Back to India and Heading North

We flew from Kathmandu back to Delhi, and had nine hours to kill before our 10pm north-bound train. We'd planned to visit the Red Fort, as it was closed the entire month of August and was the only Delhi landmark we hadn't been able to visit. After maneuvering our way through the streets of Old Delhi, we arrived at the fort's gate. "Closed Mondays" typical Steph and Ric luck. Quickly, we established a plan B; go and hang out in the gardens at Connaught Place. A nippy rickshaw ride later we arrived at the gardens. "Closed Mondays". Giving up, we spent the remainder of the day sipping iced tea in Costa Coffee.

The next morning we arrived in Haridwar, 350km north of Delhi. The city is a place of holy pilgrimage for Indians and once every 12 years the Kumbh Mela festival is held there, attracting in excess of 40 million pilgrims! 

Haridwar is located on the River Ganges, where the flat plains meet the foothills of the Himalayas. Interestingly, the rivers has been dammed off to create a man-made canal that can be kept at a certain level, saving the city from the flooding that occurs every year in monsoon season. Along a wide, paved river-front path are bathing ghats where pilgrims take their holy dip in the Mother Ganga. It occurred to me that elsewhere in the world, the path would be lined with expensive restaurants and high-end cafes. In Haridwar, however, it is home to hundreds of homeless people who live tents, bath in the Ganga and generally try to survive. I thought it nice that the people living at the bottom of India's vast shit heap could have such a pleasant space to live, although I would have liked a coffee in a nice cafe at the time!

We where walking around Haridwar with no idea about what sights were there for us to see, when we spotted a cablecar, and decided to go for a ride. At the ticket office there were numerous different tickets with different names and different prices and Ric, impulsively, bought the most expensive one, much to my dismay. I later regretted my criticism as the ticket we'd bought included two round trip cablecar rides, a return bus trip, and entrance to two temples, making it £5 well spent. 

Me at the top of cablecar one, post blessing.

The temples we visited were not very attractive, but the views over Haridwar were nice and I was fascinated by the Indians there making "offerings" to the Gods. Money, flowers and food are offered at every shrine, statue, picture and holy man in sight. The first holy man I came across blessed me, marking my forehead with the iconic red ash, and then refused to release my shoulder from his grip until I coughed up some money! After that I hurried through the temple telling everyone I was "just here for the view". This wasn't a tourist scam though, the Indian people there were throwing around notes like there was no tomorrow, and it occurred to me that for all it's thousands of Gods, Hinduism is no different from Christianity or any other religion on this Earth; it's all about money.

View looking back at Haridwar from the second temple. 

In the evening we attended the pooja (prayer) ceremony on the banks of the holy river. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of people there; sitting on the steps, singing, splashing out on more offerings. We'd also seen a pooja in Varanasi, but due to major flooding it had been a cramped, mini-pooja, Haridwar on the other hand, was the real deal. Suckers we are, we let a priest carry out a prayer ceremony for us, during which we offered flowers and candles to the river while the man in a white dress mumbled quickly in Hindi. Of course, once he was done he asked us for a donation to the Mother Ganga, only 500 rupees he said (£5!). I gave him 50 rupees, which he pocketed grumpily. 

People gather ready for pooja, which starts at sunset.

Pooja in full swing, orange man (center) is a holy priest fellow.

After just one night in Haridwar we caught the local bus 25km up the road to Rishikesh, land of yoga snobs, silent Babas and Anna Skinner!

Wonder of the World, Floods, and a Familiar Face

The North facade from across the river.

The Taj Mahal was great. I had low expectations (overrated, looks better in the pictures, just another building…) so I was delighted to find myself impressed. We got up at 5am to get there as soon as it opened at 6 and it was well worth it; less crowded, cooler weather, rising sun, and we even got a few photos without any people in. It’s a majestic building and the large gardens and waterways around it are peaceful, despite the crowds of tourists doing the “pinching the top of the Taj” pose (which Ric insisted we do even though I said it was tacky).

Woop look at me, I'm at the Taj Mahal!

To be honest we spent a lot of time in Agra just sitting under trees or in our room under the fan (air-con not in the budget). It was so, so hot, we could barely walk anywhere without collapsing. Right across from our hotel was the ‘Taj Nature Walk’, a kind of park/nature reserve with views of the Taj Mahal. We sat there for a long time under a pagoda, chatting to any other sweaty tourists that came by. Agra is a really green city, a nice change from the polluted madness elsewhere. Another really nice place we sat for an afternoon was directly across the river from the Taj Mahal, known as ‘Sunset Point’. It’s a park that you’re supposed to pay to go into to get the perfect view of the north facing side of the Taj, but seemingly most tourists just walk down to side of the park to get to the river for free. We left before sunset, as it got busy and we were facing north, not west, (not sure why it’s called Sunset Point really).

From Agra we took a night train to Varanasi. Finally a train! It was nice to get into “proper” travelling at last, after our extravagant start to the trip with the chauffeured car and the crazy driver. I was pretty taken aback by the train, it was crowded with people, with extremely narrow walkways, and bodies sleeping at eye level. Even though it was as I’d expected, the sheer number of people boarding at Agra station was mayhem. Eventually we settled in our berths and were rocked to and fro for a mere 16 hours before arriving in Varanasi.

The River Ganges, over twice its normal width, taken from a park near Shivala ghat, where Ric played cricket in the rain with some local kids. 

Varanasi is India’s holiest city, a place of pilgrimage for millions, and the place to come and get cleansed in the holy River Ganges, or Ganga. I have two things to say about the Ganga: firstly, it’s probably the most infectious, dirty, unhygienic body of water on Earth. It is a sewer, a bathing area and a crematorium. Indians come to Varanasi to die so that they can be cremated at the edge of the river, so for starters there are human remains and ashes in there. What disturbs me more is that certain people are not allowed to be cremated, including people with leprosy and small pox, instead they are tied to rocks and dropped in… and people bathe in this water!! The second thing is that there is a whole lot of water right now due to the monsoon, in fact the river has burst its banks and risen over 30m, flooding homes, temples and farmland.

Life in Varanasi revolves around the ghats, the steps that lead down to the Ganga. The ghats are usually alive with people washing, fishing, worshipping, and generally hanging out, but given the current flooding there are no more ghats. A lot of tourists we’ve met have been seriously disappointed about the flood, one girl even booked a flight out of Varanasi the day after she arrived! Ric and I have had a great time though, not least of all because we met up with our friend Anna, the only person who knew both of us before we knew each other!

Flooded ghats: the yellowy-green bush is in fact a fully grown tree, and the reddish pointed roof to the right is a temple!

 Me and Ric met in Peru, volunteering in Arequipa and living in the same house, and Anna was the volunteer coordinator who basically coordinated us both being there at the same time, thanks Anna! With a lot of luck and a little bit of organisation the three of us were reunited in Varanasi and it’s been awesome.

Happy to be reunited with Anna. The girl on the left was selling prayer candles, she was one tough business woman.

We took a tuc-tuc tour of the temples here, which was not in the least bit impressive but we did enjoy it. In the monkey temple Ric pointed out to us the cute baby monkey that had grabbed onto his toe, only for its mother to come over bearing her teeth, snarling, and give Ric a curt slap around the back of the legs. In the evenings pooja (prayer) is performed all along the ghats. We watched a pooja on a flooded ghat, I’m told it was a lot less elaborate than usual because of the restricted space but it was still rather fascinating. To the constant ringing of a bell the Brahmin (Hindu holy man) waved a number of things around in a circle (burning silver snake heads, peacock feathers, smoking coals, etc.) People chanted, sang and threw flowers into the river as an offering to the mother Ganga. It was quite a spectacle to watch, although the bell drove me pretty crazy, pretty quickly. The typical thing to do in Varanasi is to take a sun rise boat ride along the river as the ghats come to life, unfortunately we didn’t get a sunrise thanks to the monsoon, and we didn’t get much of a boat ride due to the dangerously strong currents. Also: we visited the place where Buddha gave his first sermon, we saw Thai-style, Chinese-style, Sri Lanka-style and Japanese-style Buddhist temples, we met plenty of Israelis, tried on sarees (not Ric), got hassled by hundreds of Indians, waded through the old town, got turned away from a temple for being white, did some light shopping and ran up an impressive food bill in the guest house restaurant.

The Brahmin at pooja.

Ric getting seriously hassled by some ladies at the Buddha place.

 Now our awesome threesome are headed to Lucknow!

Favourite people of Varanasi:

The man who bitch-slapped a cow and Lala the fantastic guest house manager who did everything for us, including trying to marry off Anna into an arranged marriage.

Least Favourite People of Varanasi:

The woman with the cute baby who convinced me to buy her baby milk and then went on to show me the entire shopping list she expected me to shell out for, and the cow that kissed me.