(it's going to take me a while to catch up on everything that's happened, so I will start slowly...)
It takes time to sink into the rhythm of this here holy holy city. I arrive with a raging chest infection which leaves me with limited energy or patience for the dust clouds (exacerbated by the current roadworks going on), mounds of cowshit (I know it's holy, but I still don't like it) or incessant bleating of horns. Like Kolkata, very little has changed since I was last here 5 years ago and it seems no-one has done any cleaning either! The same Nepali-run 'Shiva Cafe' which I frequented daily in the past is not the clean diner it once was - mountains of cobweb clumps line the ceilings and although the food is okay, it's not what I remember. Not for the first time I wonder if it's just me whose standards have risen... perhaps it was always like this and I just didn't care.
My reunions with my 2 old local friends are great, besides the fact that I forget Munna's name and my Hindi teacher does not recognise me - he is blind in one eye and swears all foreigners look the same anyway. However, both of them say exactly the same thing to me, that I look the same, only "more healthy" and I wonder if that's a nice way to say I've been eating too much paneer? ha ha - more likely that last time I was skinnier than ever before - too skinny Bablu says, but then again, this is a country which equates leanness with poverty... I slip into my old routines pretty quickly = Hindi and singing lessons, chai and conversational Hindi with a myriad of shopkeepers, and lazy walks by the sacred Ganges.
Which leads me to this holy holy body of water. This lifeforce which so many base their lives and daily routines around. I will attempt to describe it for you...
Come sunrise, and it is a hive of activity: washer men slamming dhotis onto rocks and then stretching them out on the dusty ghats to dry (I want to ask whether or not this defeats the purpose, but of course say nothing), young bathers eel like in the water, Brahmin priests crosslegged on the concrete reading from holy books, perhaps the Bhagavad Gita or the Vedas, others getting their heads shaved - customary for those who have lost an immediate family member and have come here to cast their ashes into the holy waters, bodies still asleep beneath piles of blankets on various concrete slabs, early morning cricket games (since India won the cup they have gone even more crazy on it), babas and the homeless lining up for their daily alms. Dogs slip back into their passive roles, having enjoyed the freedom of the night to run around in packs and feign ferocity - they are the mangiest dogs I've ever seen in my life - it hurts the eyes to look at their scabby lack of fur and disease ridden limbs... so much in India hurts if you let it, but there is enough magic to keep us travellers here forever...
Young boys are hungry for business and offer cheaper than cheap boatrides. I go for one (pre-organised from my gueshouse) with two English lasses and love it - the sun rising slow and red in the sky, the man trying to charge 100 rupees for the honour of releasing one 'Dalai Lama' fish into the river for good karma - a fish he will no doubt recatch straight away!, the women selling small containers of flowers and candles to send off in to the river, boats full of Bhutanese monks and tourists from all over India as well as the rest of the world...
Daytime is a different story... with the hot sun in the afternoon sky the mood is lazy. I attempt to sit alone and meditate but it's never long before I'm approached by young children selling postcards or single men wanting to know whether or not I'm married - oh India, how I love you anyway!! A grandfather sits on a lone rock surrounded by six grandchildren, his massive arm around all of them at once but not in the least concerned about the possibility of their falling into the river - it would probably be good luck anyway to take an extra Ganges bath, right?
It will take me a lot longer to describe the sunset Arati, so perhaps I'll leave this for another time... it's nearing my bedtime and this computer keyboard is frustratingly sticky and slow. Oh India.... I love you anyway although you are worlds away from what I have become accustomed to...
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Arrival in India
(it's been a while!)
Expectations were high I guess, having been away five years and having never stopped wanting to come back to these lands. Many can't understand why I would choose to come back to the same country (and even the same cities in the same country) time and time again. And I can't even really begin to describe it either - it's just... a feeling I get when I'm here.
So, flying into Kolkata, a city I fell in love with in Christmas 2003 when I volunteered in the various Mother Theresa hospices here(a common thing for travellers to do), I had high hopes to say the least. I met some other travellers on the place who had never been here and I was talking it up allright. The friendliness of the Bengali people. The tiny chai shops in the alleyways. My old guest house, 'The Paragon Hotel', where once I wrote an entire song using the graffiti on the wall for the lyrics. How I once met a local named George Michael (it's true - he showed me his I.D card!) and spent Christmas with him, his wife and child in their tiny shack out in the 'burbs and how easy it was to meet nice, genuine people here.
We get to the Paragon afer an arduous hour long taxi ride with a driver who didn't know where Sudder Street (main touristic place) was. I hadn't been here in five years so wasn't much help. Sudder Street was much, much smaller than I remember - it seemed to have only a few restuarants and hotels dotted around the human rickshaw pullers and hordes of gypsy henna scammers. We look for rooms in this guesthouse I've talked up, and they are TERRIBLE. Tiny cells of rooms with nothing but a bare mattress and ceiling fan for 150 rupees (admittedly only $5NZ, but still!). I'm slightly embarrassed to say the least, but we keep looking and eventually find a nice, relatively clean place with reasonably priced rooms.
Sraight away I notice something that I've never cared about too much before - this place is DIRTY. Everyone's talked about it I know, but for some reason I have failed to see it so clearly before. The alleyways reek to high heaven of urine. Gobs of spit lie everywhere between the dog shit and piles of rubbish. Men spit red fountains of paan into gutters. This time around, I am struggling with the lack of cleanliness...
The Blue Sky cafe, however, is still a traveller's haven. Sam still works there, although he makes no sign of remembering me from my last visit. The staff are lovely there, and in my 1 1/2 days here I end up taking all my meals with them as there seems to be no other place that I deem clean enough on the block! I wonder if I've turned into a hygiene snob? I know there are air-conditioned places in the nearby market, but I'm tired and can't summon the energy to go there and fight off all the touts and 'coolies' wanting to carry my bag for me.
I don't do much on that first day besides sleep, eat and email. Whilst in the internet cafe a storm erupts, and I sit for an extra hour trying to find things to do on the internet while thunder and lightning abound outside. I go to an early bed and try to sleep amidst the traffic sounds from below, the callings out, the rickshaw and taxi horns, the dogs barking...
My time here is fairly uneventful so there's not much more I can really say, except that the hearts of the Bengalis have not changed. Whilst taking a local bus to the foreigner train booking office on Fairlie Place, so many of them try to help me find my stop and offer me directions. When I need a taxi to Howrah Station later that night, a man tries to bargain for me but is unable to get below 90 rupees, an exhorbitant fee for a relatively small journey (were talking three dollars here people! But I'm thinking like a local already, for better or worse). I decide that I still like Kolkata, but that one or two days is enough. It's a city after all, and the pollution and traffic do nothing for me. Bring on Varanasi!
First, the train. As usual I take a second class sleeper and end up with a family who are pretty much the first people on the train and have MASSES of luggage. They seem annoyed that I too have luggage to chain beneath the seats and I end sleeping on my backpack and squeezing my guitar between various sacks of food and clothes. Usually I have great train experiences, but these guys don't seem too thrilled to have a foreigner in the mix and unusally ask me mothing about myself. Our neighbours make up for it however, and askme the usual questions - what is your name, are you married or unmarried, why have you come to India, what is your occupation, in that order! ALong with the family there is a lovely old man who speaks not a word of English but communicates with a smile and a head wobble and his two hands pressed together in prayer position. I like him, although he has a hacking cough and I end up having to listen to him empty his lungs out the train window every half hour or so. I've got an extremely sore throat myself and I try to sleep despite people turning the lights on throughout the night and arguing about the number five - my Hindi is coming back to me reasonably quickly and, although the Bengali language is quite prevalent here, I can make out the words "panch number" and wonder if everyone's in the right seats or what the hell is going on. The ticket dude comes and seems satisfied with my seat anyway (he should be - I checked it about five times) so I try to ignore the anxiety around me. One of my train mates is doing deals on his mobile and telling his friend to go no highger than 'ek-so pachees rupia', or 125 rupees... That's about all I can make out at this stage, but I'm only one day into my journey.
We finally get to Varanasi at around 11 a.m the next day and I'm hot, sweaty, slightly sick and tired and just want a bed. Exploring the city will have to wait I decide. My entry to India has not been as idyllic as I'd hoped this time around, but I will be patient, and wait for the magic to happen... I'm sure it will come...
Expectations were high I guess, having been away five years and having never stopped wanting to come back to these lands. Many can't understand why I would choose to come back to the same country (and even the same cities in the same country) time and time again. And I can't even really begin to describe it either - it's just... a feeling I get when I'm here.
So, flying into Kolkata, a city I fell in love with in Christmas 2003 when I volunteered in the various Mother Theresa hospices here(a common thing for travellers to do), I had high hopes to say the least. I met some other travellers on the place who had never been here and I was talking it up allright. The friendliness of the Bengali people. The tiny chai shops in the alleyways. My old guest house, 'The Paragon Hotel', where once I wrote an entire song using the graffiti on the wall for the lyrics. How I once met a local named George Michael (it's true - he showed me his I.D card!) and spent Christmas with him, his wife and child in their tiny shack out in the 'burbs and how easy it was to meet nice, genuine people here.
We get to the Paragon afer an arduous hour long taxi ride with a driver who didn't know where Sudder Street (main touristic place) was. I hadn't been here in five years so wasn't much help. Sudder Street was much, much smaller than I remember - it seemed to have only a few restuarants and hotels dotted around the human rickshaw pullers and hordes of gypsy henna scammers. We look for rooms in this guesthouse I've talked up, and they are TERRIBLE. Tiny cells of rooms with nothing but a bare mattress and ceiling fan for 150 rupees (admittedly only $5NZ, but still!). I'm slightly embarrassed to say the least, but we keep looking and eventually find a nice, relatively clean place with reasonably priced rooms.
Sraight away I notice something that I've never cared about too much before - this place is DIRTY. Everyone's talked about it I know, but for some reason I have failed to see it so clearly before. The alleyways reek to high heaven of urine. Gobs of spit lie everywhere between the dog shit and piles of rubbish. Men spit red fountains of paan into gutters. This time around, I am struggling with the lack of cleanliness...
The Blue Sky cafe, however, is still a traveller's haven. Sam still works there, although he makes no sign of remembering me from my last visit. The staff are lovely there, and in my 1 1/2 days here I end up taking all my meals with them as there seems to be no other place that I deem clean enough on the block! I wonder if I've turned into a hygiene snob? I know there are air-conditioned places in the nearby market, but I'm tired and can't summon the energy to go there and fight off all the touts and 'coolies' wanting to carry my bag for me.
I don't do much on that first day besides sleep, eat and email. Whilst in the internet cafe a storm erupts, and I sit for an extra hour trying to find things to do on the internet while thunder and lightning abound outside. I go to an early bed and try to sleep amidst the traffic sounds from below, the callings out, the rickshaw and taxi horns, the dogs barking...
My time here is fairly uneventful so there's not much more I can really say, except that the hearts of the Bengalis have not changed. Whilst taking a local bus to the foreigner train booking office on Fairlie Place, so many of them try to help me find my stop and offer me directions. When I need a taxi to Howrah Station later that night, a man tries to bargain for me but is unable to get below 90 rupees, an exhorbitant fee for a relatively small journey (were talking three dollars here people! But I'm thinking like a local already, for better or worse). I decide that I still like Kolkata, but that one or two days is enough. It's a city after all, and the pollution and traffic do nothing for me. Bring on Varanasi!
First, the train. As usual I take a second class sleeper and end up with a family who are pretty much the first people on the train and have MASSES of luggage. They seem annoyed that I too have luggage to chain beneath the seats and I end sleeping on my backpack and squeezing my guitar between various sacks of food and clothes. Usually I have great train experiences, but these guys don't seem too thrilled to have a foreigner in the mix and unusally ask me mothing about myself. Our neighbours make up for it however, and askme the usual questions - what is your name, are you married or unmarried, why have you come to India, what is your occupation, in that order! ALong with the family there is a lovely old man who speaks not a word of English but communicates with a smile and a head wobble and his two hands pressed together in prayer position. I like him, although he has a hacking cough and I end up having to listen to him empty his lungs out the train window every half hour or so. I've got an extremely sore throat myself and I try to sleep despite people turning the lights on throughout the night and arguing about the number five - my Hindi is coming back to me reasonably quickly and, although the Bengali language is quite prevalent here, I can make out the words "panch number" and wonder if everyone's in the right seats or what the hell is going on. The ticket dude comes and seems satisfied with my seat anyway (he should be - I checked it about five times) so I try to ignore the anxiety around me. One of my train mates is doing deals on his mobile and telling his friend to go no highger than 'ek-so pachees rupia', or 125 rupees... That's about all I can make out at this stage, but I'm only one day into my journey.
We finally get to Varanasi at around 11 a.m the next day and I'm hot, sweaty, slightly sick and tired and just want a bed. Exploring the city will have to wait I decide. My entry to India has not been as idyllic as I'd hoped this time around, but I will be patient, and wait for the magic to happen... I'm sure it will come...
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