10.04: INDIA: Varanasi (day 1: Nightmare HO-tel)

  Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India
Sunday, October 5, 2008

Oct 4, 2008: Varanasi

Dear Mom & Dad,

Airport pickup2

Boarding India Airlines after savoring my last memories of Nepal, I prepped myself for India again...convinced that this second time around I would make it better. It was a quick 1 hour flight. When i got off the plane, the driver for my hotel was surprisingly there to greet me holding a white piece of paper with my name scribbled on it. I was grateful for his timeliness as my Team M&D had  bailed on me before I could collect my bags! Again, I was THE SINGLE FEMALE TRAVELER.... still feeling virginal, alone and very very vulnerable. Bags in tow,  I walked over to my driver's depressingly dilapidated van and well... it didn't start. For an hour, the driver and his driver buddies entertained me (not purposely, mind you...) by attempting to jump start his van in "Typical Indian" fashion . ("How many Indians it take start to a car?"...FOUR! One to steer the car and three to push it! Which ironically is literally the number of guys it took to wash the windows at my first hotel in Delhi, the Godwin Grand Hotel... FOUR- one to wash the window... and three to watch him!) Anyways, try with all their might to push it, the van never started and the hotel had to send another car for me.  Tick-tock...



Cricket is the popular national sport in India just as Basketball or Baseball is to the U.S. When my driver and his friends left the parking lot to take a break, the airport attendants entered and struck up their own game of cricket!  I have never seen a mundane group of airport workers transform so immediately into little boys- teasing each other as if they were on school recess!  The love for cricket in this country is immense!

V- Honk

 My new driver weaved and dodged traffic. Whether traffic is light, heavy or a messy clutter of randomness, it has to be said that the agility of drivers in India can be phenomenal (& dare i say, possibly even better than NYC cabbies- i've miraculously not gotten carsick once!) The drivers can be literally "inches" away from a collision with a rickshaw, taxi, cow or pedestrian and just when you think they WILL...they don't. A test of their skill is that there doesn't seem to be any real rule to driving in India but one-- HONK!  On the tail of every pickup or cargo truck in India you will see a large sign, decoratively painted sign that begs one courtesy "Please Honk!"; hence the incessant noise pollution of high pitched car honking...  Bikes, rickshaws, autorickshaws, tractors, pedestrians, cows and camels are all game to the road ... a honk is essential to letting people know to GET OUT OF THE WAY cause you're comin' through!

Street Light Guy

Varanasi is very congested, crowded, noisy... and polluted. I have a slight cold and this undoubtedly won't help it... BUT the festivals, the Ganges and the earnest temple rituals had me looking forward to this visit. In my romantic mind, Varanasi is one long prayer ritual... an homage to Shiva with worshippers bathing and OM-ing while pretty votive candles float down the Ganges.   Durga Puja  is celebrated here, as it is in Nepal and it has the entire city ELECTRIC! Festival lights are being hung by a man on a tall, wheeled ladder and a boy below pushing it through the streets. In the air, kites are flying with kids attached to them via kite strings. As I explained in an earlier entry, it is not only kite flying but a friendly festival competition to cut your neighbors' kite's strings!


I'm dropped off in the streets.  My car can go no further as there's no vehicle entry into the neighborhood sector which has access to the Ganges. So I am met by a hotel guide who carries my bag and leads me on a 15 minute walking-sweat tour through the crazy and winding souk-like streets, cow manure, flies, noise,  complex maze of dark homes and mysterious grungy dwellings until we FINALLY reach the Ganapati Guest House!  I check into my new padlocked double occupancy room with a "Ganges view" (shared) balcony and frankly, ...i'm inches close to calling in my hotel points at the Hyatt or Sheraton. It goes without saying, the room is a bit of a dive! Like a wooden air-trapped stable situated above the river, it's "neat" but gauging my dirty-looking sheets, it doesn't feel clean. It  feels aged and worn. No windows but one ceiling fan circulating... HEAT!  It's shitty humid (being above the Ganges river doesn't help), I have NO one to whine to and I am literally drowning in my own sweat but this isn't the worst part...

    

I have 2 resident geckos the size of 5 inches long and 2 inches wide on the wall above my bed & I'm afraid they're going to eat me alive while I sleep! Being from Hawaii, geckos "come" with the house like fixtures.  BUT these "VARANASI GECKOS" are  GIGANTIC FAT,  lethal-looking and very UN-innocent... UN-Hawaii-like! (I predict, a Varanasi gecko could swallow a Hawaii gecko whole in one gulp!) And if worse can't get WORSE-R, I discover the flourescent lights in my room attracts huge flying ants, termites and random bugs... in large quantities. The word i'm reaching for is SWARM!!!

If the geckos weren't going to do me in, then the swarm of flying bugs inevitably would.



I can't stand it. At  12A, the last hotel light went out in my hotel. All is dark-  i'm outside my room smoking cigs to kill time because i'm afraid to go back into my room. I seriously contemplate bringing out my sleeping bag out and sleeping on the outside tables!  Eventually, I have to go back in and get some sleep for my early rise boat cruise on the Ganges. I will myself back into my sauna coffin.  I am lying on dirty-looking sheets, wrapped tight in my silk liner like a mummy, sweating profusely and paranoid to reveal ANY skin cause the moisture on it might tempt the bugs (i even attempt pulling the liner over my face)! My hair is wrapped in my mosquito-sprayed bandana and every little "itch" grows bed bugs in my mind.  Right now i feel like my room is worse than Team M&D's Nepal trekking tour where they had to endure leeches & my only consolation is that at least i've not paid nearly as much as they have for this experience...

I'm a bit overwhelmed with my situation. I question whether I've made the right choice with coming to Varanasi.

Some travelers i've met this evening  said that it would take a couple of days for me to adjust to Varanasi and get the hang of it. They say the city is really FUN and Humorous. Right now it is not fun and I I hardly find it humorous! The negative mantras sound in my head as to how I will deal with this in the morning...

I kinda wondered what the difference was between a "Guest House" vs. "Hotel" ...this could probably be the quintessentially worst definition.

Sleeping with one eye open,
Chris