Varanasi India 11/11-13

Leaving Chitwan, and hence Nepal, on our way to India was both sad and exciting.  Sad to leave a country that we had so many experiences and had finally begun to understand the ins and outs.  (We have realized that this is a reoccurring problem – as soon as we get the hang of a country, we leave!)  Excited to be on to our next adventure and to be honest, a new cuisine!  A quick aside: I now have a new appreciation for the States, more specifically NYC, and the availability of so many cuisines all the time.  Every time we leave a country we get excited about the palate.

The ride over the border was mostly uneventful.  A couple bus rides brought us to the India border town of Sounali.  Possibly one of the most chaotic places we have seen yet (This little border town will play a small role in our passport fiasco a couple weeks later).  The actual border is little more than an arch that you pass through but it is a pure free for all.  We got our passports stamped and boarded an Indian bus in a somewhat calm procession.

Along the way we hitched onto an American and an Australian girl heading in the same direction.  The American, Brooke, lived in India so she was the natural tour guide - a blessing considering the chaos we were entering.  Brooke gave us a few pointers, actually put us on the train to Varanasi and bid farewell.  She was due on a 40 hour train to Mumbia. 

We pulled into Varanasi early, around 5am, found a place to stay, dropped our bags and headed to the Ghats.  Varanasi is one of the holiest towns in India.  It sits on the banks of the Ganga River which is naturally the holiest river in India.  Cleansing yourself in the Gangas is a way to wash away a lifetime of sins and cleanse your conscious.  Ironically, there are hundreds of people doing this every day, all day – makes you think.  The touristy thing to do is board an early morning boat and ride up and down the river to watch these personal ceremonies.  So off we went. 

The Ganga River needs some explaining.  To be blunt, the river can scientifically be classified as a septic system, meaning the oxygen levels are so low and the toxins so high.  There apparently is a significant effort to clean up the river but, like so many religious places, the considerable red tape has slowed the process down.   The Ganga’s is the life line of Varanasi.  Aside from the daily cleansing ritual (which includes cleansing the mouth), the river accepts the towns septic and storm water, it is used by all the animals for bathing and drinking, it’s the laundry-mat, and of course a way of transporting goods.  Last but not least, the Ganga is the receptor of many of the souls who come to be deposited.  Mostly this is by cremation but in some cases it is simply sinking the corpse (which may or may not stay sunk).

Needless to say, the Gangas is a special place.  Once you digest the fact that the river is what it is (and that you yourself will not be stepping into it) you begin to see the magic behind it.  The entire town is connected to the river and the people have so much spirituality it becomes tangible.  For me it was difficult to be anything more than a spectator but for the moment that was enough.

-Alan

Delhi, Rajasthan and Agra

After a 5 hour delay on top of our 12 hour train ride from Varanasi, we arrived hungry and tired at the New Delhi train station. We had to file a police report.  To the woman in charge we seemed invisible, no matter how patient we were or how hard we tried to get noticed. Finally she told us to come back later and we were released into, as the guide book Lonely Planet describes, “Pahargani …isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, with its reputation for drugs and shady characters. Never the less it’s walking distance from the New Delhi train station…Most budget hotels offer nondescript, poorly ventilated and sun-starved rooms on the Main Bazaar main drag, or in the numerous alleys snaking off of it.” After making our way through a sea of yelling rickshaw drivers who all wanted to take us somewhere, we dogged the usual long list of modes of clustered transportation and descended into Pahargani the only real budget area in Delhi, which happens to be an expensive city in comparison to India standards. Logistics and administration would best describe our first stay in Delhi. We were very lucky to have our neighbor’s sister, Sangeeta in Delhi to help us sort things out with everything from trains to great meals in her cozy home. It was just what we needed because we were getting the runaround so often trying to get everything accomplished.  We spent our time visiting the Air India office to change our flight, the U.S. Embassy for new passports, bought a new camera - a small point and shoot - and caught up on our blog. The U.S. Embassy said our passports would take 7-10 days to process and so off we went to Rajasthan.

We began our trip in Japuir, a city that is home to the magnificent Amber Fort and an old theater where we caught a Bollywood movie. The movie was 3 hours long and had an intermission! It was all in Hindi but we were able to catch the crazy story line and almost kept ourselves from falling asleep amongst the crowds hooting, hollering and whistling at 12:30am.

Next we traveled to the town of Pushkar. It is cleaner than many other parts of Indian, the shopkeepers are a little mellower and there is a magnificent lake that centers the town. Every restaurant and many hotels have a “Lake View” sign, “the best view, the perfect look, the closest.” We even had our drum lessons on the lawn of a hotel that is right on the lake, one thing though - the lake was dried up and had been for about a year (don’t worry we knew about this ahead of time). We loved Pushkar and could only imagine how it would be with a beautiful lake in the middle. This was the first time in a long time, if ever, that the lake had been empty. There were many rumors about how it dried up I think we figured out is was somewhere in between a dry monsoon season and it being so dirty people were getting sick and it need to be emptied and cleaned (it is also a place where pilgrims flocked, like a very mini Varanasi). Pushkar is one of those towns that hold you and you don’t feel the rush to get to the next place. The stray dogs even seem happier, responding to you when you speak to them instead of running away sheepishly.

For 8 days we allowed ourselves to be lost in this place, filling our days with activities that we would not have necessarily made the time to do back home. We found a yoga place and enrolled in drumming lessons on traditional Indian drums called Nagara drums (Alan even bought a set and we thought to ourselves where are those going to go?). This all began at an evening drum circle around a campfire. Alan is always drumming rhythms with his fingers and I thought it would be great for him. He struck up a conversation with one of the men hosting the event and it turns out that he had performed at Lincoln Center in NYC, 2 blocks from our old apartment the previous month (we have been having a lot of synchronistic moments here in India). He also began telling stories of his days playing with The Grateful Dead and The Rolling Stones. In addition to all this, I decided to take a Reflexology course and was away from Alan every afternoon for the first time since we left. Our guesthouse was wonderful, family run, with levels of roof gardens and we easily settled ourselves into a roof top room decorated in saris.

We also tried Pancha Karma. I had always known Pancha Karma to be a wonderfully relaxing experience where oil is dripped slowly on your forehead followed by a full body massage with two masseuses on either side of you working simultaneously. We tried a different kind of Pancha Karma, as in yoga cleansing Pancha Karma. This form of cleansing has many steps, some of which were too advanced for our capabilities. But the ones were did in our introductory session were a bit unique. I have always been more airy fairy then Alan and when he agreed to try this thing out I have to admit it I was surprised because it was even a bit much for me to wrap my head around. So there we were standing on top of the roof next to the yoga studio chugging 5 glasses of warm salt water at 8 am. As for the next step you had to bring it all back up, like Alan said, “there is nothing like self induced dry heaving first thing in the morning.” After this festive event, we began the cleansing of the nasal passage.  This involved tilting our heads to the side, bending over and pouring salt water in one nostril and having it come out the other. I did have a bad cold that day and I must say the next day and even that afternoon I felt much better. It is supposed to work wonders with sinus infections.

We spent Thanksgiving in Pushkar with Alan telling everyone what Thanksgiving was and trying to get them to say “Happy Thanksgiving.” The only thing that reminded us of Thanksgiving on Thursday was the fact that we were very full after our meal. But since there were no other tourists from the US in town we spent it with just the two of us.

Then it was back to Delhi to pick up out passports and get our visas…another almost fiasco. But we got them!!

We even crammed in a day trip down to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal and yes it is as wonderful as everyone says. There are a couple funny photos below that may need some explanation.  First, we noticed that Indians are very serious in most of their photos.  We don't know why but we saw it everywhere.  So in the spirit of India we took a stab at our "serious photo" look.  Second, we were approached by many locals to take a picture with them.  They literally would come running over to have their photo taken with us.  However, as their customs prevent them from touching strange women, taking a picture with Mika posed a problem for some.  Take a close look at the guy's hand sitting to Mika's left!

Today we are off to Thailand to begin yet another adventure!! There is a lot of unknown in Southeast Asia, this will be the first time we are traveling to an area where neither of us has been.

After spending a month in India we realize that we wished we had more time. We are just beginning to feel we have our bearings but there are several things that I don’t think that we will ever grow accustom to: the flies always landing on our food (but you do get used to finding the random hairs); the art of haggling for everything from a rickshaw ride, to a banana, to your hotel room. When you ask how much something is it always turns into “well it depends… ” here comes yet another story without an answer, or “as you like…” which at first seems great until they do not like your “like”. Another thing Alan and I struggled to understand was the freedom for men and sometimes women to urinate where they see fit, which normally runs along a long reeking wall or if you are riding a train, simply on the tracks. There is nothing like taking an early morning train and looking out your window at all the people having their morning bowl movement on the tracks. This includes the passengers of the train at stops in less populated towns getting off the train to relive themselves instead of using the 2 bathrooms conveniently located in each car. Although in essence I guess it really does not matter because the squat toilets on the trains dump straight onto the tracks anyway.

Then there is the extreme poverty, something that often unknowingly fades into the background and after being here for a month you learn to look away. If you acknowledge it physically, by a turn of the head or a glace of your eyes, you are quickly surrounded and harassed. There are those quiet internal moments though, that tug at your heart strings. Sometimes you are struck with such poignancy, on the verge of tears and you realize what you take for granted. Alan was often my escape in those moments. I would  look over at him, so transparent, absorbing it to a similar extreme and I’d giggle in relief at his facial expression thinking thank god I am not experiencing this intense stuff alone. But that is the thing about India, its ability to pull those visceral reactions out of you, make you feel intense blinding emotion and see things with such simplicity for a split second and then just as quickly transport you back to the over stimulation of chaos where your mind jumps from one things to the next struggling to take everything in.

   I am leaving India with a many new loves and affections for things like masala chai tea; babies with thick, black eyeliner; learning to live without expectations or an agenda; people, animals and modes of transportation decorated to the nines in colorful fashion; and most of the time replacing frustrations with humor because “This is India”-- a bombardment of the senses and an ever undulating sea of contradictions.

Love, Mika