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10th Dec 2006
India Part Deux
The final leg of India and my round the world trip is here. Hope you have enjoyed reading up and I will post one final entry when i finally get into Boston and/or New Hampster.
Upon leaving the Northwestern of India`s Himalayas, I returned to Delhi and quickly left again, heading south to Agra the home of the famed Taj Mahal. The Taj truly lives up to its status as one of the seven man made wonders of the world. A monument built to love, it is a mausoleum built by the Mogul emperor for his dead wife. Its soring marble domes and latticed walls need to be seen to be truly appreciated like so many things in India. The city is also dotted with many regal landmarks as Agra was the capitol of the ancient Mogul Empire, including the Red Fort and nearby city of Fatephur Sikri. Agra was also where the streak ended. I thought I must have an iron stomach, but Krishna rooftop restaurant proved me wrong. I spent a wonderful evening throwing up into the hole in the ground that was the toilet but thankfully was pretty much recovered the next day.
After recovering for another day in Agra I hopped a train further south to the city of Jhansi in the second class train carriage. For over four hours I was stuck in the crane position from Karate Kid as the car was so packed I could not move and it was All I could do to stay conscious due to the powerful stank of hundreds of unwashed Indians. The image of a mixture of urine and feet would best describe the smell. The idea that personal space doesn`t really exist also does not help the train situation as the placement of some of the hands would have normally caused me to take a swing out someone, but I had no idea where the hands were coming from, it was like a freakin` magic show. I finally transferred to a bus to finish the days journey to the ancient erotic temples of Khajuraho.
I arrived and an Indian I met on the bus took me on his Enfield to his friends hotel where I paid 60 rupees (about 1.50) for a double bed with en-suite bathroom, quite the bargain even for India. The temples of the city were interesting in there own right with their sandstone Buddhist architecture and intricate designs. It was these intricacies that made these temples different however as the scenes they depicted were enough to make Hedi Fleiss blush. India is in fact where Kama Sutra was born and these temples prove that, but they would also keep Catherine the Great happy due to depictions involving people "befriending" their horses. This town was also the worst I had experienced when it came too aggressive touts as people would follow you everywhere demanding you drink chai or brandy with them as they tried to sweet talk you into their shops. One young entrepreneur was trying to sell me jewels and I told him I was uninterested and he should maybe try a female because they are more known to wear said jewels. He said this was a bad idea because a western female tourist gave him syphilis and he no longer trusts them. Live and learn young Indian friend. After enjoying the ancient erotica I grabbed a bus withe some Dutch travelers to Satna where I connected to a train traveling eastwards towards Varanssai and the holy Ganges river.
I arrived early in the morning and soon began to explore the famed ghats of what is believed by some to be the oldest living city in the entire world. The ghats are were pilgrims from all over come to enter the very holy yet very polluted Ganges river. Most of the ghats are there for cleansing rituals, but there also exists the "burning" ghats where people are cremated and dumped into the river (just upstream of people doing laundry and brushing their teeth). It is quite an honor to exit the physical world via the Ganges funeral pyre and their are literally hospices scattered around with people "lining up" to die. They use a special kind of wood (very expensive) that masks the smell but it was still an eerie sight seeing the fires caretakers walking around with severed human limbs that fall off the pyre. I also took a quick Buddhist side trip to Sarthna where the lord Buddha preached his first sermon via rickshaw before returning to Varanasi. One night I went to watch James Bond in Hindi (though the ticket seller swore it was in English) with a packed house of Indian men who hooted hollered and talked through the whole thing like it was a cricket match. I would have been mad but the five dozen words i know in Hindi were really not enough to salvage the films plot. A few days more of navigating the crowded alleyways of people and cow shit as well as the crowded water ways of the mother Ganges and I was off to my next destination, the hills of West Bengal.
I took a very long and exhausting train journey to Siliguri, which is a station near the Bangladesh border that was bombed by alleged Pakistani terrorists three days after my arrival. A friend of mine wished to travel the next day and asked if trains would still be running due to the bombing. The employees answer was of course they would, the bombing was yesterday. A more causal view than they would have back in the US me thinks. Anyways a jeep journey up 7,000 feet of hillside brought me to the cool and cow free streets of Darjeeling. Like McLeod Ganj the city was nearly devoid of Indians and dominated my Tibetans and Nepalis from the bordering mountains. Here I experienced the first rains I had seen in India and spent my days visiting museums and taking high tea in a town with an incredible colonial British feel. There are apparently incredible views but just like my earlier ventures int the Himalayas, obscured by clouds. Next a trek into the mountains was in order so I hopped a jeep to a nearby village and found a Sherpa who would escort me for 6 dollars a day. We hiked up into the 10,000 foot neighborhood and stayed with a family in Nepal. This was thanksgiving and we had rice, fried dhal and a little bit of yak. The clouds finally parted the following day and there at my doorstop was the third highest peak in the world and in the distance looming over its shoulder, mount Everest. I trekked along the Nepalese and Sikkim border closer and closer to the high snow capped peaks following old yak and donkey cart trails. I stayed in tea houses eating lots of rice and trying to speak to my Nepalese hosts with little success. Five days of longs walks and cold temperatures (around the 20`s but no heat in any of the shelters so with every breath I looked like I was exhaling plumes of cigarette smoke). I saw many pheasants, yaks and at the very end of the descent a herd of forging elephants. I returned to Darjeeling to take in many of the nearby Buddhist gompas and slightly warmer temperatures before I went further south to the old stomping grounds of mother Theresa herself, Calcutta.
The train was only about four hours late, but I rolled into another mammoth Indian city in high spirits as I booked myself into a decrepit hotel room in another central tourist ghetto. I made my way to the immaculate Victoria Memorial, a bombastic example of Raj era architecture that is one of the central sights of Calcutta, an enjoyed the serenity of the city`s central Park. I meandered through the Maiden amidst thousands of kids playing evening cricket as well as the bright lights of Nehru Ave in what I found (at least in the center) a very charming city. Don`t get me wrong, the history of extreme poverty in this city that mother Theresa labored in for so many years is still very bad. It is just on the outskirts of the city center and as I was only in town for 2 days, not something that was really experienced. India has had the most horrid conditions of poverty I have seen on my travels but it also has, relative to population, the largest middle and upper classes I have seen in the developing world which make for a mind boggling juxtaposition of wealth and social status.
I was then back to the west coast on a 44 hour train ride to arrive at the old Portuguese colony of Goa for a little bit of surf and sun to wrap up and relax my journey to thew subcontinent. I visited the cathedrals and churches of Old Goa a city that once rivaled Lisbon during the festival of St Francis Xavier. The old town was overrun by thousands and thousands of Indian Christiana Pilgrims celebrating his 500th birthday and was maybe the largest collection of Christina`s I have ever seen. After a lot of sweating, now that I was back in southern India, I took a few buses to the southern edge of the tiny state to Palolem beach. Warm waters, palm fringed beaches though unfortunately wall to wall shacks trying to hock trinkets to tourists like myself. Reading and swimming by day, seafood and Kingfisher Beers by night. A nice yet bittersweet farewell to Mother India.
A 15 hour bus ride next to an Indian Christian Fundamentalist who would not let me sleep, soon dropped me in Mumbai where I now write this email. Just enough time to Pick up a few souvenirs, bootleg DVD`s and hang out at Leopold`s before a BA flight will bring me back to the United States of America.
See you all soon. For some of you it may be a while, so email and keep in touch.
Cheers,
Bob
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Diary Photos
| 10th Dec 2006 |
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| Cave Cities of Cappodocia |
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| 10th Dec 2006 |
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| Love Valley, Cappadocia |
| No Description |
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| Victoria Terminus, Bombay |
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| Ajanta Caves, Ajanta |
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| Panorama of Ajanta caves, Ajanta |
| Panorama of Ajanta caves, Ajanta |
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| Lake Palace, Udaipur Rajasthan |
| Lake Palace, Udaipur Rajasthan |
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| Worlds Largest Turban, Udapiur |
| ..... The reaon I came to India |
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| The Blue City, Jodhpur Rajasthan |
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| Merhangarh Fort, Jodhpur Rajasthan |
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| The Golden City, Jaisalmer Rajasthan |
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| Golden Fort, Jaislamer |
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| Sikh at Golden Temple, Amritsar Punjab |
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| Paki/Indian Border Guards with sweet hats |
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| Buddhist Temple, Mcleod Ganj |
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| Bob and Taj, Agra |
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| Apparently a horse is mans best friend, Khajarou |
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| Ancient Erotica, Khajarou |
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| Holy Cows |
| Holy Cows |
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| Sunrise on the Gnages |
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| Ghats of Varanassi |
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| Burning ghtas of Varanassi |
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| Buddhist Stupa, Sarnath |
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| Prayer Flags, Darjeeling West Bengal |
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| Tea fields over Darjeeling, West Bengal |
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| Singilila Ntaional Park, West Bengal |
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| Sun rise over Bhutan |
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| Everest!! (2nd from left) |
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| Field of Yaks, Nepal |
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| Nepali Boder Post |
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| Indias Highest peak |
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| Buddest Monastery, Ghoom West Bengal |
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| The Victoria Memorial, Kolkatta, West Bengal |
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| Man Powered Rickshaw, Calcutta |
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| Jebus, Old Goa |
| Very Christian in Goa |
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| Statue Panjim, Goa |
| Ode to Strangling the wife? |
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| Monkey Temple, Panjim Goa |
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| 10th Dec 2006 |
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| Sunset over the Arabian Sea, Palolem Goa |
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