At first glance Kathmandu seems to resemble an Indian city with rules and order. People don't just drive on any side of the road; the cycle rickshaws are contained within certain sections of the city; only a few cows grace the streets; many people want to avoid inhaling the city's noxious fumes and dust so they wear facemasks and there are generally fewer people making the place seem less hectic. They still, however, have the omnipresent "export quality", "genuine", "extra high quality", etc. denoting products that are anything but; they have load-shedding schedules that would make India's poorest city blush; and they have many shanty-town lined rivers that collect so much litter that it forms many islets and peninsulas along it, some providing enough space for several lean-tos should anybody have the urge build on waste. The Ganges looks like the purest distilled water compared to this. Also, all the writing (Nepali) is in a Sanskrit style script so you almost think you've not left India (of course as long as you cannot read Nepali or Hindi).
We headed for what the guidebook (probably) calls backpacker central, Thamel. This part of the city is populated by tourists/trekkers and tourist/trekking shops selling all kinds of equipment fake and otherwise. Everything here is authentic, genuine, hand-made, finest quality, export quality and more, and all brand names spelt correctly in the correct location. How to tell the difference when buying fake or otherwise mountaineering equipment you may later have to rely on? Well, if you don't categorically know how to tell then it's probably a guaranteed fake. At least that's certain.
We whiled away our days in Kathmandu finalising our tours (China had closed one of our destinations at this point and we had to make enquiries), enjoying various restaurants, luxuriating in excellent quality coffee and cakes and visiting a few sites. People watching in and around an incredibly well preserved Durbar square was particularly relaxing and enjoyable, as was doing the same around the two large stupas located in the suburbs (the stupas in Nepal are generally domed monuments with a cube atop wearing a conical hat; the cube normally has an enquiring pair of eyes on each side looking out over the city - very enigmatic).
At night the Thamel tourist/trekker hussle and bussle turns to late night pub music that reached a peak on Paddy's day when we were treated to the death throes of several student bands all within earshot of our hotel room. Various singers screeched rock classics with intensity and passion over the banging of their drummers, who in turn were competing for decibel attainment with any other band within a five mile radius. Past midnight to 3am, the people who rattle the metal shutters of neighbouring shops took over and banged those babies like their life depended on it. After 3am, the tourists/trekkers came out of the bars and talked loudly until morning. In the early morning we were regaled with multiple sounds of what Americans (I believe) would call 'hocking a loogie' (or otherwise described as 'lung butter' or 'an oyster'). The repetition of this sound sharply followed by the spit has quickly achieved comical status and will be my abiding memory of waking up in Kathmandu when the taste of coffee has disappeared. It really is good to be somewhere calmer than India.
A quick flight and we were in another country, almost another world. Still a country with a Hindu majority, still cows on the road (although rather fewer), still palpable poverty yet totally different: calm whilst busy, kind whilst intrusive. Of course, almost every word in that sentence is a massive generalisation and stereotype but we both felt immediately welcome and happy here in Kathmandu. The feeling hasn't gone away. It feels like somewhere we could spend a few years very happily. Perhaps we'll be able to find jobs here one day and get back to be a part of this country's continuing development.
Two giant stupas, one on either side of the city, appear to watch over the residents - in a good way, I guess. We enjoyed visiting both of them, and also enjoyed the long, confusing walks to find them. Durbar Square, where the royal family used to live, a fascinating place to sit and people watch for hours, which we did. We were both particularly enchanted by a young woman and her small child chasing each other around the shrines.
And then there's Thamel - a tourist haven said to be second only to Khao San Road in Bangkok. Here one can shop until drop time before diving into an Irish Bar (not that we have) playing host to a truly dire band. One can eat good food at any hour of the day and one can even find volunteer opportunities. C and I have made contact with a street kids' centre where we'll hopefully spend five or so days volunteering.
Our days in Kathmandu tend to begin in Pumpernickel, a great breakfast place. Then we wander around, see a monument or something, walk some more, rest a bit and then find a good supper place. Not a tough life. I also accidentally did some shopping here too.
Day 1 Fly to Lukla (2840m), walk to Phakding (2610m), suggest to guide we continue Monjo (2840m)
Day 2 Walk to Namche Bazar (3440m)
Day 3 Acclimatisation walk to Thame (3620m) - fail at Thamo (3493m) for reasons to be explained below
Day 4 Walk to Phortse (3680m)
Day 5 Walk to Pangboche (3930m)
Day 6 Day trip to Ama Dablam base camp (over 5000m)
Day 7 Walk to Namche Bazar (3440m)
Day 8 Walk to Lukla (2840m)
Day 9 Walk 500m to airport and fly to Kathmandu
They say Nepal can be split into three 'sections' according to altitude and I suspect one could split the Himalayas similarly with an altitude-noise ratio. At tea-house level one has to contend with all the noises you might associate with living in a ply-wood box: hawking up of phlegm, loud talking, white noise of radios, terrible recordings of Buddhist chanting, loud hosts ensuring everyone can hear their phone conversations, tourists chattering and even the odd, old, deaf, English woman terrorising the locals. On the regular sherpa paths one has the beauty of cow/yak/donkey bells, more white noise from radios, sherpa mobile phone conversations and trekkers' pantings. However, get above all of this to the higher levels of less trodden paths and all one can hear is a solitary bird, the wind howling round the mountain tops and one's own, exhausted, breathing. Magnificent.
I lay, alone, for perhaps 30 minutes on the top of a ridge over 5000m above sea level, while C went off exploring. I had my eyes closed and could feel the heat of the sun on my body. All I could hear was the wind and that one bird. I opened my eyes and was confronted with the majesty of an entire range of snow covered mountain peaks. Despite having had my eyes shut for just minutes, I was amazed anew at the beauty and at my luck to be able to experience this.
Before we could get to such splendour, there was a great deal of huffing and puffing as we walked along routes popular with sherpas, pack animals, skipping sherpa kids and trekkers. C was particularly keen that we escape the hoards and the herds and make for higher (and quieter) lands. Our guide, who was spectacularly useless, finally acquiesced (must have been those dollar signs we have for eyes!) and suggested a more challenging route (above) that got us to Ama Dablam base camp. Thank goodness for C's 'dog with a bone' attitude that meant we did this as it was certainly the highlight of the entire trekking period.
Namche Bazar, the real starting point for trekking (a two day trek from the airport in itself), was, I imagine, at some point, a traditional sherpa village. Today, however, it's a tourist hole with a better quality ply-wood hotel than found elsewhere. (To be fair, the ply-wood is a necessity since there are laws about chopping wood in the national parks and everything has to be shipped in on the backs of sherpas). Possibly out of boredom or pure stupidity, C and I decided, on our first night in NB, to drink an entire (small) bottle of rum between us. At sea level this would be fine but at almost 4000m, not bright (I can hear my mother's exclamation now)! I spent the night tossing and turning, unable to sleep thanks to both alcohol induced altitude sickness and a bad tummy. It felt as if a small person (K, perhaps) was sitting on my chest whilst pressing on my gut! C woke up with a shocking headache too. The next day I felt no better but was determined that our stupidity wasn't a reason to sit still. The acclimatisation walk to Thame was supposed to take six hours in total. We made it approximately half way, to Thamo and back, with me practically crawling up the bloody mountain trying alternately to breathe and to stop my guts exploding. Great. C was amazing - he carried my bag for me, walked at my speed and offered soothing and encouraging words the whole way around. Much better than the guide, who walked his usual 20minutes behind us.
Leaving NB the first stop is Everest View Lodge where...one can see Everest properly for the first time. Good to have seen the world's highest mountain but it's certainly nowhere near as beautiful as others in the area. From here the scenery got more and more stunning as we climbed higher. Of course, as we climbed higher, it got colder too although only at night. We left trees behind and entered yak country - they taste good, their wool makes soft scarves and they can balance on steep sided mountains; who wouldn't want a yak?
Some of the walking did scare me a bit as we skirted mountains with sheer up on one side and sheer down on the other with paths around a metre wide. I thought of my HK and her fear and soldiered on! With the wind and heavy cloud adding to the mix, I was a little concerned but again, C was great, always checking that I was ok on the tricky bits and offering kind, if sometimes sarcastic, support.
Food, accommodation and bathrooms: hmmm. food was carb-tastic. Three heavy, not so tasty, meals a day guaranteed to make your gut wrench at some point! Thanks to the cipro-gods we were ok. Accommodation, ply-wood and chilly with a communal dining/living room. Bathrooms - if you're lucky, opposite the bedroom, if you're not, sort of out-house style squat. Not good at night.
All in all, a great trip, despite (not because of) our guide. We saw some incredible views, pushed ourselves fairly hard (at least, I did), and thoroughly enjoyed each other's company. I was most pleased when C said he was impressed with the way I was able to keep up with him.
With the benefit of no research and with only my limited imagination to go on I expected C and me to be trekking in solitude over the vast expanse of scrublands with the tallest of the HimalayanMountains looking down on us. Day one was a bit of a shock. Our guide pointed to our trail; the one with a long line of trekkers, dzos (yak+cow), donkeys and porters carrying the most cumbersome and heavy items you could imagine. Our first day's trek ended almost before it started as we came to our first village. A bit too quick so we carried on for a bit - the beauty of a private "trek" - and were happier still when we rearranged our itinerary to have a more solitary experience away from the too well maintained sherpa paths, bridges and stairs up and down the mountainsides.
Our (and everyone else's) acclimatisation town was Namche Bazaar, where we made our first medium altitude mistake by finishing off a small bottle of Nepalese spiced rum that was supposed to last us the week. The altitude sickness pills came out in force, as did paracetamol and ibuprofen over the next couple of days for some major headaches. Fortunately, my headaches and C's sickness abated for the main hike; some lung busting ascents (and later knee-busting descents) to Panboche, and later to the base camp of Ama Dablam. This was indeed the type of terrain I naively thought we'd be trekking over on day one; an impressive mountain surrounded by awe-inspiring scenery and no one else but us.
However, to get to this stage there was a lot of cold evenings playing Scrabble by dung fuelled fires and colder damper nights sleeping in plywood box rooms in the village tea-houses. The sleeping bags we carried around India came into their own here; a veritable cocoon of comfort when all is right with your head and gut but a goose down coffin when not, especially during many insomniac nights (another side effect of altitude) where your only respite is bouts of fitful sleep filled with claustrophobic dreams. The altitude pains come at any time, when they're absent you feel fit enough to run up Everest naked, when they come - drill a hole and get me to sea level - now.
By the end of our basic ramble we were well into the trekking spirit. We appreciated small comforts, like the sensation of being clean after a few days of dirt. We worked out techniques to feel clean during the shower drought. Our cleanest clothes would surely be in the 'immediate wash' category at home and our walking clothes - with dirt, dust and material in equal quantities - no doubt for throwing away or to be washed with heavily soiled doormats.
Lessons learnt: Untalkative or unresponsive guides don't give good insight into Nepalese village life, though chatty hotel owners who speak good English do. Nepalis don't eat Dal bhat (lentils and rice) twice a day every day, but they give it a go. Half a ton of sweets and biscuits is really too much for an eight day trek, though I'm sure we'll make that mistake again. Everest is not a pretty mountain, from any angle. QUAD, with the 'Q' on a double letter and the 'D' on a triple word is very handy when you're losing at Scrabble. And finally, if my wussy feeble excuse for a body gives me problems at 4000m, then I should take pills from day one when we go to Tibet.
If you took all the things everyone has ever said about India and gave them substance, Vananasi would probably spring forth. It is a real education being here if for only a few days and undoubtedly gives the archetypal India experience. The bustling mass of vehicles and people that create the congested mayhem; the cows that (mostly) wander around aimlessly; the myriad of wretched specimens barely recognisable as dogs that seek shade by day and howl at night; the monkeys sifting through rubbish; the hustlers; the hassle; the rubbish; the smells; noise; flies; chai. It's all here and more.
Our guest house was one of the first in a long line of interesting looking buildings that stretched along the seven or eight kilometre bend of the Ganges; an impressive river even in the dry season where it had shrunk to about half its post-monsoon size. Judging by the number of old palaces along this stretch of river it must have been a popular resort or getaway for the Maharajas, not so much now. All the buildings that overlook the river are buffered on one side by Ghats (steps that lead down to the river) and a labyrinth of narrow streets on the other.
A typical stroll along the Ganges took us past a burning Ghat, where dead bodies are continually being carried down to the river for a quick soak and then put on one of half a dozen pires. Wood is weighed at the top of the Ghat ready for the outcasts to transport it, on their head, unfeasibly large pile by unfeasibly large pile at a time, so that this ancient production line of outdoor cremations can continue.
A little bit further, a youthful cow-master yanks one down the steep steps using a cord tied around the unfortunate beast's neck. It doesn't want to go (not surprising, cows aren't made for stairs) and the calf next to it wants milk but can't get it while its mother is being hauled down. The cow can't resist forever, slips, corrects and jumps down to a platform (what was the fuss all about) where she's tied up; and the calf too in such a way as to prevent it from reaching the valuable milk. Cows aren't usually treated this way; I guess for them to be in this position (especially in India) they must have a lot of negative karma to exorcise.
Further down the Ganges, we decline hundreds of offers of "boat" (with special price), a dozen or so offers from children selling karma in the guise of floating candles and a few miscellaneous hawkers selling whatever (at 25% discount). We are perplexed by the requests by Indian tourists for us (and other western tourists) to be in their photos so accept a couple and decline the rest. Meanwhile, a few steps down other Indian tourists scoop some of the Ganges into plastic water containers, semi naked men bathe in ritualistic fashion and women in full sari gear dip their heads under and appear to drink it with a look of divine bliss. I suspect that this expression will change when the immune system succumbs to the septic and faecal ridden water.
Still further down the Ganges and we are nearly at the central Ghat, where bells are rung and holy men throw smoke and perform other rituals. A large crowd is evidence of the popularity of the ceremony but for us there are only so many prostrations and genuflections one can see in a day with brief interest until all the meaningless activities merge with the rest of the craziness. We head up the steps away from the river, stepping over a number of ashen faced Sadus begging piously, past some ten foot papier-mâché gods and thousands more people and cycle-rickshaws to reach our Holy Grail: A restaurant that has renewed our faith in Indian food.
“Boat, sir? Boat? One hour, good price”. Sadly, that may well be the lingering memory of this fascinating, strange riviera-esq town. I may remember that chant more than seeing burning bodies, more than the crusty hippies, more than the mean hotel manager, more than being in a (minor) rickshaw crash and more than the actual boat rides themselves.
We arrived at the station after a long and slow train journey from Agra. I was exhausted and really having to work hard to not be pissed off with everything in the entire world, ever. And then I saw the most skeletal child I have ever seen and all my annoyances and minor irritations were swept away. I have no idea how old he might have been - somewhere between 11 and 17 I would guess. He sat down not far from us and devoured a packet of biscuits. I bought him a cup of hot, sweet, tea. I saw a skeletal child and I bought him a cup of fucking tea. Nothing more. My heart broke and I bought him tea. What else could I have done? Money? Everything I believe about the ‘greater development’ picture tells me not to give kids money. Some kids deliberately keep themselves looking ill as it elicits more sympathy, which translates to hard cash. I can’t believe this was deliberate though. So what it boils down to is a cup of fucking tea.
I’m torn: on the one hand, helping one life is helping the world, on the other, development and change are not about the individual but the whole. There’s no easy answer. One question I do find easy to answer concerns begging sadus, or holy men. I’m not interested in propagating religion or the idea that begging is acceptable in the name of religion. So no money to the guys in yellow from me. Interesting to consider that although 4/5ths of India is now claimed to live above the poverty line, many live in the conditions we see here in Varanasi, conditions worse than I have seen in many places where people are living below a ‘poverty line’.
Varanasi is considered particularly holy to Hindus - something to do with the Ganges here, confluence of something or other. What this means in reality is shed loads of Indian pilgrims and tourists all taking a swim, washing, pee-ing in the great river. It also deals with dead bodies, human waste (33 sewage pipes go directly into the river from which people then drink), washing suds and water buffalo. Yum, one great big polluted soup of a river. We took a couple of boat rides on it and watching people perform almost all of their daily rituals at the riverside was just fascinating. There was no compunction about defecating at the side and then wiping oneself in public, no qualm about getting almost totally naked and jumping in the river and certainly no worry about drinking the water. I’m sure the people of Varanasi must be super humans to survive.
We stopped a few times to watch the cremation ghat activities - here the process is: ceremony through the town with the dead body on a stretcher; chuck it in the river until it’s truly soaked and then put it on a big bonfire with logs on top to prevent it sitting up when gases are released. In four days we saw lots of processions, lots of chucking in the water and lots of bonfires but very few burning bodies (just three of these, in fact). It was less interesting than I thought it might be but certainly it’s surreal to see the shroud burn and suddenly be faced with a human on fire.
Oh yeah, and a cow headbutted me, which was quite funny.
The Taj Mahal. A reminder of the dangers of not using contraception: Old Mumtaz Mahal, the wife of Shah Jahan, died giving birth to their 14th child. He built a mausoleum for her. Currently in India there’s a trend amongst the poorest to have families with fourteen or so kids. One newspaper interview went something along the lines of: “‘so Mrs. So and So, why don’t you ask your husband to use birth control?’ ‘Ooooh, no, he wouldn’t like that. I couldn’t’.” As in other parts of the developing world, life expectancy goes up, child mortality goes down but birth rates are slow to show such positive change so the numbers of children living in extremely poor families increases. And this means yet another generation of poverty despite the astounding leaps India has been making in poverty alleviation in the past ten years. It is estimated that only 22% of the population lives under the absolute poverty line ($1.25 a day) but when the entire population is over 1 billion, that’s still a lot of people barely making ends meet. These people live a long way from the computer-tec world of Mumbai.
My views on large families aside, the Taj Mahal is an incredible monument, one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen and I’m so glad C and I decided it was worth a detour to go and see something he’s already seen before. All wasn’t smooth sailing though. We went from one mishap to another. We began with the discovery that the UP tourist people thought it was a good idea to move the ticket office for the Taj to a km away from the Taj. Why? We certainly don’t know. My only guess is that it’s to give rickshaw-wallahs a chance to make money of lazy tourists who can’t be assed to walk 20 mins.
First hurdle passed. We bought our extremely expensive tickets. We walked back, joined the queue to enter, had our bags searched, I had my bag broken by the bitch checking them. Her conversation with the woman in front of me should have indicated her mood/attitude: ‘what’s this?’ she said, holding up an item from the woman’s bag. Woman answered in a southern Indian language. ‘Well I can’t understand that language, don’t you speak E-N-G-L-I-S-H?’ she said with a sneer on her face! Nice. She wasn’t at interested in the fact that she’d broken my lovely running rucksack, only in the playing cards she’d found in said bag. Apparently they’re banned in the Taj. I refused point-blank to hand them over and in the midst of making a fuss about her breaking my bag, I slipped them back in to my stuff. Hah. That’ll teach ‘em to have stupid rules.
I don’t appear to have any reverence genes but I do have a whole host of irreverent bones. And C’s the same. Means visiting holy or sacred places can be both amusing and extremely frustrating. This place seemed to have irreverence wasps though, designed to seek out those people not sufficiently pious and bug them to the hell we don’t believe in. We tried to sit and read in the shade, nope, wasps didn’t approve, we tried walking around admiring the building from the outside, wasps attached themselves to our clothing (everyone found C’s little dance particularly amusing).We decided the wasps didn’t want us there so we left.
After exerting ourselves with the Taj we spent around 2 hours in a western coffee shop and then made our way to Pizza Hut - three weeks of curry will do that to your taste buds, make you want to eat cheap western shit. And man, was that shit good!
Only other thing of note in Agra was C getting awfully annoyed at me for not having folded his sleeping bag liner properly, which meant it wasn’t soft enough anymore. I was definitely in the dog house for a little while but my sweetness and good apologising skills got me out fairly quickly.
From door to door our next modes of transport would be: Auto-rickshaw to local bus station; local bus to Kota; auto-rickshaw to Kota station; 8h train to Agra; auto-rickshaw to hotel. Pretty normal stuff, but we dreaded the local bus part so much that we even considered spending the equivalent of a tenner on a taxi to Kota to avoid the unpleasantries of lugging our rucksacks and bags on a manky rust-bucket with tiny seats and a million people crammed into all corners of the bus. However, our fears where unfounded as the morning bus was in far better condition than any of the ones we checked out the day before and our journey (plus bag lugging) went smoothly. Our train journey was a little unexpected though; when we boarded around 2pm we expected it to be lively, but we boarded our carriage alone and everyone already in it appeared to be asleep. Agra may have been important in the past and the guide book does list a few attractions, but most people I would guess come here to see only one, the Taj Mahal. And it is impressive. Though the administration does try their best to put tourists off with an exceedingly high entry fee, a ticket office that is about 1km from the gate and arbitrary rules for prohibited items made on a whim by security. For example, although 'playing cards' were not indicated anywhere on their comprehensive list of forbidden items, they were considered on the day too contaminating for the sacrosanct compound which contained the Taj. Perhaps a list of non-forbidden items would be easier and shorter. We spent quite some time in the Taj compound taking the same kind of pictures everybody takes, sitting and reading, being chased by killer wasps and flailing our arms around like girls when a couple managed to get trapped in our shirts. After, we read some more on the roof of our hotel, which has a nice view of the Taj and finished the night off with a present to our digestive systems, Pizza Hut. To get from place to place we had some superb hair-raising rides on the cycle-rickshaws. The old men who ride these contraptions are incredible; wiry yet powerful with an acute knack of fearlessly ploughing across busy roads and never flinching or being intimidated by the aggressive larger and faster vehicles blaring their horns or cutting them up.
Already the big guns are out: Ciprofloxacin. How weak must my constitution be that eating and drinking in what must be no more than a standard dose of bacteria for these guys has such a detrimental effect on my fragile western gut. I shudder to think what a taste of a cow's every day feast would do to my system; undoubtedly turn it inside out and then to jelly or maybe the other way around.
We've not had any great meals here and I'm guessing there's a hole in the market for tourist restaurants because the locals have stepped in and opened their homes and roofs for this service. But seeing the sign 'rooftop restaurant' (with modest expectations) and then the reality never inspired us with confidence. The way to the 'restaurant' is usually through the house, up the inside stairs, through a bedroom, past an old man in the corner wondering what the hell you're doing there, past the kitchen, and finally up to the roof where a single small metal table covered with a stained plastic sheet and two rickety chairs await. Home cooking would probably be ok, but this was home cooking for a profit for strangers and we doubted whether our delicate western stomachs would be adequately considered, so we left. It turns out no place really considers this. Most of the restaurants we visited (and even drinking places where they put water in the orange juice - we found out too late) aught to carry a toilet rating indicating how many hours you should expect to be on it after the meal. What can one do? I guess giving tourists antibiotics free with a meal would be sending the wrong signal.
Apart from the Bundi belly, it is a much nicer place in terms of pace of life and quantity of tourists. There's another palace and another fort, but no sanitised tour and you're free to ramble around the ruins at your leisure as long as the numerous monkeys aren't blocking your way. There are great views of the town, countryside and of the putrid cesspool of a manmade lake that gives some of the guest houses overlooking it their distinctive smell.
We went to Ranjeet's Talkies cinema and saw a pretty dire comedy with the usual Bollywood song'n'dance numbers mixed in with some serious overacting and exceptionally bad dubbing. We didn't expect a good movie but we thought there would be a packed cinema and some atmosphere. I think we were in single figures so at the interval we left. Incidentally, although the plots of these films typically seem farfetched one of its more outlandish elements actually turned out to be fairly topical; a staged kidnapping where a boss in the movie was to pay the ransom for her servant who was the perpetrator and supposed victim. There was an article in a recent edition of India Today which seemed to suggest an epidemic of teenagers who arrange their own kidnapping in order to extort money from their unsuspecting parents.
A fairly painless train journey and we found ourselves in a pleasant haveli guesthouse in Bundi. Bundi is a million miles from Udaipur. It's small, not very touristy and quite relaxed. Its main attraction is a hillside palace cum fort that hasn't been restored to its former glory. Wonderful. I just love poking round old, crumbling buildings. It always reminds me of a family holiday to Ireland where we seemed to spend all our days climbing up to, and examining, old castles. Something I've always loved.
The palace is famous for the (accidental) preservation of C17 wall paintings. The detail in the paintings is phenomenal and we were suitably impressed. We then climbed up to the fort with a young American guy named Pete. We all needed each other at this point since the route was, by no means, clear and we weren't terribly sure it was safe or permitted. He was nervous of the wild dogs and we weren't convinced it was a good idea. Egging each other on, we made it all the way to the top, even to the top of the prohibited police tower at the very top (thanks Pete!). The views were just stupendous and the opportunity for us to be so alone and so un-bothered in India was extremely special. The fort comprised labyrinth style courtyards and stairs - I felt as if we'd stumbled into an Escher painting at one point.
Not much else goes down in Bundi. The place is also famous for its baoris - water tanks from the C17. One we saw is 46m deep and really very impressive although no longer in use. Today these magnificent water tanks are either collecting stagnant water or plastic water bottles. .Such a shame.
Da Dana Dan (?) - the latest Bollywood release. If anyone's considering it; don't. We did. It seemed like a good idea to go to the cinema and experience the 'Bollywood experience'. What we got was a terrible movie in an empty theatre. Thankfully, they still have intervals here so we left. We really didn't need to see the end to know what happened to the poor servant whose mistress treated him badly.
Our train to Agra leaves from Kota - a town around 45 minutes away from Bundi. We have two options; 1. take a bus for around 50 Rupees; 2. take a taxi for 700 Rupees. A tricky decision, I think we would both quite like to take the cab but neither of us wants to be that wussy. We discussed it and agree that we don't need to make our lives difficult for the sake of £10, we're not destitute and we're certainly not trying to prove anything to ourselves. We've both done travelling on the cheap and that's not what this trip is about. However, we seem to have decided that we'll take the bus this time. Doesn't fit our logic but it doesn't need to, not every time.
We arrived at night and were looking forward to a few days staying put before our next train ordeal. In our guest house’s rooftop restaurant we had a petite but tasty curry and caught a glimpse of the lights reflected in the lake that the hotels in front of us looked over. This town is frequently called the ‘Venice of the East’ and by the morning saw that this description was at least half correct. Nevertheless, we managed to get some interesting photos of the cows grazing on parts of the dried up river.
We decided we were well and truly ‘palace’d and ‘temple’d out so kept things simple and made plans to do a cookery class and not much else. This was a little disappointing in terms of hands on training but I not sure we could have expected much more for three dishes in two hours (Butter Paneer, Rajasthani Dal and Aloo Gobi). Still, it had an impact as I now have an urge to make curry. Hopefully, when we return the echo of that urge will be stronger than the urge to pick up a take away menu or buy the ready made stuff. We’ll see.
Our time has mostly been spent wondering around the city, reading on rooftops, watching the sun go down and looking for places to eat. I feel suitably recharged but I do hope the next place doesn’t have the same quantity of tourists wandering around so I can have the illusion of being at least a little bit intrepid.
On first sight I wasn’t keen on Udaipur and I don’t think C was either. I had certainly built it up in my mind to be something maybe a bit more special than it actually is. What it isn’t is the Venice of India. What it is is a typical Indian city with a lake that happens to have a couple of islands. It is also more hectic than anywhere we’ve seen since Delhi: more tourists, more cars, more rickshaws, more motorbikes, more cows and more dogs - all trying to fit down narrow un-pavement-ed roads en masse. The area in which everyone stays in extremely touristy since it’s next to the lake and the palace (largest in India they say, we wouldn’t know as we opted not to visit) - tourist shops mingle with tourist restaurants and tourist henna places. In photos this place looks just magnificent but I think we’re here at the wrong time of year since the lake is dry in many places and cows and kids graze on the grassy sections of the lake bed. We did take a cable car up a hill and witness something of the beauty of the city at sunset but unlike Jaisalmer, this feels like a city whose beauty can only be seen from afar.
There’s also more hassle here; I guess that goes with the larger numbers of tourists. C just pointed out that although Jodhpur wasn’t beautiful it did seem to be a purely functional city. This is a tourist city (at least in the old part) that isn’t beautiful. Perhaps rather than being referred to as the ‘Venice of India’ it should be the ‘almost Cairo of India’ for the level of hassle from beggars and shop vendors.
One of the primary items on sale in the city is traditional Rajasthani art - I think it dates from the C16 or so and they’ve made a craft out of replicating the style for tourists here. It’s quite pretty and I was certainly tempted until I saw some modern artists’ work, which reminded me not to buy mass produced stuff. After going to a photography exhibition in Windhoek we didn’t hold out much hope for a similar exhibition here but were pleasantly surprised to find some really beautiful pictures. I’ll be checking out the guy’s website for sure. I wonder if his work is in my price range.
One reason we decided to spend a few days in Udaipur was a cookery class that got rave reviews. I think we were spoiled in Oaxaca though as this course felt a bit perfunctory. We still learned how to make delicious food but with none of the finesse we saw in Mexico - there, the guy did it for the love of food, I definitely felt this was a job rather than a passion. No matter, we came away with new knowledge.
This place, so full of tourists, has really made me question travelling. Why are we doing it? Why is anyone doing it? Is there a difference between tourists and travellers? Was there ever? At 18, I was travelling to find space to become independent and to meet the grown-up me. At 30 I don’t need to do that. While it doesn’t de-legitimise what we’re doing it does make me realise that simply travelling around isn’t enough for me. I enjoy seeing and being but as C. put it, perhaps I can’t enjoy the enjoying as I don’t think I’m bettering myself or anyone else with my actions. We agreed that I need to find a way to fix this. He thinks I’m in quite a fortunate position since I know what I’m doing with my life and know where I want to go. I’m not so sure as I’m impatient to get there and while a few months is only a few months, there’s still a lot I need to do - study, find a new job etc.
Travelling doesn’t actually give one an insight into a country in the way that living somewhere can and I find being on the outside a bit frustrating. I want to understand India (particularly its development - human, economic and political) and am going to try and find a way to do this.
I’m glad to see India but am shocked at how touristy it is. While some people we’re meeting are honest and good, many seem to be involved in trying to rip off visitors. It’s a vicious cycle: get ripped off, don’t trust, feel untrusted, rip off and so on... I don’t like being a part of this.
Thankfully I have C to listen to me wax lyrical about all this nonsense. He’s also wise enough to realise that women often don’t want a concrete answer to problems, just someone to listen and sympathise. This time though, I do want to find a solution and he’s helping me to do so.
The blue city, and indeed it did look impressively blue from afar at the Meherangarh fort towering above it. Unfortunately, in order to go back to your room, you have to see it up close and it’s none too pretty. We stayed in an area where there were a few guest houses but outside these backpacker havens was only unsightliness; decrepit shops of necessity lining the decaying streets with their broken sewers bubbling over the collecting refuse. And of course the omnipresent auto-rickshaw drivers ready to pounce on their next customer.
We had a wonder around, following the stronger smells, and found the market. This was a lot more colourful than the rest of Jodhpur purely due to the number and variety of colourful saris and turbans floating around. It was also the place were one could (supposedly) find the best lassi in town. These were the kind the locals drink; just one type, plain and so thick with sugar you need a spoon to drink it. Think condensed milk concentrate and you’re half way there.
Our extremely talkative and possible mad hotelier suggested a ‘tourist taxi’ to our next destination, therefore giving us the chance to see two attractions en route. I’d never heard about these services but I guess it makes complere sense that there’s a market for the traveller who is willing to pay more for a hassle-less ride from city to city. As with everything in India, there’s a price to pay other than the rupee one and this one is getting used to Indian driver etiquette. I think I know the car language now. Beeping the horn on every corner - easy enough - means I’m going round this corner in the middle of the road at speed, everyone please move. Beeping horn and flashing lights on every corner; like the last one but for night time. Beeping the horn while overtaking signals the overtakee and means please slow down so I can pull in just in case the oncoming traffic is faster than anticipated. Of course it is possible that our driver simply connected the horn to his accelerator pedal. This would make sense as he informed us of the number of hours he had already worked and his lack of sleep and figured this could be a technique to stay awake. This was one reason we didn’t complain about him playing loud Bollywood music the whole way, at least we knew he was awake even when playing chicken with the oncoming cars (which he seemed to do an awful lot). Though, I think the manoeuvre that must take first prize was his ‘overtaking while concentrating on phone call’ manoeuvre. This involves concentrating on the call so much that you forgot you’re overtaking. Not only were we riding parallel around several bends but we were doing it so slowly that the car behind us overtook us on the inside! Actually, it’s not as dangerous as it seems; he has a miniature of Ganesha on the dashboard so nothing bad could possibly have happened.
Despite the drive (and of course we could have kept our eyes shut), the drive was worth it. Apart from seeing Ranakpur, yet another Jain temple (but one of the finest) and Kumbalgarh, a fort with some incredible views, we also saw a glimpse of Rajasthani life out there between the towns. For example, we passed a bizarre shrine built after a motorcycle accident five years ago. The motorbike is propped up next to it and the bike’s engine is said to start every month. Apparently there was no town here five years ago and now there is, everybody wanting to be close to the motorbike miracle, although stopping the accident from happening in the first place would be a healthier miracle one would have thought. We passed a few of Rajasthan’s tribal people; some using equipment and water collection systems that wouldn’t look out of place in a museum of the middle ages; and others (all women) using another ancient technique of blocking roads with stones and wood to gather money from passing cars and buses. Our driver was as perplexed as we were saying that the women were probably ‘mad at India’, but couldn’t get an explanation since they didn’t speak Hindi and he didn’t speak their language. Later we found out that the village women do this every year for the Holi festival and were lucky we only had one road block to pay our way through.
A question I keep asking myself: why does everyone abroad (me included) seem to feel as if the ultimate quest is to find ‘that picture’? Does it matter? Are we losing something by always trying to find a new and interesting pose, someone doing something, or looking, ‘foreign’, a new level of poverty or beauty to snap? I see so many of us on this quest that I wonder how we now look to those we’re visiting. I wonder what we’d see if we put down the camera and actually took in what’s in front of us. Today, driving from Jodhpur to Udaipur, I kept wanting to stick my camera out the window and take photos of everything new - do I want memories, do I want photos that demonstrate how much poverty I’ve seen or do I just want to claim everything for myself? A bit of all of them? Maybe. I’m definitely not proud of this and would like to change this about my habit of travelling before the end of the trip. I had to really push myself to put it down and just look, just take in the outstanding colours and scenes before me.
Today’s journey took us from Jodhpur to Udaipur through tribal areas of Rajasthan. The poverty we hadn’t been seeing in droves came and bit us on the ass. We could have been visiting the middle-ages and nothing would have looked different (except, of course, for the motorised vehicles). Cow powered water wheels (again with the cows), women with their veils teaching children to carry water pots on their heads, people working the dusty, dry land. Villages here looked similar to many African villages: hustle around the road, the same shops, the same resting men while the women go about their work, barefoot children calling in excitement at seeing white faces in a car, teenagers herding goats and an overriding vision of colour. It’s trite but true; the colours of Rajasthan are what make this place so interesting. While the land is a drab, dry reddish colour, the women wear the most beautiful saris, bringing everything to life.
I again have to question the place of cows in society - if they’re so holy why’s it ok to own them, tether them and work them? Isn’t it a small step to simply take a bite out of a tasty looking one? C and I wondered if this ever happens - imagine your neighbour commenting, ‘didn’t you have three cows yesterday?’ and you having to wipe steak juice off your chin before mumbling a big fat lying ‘no’.
We visited three incredible sites in the last two days - a fort in Jodhpur, Ranakpur and another fortress out in the middle of the ass end of nowhere. The first fort was impressive for its sheer size and the way it dominates an enormous, sprawling misery of a city. Ranakpur is a Jain temple that crawls with tourists and understandably so, to be honest, as the place is beautiful. However, for me, the second fortress - Kumbalgarh - was the most wonderful. The views were simply marvellous from every point in the place - over hills and fields we could see for miles. And the monkeys made it even more fun.
Two interesting things occurred on our journey between the two cities: 1. our taxi driver stopped beside a motorbike and some roadside stalls and told us that a shrine has developed around this miraculous bike - five years ago there was a crash there and now, every month, at full moon, the bike’s engine starts up. Dunno, maybe it cries real tears too. We couldn’t tell if the driver believed this or not.
2. As we were approaching Kumbalgarh, we came across a group of women who had created a roadblock. I had visions of angry Maoists in Nepal and I suspect our city driver did too. He muttered something about ‘angry tribal women’ and turned the car round. C and I then had a pleasant ten minutes conjecturing what they could be mad about, and rationalising it for them, before someone else told us that the women were simply extracting a small fee from every driver to contribute to their holi celebrations, which seem to be later here than other places. I did decide here that it was totally legitimate to take pictures of the women since they had forced us to stop and hand over cash. Seems like a good exchange to me.
We seem to be having some interesting ‘people’ experiences at the moment too: Yogi, owner of Yogi’s guest house: total nut job. Claims to know Barack Obama and the ‘big Daddy of the BBC’. He also claims that some American dude is giving him $200,000 a year rent for the hostel building. Even smile at the man and you’re stuck for at least an hour as his mind wonders and his mouth keeps up. A lovely guy but a little tiring. Our taxi driver today immediately told us that all Indians put on an act - and then swapped from being bubbly and nice to being a bit of a sulky bastard! He played tinny Bollywood tunes at full volume almost the entire 10 hours we were in the car with him. I almost thought it had been a test and that we’d get a prize for not asking him to turn it down until 9 ½ hours into the journey! Damn it, I was wrong. No prize.
And now, we’re staying in a new hotel, on first impression I dislike the owner. He watched C and me struggle to bring luggage in and eventually picked up my hat and camera to help! Everyone else, without fail, has helped out of kindness. This guy is weird. He sat and watched us finish our meal in his hotel and claimed I was the first person to ever mention that fact that the bathrooms don’t have ceilings (as in they’re a section of the bedroom with walls but no ceiling) - I don’t believe him given how many people get bad tummies here. No matter how much one loves one’s partner, a ceiling might be nice! And yes, bad tummies have come to us. C first, but only extremely mildly and now me. Bah. Although it does mean I might lose weight - maybe I’ll wait a few more days before bringing out the antibiotic guns. (On further thought I think that perhaps neither he nor I were in good moods when we met, he’s a bit odd but certainly not unpleasant).
Also, I’ve just noticed that my sweat smells of curry!
The 19 hour "express" from Delhi to Jaisalmer was a bit of a struggle. It consisted of open carriages divided into several units with eight beds in each one; so a lot of squeezing of selves and luggage into small places going on. When we noticed everyone chaining their luggage to special points in the carriage we realised that chains were something we forgot to buy beforehand so had a fitful night keeping our non-sleeping eye on our large rucksacks and sleeping on our small ones. To help us stay awake our neighbour ensured his mobile phone would ring at least a hundred times throughout the night with an especially irritating Bollywood melody. He must have guessed our predicament.
This city is probably one of the most relaxing places I've been to in India (I had been before for a few months, not just to Delhi). Perfection would probably mean putting huge unfixable holes in the tyres of Jaisalmer's million or so motorbikes so they couldn't swerve in and out of people on the narrow streets constantly beeping their horns, but I'm probably naive to think that a flat tyre would stop these guys anyway. The cows however seem oblivious to all this; they seem to be quite happy lying in the middle of the road eating the detritus left on the ground. It's amazing really; cardboard, paper, dirty rags go in; milk comes out. And the Lassies do taste good (drink, not Scottish women).
We were lucky enough to be here during the Holi festival; celebrating the start of spring and killing daemons or something like that. It is one of the few times you can walk the streets with no traffic and the only price you pay is being covered from head to tow with a large selection of coloured powers. Rajasthan is always described by the guidebooks as a colourful place but this is ridiculous. Today, the end of lunar such and such (1st March 2010 for the rest of us), the people turn it up a notch by saturating the town and everyone in it all the primary colours and everything in between including luminous yellow and radioactive green. We knew we'd get a pasting when we went out and even bought our own bags of 'throwing powder' so we could get our own back. There was a lot of smearing powder on the face and body too, which I was previously warned about the day before. 'You will have to protect your wife from the crazy guys on bang [ganga, weed, etc] who will run up and down molesting women'. And he wasn't wrong. I guess that's what happens when all the (undoubtedly) sexually repressed teenagers in a small town have an excuse to touch the opposite sex. It's a lot clearer now why most Indian teenage girls were more or less separate from these guys and did their own thing in their own groups. Now the day is over and we are trying to wash the stuff off we realise that this may be some kind of dye. Mmm, we were warned about that too so can't complain really.
As for attractions; the large sandcastle fort was large, impressive and busy; the museum (at the old Maharaja's Palace) interesting and informative; the Desert tour (without camel) mediocre (we seem to be keeping a quota of one crap desert tour per week); the Jain temples all around extremely ornate and the priests within sufficiently irritating with the hard sell - or hard 'give us a donation'. On the last point I should say that there is already an entrance fee to the temples, plus a fee if you want to take pictures, plus a fee if you want to walk round with your eyes open, plus there's a big sign saying 'Don't give the priests any money'. I did try and point this out but I don't speak Hindi and they don't speak English, which makes me wonder who put the signs there in the first place; the Indian tourist board perhaps? I'm sure business will boom when they realise and remove the signs. Anyway, rant over.
As with Delhi, we had an array of amazing curries with only a light sprinkling of bacteria in a couple as my gut will attest.
It really feels as if we’ve left the UK now. We’re staying in a typical backpackers’ hostel that serves banana pancakes on the roof and offers mediocre tours; we spend our days walking in the blistering heat and retiring for cheap but delicious curry in the evening. We have successfully evaded the ubiquitous ‘camel safari’ and have not been seduced into buying travellers’ clothing - although perhaps after a few more weeks we will give into that one. We’re still washing on a daily basis so perhaps some would say we’re not entering into the full spirit of things. What the hell, chaque’un a son gout, non?
Jaisalmer is a fascinating city 19 hours west of Delhi as the train flies. And to be honest, it didn’t really fly, more hobble. We were in a ‘3AC’ carriage, which is nowhere near as grand as it sounds. The ‘3’ stands for three bunks high. Who knows what the ‘AC’ might stand for as there was certainly no ‘AC’ that I noticed. However, the 19 hours passed fairly painlessly and we eventually found ourselves on a hot, dusty, yet busy station at Jaisalmer. It turned out the unthinkable had happened - our train was a full hour early, confusing locals and visitors alike.
Think Carcassone, think Jerusalem or any other walled, fortified town and then add a great big desert, that’s Jaisalmer. Built in the 12th century, this place is simply stunning. 99 sandstone bastions protecting a town of winding lanes barely big enough for the inhabitants let alone the cows and motorbikes that clamour for their space. Inside the fortress is the Maharaja’s palace, now a fascinating museum and a complex of Jain temples where intricate carvings in the same sandstone offer tourists another opportunity to part with their rupees as devout monks spend their day chasing foreigners for baksheesh. God’s will and all that, or should it be Gods’ will?
Wandering through the streets of the fortress and the new city I have been particularly struck by another dichotomy of religion and reality: cows are holy yet left to forage through rubbish for sustenance. People may put out scraps in the evening but most of the cows, although huge, are unhealthy and seem to be subsisting on cardboard boxes and scraps of cloth.
What appears particularly absent from Jaisalmer is the desperate, highly visible, poverty of India. Most people appear healthy and happy. I got a brief glimpse of reality, though, as we drove through a small area on the outskirts of town with homes resembling African huts. Villages out in the desert also offered the poverty we were expecting. Contrast this with the hotel owner we met today who pulled out his new i-phone to demonstrate the speed of his hotel’s wi-fi.
Throughout our days in Jaisalmer, excitement was brewing. Vendors were doing a brisk trade in coloured powders and plastic water pistols and children were getting more and more high pitched - imagine Christmas excited but outside, in 33 degree heat. Holi (pronounced ‘holy’) was almost here. Day 1 meant singing in the street outside our hotel as people collected funds for ‘the party’. By Day 2 even the tourists were being let in on the secret of Holi although I think C and I learned more than most thanks to an extremely kind (big mouthed?) hotelier. He mentioned to me that there was a big party down at the lake in the evening. So after supper we took a stroll lake-wards to see what was up. Unwittingly we found ourselves in a crowd streaming through a small gate. The party was, in fact, four separate parties for different strata of society and, naturally, we’d been corralled into the ‘upper class’ party. Amazingly, at a party for thousands of people where we thought we knew no one, we bumped into the guy who’d told me about the party. He was a little shocked to see us but took us under his wing, offering us sweets to try and explaining what was going on. We excused ourselves fairly quickly, feeling that we shouldn’t intrude on something that was so clearly not for tourists. Luckily we’d left our cameras behind as I suspect the temptation would have been too great.
Day 3 involved nothing more than digging up the roads at select intervals and making fire for people to walk around. Day 4, however, was the most fun of all. Between 9am and 2pm the entire town, resident and visitor alike, was out on the street greeting others with a ‘Happy Holi’, a daubing of coloured powder and a big hug. I suspect the hugging may have been an excuse for touching women but who am I to question the motives behind religious requirements? Within minutes of leaving the hotel we were quite literally covered, from head to toe, in coloured powders - as was everyone else. The atmosphere was incredible as everyone came together to enjoy the coming of spring (doesn’t everyone celebrate spring this way?). And I, for one, have never been groped so many times before lunch in one day!
I assume other towns were also celebrating today but I’m glad we were here, in Jaisalmer, this ancient city with a population that lives regardless of the thousands of tourists wandering in and out of their streets, taking intrusive photos and getting in the way.
Delhi 23-25/02/2010
Where to begin? Obviously, a Shantaram experience was what I’d whimsically hoped for. Sadly, a warm welcome into India and into Indian culture was not to be had. Instead there was the creepy hotel guy who conspiratorially informed us that he was giving us a shit room for one night but it’d be ok on night two. He was a bit surprised when we then complained about the damp box of a room right next to reception we were given. The second room was bigger and not so damp but the cleaner had clearly only just finished his last cigarette in there when we moved in. We elicited a free breakfast in compensation for still being in a crap room as well as a promise to move us first thing in the morning. It was claimed that we were the first people to ever, in the history of the hotel, complain. We didn’t bother directing him to the website of fairly mixed reviews! Room number three was bigger but neither of us managed much sleep on either night thanks to the porters’ lack of understanding about hotels primarily being for sleeping. Despite C asking a number of times, the noise was most certainly not kept down.
Creepy hotel guy was weirdly incapable of directing us to anywhere or showing us where the hotel was on a map - luckily whoever designed the business-card, was not. The Delhi metro was a lifesaver - easy to use, quick and clean. The only issue came when C thought he’d been pick-pocketed within minutes of being on the platform. A very miserable few minutes ensued until he realised he’d moved all the money to another pocket and then forgotten! Lucky boy.
First stop was a meeting for me with a guy from an NGO with whom I’d been corresponding. We sat for 2.5 hrs discussing issues facing street-living/working children in India. Fascinating guy and really interesting work. Meeting him has certainly made a lot of things about India much clearer. While the problems are clearly severe, civil society is a lot more developed than I’m used to in Africa, which means a seemingly greater level of understanding and compassion from local government and community structures - invaluable when working with vulnerable children.
We decided to walk from the hotel to the station - a mere one hour through screaming traffic, road-works, millions of people and anything else you care to imagine. However, the ease with which we purchased rail tickets more than made up for the stress of the walk. The highlight was seeing an extremely tall goddess statue with wooden scaffolding all around - people we making all sorts of interesting genuflection type movements to this plastic goddess. Perhaps an indictment of modern India?
Thankfully the train had no space on the day we wanted to leave Delhi so we were forced to leave a day early! For some unknown reason we allowed a hotel we were ditching to book us a cab - eventually a small, smelly, man with a small, smelly car, claimed to be our cab. Despite reason telling us not to go with him we did. It was fine (if smelly).
With eight hours until the train to Jaisalmer we decided to walk from the station to the Red Fort - yup, as dull as everyone said it was. However, the Jama Masjid mosque was not. After a walk through a long bazaar we arrived at this majestic building. Rather than leave our shoes outside we carried them in with us, which only caused trouble with the mini man guarding the entrance to the minarets tower - like a little troll in Rumpelstiltskin. He was convinced that our shoes would de-holy-fy the minaret (true, we had walked in de-holy-fy-ing water only minutes before). Clearly the 20 rupees we gave him to guard them re-sanctified the area.
After a great lunch in a well-recommended restaurant we wandered back to the station to collect our bags and enjoy the relative luxury and peace of the first class waiting room - sometimes I do love a bit of western arrogance (we certainly weren’t travelling first class).
Interestingly, despite all the poverty - evident in human and infrastructural form - after the first night I wasn’t particularly overwhelmed. Work in Africa prepared me well for slums and human poverty and work in the fSU prepared me well for the chaotic and collapsing infrastructure. Of course, seeing people forced to live in such appalling circumstances breaks my heart, but it also fascinates me to see whole communities living on the streets. I just want to meet them and understand their lives. Whole rivers of electric cables on the streets, high or low, have a strange beauty to them. We just kept asking ourselves, ‘but how could one ‘fix’ Delhi?’ The city’s decay is so severe, the chaos so all encompassing, that there seems little option but to keep on going, keep on half-heartedly fixing and keep on hoping nothing goes seriously wrong. Not a glowing reference for India’s capital.
I couldn’t say I enjoyed Delhi, per se, but I did find it enthralling and truly an education.
