After enduring the Indian visa application process in Kathmandu I should have been more prepared for what lay ahead. Some travelers I’d met in Nepal had described that country as being like “India-lite”. While this is a partly apt description, it understates India’s many frustrations. Although Nepal is basically a very poor country, I found it generally fairly straightforward and even at times logical. India isn't.
A visit to India is an experience that will change your life. I often hear that "you either love or hate India". While there, I was definitely in the later category. My multiple bouts of "Delhi belly" probably didn't help. To me, being in India is like turning up the volume on all your senses simultaneously - the sights, sounds smells not to mention tastes are like nowhere else. It takes a bit of getting used to, and quite a bit of recovering from!
India has left its mark on my memory and the way that I look at the world. Luckily you forget the painful or irritating moments, and instead the memory of unbelievable colour, spectacle and unstopping movement is left behind. A lot of other places can seem a little bit bland in contrast.
Varanasi
After an epic trip to cross the border from Pokara in Nepal, I arrived in Varanasi in the early hours of the morning, maybe an hour before dawn. By this time I was traveling with a Mexican girl who I’d met on the roof of a bus on a journey that took up half the distance from Pokora to the border. We were met at the station by an autorickshaw driver who drove us to the accommodation we’d booked. I was thankful that I’d been lucky enough to meet someone who was organised enough to book accommodation in advance, particularly of the type that arranges a pickup!
Having seen a wide variety of locally-made transport, I was once again intrigued by the latest local variant. It was clear that when it came to cheap local junk-on-wheels transport, the three wheeler was king. Compared to other three-wheelers the rickshaws here were less roomy, although possibly provided marginally more protection against the elements.
After speeding through the empty streets, we soon stopped in a dark laneway and were greeted by the first of Varanasi's errant cows. Unfortunately the hotel was nowhere in sight, and the rickshaw driver signaled for us to follow him. Although walking through narrow, pitch-black lane-ways in a completely unfamiliar city didn’t seem like the most appealing option, really there wasn’t much other choice but to follow and hope for the best. As the walk progressed, the streets only seemed to get narrower and darker. We encountered several more cows. I hadn’t realised how big a cows horns actually get when left to their own devices. Somehow I’d always only associated horns with bulls and bullfights. Here the horns seemed bigger and the cows somehow more menacing.
The hotel was one that offered free dawn and dusk boat tours as part of the ridiculously low room rate. After finally emerging in the hotel’s reception, we found that we were just in time to take advantage of this arrangement. In any event we decided that it would be easier to persevere that day, than to try to get up early any other day. This was a wise decision in hindsight! As a result we quickly checked in, dropped backpacks in the room and descended once again into the early morning fog to the Ganges.
Riding through the early morning mist on the Ganges in a wooden row boat is an unforgettable introduction to India. You glide past the burning Ghats witnessing several of an apparently endless series of cremations, past people washing or preparing for the day ahead, past several sleepy looking but peaceful cows. One of the most heavily polluted waterways on earth is a scene of serenity and surreal beauty. I felt about a million miles away from everything that is familiar.
Everywhere around I was confronted with reminders of death and mortality. Having recently celebrated my 30th birthday I was still able to tell myself that I was nearer to the beginning of my life than the end, but in the mists of the Ganges you become aware of how quickly that changes. There was just so much that was different that it wasn’t possible to work out what to make of it all. Not for the first or last time I was comforted by the knowledge that while I was experiencing something truly amazing, I didn’t have to live there and could leave at any time I chose. When the boat returned to the original dock our small group made its way back to the hotel. Unfortunately we weren’t following the boat man this time, so the journey was made longer through several wrong turns before finally reaching the relative comfort of our new temporary home.
On awaking in the afternoon, I started feeling what would be an all to familiar sensation in India – more commonly known as “Delhi belly”. I’d hardly crossed the border before I was struck by the first round. I told myself that this was probably caused by the dinner at the train station that I’d been foolish enough to eat the night before, rather than the tasty breakfast of baked beans on toast that I’d eaten at the hotel’s rooftop restaurant for breakfast on returning from the boat ride. Once my stomach had settled, I promptly ordered another serving of beans on toast for “second breakfast”. While this may seem an unlikely remedy for an upset stomach, the combination with a drink of Coca-Cola seemed to do the trick and I managed to get out for a wander along the Ganges. The river was bathed in the early afternoon sunlight, filtered by a seemingly ever-present blanket of smog and pollution. The effect was a warm orange glow covering the whole area.
Walking along the banks of the Ganges, it became clear that the rhythm of life and death was very different here to most other parts of the world that I’d been. Looking at the whole picture, there was a bustle that gave the impression of Varanassi being a hive of activity. Looking at life more closely however, told an opposite story. People went about their lives in no particular hurry. I saw kids engaged in the national obsession - Cricket. People bathed in the Ganges, which wasn’t a quick process – it was something that seemed to take hours. Everywhere you looked there were people sleeping or lying about doing nothing.
Indians seem to sleep with their entire body covered from head to toe in a single blanket. In the area near the burning ghat, I saw one person in this position, however after a few seconds I realised it was in fact a corpse rather than someone sleeping. The only way I could actually tell was that a foot had become uncovered and was a deathly pallor. That and he was lying near a big pile of dry wood. For the rest of my time in India I was uneasy every time I came across someone sleeping under a blanket.
Monkeys for breakfast
Affenteatre is a an expression in German that I'd grown up hearing and basically translated means to make a fuss or farce (foolish show; mockery; a ridiculous sham). The literal translation however is "Monkey Theater" which is what I was treated to each morning in Varanasi at breakfast time, when the local monkeys would descend on the place, run about and try to steal your food when you weren't watching.
On the morning of my last day in Varanasi, the regular rhythm of the hotel rooftop breakfast was interrupted by a large grey monkey which had decided to hold the place to ransom and eat everyone’s breakfast. If anyone tried to approach, it would snarl and hiss. The photo of the left isn't my best ever technically, but it gets the impression across. I really should add "Don't cower inside a dirty glass enclosure and expect to take nice photos" to my list of photo tips somewhere.
I’d been getting used to the regular appearance of additional wildlife at the rooftop restaurant over the previous two days, however mostly the uninvited guests were small reddish monkeys which were quite timid and much more playful. Up to this point, I’d actually enjoyed the morning theater provided by the monkeys. In any event, the grey monkey was more terrorist than play actor, and for a while at least, over a dozen fully grown humans were held to ransom by one feral primate. After he’d finally had his fill of breakfast, and terrorising the hotels guests, the hostage crisis eventually ended when the monkey decided to descend down the four flights of internal stairs and walk through the hotel lobby and out the front door.
Advice for traveling to Varanasi
Go! Varanasi is one of the places that should be on your travel list if its not already there. If it is already, bump it up a few notches - its one experience you'll never forget.
