night long.

Sometime around 2 or 3am when the hubbub had finally died down—old family friends had returned to their bunks, aluminum and plastic wraps of delectables were shoved back in purses and shoulder bags, and the last whiffs of steaming cups of chai had wafted idly down the corridors—the roaches scuttled out to feast on the remains and I finally managed to drift off to sleep clutching my ipod and mobile phone tightly to my chest. At about perhaps 4 or 5am, I woke up to realize two things: the train was stopped in some city or town I couldn’t quite make out and there was a man staring into my eyes. Surprisingly, my first reaction was not to scream and in fact barely registered as shock, half sleep as I was and inured as I’d become to the constant (quite literally) in-your-face transactions and curious inspections that burst my personal bubble on a minute-ly basis. Instead, I sort of grunted a strange low sound resembling that of a disgruntled sow and shoved at the face with all my strength. Somehow, I managed to miss the face just as it rapidly receded and I instead pushed off the probing fingers he’d used to hoist himself up. The face (and body I suppose) sort of tumbled into the darkness and hit the ground with a soft thud. Swinging over the side of my bed and the snoozing figures below me, I caught a glimpse of a startled young man who scurried off down the corridor. Recalling the tale of an Australian friend I'd met in Vietnam about dozing on a train to Jodhpur, India and waking to a man attempting to pry her ipod from her closed fingers, I quickly checked my bunk for my own electronic possessions. Fortunately, my, erm— bosom— had cushioned and incidentally shielded them from his grasp. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep much that night.


Eight a.m. found us pulling into the Varanassi station just as the morning furor had fully taken over. In a sleep-desirous haze, I gathered my things and quickly dismounted from the train, terrified that I might get stuck and shipped off to who-knows-where. Jostled and hustled to and fro, I made my way outside where, to my great surprise, a spiffy taxi car was waiting for me with my name on a placard. During the night, I had located the hotel where my friends were set to stay and inquired if they had indeed confirmed their booking, unable as I was to actually get a hold of them. This had been confirmed and so in the a.m. off I went to their hotel. Walking into the lobby, I was stunned. The floors were scrubbed and something marbly, there was a bellhop to gather my bags and a concierge to assist me with finding the room. Although there was much confusion as to why I’d arrived in Varanassi ahead of my friends and why it was they and not I who had made and paid for the booking, eventually I was escorted to a room with a comfy bed and TV. There was the inkling to call my folks and let them know I’d arrived at long last and unscathed, but recognizing that my phone was out of credit (and subsequently unavailable for them to call me as incoming and outgoing calls are charged, oy!), I gave up on that notion, turned on the tele to some horrible movie with Hilary Duff and Nicholas Cage in a fictitious wartorn country with rockstars and big business scandals and fell fast and well asleep.


The next day, FINALLY united with the girls I was to spend the next two cities in, we woke up at 6 a.m. and made our way down to the famed ghats of Varanassi. There is something unbelievably tranquil and at-once beautiful about the streets of an ancient and people-filled city in the morning. It’s as if even the early-risers realize that it is too soon to punctuate the dawn with the hawkings, calls, yells, and smells that will dominate in the hours to come. And much to my surprise, after the non-stop cacophonous assault of honks and shouts and cows braying and plopping dungeroo that had thus far defined my trip, Varanassi at the dawn was, dare I say it— at peace. We were dropped off some distance from the Dasaswamedh Ghat and meandered down to the Ganges from there, sipping on our Maaza mango juice boxes the whole way down. At the river, after haggling for approximately five million hours, we clambered into a boat and began our journey down the glistening waves (ok, so not really waves, but ripples?) of the Ganges. The water itself is septic, meaning little to no life can sustain itself in this area of the river, as polluted as it has become over the years, not from the daily holy bathing done by pilgrims and city-dwellers alike, nor the pyres of cremating corpses left to drift down its gentle stream, but pollution primarily funneled in by factories that pepper the city and the banks of Mother Ganga.
Regardless, there is certainly something magical and pristine about the river in the morning and something that awakens in your own soul watching all the people coming to purify their bodies by dipping in her sacred waters. We docked after about an hour, proceeded to engage in another five million hour debate over the cost of the ride (really, REALLY, now?!) and endeavoring to stay at peace in our inner souls, coughed up a modicum of extra cash (NOT what was requested of us, of course) and ultimately wended our way back to the hotel, smiling and humming with the life of the city that had just shaken its last grumblings of protest at the morning’s rays. By which I mean, the cars and rickshaws descended, metal-grated shop fronts flung open, the women piled baskets on heads and at waists, the sun scorched the skin mercilessly, and the day in Varanassi began.