The Taj!

We took a train to Agra, which is not the most interesting nor charming city, but it does have one thing going for it – Taj Mahal. It was surprisingly quiet and peaceful at the Taj Mahal, mostly Indian tourists. They also only have to pay 10 rupees to get in, whereas foreigners have to pay a whooping 750 rupees. But I guess it is worth it, it really is beautiful. We took a quiet little moment on a bench, Martin looking at the Taj Mahal me looking into the tree above us, as there were a whole family of green parrots living in it! What beautiful birds.



We even had a view of the Taj from our room - through the bars that were designed to keep the monkeys out. We did have a monkey looking in from time to time, as well as a squirrel, a mouse and a lot of little flies, yes it was quite the little zoo… None of them really bothered us though, only the flies were kind of annoying.



We are in the train as I’m writing this, from Agra to Jaipur. The train was over 2 hours late, luckily there is much to keep you entertained at an Indian train station, trains coming and going, people getting on and off, all of them clambering over the tracks, a band of monkeys were patrolling the station, finding leftovers to eat and getting a little too close for comfort as I was eating a banana! Suddenly a white cow came running down the platform. Then a family got off the train and made camp at the platform to net themselves, mom was combing her hair, applying a bindi and putting on make-up while the father and son brushed their teeth. Meanwhile an older woman was taking a shower little further down the platform, naked from the waist up – this is India.

Jaipur

The time had come for us to start our assault at Rajasthan, the fairytale state of India. And we were quite excited about it. I still had very fond memories of the places I visited in Rajasthan almost 5 years ago, and the guidebook dreamily describes places like the big Meherangah fort that looms over the bright blue city of Jodhpur, the giant gold sandcastle at Jaisalmer, the palace in the lake at Udaipur, the carnival charm of Pushkar, the storybook whimsy of Bundi, and everywhere filled with happy, waving children, tons of camels, soulful music, glittering saris, big piles of chilies all over the place and tottering turbans in all the colors of the rainbow.



But as in all great fairytales some terrible times have to be fought through before getting to the good part, and that terrible time for us was Jaipur.
We started out arriving 4 hours later than expected because of the train being late. Then at the train station we were given a tough time by the auto rickshaw drivers who want to take you to a hotel where they get a commission, we finally found a pre-paid one (they are slightly more decent) then one of the commission touts tried to ride along – we had to tell him to get out! Then we could go looking for a hotel. We hauled our backpacks round to several that were full, before ending up at an overpriced one with a rock hard bed and a non-functioning shower. We took it. The cycle rickshaw we took into the old city dropped us of the wrong place, and of course he didn’t have change for our 100 rupees note either…

The streets of Jaipur were so filled with traffic it felt kinda dangerous to walk around, and dangerous to breathe the air thick with exhaust fumes. The place we had dinner decided to try and cheat us and billed us for double the agreed amount, at this point I was ready to kill someone, but tried to be reasonable and tell the restaurant manager that you can’t just change an already agreed to price, but he was not up for talking about it logically – so we just left the agreed amount on the table and told him if he had a problem with that he could call the police. Then the rickshaw driver we took back to our hotel had Martin walking up all the hills as it was too heavy for him (!) And rest of the time he pushed the bike instead of riding it, so we might as well have walked home. He then tried to get us to shop at his friend’s shop, before finally dropping us off at the hotel and asking for more money than what he had first stated.
We left Jaipur early the next morning.

Varanasi

We arrived at Mughal Serai, a town 15km from Varanasi, at dusk – a hell hole bathed in magical light. A short but extremely bumpy auto rickshaw ride later we entered Varanasi. Our driver did his best to hustle as much money as possible from us; howerver we still made it away with most of our rupees.



A lot of little alleyways lead down to the Ganges and they are all too narrow for a rickshaw to enter, and since our hotel of choice were located at the edge of the Ganges at the end of a winding little alley, we embarked on a stumble through the dark, guided and mislead in turn by the locals. We found it alright after a few wrong turns though.
Our room has the tiniest balcony with a view down the ghats (the steeps leading down to the river) and the Ganges. One morning I awoke to see the sun rise and make the river glisten and shimmer like gold.



In the many narrow alleys of the old part of Varanasi, you are in constant danger of being trampled by a cow, pushed over by a man ferrying a load of bricks on his bicycle or someone on a motorbike blaring his horn - it is a great people watching place. There are always beautifully dressed women in gorgeous, colorful saris, cute schoolchildren, old men in lungis (like a sarong) and vendors selling everything from vegetables to CDs – all the hustle and bustle of India.
At first we thought it all a bit much, but eventually we started hearing how friendly most people sounded we they greeted a “Namaste!” There are many smiles and even the touts seem less persistent than we have otherwise experienced in India.



The Ganges is a multi-purpose river, it is used by the kids as a fun place to swim, women wash clothes, buffaloes are driven there to be watered and cooled and scores of boats ply up and down the coast. Many people perform “Puja” (prayer) while dipping their heads under - the water is believed to be very holy - while others shower nearby; soap all over the body, scrubbing away as they sit on the ghats. Along the these ghats, 60.000 people submerge themselves daily in the waters – along this same stretch 30 large sewers empty into the river. The water is so polluted that it has become septic, having 1.5 million faecal coliform bacteria per 100 ml of water – in healthy bathing water this figure should be less than 500! We limited our river activities to boating and dipping our feet…



Two of the Varanasi ghats are burning ghats, were cremations happen over open fire 24 hours a day. It is a bit macabre seeing a half burned leg being pushed further into the flames and to have smoke and ashes blow around you and into your eyes and mouth – knowing where it comes from…! But in a way it also seems perfectly natural; the Indian at least are very nonchalant about it. The men handling the bodies and fires on the burning ghats all belongs to one of the lowest castes in India. The owner of the burning ghats, also from this low caste, is now a very rich man from all the business he gets from the constant cremations. He has built a big house overlooking the Ganges, but he still uses leftover firewood from the cremation-fires for cooking.



The Hindus believe that if you are burned on the banks of the Ganges and have your ashes spread over the river you skip all that incarnation nonsense and jump straight to Nirvana – not bad eh?
Bodies are cremated with jewelry and all, so you see men and boys in the river looking like they are panning for gold and in a way you can say that they are…
Not all people can be cremated; unnatural deaths, which include small children, people with leprosy, pregnant women and people who have died from cobra bites, are instead weighted down by stones and thrown directly in the river.



Every evening at the main ghat the “Ganga Arti” is preformed, it is a prayer to Mother Ganges as a show of respect. The act involves a lot of fire and the air is thick with myra and incense, music and drumming and – my favorite part - tooting in big seashells. It is quite spectacular! Out over the water you can see a lot of small lights; little lotus flower lamps set alight as offerings to the Ganges.



Getting up at 5 am normally isn’t that fun, but taking an early morning boat trip on the Ganges, we were rewarded with soft golden light and all the color and clamber of pilgrims bathing and performing puja.

Brahmin blue streets

On our tour through Rajasthan we had now come upon Bundi, a smaller less touristy town, which might owe its relative lack of tourism to the bad roads leading to it and the shortcoming of decent train connections. We spend the days walking the narrow Brahmin-blue lanes stopping to look at the bazaar, temples and old havelis along the way.



Looming over the city is the Taragarh Fort, it was build in 1354 and has been long abandoned. It is now partly overgrown with wines and a band of monkeys have pretty much taken over - we were advised to find a big stick up there to scare them away. As we were exploring, we were suddenly caught between two monkeys screaming at each other, chasing each other around. We were completely caught off guard and got a little startled; Martin found a bigger stick – with thorns on it, and we proceeded. There were some huge reservoirs and in some places, and we could still see old, fading murals adorning the walls.



Another highlight was the Bundi Palace; it had previously been shut up and left to the bats but has now been cleaned up and is open to the public. It was a pretty grand place, with decaying murals and pretty ornament balconies; we walked through most of it, enjoying the view over the city through the many windows. In some of the rooms you could still clearly smell the bats, and in a couple of darker passages, hundreds of them were clinging to the high ceilings.