ToewsTravels – Page 36 – every country or bust!

kolkata, and it can’t be normal to have had diarrhea for this long

kolkata! its the new indian name for calcutta. the city of poverty. its true, there are a lot of desperately poor people here. it doesn’t help that every year during the monsoon the entire city has to swim through five feet of water. i’ve been doing things like being mauled after giving homeless kids under overpasses one rupee coins. and getting attacked by a deranged crow that attacked me from behind, drawing blood. so if i come down with some rabies-like bird flu in the near future y’all know where it came from. and trying to avoid being suckered in to buying powered milk for “needy” mother’s “starving” babies – they sell it back to the shopowners as soon as we leave. as if i’m the first person to wrestle with the issue – it is really tough to know how to deal with extreme poverty as a mere passer-through without just perpetuating it by breeding dependence.

kolkata surprised us, though. although there are way too many millions of the world’s bottom billion here, there are also millions living well above the poverty line. kolkata is the cultural capital of india. there are more well-versed english speakers, expensive coffee and confectionary shops, and well-stocked bookstores here than anywhere else in india. yes, you read that right!

we (devin and i) are staying at the couple-hundred-years old calcutta ywca – because our friends are staying there and also because they have an atrium with a dirt tennis court. we’ve had some pretty intense games. we’ve also been eating some amazing food. if north indian food is savory and spicy (actually most of the time its pretty bland), then bengali food is sweet and tangyyyy. i have embraced eating with the right hand (that is – exclusively the hand). i’m going to miss that part about india. i won’t miss the stuff necessity sometimes forces you to do here with your left hand.

yesterday we went to mother teresa’s house and grave. there are now thousands of nuns following in her footsteps all around the world. devin is going to volunteer at the missionaries of charity home for the dying – really wish i could too but unfortunately i leave tomorrow so there isn’t enough time. did some soul searching while reading about her life in a little museum – while right above us a bunch of nuns were making vows committing the rest of their lives to the service of the poor.

darjeeling: cold, tea at every turn, running through clouds, and political martyrdom

darjeeling! the place has it going on. it might be the most beautiful locale i have ever seen. perched along the crest of a hill just in front of the himalayas, it reminds me of a swiss town high in the alps, except with a lot more tibetan and bhutanese people, poverty, $7 hotel rooms, and monastaries. although it still has its fair share of cathedrals too. the best tea in the world is grown here, and you can sip it while sitting in wicker chairs at colonial establishments that have been here since the colonial british era. even though its the warmest time of the year here, it always stays below room temperature. the town is cloaked in clouds – apparently if they were to disappear it is possible to view mt. everest from just down the road, but it doesn’t look like the clouds are going anywhere soon. we took a jeep up here, but its possible to take an eight hour toy train ride up from the sweltering lowlands that chugs (with steam) along a tiny narrow gauge train track. we’ve been eating meals with but three of devin’s unlimited supply of female friends. they happened to be in darjeeling and later kolkata at the same time as us.

although darjeeling is technically in the indian state of west bengal, on the street it is part of independent gorkhaland. there is an intense independence movement that basically controls everything, including whether businesses are allowed to be open, which they frequently aren’t because of political strikes. proposed gorkhaland would occupy a strip of northern northeast india. this is one of the biggest and established movements of its kind in india, although there are numerous others as well. like almost every problem the developing world has ever known, why don’t we blame this one on the british. they created the awkwardly shaped state of west bengal that grouped a few mountain dwelling nepalis in darjeeling with tens of millions of bengalis living in kolkata. by the way, there used to be an east bengal too, but now it is bangladesh.

now here is the juicy news. on our last day in darjeeling an opposition gorkha leader was brutally hacked to death with a traditional nepali knife at a political rally just down the street from where we were staying. the front page of the local papers had a huge picture of him bleeding out on the ground. no sensitivity from the press here. so the entire town went into lockdown mode. we went to visit the girls at the house they were staying at, and we had to stay there for the rest of the day because apparently it was too dangerous to be on the streets. although later that night we wandered the streets for adrenaline’s sake and it was fine. the next day we managed to find a jeep out of town although it was tough to do because all the jeeps were parked – their owners presumably inside their houses mourning. we had purchased a train ticket, but of course we were to pick it up the day everything shut down, and we couldn’t. so when we got to the bottom of the hill (after being privy to some motion sickness from one of the guys stuffed into the back of the jeep with us) and found our way to the train station, everything was sold out for the next three days. so we ended up taking a night and the next day too “sleeper” bus to kolkata. i’ll just skip describing that journey so i can avoid reliving it.

politician death announcement, darjeeling

kathmandu!

we had a superb time in kathmandu! my good nepali friend and apartment-mate from college prajjwal grew up there, so we stayed with his family. i had no idea that his father was a gordon-conwell seminary educated pastor who started from scratch what is now a massive church there that has planted 60 other churches. he is also the country director for about every agency doing good things in nepal, as well as a university architecture professor. they have a really nice house with mosquito nets over the beds (which saved our lives), and we got amazing home-cooked american breakfasts (cooked just for us – apparently nepalis don’t eat breakfast) and nepali dinners along with lots of good discussions in the evenings. as if that wasn’t enough, prajjwal’s brother ujjwal and some of his friends took us on a tour of kathmandu on sunday. all the tourist sites were rather expensive, but they insisted on paying for everything which was very generous of them.

we went to a couple durbar squares – groups of ancient temples. also went to a museum devoted to a late king (since recently there is no longer a monarchy in nepal), and a “monkey” temple complex on top of a big hill with a great view of kathmandu. all the houses are three to eight stories tall, and very distinctively nepali. the streets are all very narrow, except for one big ring road. during the recent maoist strikes tens of thousands of maoists joined hands on the ring road – completely encircling the city so no one could get in or leave unless they were desperate enough to run people over. after our tour i got to go on a long run around prajjwal’s house! in india it had been too hot to even think about running, so i’ve really missed it.

the next day, we got to deal with some more of the stupid, arbitrary bureauracy of the indian government. they just decided to implement this rule that if you leave the country, even though you have a multiple entry visa, you can’t come back for two months. that is, unless you get a special stamp that costs a lot of money and, as we found out, takes a full day of waiting to get. and the rules go on, but this is already probably boring you. you would think that they would understand that making tourists jump through randomly placed hoops of stress will only translate into less tourists and thus money. i haven’t even finished college yet and i can figure that out. anyways, this caused us to miss our bus to the far eastern end of nepal but luckily there was another one later. we took it, arriving 17 hours later in kakhadvitta, nepal, from where we walked across a river into india and caught a bus to silguri, from where we caught a crowded jeep to take us up an infinitely switchbacking road way up into the himalayan hills to an epic best-tea-in-the-world-growing/british hill station/remarkably exotic town called darjeeling!

himalayan adventures

we are in nepal now, and it is wonderful. people actually have a concept of personal space here! and we need blankets to sleep at night – its that cool! we didn’t think we’d even be able to come, as there was a week long, rather intense maoist (d*** communists) strike that shut down the entire country. the maoists were out in the streets to beat any shop owner or taxi driver who was working. so the whole country was brought to a complete standstill. thankfully they eventually called it off, and as soon as we heard it was over we headed in.

we took the bumpiest all day ride possible from varanasi, india to the nepali border at sunauli – a ride that got started moderately late by indian standards because they were under the bus hitting something with a piece of rock for two hours. the bus had this cute horn that played a little song every time it was engaged – about every five seconds for 14 hours. the next day we took another all day bus from the border to the town of pokhara. we got to stay with an uber cool nepali guy named neeraj, who is a friend of some of my cousins. the first night we had a delicious nepali dinner with him and his parents and family members. his father is the director of the international nepali fellowship – one of the biggest christian ngos in nepal! they have some sort of rule that foreign ngos can’t do anything here, so that basically means that we had dinner with a very important man. and they gave us a room that was the nicest i have slept in for many a month.

pokhara is right on the edge of the annapurna range in the himalayas, probably one of the most famous trekking areas in the world. on the first day we headed out for a two day trek. haha, it sounds a lot more intense than it was. the first day involved a two hour hike up to a little village called dhampus at neeraj’s suggestion. it was just outside the annapurna conservation area – so we didn’t have to pay the large permit fee. the village was idyllic, and we didn’t do anything for the rest of the day, except for eat some more nepali food and watch the odd cow go by. the place was completely deserted. we got up the next morning at 5 am and there was the huge annapurna mountain range right outside our window! during the day the mountains are shrouded in clouds. we then climbed another two hours (after a while on the wrong path) to a village called pothana where the views were even better. had breakfast, and then came all the way down. that night we had a fine dining experience in pokhara. the place is rather upscale, and we had to search for a place we could afford.

the next day was a truly epic day, soiled by only one little thing. actually, when i write the word soiled, more than one thing, but i won’t get into that whole issue this time. when we got up after sleeping in, neeraj cooked us a satiating breakfast of buffalo burgers complete with fresh lettuce washed with clean water and coca cola to wash it all down. we then checked into a hotel because neeraj is heading up to dhampus himself for a romantic weekend. we then rented scooters! $3.50 for the day! on these scooters we had more fun than one knew was imaginable. we found a waterfall and a cave with a river and a temple in it. then we went out into the countryside to a river with rapids that we swam in. but then it started to rain.

as we were grabbing our stuff, my friend devin dropped my camera onto a rock, from which it bounced into the river, ruining it. i miss it already. the last parts of my trip will be pictureless. but i forgave him, because he’s my friend, and that is what friends do. even if he wasn’t my friend, as per the words of Christ. plus it was in no way his fault. even if it would have been he more than made up for it by being the best scooter partner. after that, it started raining very heavily, so we went swimming more because it was warmer in the water than out. it started hailing huge half inch hail balls. when, after at least an hour, that finally ended, we headed back, but the rain/hail started again, along with intense wind that threatened to blow our bikes off the road and was rather painful when combined with the hail on our tender, north american skin. it was exhilarating. tonight we cruised around pokhara in the dark on our scooters. the only thing better than unexpectedly hitting a speedbump on a scooter during the day is hitting one in the dark! we got lost, which added to the fun. tomorrow we’re heading for kathmandu….

veg thali and varanasi

varanasi is the holiest city in hinduism. rumor has it that if your body is cremated here and the ashes deposited in the ganges river your soul goes straight to nirvana. that means no chance of being a tapeworm in the next life! we are staying in a really great guesthouse right above the main burning ghat, where this cremation happens on big pyres of wood. there’s a funeral procession through the narrow, winding streets down to the river every few minutes. deceased people are flown here from all over india and around the world. most of the time the bodies are wrapped up elaborately, but sometimes they’re not – which is pretty gnarly when they burn the person right there in front of you. the people doing this work are the dalit, or the “untouchables” – but its a lucrative business so some of them have become the richest people in town. there’s a list of kinds of people who can’t be burned – they are tied to rocks and deposited in the ganges. of course, this being india, most of the time the rope breaks. so there’s all kinds of dead bodies floating in the river and washing up on the shores. along with all the feces from the city. and thousands of cows and buffaloes trying to escape the heat (aside – there are people who spend all day in the water scrubbing down the cows, perhaps for karma). all this in the water that everyone here seems to love to drink.

the first day we were here we fell for a scam about a hospice for dying people right beside the burning ghat. we went up to this “hospice” with a guy, and of course it wasn’t one and they demanded money. then some young guys started physically accosting me and i may have almost lost my temper again. moral of the story: stay away from the burning ghat. varanasi has dozens of ghats though (these are stairs leading down to the river). they are quite nice to walk along, and brilliantly photogenic.

behind these ghats is an intense old city with kilometer after kilometer of narrow streets filled with cows, their excrement, flies, temples and people selling stuff. on some of the ghats there are fire pujas every night, which are ceremonies performed by elaborately dressed young brahmins (the highest caste) involving lots of fire, flowers, what seems like some sort of interpretive dance and continuous noise (some of it provided by automated machines that power mallets that bang cymbals, drums and bells). after one little one of these they handed out this delicious pudding desert that may have been the only free thing i’ve ever received in india. oh, except for some partial body massages. the massagers come up to you and start massaging you without your permission – and you’ve got to literally beat them off before they have a chance to get their posse to surround you to ensure you pay for your massage. but we’d always let it go for at least a little while, because they sure did feel good!

on our second day here devin, lauren and i found a shopping mall and indulged ourselves in american style buttery corn and ice cream. then we went to a hindi bollywood movie at the cinema, in large part because the facilities were air conditioned. the film could not have been more entertaining. it was a romantic comedy that had about ten different basically unrelated storylines. wonderful. we also went on a couple boat rides on the ganges – one at night when people set afloat little floaters with flowers and a candle on it, and one very early in the morning when everyone in the city and their dirty laundry come down to the ganges for their bath and their swimming/yoga lessons.

we also went to an interesting “christian ashram.” a typical ashram is a hindu communal retreat center that focuses on attainment of spiritual enlightenment through the teachings of a guru. so i don’t really know what we were expecting from a christian ashram – i suppose some sort of fushion of hindu practice and faith in Christ. basically we were curious. well, it turns out the place was less of an ashram and more of a chill hangout with christian hippies. we had a communal meal, and then, being hippies, they passed a guitar around the circle for any of the ten people there to play. and a guy put in a good effort trying to play an indian flute thing that he is in india long term to apparently become proficient at playing. there is a soft spoken aussie guy with a head full of dreads and a rather sparse beard and his – you guessed it – musically inclined, artsy, and even more soft spoken wife and their child that have established this place to show Jesus to all the backpackers coming through seeking spiritual enlightenment. we had some interesting light-hearted discussions about such things as spiritual contextualization and different ways of interpreting the great commission; it was good. i appreciated them because you could tell that their hippiness was extraneous to their genuine desire to be missionaries without calling themselves or even necessarily considering themselves said, which in a way was rather refreshing. its all about the love man, not about the colonialism. don’t worry though mom – i’m holding off on the dreads. and by the way, happy mother’s day!!

the taj mahal!

the next stop for devin and me was agra, the home of the taj mahal. it truly is beautiful. there were thousands of indian tourists there. rather unexpectedly, almost every single one of them wanted to get their pictures taken with us. so all morning we posed in pictures. definitely the most popular i have or ever will be in my life. some don’t even ask – they just put their arm around you while their friend takes the photo. and oddly, it is not cool for an indian to smile in a picture. it was outrageous and, needless to say, got a little old after a while.

so we sat on a spatially isolated ledge under one of the minarets for a good while where only one indian tourist could gain access to talk to us at a time. later devin got violently ill, which was rather unfortunate. we then took the night/most of the next day too train to varanasi. we met a girl named lauren from new york where we were staying in agra, with whom we’ve been hanging out with ever since. varanasi is a remarkable place, but i think that will have to wait for the next post because i’m getting tired and we have to get up really early tomorrow…..

more delhi

went to the delhi airport and met my friend devin. he finally came out a little over two hours after his flight landed…. indian immigration. we hung out in delhi for two days – one day in old delhi which is a walled maze of little chaotic shopping streets. went to a very golden sikh temple where they give out free food and sing beautiful sounding sikh songs. also more hindu temples and a jain temple that had a bird “hospital” – more like a couple thousand birds being held in a cage. we tried to get into the jama masjid – the largest mosque in india – but even though it was supposed to be free they wouldn’t let us in unless we payed a lot of rupees. may have almost lost my temper. but i’ll stop writing about it now because its a bit of a sore spot.

the next day we walked around new delhi – refused about a million determined salesmen beneath the shadow of the india arch, decided not to go into the indian national museum because of the exorbitant admission fee, and saw the president’s house. a punjabi chap named mr. singh gave us a ride in his rickshaw. that’s also the prime minister’s name – what a coincidence. the smog in delhi is so bad that there is never direct sunlight – i can’t imagine how hot it would be if there were. we then hung out around connought place, the main shopping circle in delhi, before catching an evening train to agra.

delhi

“all” the trains from jaipur to delhi were “booked” – hard to believe considering i inquired two days in advance and there’s a train leaving for delhi every ten minutes, but whatever. so i took the bus. call me shallow, but my first day in delhi i was magnetically drawn to a shopping mall. i just felt this need to get away from the heat, incessant touts, beggars, bicycles trying to hit me, etc. and to eat something other than veg thali, masala dosas, and puri, as tasty as those foods are. “the great india place” is apparently the best mall in india. it was really nice – for india. don’t let the hype and the gdp growth figures fool you though – india is very much “developing,” and will be for a long, long time. a month ago i would have imagined the nicest mall in india to be a lot more amazing than it was.

after saying that, delhi has an amazing new metro system, being built in preparation for the commonwealth games that are going to be here this fall. the best thing is that you don’t have to barter for how much the trip is going to cost. although that sort of takes the fun out of it i guess. anyways, after taking it to the mall in the suburb of noida, i took it to the largest hindu temple in the world. today, i went to the international church here (after searching for quite some time to find it. rickshaw drivers sometimes say they know where something is and it turns out they have no idea). it was so nice. my first real church service in maybe over four months – it was absolutely refreshing. i love a good church. had a sit down chat with the pastor after the service, at his request. he was the man. there aren’t many churches here, to say the least.

i also went to a museum devoted to mahatma gandhi on the site where he was shot, then humayun’s tomb, perhaps india’s most impressive piece of mughal architecture. apparently there was a serious delhi-specific terrorist alert issued this weekend. so the military is absolutely everywhere right now, doing pat downs and waving their ak-47s around. they even had a little bunker set up in a shiny new metro station – completely surrounded by sandbags. i’m not going to say its overkill or they might arrest me – after all i had to give up my passport and every piece of personal data imaginable just to use this computer. personal liberties………… i digress.

tonight i head down to indira gandhi international airport to embrace my good friend devin from home, whom i will be joining as wingman on his indian adventures. he was supposed to get here last night but the toilet on the plane broke or something, so its 3:15 am tonight. yay! it will be really nice to have someone sleeping next to me every night.

gandhi smriti, the location of mahatma gandhi’s assasination, delhi

jaipur; it was inevitable, i guess

i got really, really, really sick. basically i had every symptom in the book, short of hair loss. i thought i might die. ok, i didn’t really think i would, but it was scary. maybe it was the “aquafina” water that definitely tasted like it had come straight out of the ganges, or worse yet, the yamuna river. who knows. i prayed a lot and took some miracle drug, ciprofloxacin. thankfully now i’m doing much better, although i’m still nowhere near 100%. i was staying at this place in jaipur that was 20 degrees hotter than it was outside during the day, which was already pretty darn hot.

i foolishly decided to take a rickshaw to this fort nearby in amber. it was a climb and a half to get to the fort, and at the top i was basically delusional and completely messed up. i had to lay down in this shady area with the guards for a couple hours to get myself together for the trip back. then i just stayed in my hotel room. but the fort was pretty cool. i think.

the day prior i explored the old walled city of jaipur, the capital of rajasthan and home to three million people desperate to rip off a tourist. can’t blame them, there’s not much else to do in town. its a pretty crazy place – the bazaar area is absolutely huge and there is a separate street for every imaginable thing to purchase. also any camels, cows, monkeys… wandered around all morning looking for something to eat – remarkably not a single establishment around opened until 11 am. climbed this huge free-standing minaret in the middle of the city for a great view.

i went to an amazing structure called hawa mahal, or the palace of the winds. it is a huge facade that women used to hide behind to watch the world go by back in the dark ages when they weren’t allowed to be seen in public. a truly beautiful building. a rickshaw driver promised me a great rate for an extensive tour (20 cents). i now know that any time something sounds too good to be true in india it most certainly is. i knew that before but i must not have been thinking straight. it turns out the rate was contingent upon him taking me to all these overcharging textile factories where they pressure you to buy things and he as the driver who brought the tourist there gets a kickback. i don’t have room in my backpack for textiles. so we argued, and we argued, and we argued, and i ended up walking.

pushkar and ajmer, rajasthan

got on the 22 hour “express” train from mumbai to jaipur. the air conditioned one was fully booked (tried the suggested bribing, to no avail), so it was the excessively hot cage-like sleeper class. actually it was very doable though. they put all the white people on the (very long) train together in the same six person cage – in mine were an aging austrain surfer dude/chronic traveler who came to india for the women, a he-didn’t-divulge-his-sexual-orientation-but-i’m-going-to-go-ahead-and-guess-gay irish guy, and a chubby english-as-a-second-language french canadian law student on a decidedly unspiritual pilgrimage to an obscure temple devoted to rats. also an indian family with about seven kids on the floor. naturally you become friends with the folks when you are sitting around/trying to sleep in a 50 degree steel oven. goodbyes were tough, but life goes on.

trains in india are great. there’s a chai guy who comes by every three minutes with tea for ten cents. and you can order a pretty tasty meal for 50 cents. did i mention the trip (1000 km) cost $7? garbage goes straight out the window, and if you use the toilet it plops out the bottom of the train onto the railroad tracks. i decided at the last moment to jump off at a place called ajmer. its close to a little hindu holy town called pushkar, famous for its annual camel fair (reportedly the largest in the world) and its one of a kind temple to brahma. shared a cab-thingy to pushkar with the aging austrian surfer dude/chronic traveler.

pushkar is a nice little temple town that is supposed to be centered around a beautifully serene lake. it is in rajasthan, india’s desert state. got there and discovered that the lake was completely dried up. but there were literally thousands of little temples all over the place that are painted light blue around what should have been the lake, and a big red one for brahma that apparently is the only temple of the world of its kind. the crowds in front of it were insane. all these “priests” try to shove flowers into your hands (to release onto the lake that should be there) and then demand money. i know what you’re thinking – “people in india demanding money? that can’t happen very often.” actually it happens every single moment of every day from every angle to every white person on the subcontinent, and it is really, really annoying. back to pushkar – there is no meat, alcohol, or eggs allowed in the town. yes, they have a stringent checkpoint on the way in. they also charge a 20 cent toll to get into the town. hundreds of cows wandering the sreets. i had no idea, but the place is basically hippy central. thus, one day was enough for me. the vegetarian food was great though. the highlight was climbing a huge 1000m high mountain on the edge of town in the 40 celcius plus heat of the day to a little temple at the peak with amazing views and lots of cute little monkeys.

the next day i took the bus back to ajmer, which is just over a mountain range from pushkar. it is india’s biggest pilgrimage hotspot for muslims, as there is a huge mosque complex devoted to some sufi saint. first they wouldn’t let me in because i was wearing shorts, so i found a sheet to wear as a dress. then because i wasn’t wearing a hat, so i bought a little muslim cappy from a kid for ten rupees (20 cents). then because i had a bag with me, so i followed another kid down a number of back alley ways to some sketch guy who would “hold” my bag for me. then they wouldn’t let me in because i had my valuables on my person. at that point i decided the place wasn’t worth my time.

so i just wandered around the chaotic town for a while, visiting some other places, and then bought a train ticket to jaipur. the bureaucracy is crazy – i waited in line for over two hours to have a lady take five minutes to fill out a $1 train ticket. that’s what machines are for. and for supposedly being a relatively english speaking country india sure doesn’t seem to have very many people who speak english. figured out the lady had sold me a ticket for a train that had already left. so i hopped on a random one and sat with a huge group of ladies who were arguing at the top of their lungs in hindi for the entire three hours to jaipur. wandered around until i found a hotel that i could barter down. ah, the joys of life.