Kolkata-Delhi... Not enough and too much! (part 1)
Trip Start
Mar 02, 2008
1
6
Trip End
Jun 07, 2008
Kolkata (Calcutta),
India
Friday, March 7, 2008
so anyway, here we are. sitting in an internet cafe in downtown (or uptown, who the hell knows) agra - home of the famous taj mahal. famous why? largely because it's so beautiful, both from an asthetic point of view and architecturally as well. as hard as i tried, all my photos that i took of the place, yesterday afternoon, and this morning at sunrise, just look like picture postcards
Eve of Holi Festival, on the shores of the Ganges
. it would be hard to convince you that we are truly here, so myself and annie made sure we got shots of each other stood in front of it. not like some people who felt the need to pretend that they were either holding it in their fingers, leaning up against it, or some other ridiculous pose which was based on optical illusion - people, trust me on this... you look like idiots!it has been a rollercoaster ride through india, and one which has caused me to think long and hard about how i feel being here. having only arrived 4-5 days ago, it is difficult and probably unfair to make concrete statements about the place. this would mean writing rash generalisations, and painting an entire country with the paintbrush of just a few moments of experience. but (isn't there always a 'but'..?), i will give you my impressions, and my thoughts.
kolkata (calcutta to the old school lot)
full of crows. everywhere! never seen so many of the things. more crows than sit in the trees around farmer giles' fields in autumn. hmm, as i started with crows, i may as well do the whole animal kingdom. cows are sacred here - if i got my facts right, the hindu god shiva appeared as a cow once and this is the reason for their status
Looking down on the Ganges at Varanasi
. this means that they can do pretty much what they wish, which usually entails sitting in the middle of the road flicking their tail as the swarms of tuk-tuks, motorbikes, rickshaws, pedestrians, cyclists and oxcarts jostle their way past. dogs are as much of a part of life here as they are in thailand. too much a part of life as i found out watching an english speaking indian news programme - in srinigar (north india) there is one dog for every six people. this means the city contains two million dogs. not for long... the municipal authority has decided to cull them through the use of poison. dog lover that i am, you can imagine the effect this has had on me!arriving in kolkata didn't seem real. the first few days in fact has been largely a sleepless dream in which we have staggered from one tourist sight to another, flung overselves wearily into hotel rooms (or train carriages), or slumped over cafe tables before gulping down some delicious indian food. in kolkata we scoffed muttar paneer, naan breads, vegetable curry and drank lassi. it's great to look at a menu and see the majority of food on offer is vegetarian. nepal will be the same, although i have worries about china (especially if we decide to divert northwards into the steppes).
we walked everywhere in kolkata, ambled more to the point
Sadu gathering on one of the ghats
. no real intentions of visiting anything in particular, although the one place annie wanted to see - mother therasa's missions of charity - eluded our efforts. it's the old thing of knowing it's there, probably walking past it half a dozen times, but never actually finding the place! no worries, we had enough to look at and drink in.varanasi
the holiest city on india. a hindu mecca, and also one of the four holiest places in the buddhist faith as well. after a fitful sleep in our 3AC sleeper train carriage, we were guided to a tuk-tuk driver, and eventual guide, called shiva. coincidence that his name was the same as the god which this city reveres more than any other..? not sure, but i heard others call him the same, so maybe the god inspired his parents. he took us to a guesthouse (commission-paid i'm sure) and after showering and resting, we engaged him to drive us to some of the sights of varanasi - the university, whose grounds also housed the museum, and the only shiva temple in india; a monkey temple, where the armed guards joked about my t-shirt (a target printed on the front, and 'shoot me please' written on the back... i confirmed that it did indeed say what they thought, then added, '...but don't okay' just to be sure. they laughed a lot, and i laughed too, not too nervously); a third temple was next, although we didn't go inside as i got hacked off with the police at the front who were manhandling my camera like it was a toy. i grabbed it back off them and walked off. done a bit of walking off recently as people as hacked me off, but that's india i guess.
the ghats by the river ganges at varanasi go on for miles. ghats, quays in english, run are massive sets of steps leading from the bank down the the river. used to bring in goods and produce historically, they now serve as laundrettes, bathrooms, and stages for boat trips. the nearest ghat to where we stayed stood next to the cremation site for hindus. this is right next to the river and serves all hindus who can afford to be cremated here. the cost is 2,000 rupees and involves a funeral pyre made from wood - 150 cremations are performed every day. if you don't have the money, or are of another religion, you can be cremated in the electric ovens that stand a little further up the bank. alos, there are five categories of people who cannot be burned: holy men; children under ten years old; pregnant women; lepers; and those killed by cobra bite. these people are bound in a shroud and cast into the river ganges. this is to continue the cycle of life - fish eat the bodies, the fish are caught, people eat the fish, the people die from something which means the are cremated... (i hope that's right... pretty sure it's the essence of what we were told).
in the evening we took a boat trip down the ganges to see some of the activities which marked the beginning of the big shiva festival of the year. we had no eye deer this was taking place until we arrived, or we made have planned to stay longer. but by the end of an hour sitting in the boat, we'd been bitten to death by mossies and hounded by little flies, so enough was enough.
the ghats, like everywhere else you go here, are littered with hawkers and pedlars selling boat trips, postcards, beads, hashish and any amount of rubbish for a few rupees. these people are the ones that have blemished my time here. these, the tuk-tuk drivers, rickshaw drivers, and everyone who pretends to be nice and then demands money, or just overcharges you for something. this place is riddled with greed. i can understand beggars who do it from necessity, and it's obvious who is a beggar and who is a scammer, but of all the people we've talked to and engaged with, i can truly only think of around five who have had open hearts and been pleasant for the sake of it. maybe it's because we're on the tourist trail. as much as i hate tourists, i have no option but to call myself one here - seven days in india, in four different cities, leaves me no other choice. but is it really in the best interest of the individuals involved, and the wider communities, to hassle and rip off everyone they think can be taken for a ride. it has made me think twice about coming back. if i do, it will be into the country as my distaste for cities has been cemented by my time here.
i don't want to harp on about it, so will leave it there. it doesn't mean i'm having anything other than an interesting and fun time here, it just means it could be a lot better. that will only happen if i return and spend longer here i think. it's no different to thailand or any other country when you go to tourist hotspots, but it is more intense - like everything in india.
the thing that has hacked me off more than anything else is my bank. i can't use any atm at the moment, and after emailing them through my online account, can't even access that any more. this is after sending, and receiving a reply from customer services, an email stating my travels plans. frustrating, and if it wasn't for the fact that i am borrowing off annie, ultimately disasterous.
i don't want to finish my entry off like that so will tell you a bit more about what has happened...
we managed to get it slightly wrong on our first train - kolkata to varanasi. our ticket said 'coach B1, seats 61 and 64'. so we duly found coach B1, lumped our stuff on the relevant seats and sat down for a game of travel scrabble. this interested the other passangers, and the one opposite annie was staring at the board with an intent beyond belief. three-quarters of the way through the match (i was getting royally shafted by annie for the first time ever), our intent companion announced he wanted to sleep so could annie move her things... hmmm, but that's her bunk we said. oh no it isn't, he relpied. after the ritual two minutes of pantomime too'ing and fro'ing, we halued out all our respective tickets and found out this was coach B2, not B1. shame-faced we withdrew to the correct carriage, with commisserations from the others that we had unfortunately ruined our game with the error - i was pleased as punch at the interruption for obvious reasons, but that scallywag, annie, refused to call it a day as the game was magnetised and nothing was lost apart from time and a little pride. bugger.
oh, the funniest thing of all! we had booked a sleeper train from varanasi to agra. the guy we went through couldn't get us 2AC or 3AC bunks, so we had to go for sleeper class. not a huge amount of difference but i had read that you can expect anyone and everyone to join your bunk to find a bit of space. we got to the station with fifteen minutes to spare, grabbed some water and snacks from a concession stand and looked at our carriage. my heart sank as i saw it was brimming with people. it was the epitamy of of what you have in your minds' eye about an indian train - heaving full, with people hanging out of windows. when we got inside, it was even worse... two white backpackers, with full rucksacks and secondary bags, going half the length of the carriage down a narrow passage.. which is littered with bags, sacks, people, bare feet dangling off the overhead bunks in your face... and finally arriving at our bunk area to find... yup, this is the train to bihar, not agra. bugger. again.
so, with looks ranging from amusement to contempt, we thrust, barged, begged, cajoled and pleaded our way off the train again, and went as fast as our packs would allow to the bridge across the other seven platforms. with five minutes to spare before our journey was due to begin. walking and asking at the same time we found it - the final platform of course. but as most clouds have silver linings, as we descended the steps of the bridge, i caould see that the train was as bereft of people here as it was full on the bihar train. luxury. apart from the 3am talkers, and the 5am snorers and farters, the journey to agra finished up being quite pleasant and easy.
when i get to a point where i can upload my photos, i'll let you know. until then, namaste. it's not really namaste here, as they speak bengali, but i don't know the translation in that language.
for those of you anxiously awaiting my return - indeed counting the minutes and hours (i know it's practically all of you!), we should be booking our flights back very soon. maybe before we leave india. it's almost certainly end of may, early june. i shall keep you informed.
love you all!
