Bamboozled

Time has flown faster than I can keep any kind of useful track of and unfortunately that means that I am once again behind in my journal keeping and therefore blog updates.

Since I left you in Dharamsala - in the very North of the West part of India - we traveled by train to Varanasi. (after having to hire a car through some of the most bumpy, potholed roads I have ever seen - in order to even catch our train on time after being monsoon-ed in, in Mcleod!) Because of the impossible Indian train reservation system, the only available train to Darjeeling our next destination was a day later and so sadly that left us with only one evening and one full day to play with in Varanasi.

But we made the most of it. The city is supposed to be one of the craziest, busiest, chaotically impossibly indiscreet places on the planet but personally I found it to be much less invasive and big-city-esque than I was expecting. Sure, the place is crowded, loud and at times you have to hold your breath and pause to take it all in (note to self: you are in India!) but it was mostly a very interesting and cultural experience. The First sentence used in the Lonely Planet to describe the city is Brace Yourself, you're about to be Bamboozled'. I'm not really sure what bamboozled is supposed to mean (I have only really used it in the past to describe someone who is very drunk.) but we definitely felt it.

The city is built around the Ganges river - which to Hindu Indians is one of the holiest places in all of India as the river itself is actually the Goddess Mother Ganga in liquid form. It is believed that if you are cremated on the banks of the Ganges, your soul will be purified and therefore halt the reincarnation process. All along the river there are Ghats which in non-monsoon season the water runs low enough that you can walk the entire length of the Ganges. However, we arrived where rain was aplenty and so unfortunately some of the activities we wanted to do (like take a sunset boat ride along the Ganges) were brought to a standstill. Fortunately we were in one of the most bustling cities in India so we were still able to see some of the rituals and enjoy the titbit of time we had in Varanasi. We wandered down to the Manikarnika Ghat which is the biggest and busiest of the 3 'burning Ghats' in the city. This as you may have already guessed is where a giant number of cremations are held every evening. We were led up some stairs by an old man to get a better 'view' of the ceremonies. It was of course, at first, rather disconcerting, especially because I don't think I have ever been that close to a dead body before (never mind one that is burning on a stake right in front of my eyes.) But after the initial shock, it was actually very interesting to learn about the ritual: The bodies are burnt on mixtures of certain kinds of sacred wood - which vary in price (sandalwood being the most expensive - they therefore only sprinkle shavings of the wood to represent it.) and the bodies are bathed in the water in cloth before placed on the hefty pile of wood to begin the cremation which burns all night. Female family members of the deceased are usually not allowed to attend the cremation becasue they are 'too emotional' and there have even been some cases of women throwing themselves on the burning flames to their death. There are also certain cases that are exempt from the cremation process - these are those with 'pure souls' - children, animals, pregnant women, sadhus (holy men who walk around and perform Puja (prayer) dusted with Ashes usually completely naked!) and lepers - leprosy is actually considered a godly blessing. In these cases the bodies are taken to the middle of the river,on a palm leaf, by boat and sunk. So it is somewhat understandable why foreigners are mostly TERRIFIED of getting anywhere near to the water because of all the sewage, rubbish, dirt, animals and multiple dead bodies floating around at the bottom, though to Hindus around India this is the most beautiful sacred place of all.  Surprisingly the most bizarre thing about the entire process is that the Ghats themselves are actually privately owned making it a very expensive ritual for people to have their relatives cremated there. Surely if this river is a goddess who belongs to the Indian people, they should have the right to perform their ceremonies there without having to report (and pay huge sums of money) to anyone. But every rose has it's thorn, I guess.  

We spent the rest of our time in Varanasi walking around the tiny little alleyways and people watching at the river. Jonathan was also in town which was brilliant because we hadn't seen him since Delhi which of course meant parousing through cute little shops, laughing hysterically and snacking on brownies, homemade pizza and coca cola in small, breezy cafes (one which was actually South African owned!) We were planning on taking a sunset boat trip down the river but as our luck would have it, the monsoon swooped in just in time. And wow, it was fierce. We tried to wait it out in the South African Cafe but after they closed we had to make other plans, and being in the middle of the open street with not many other options, we just had to climb in a Tuk-Tuk and hope like hell it wasn't too far from our hostel, especially because there were 4 of us and I was hanging off the side being blasted by the down pour. Suffice to say we arrived more than soaked.

And so, our day in Varanasi came to an end and we hopped on another train en route to Darjeeling. Now this 22 hour journey could probably be written as a book in itself. So after a 2 hour delay at a grimy, smelly train station (though that part is no different to any other train station in India), at 2am we were elated to jump onto the 3AC compartment and find our seats. This was the first debaucle since it was pitch black and we couldn't see a foot in front of us, never mind locate our numberless seats (which were split up and already had lurkers sleeping in them - of course) Now, in these 3AC compartments there are supposed to be just 6 bunks per cabin but they also  sneak two bunks on the side corridor. These bunks can be good as there are only 2 instead of 3, so you can actually sit up straight in both of them but it also means that ANYONE taking a stroll down the corridor has Direct access to your bunk (even the curtain drawn across rarely stops anyone!)

So we hoped that once we eventually found our seats and got settled that we would be able to get some sleep for as much as was possible of the long journey we had ahead - HA, this train definitely had other plans for us. 3 hours after eventually drifting off to sleep on the bottom side bunk - I felt a rustle against my curtain an suddenly a scratching on my face. The next thing, my curtain was whipped aside to reveal a man who had a leg deformity and was pulling himself along the length of the corridor on a piece of cardboard gesturing at my shocked, confused and 95% asleep face for money. In a frenzy of fright and bewilderment I managed to find a half pack of crackers that I had put in my drink holder for breakfast and shoved them into his hands while simultaneously pulling my curtain shut. But the scratching to my face continued and the curtain found itself once again whipped open. The man returned my crackers to me, wanting only money. This is also all unveiling under the eyes of a staring Indian family taking up the 6 bunks across from me. All I could do was pull my curtain back across and curl up as close against the window as I could squeeze myself. But sleeping proved an impossible optimism thanks to the array of hawkers that had now taken to parading up and down the passageway yelling, trying to sell their products. Even with my Ipod bellowing at full volume I could not avoid the loud whining of the men yelling "Chaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii" or "coffeeeeeee" or "cadburrrry" every 2 minutes. Shamelessly, he even opened my curtain screeching in my ear, when I yelled NO! back, he turned around to serve the man opposite me, leaning his backside deep into my bunk which I had to viciously elbow out of my face. Thinking that these disturbances were just my stroke of luck for being on the bottom side bunk, I hoped that the other girls had not experienced such joyous wake up calls from beggars and hawkers and actuallymanaged to get some sleep. I soon found out as Jessie crawled into my bunk that she too had been sleeping and was violently shaken awake by the ear-hairy man in the bunk below her. Angrily asking him, WHAT? WHAT's THE PROBLEM? He just pointed to the little water puddleon the floor and proceeded to ignore her and then of course she was another victim of the annoying Chaiiii whiner. The man in the bunk below her, who we begun referring to as "her nemesis," then took to following her every time she went to the bathroom. Not too long after that, Kate arrived to my bunk after she woke up to the man accross from her snapping pictures of her on his camera phone - for what reason we are still entirely ignorant. The next thing we know the train has magically transformed into a chinese market. Guys selling everything from fold up chairs to battery chargers to knife sets to life size keyboards all carrying their goods in bags so gigantic that they could barely fit through the aisle and hence knocking us in the head with them, every time they charged past. By now, the three of us huddled into one bunk could do nothing but laugh at all this ridiculousness hoping that nothing else could possibly happen but OH NO, too soon for that, we were poked for more money by another beggar and a garbage collector - who was sweeping up all the nuts, papers, food and other crap that the people in the cabin had shamelessly discarded all over the place. And then 6pm Chimed and a man in the bunk over from us whipped out a tamborine to signal the start of 'prayer' which everyone around joined in and sang for the next 2 hours. Just when it started getting quiet and I thought maybe it was a good time to check our bags that we had stored in Jessie's bunk, I stood up to find two Chinese Marketeers coming at me and soon became part of a tshirt, keyboard, knife set and fold up chair sandwich. Joyful, just joyful. Though by this time, frustration had definitely gotten the best of us and it came down to a choice between going completely mad, or adopting the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" attitude. And so we joined in the 'worship', laughed with the marketeers and tried to buy some food - which sadly tasted like newspaper. Luckily we arrived in NJP and leapt off the train liberating ourselves and the little that remained of our sanity. From then it only took, a load of haggling, a 3 hour bumpy jeep ride in the pitch black mountains, helping tow a van that had almost flown off the mountain back onto the road and eventually finding a really revolting guesthouse(because everything else was closed) to arrive in the tiny but lovely Himalayan town of Darjeeling nestled in the North East of India.


We have been so busy in the last month that unfortunately our internet meetings have been very sparse but the next update will come soon, I assure you.

From Darjeeling, we traveled by bus to Kolkata, where we said goodbye to Kate :( and then took a long 33 hour train coast side to Chennai. We went from there by bus to Pondicherry and from Pondicherry across the subcontinent by bus to Mahe, Kochi and Alleppey in Kerala. From there we traveled by train to Madgaon in GOA and then onto Palolem beach by van where we spent the next 7 days, partying and beaching like never before.  But those adventures will be reserved for the next post. We are now in Hyderabad and will be going from here to Mumbai where we fly out to Thailand.

Lots of love and see you soooooooooooony xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx