On the way into town from the train station, my rickshaw driver, in the interest of getting himself another fare, talked on and on about this place called Mehtab Bagh, which is a park across the Yamuna with great views of the Taj Mahal. I had absolutely zero intention of hiring him to take me there, but it was good to know about.
Of course, once I got settled in and really did want to go out to Mehtab Bagh, I now had to find a way to get there. As all of you have probably learned from this blog, the getting there is at least 70% of any experience in India. Wandering a few blocks from my hotel I found a cycle-rickshaw. [As I said yesterday in my post about my perfect day in Delhi, cycle rickshaws are my favorite way to get around an Indian city.]
"How much to Mehtab Bagh?"
"100 rupees there and back," according to the driver, Lalu. Rickshaw wallahs are always keen to take you somewhere they know you'll be a long time, and then charge you more than double so they can sit around smoking bidis and be guaranteed another fare after that nice break.
After a long lecture about how there are no rickshaws over at Methab Bagh to bring me back (riiiiight...), it will get dark soon, it's not safe, blah blah blah, I agreed. I seldom have the energy to get into all-out bidding wars with rickshaw dudes, because it tends to not actually save you much money. You'll eventually arrive at a fare 10 or 20 rupees shy of what they wanted in the first place, saving you a grand total of like 50 cents, max. If you have any chance of a much lower fare, he'll agree right away.
So I climbed up and we were off. On a map, Mehtab Bagh looks very close to my guesthouse just a few blocks from the Taj. I figured it would be 2 seconds away and I was an idiot for paying so much and agreeing to the "there and back" scheme.
We left the backpacker hotels and souvenir shops of Taj Ganj and coasted through the winding streets of the old city, past madrasas, bazaars, and crumbling havelis. Men lounge on charpoys, alternately spitting tobacco and sipping tea fro disposable-yet-eco-friendly terra cotta cups. Women draw water from street corner hand pumps which pour into stainless steel amphorae the women somehow manage to cart home on their heads. The call to evening prayer comes from a thousand directions -- there are as many mosques in this part of Agra as there are churches in small-town Mississippi.
We passed a tractor. Then a bullock cart. Then a convoy of camels. This is India at its most scenic, the stuff that makes you want to come here in the first place. OK, so it seemed Mehtab Bagh isn't as close as I thought. Well, that's fine, makes me feel like less of a newb. I'm along for the ride and loving it.
And then we came to the bridge. From afar it looked just like any bridge over any river. Then we actually got on it. It's studded with potholes -- for the first time, I wished rickshaws had seatbelts. I stupidly looked down and notice that some of the potholes were so serious that I could see the river through them. I white-knuckled the arm rests, thanking god that this rickshaw had armrests. It's as scary as my annual spin on the Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island, except scarier beacause it's not on purpose. Visions of travel insurance danced through my head. It occurs to me that I'm going to have to do this again coming back. I curse my agreement to ride back with Lalu. Maybe I can just pay him and then hitch a ride in someone's taxi.
Finally crossing the bridge, we headed through a slightly newer part of the city, which gradually transitioned into the slums that line the flood plain of the Yamuna. Jubilantly grimy kids gave chase, calling, "Hello! You give one rupee! Hello! You give one school pen! Hello! You give one chocolate!" I would happily hand over an entire Office Depot worth of Bics if I thought it would help them. I want to smuggle them back to the US in my luggage and give them a real roof, three meals a day, and an education.
The kids fell back as we approached the park. Lalu parked the rickshaw and stalked off in search of paan. I took a right down a wooded path and there it is. The Taj Mahal. It's so beautiful I decided it was definitely worth it, and not only that, I'd be fine riding back over the bridge in Lalu's rickshaw.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Time Warp
OK, so the next two posts are from things I wrote in Agra, a few days ago.
Agra is yet another city with a tough reputation, but which I don't find to be that bad. Yes, the constant flow of "come in my shop!", "Buy my marble doohickey!", and "You want rickshaw madam?" is midly annoying. But there's an easy antidote: ignore them. I don't live here. I don't know these people, and I don't owe them anything. If they think I'm stuck up or rude, who cares? I think they're annoying, and yet that doesn't appear to affect their behavior.
The bottom line - I got off the train without a word from anybody. There's a prepaid auto-rickshaw booth which charges sensible fares to key parts of town. My guesthouse is pretty much everything I could ask for, and dirt cheap. I didn't even face an unusual level of hassle at any of the very, very famous tourist sites I visited. I just don't get what the fuss is about.
Agra is yet another city with a tough reputation, but which I don't find to be that bad. Yes, the constant flow of "come in my shop!", "Buy my marble doohickey!", and "You want rickshaw madam?" is midly annoying. But there's an easy antidote: ignore them. I don't live here. I don't know these people, and I don't owe them anything. If they think I'm stuck up or rude, who cares? I think they're annoying, and yet that doesn't appear to affect their behavior.
The bottom line - I got off the train without a word from anybody. There's a prepaid auto-rickshaw booth which charges sensible fares to key parts of town. My guesthouse is pretty much everything I could ask for, and dirt cheap. I didn't even face an unusual level of hassle at any of the very, very famous tourist sites I visited. I just don't get what the fuss is about.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
...Drank Sangria In The Park...
Today I had probably my all time most ideal day, ever. Seriously, if you asked me to list exactly what I'd do if I could do anything in the world, today would be pretty much it. Not even counting the India aspect.
Got up about 8:30 without an alarm or anything. There was hot water. Put on clothes which were clean, matched, and which I actually wanted to wear. (this wouldn't usually be a specific stipulation for my perfect day, but in India it needs to be said after two months with only two or three changes of clothes.)
I jetted off to the cafe across the street and had my favorite Indian breakfast - aloo parantha (basically flat bread stuffed with spicy mashed potatoes) and some of the best yogurt I've had in India so far, washed down with a big ol' cup of chai. While doing this, I read the paper. The sudoko was just hard enough to be interesting, but just easy enough to make me feel smart.
I got into a cycle rickshaw (favorite mode of non-train transportation in India, hands down) and headed into Old Delhi without incident. Old Delhi is all of my favorite aspects of New York, distilled into everclear. My rickshaw happened to take me up an entire street of stationery markets, and I managed to make a mental note of how to get back there later, because at the moment I was headed for one of my all time favorite ways to spend a day: historical nerditude.
The Red Fort (AKA Lal Qila in Hindi) was the seat of Mughal power in India - it's basically the Tower of London and Versailles rolled into one, except with way cooler architecture. It's also, hands down, the best preserved, maintained, and organized historical site I've visited here. Everything is clearly labeled. There are clean bathrooms, orderly paths, and kiosks selling drinks and simple snacks so if you get thirsty or realize you forgot to eat lunch, you can grab some bottled water and chips or cookies or something to tide you over and don't have to rush through the place in order to get out and find something. The museum is skillfully curated and has actual important artifacts on display. Even the silly little tourist guidebook the hawkers sell out front is full of genuinely useful and interesting background information (Aurangzeb staged a coup and murdered his two older brothers right here in the Diwan-i-Khas, for instance). So I had a fascinating morning learning all about the various Mughal emperors and the history of Delhi while also admiring incredibly beautiful architecture.
After I finished up there, I decided to have a wander down Chandni Chowk, the fabled main thoroughfare of Old Delhi. Chandni Chowk translates to something like "Crossroads of the Moon". Apparently it was the Champs Elysees or Fifth Avenue of 15th century Delhi, which at that time was basically the capital of the civilized world. This was the India that European royalty sent scores of explorers to find. This was where you could get all the jewels, spices, gold, silks, and perfumes craved by the back asswards folks in crappy third world countries like France and Spain. I think it's important to remember that at this time, India was such a world super power that the elite of Europe didn't even fricking know how to GET THERE. Literally.
In the intervening centuries, Chandni Chowk has been transformed into something that bears a striking resemblence to Canal Street in New York. Cut-rate clothing stores. Fast food restaurants and snack stalls. Teensy stalls selling luggage or cheesy souvenirs or a collection of random items you can't live without (buckets, padlocks, plastic sheeting). There are even designer knockoffs, which in India tend to be so crappy they in no way resemble the real thing (for instance a t-shirt with the Nike swish logo, except it's spelled "Nixe").
After an amazing lassi and a jalebi or two I decide that it's time to set off for the Jama Masjid. The Jama Masjid is just as major as the Red Fort - it's one of the largest mosques in the world and was the Mughal equivalent to Canterbury or Chartres or St. Peter's.
The weird thing about mosques is that the inside part, what I guess you'd consider the main sanctuary, is kinda dull. It's basically a big empty room. Sometimes it's a real pretty empty room, but it's not like a church or a synagogue or a temple, where there's a holy-of-holies or some sort of focal point.
What's interesting about the Jama Masjid is the outer courtyard. There's a huge tank, meant for ritual ablutions but also working aesthetically along the lines of a fountain. For some reason one corner is paved with birdseed, which means there are pigeons swooping around everywhere, little kids chasing them, mothers and big sisters trying to herd the little kids, etc. etc. It feels like a park or a public square. I could easily sit there all day.
What's even cooler is the fact that for a small fee you can climb up to the very top of one of the minarets and get a view over all of Old Delhi. Unaccompanied women aren't allowed to do this (I mean, this is Islam - we can't have people feeling all happy and inclusive and all...), so I teamed up with the first white guy I saw, this German convert to Islam named Imtiaz (who proved to be really interesting, but this blog is getting long and it's only like 2pm at this point). Climbing a minaret is actually not that fun. It's one big spiral staircase, and for a minute I was too winded and dizzy to remember why I'd gone up there in the first place. I really thought I was going to fall out -- which is funny considering that someone at Christmas warned me to be careful not to fall off the side of a temple. What about a mosque? Would that be OK?
But then I caught my breath and my balance and spent forever looking out over the city, or more correctly one small segment of a city that is twice as big as L.A.
After getting down, which was thankfully a lot easier than getting up, I sort of stupidly decided to get another rickshaw back to Connaught Place, which is the main drag of tourist-centered New Delhi. It's where all the good state-run craft emporia are, as well as the big Fabindia flagship (Fabindia is like Banana Republic with an Indian twist), and lots of other good shopping. Which was half the reason I came to Delhi in the first place. I say "sort of stupidly" because traffic was outrageous, and because Delhi has a metro with a stop right on Chandni Chowk which goes directly to Connaught Place in like 3 stops. Luckily the outrageous traffic made for really good exploring, because while my rickshaw-wallah played bumper-cars I got to scope out all the weird little stalls and beautiful old mansions from back before Partition when this area was still the creme de la creme of Muslim culture in India.
Inching along, we came upon a woman who'd been looking for an empty rickshaw for ages, and between the Hindi-speaking driver, English-speaking yours truly, and bilingual her, we agreed she could ride along. We spent the rest of the traffic jam talking about her mother in law, Hawaii, and all sorts of other interesting things. This is the BEST thing about India - people actually talk to each other, and not just small talk but anything and everything. Which was about to be repeated to brilliant results just a few minutes later.
After finally reaching Connaught Place, I had what I'd usually call retail therapy except there was nothing to be healed. It was like Christmas shopping, except better because everything is both beautiful and cheap. I even got to console myself that 90% of it was for other people, AND was at shops that sell "village industries" crafts and clothing, therefore not all evil and consumerist. In one of these shops I jumped into a casual conversation about the movie Lagaan, which is the only movie I've ever seen which is about cricket and taxes and yet still manages to be really, really fascinating. This developed into a longer conversation between me and this Brazilian girl named Raquel who is making a documentary about Bollywood. We finished our shopping together and decided to go for chai.
On the way to the chai stall, we passed a big group of mehendi-wallahs. You know, what in the US is called "henna tattoo". Raquel has lived in India for several months and thus knows good mehendi when she sees it. I'd been wanting to do this, but seeing a lot of ugly work on other tourists. We started up a conversation with two of the mehendi-wallahs, Anjali and Rajkumari, who agreed to get their kids to bring us chai so we could do both at the same time. It's a lot like getting your nails done back home. You sit back, relax, have girl talk, and basically have an excuse to do nothing for a long time. And even better, when you leave a nail salon you look ordinary and presentable -- when you get mehendi, you walk out decorated.
The sun went down, and calls to prayer came from every direction, from all the mosques, the Shiva temple, the Hanuman temple. Because Raquel speaks pretty good Hindi, we were able to converse more deeply with the mehendi-wallahs than I usually get to with nail ladies in New York, so lots more idle-yet-intense conversation ensued while they worked, and then in the hour or so that we had to wait for the henna to dry enough for us to use our hands. Another mehendi-wallah came back from the Hanuman temple with prasad for everyone. Prasad is sort of like communion, except way more casual and it actually tastes good. Hanuman temple prasad is a golden sphere of sweetness called a laddu. Since my hands were still way too muddy to touch anything, someone just popped my share right into my mouth.
This is another one of those amazing India moments. Nothing like it can exist anywhere else on the planet. I'm sitting in the middle of a public square, getting my hands painted with mud, and someone comes along and hand-feeds me holy candy.
When our hands finally dried, Raquel asked if I wanted to get dinner. It seemed she had a coupon for Domino's pizza (how surreal is this?). For a second I was mentally rebelling against eating pizza, Domino's no less, in India. Especially to crown my perfect day, and that ridiculously intense moment with the laddu. But then I gave in - I came to India to experience all of it, not just the quaint parts. And for better or for worse, Domino's pizza is India. Luckily Indians have all their own seperate pizza conventions, and we ended up getting chilli paneer on ours (chilli paneer being one of the more popular dishes in the Indian take on Chinese). We went back to Raquel's guesthouse to order pizza and hopefully scrape the dried henna mud off our hands before it arrived.
This whole thing had developed the same way you make friends as a kid - you see some other kids who look interesting for whatever reason and start playing along with them, without the need to join a club or take a class or be formally introduced. This is possible in India in a way that it's just not possible in the west. Raquel and I exchanged info and I bundled into an auto-rickshaw back to Pahar Ganj.
Why can't every day be this awesome? Even in New York - it doesn't have to involve crazy India stuff like randomly making friends in a shop, or having people pop sacred sweets in your mouth.
P.S. I haven't forgotten to blog about Agra, the Taj Mahal, and all that -- I just keep having so much to say about Delhi... It's coming, I promise.
Got up about 8:30 without an alarm or anything. There was hot water. Put on clothes which were clean, matched, and which I actually wanted to wear. (this wouldn't usually be a specific stipulation for my perfect day, but in India it needs to be said after two months with only two or three changes of clothes.)
I jetted off to the cafe across the street and had my favorite Indian breakfast - aloo parantha (basically flat bread stuffed with spicy mashed potatoes) and some of the best yogurt I've had in India so far, washed down with a big ol' cup of chai. While doing this, I read the paper. The sudoko was just hard enough to be interesting, but just easy enough to make me feel smart.
I got into a cycle rickshaw (favorite mode of non-train transportation in India, hands down) and headed into Old Delhi without incident. Old Delhi is all of my favorite aspects of New York, distilled into everclear. My rickshaw happened to take me up an entire street of stationery markets, and I managed to make a mental note of how to get back there later, because at the moment I was headed for one of my all time favorite ways to spend a day: historical nerditude.
The Red Fort (AKA Lal Qila in Hindi) was the seat of Mughal power in India - it's basically the Tower of London and Versailles rolled into one, except with way cooler architecture. It's also, hands down, the best preserved, maintained, and organized historical site I've visited here. Everything is clearly labeled. There are clean bathrooms, orderly paths, and kiosks selling drinks and simple snacks so if you get thirsty or realize you forgot to eat lunch, you can grab some bottled water and chips or cookies or something to tide you over and don't have to rush through the place in order to get out and find something. The museum is skillfully curated and has actual important artifacts on display. Even the silly little tourist guidebook the hawkers sell out front is full of genuinely useful and interesting background information (Aurangzeb staged a coup and murdered his two older brothers right here in the Diwan-i-Khas, for instance). So I had a fascinating morning learning all about the various Mughal emperors and the history of Delhi while also admiring incredibly beautiful architecture.
After I finished up there, I decided to have a wander down Chandni Chowk, the fabled main thoroughfare of Old Delhi. Chandni Chowk translates to something like "Crossroads of the Moon". Apparently it was the Champs Elysees or Fifth Avenue of 15th century Delhi, which at that time was basically the capital of the civilized world. This was the India that European royalty sent scores of explorers to find. This was where you could get all the jewels, spices, gold, silks, and perfumes craved by the back asswards folks in crappy third world countries like France and Spain. I think it's important to remember that at this time, India was such a world super power that the elite of Europe didn't even fricking know how to GET THERE. Literally.
In the intervening centuries, Chandni Chowk has been transformed into something that bears a striking resemblence to Canal Street in New York. Cut-rate clothing stores. Fast food restaurants and snack stalls. Teensy stalls selling luggage or cheesy souvenirs or a collection of random items you can't live without (buckets, padlocks, plastic sheeting). There are even designer knockoffs, which in India tend to be so crappy they in no way resemble the real thing (for instance a t-shirt with the Nike swish logo, except it's spelled "Nixe").
After an amazing lassi and a jalebi or two I decide that it's time to set off for the Jama Masjid. The Jama Masjid is just as major as the Red Fort - it's one of the largest mosques in the world and was the Mughal equivalent to Canterbury or Chartres or St. Peter's.
The weird thing about mosques is that the inside part, what I guess you'd consider the main sanctuary, is kinda dull. It's basically a big empty room. Sometimes it's a real pretty empty room, but it's not like a church or a synagogue or a temple, where there's a holy-of-holies or some sort of focal point.
What's interesting about the Jama Masjid is the outer courtyard. There's a huge tank, meant for ritual ablutions but also working aesthetically along the lines of a fountain. For some reason one corner is paved with birdseed, which means there are pigeons swooping around everywhere, little kids chasing them, mothers and big sisters trying to herd the little kids, etc. etc. It feels like a park or a public square. I could easily sit there all day.
What's even cooler is the fact that for a small fee you can climb up to the very top of one of the minarets and get a view over all of Old Delhi. Unaccompanied women aren't allowed to do this (I mean, this is Islam - we can't have people feeling all happy and inclusive and all...), so I teamed up with the first white guy I saw, this German convert to Islam named Imtiaz (who proved to be really interesting, but this blog is getting long and it's only like 2pm at this point). Climbing a minaret is actually not that fun. It's one big spiral staircase, and for a minute I was too winded and dizzy to remember why I'd gone up there in the first place. I really thought I was going to fall out -- which is funny considering that someone at Christmas warned me to be careful not to fall off the side of a temple. What about a mosque? Would that be OK?
But then I caught my breath and my balance and spent forever looking out over the city, or more correctly one small segment of a city that is twice as big as L.A.
After getting down, which was thankfully a lot easier than getting up, I sort of stupidly decided to get another rickshaw back to Connaught Place, which is the main drag of tourist-centered New Delhi. It's where all the good state-run craft emporia are, as well as the big Fabindia flagship (Fabindia is like Banana Republic with an Indian twist), and lots of other good shopping. Which was half the reason I came to Delhi in the first place. I say "sort of stupidly" because traffic was outrageous, and because Delhi has a metro with a stop right on Chandni Chowk which goes directly to Connaught Place in like 3 stops. Luckily the outrageous traffic made for really good exploring, because while my rickshaw-wallah played bumper-cars I got to scope out all the weird little stalls and beautiful old mansions from back before Partition when this area was still the creme de la creme of Muslim culture in India.
Inching along, we came upon a woman who'd been looking for an empty rickshaw for ages, and between the Hindi-speaking driver, English-speaking yours truly, and bilingual her, we agreed she could ride along. We spent the rest of the traffic jam talking about her mother in law, Hawaii, and all sorts of other interesting things. This is the BEST thing about India - people actually talk to each other, and not just small talk but anything and everything. Which was about to be repeated to brilliant results just a few minutes later.
After finally reaching Connaught Place, I had what I'd usually call retail therapy except there was nothing to be healed. It was like Christmas shopping, except better because everything is both beautiful and cheap. I even got to console myself that 90% of it was for other people, AND was at shops that sell "village industries" crafts and clothing, therefore not all evil and consumerist. In one of these shops I jumped into a casual conversation about the movie Lagaan, which is the only movie I've ever seen which is about cricket and taxes and yet still manages to be really, really fascinating. This developed into a longer conversation between me and this Brazilian girl named Raquel who is making a documentary about Bollywood. We finished our shopping together and decided to go for chai.
On the way to the chai stall, we passed a big group of mehendi-wallahs. You know, what in the US is called "henna tattoo". Raquel has lived in India for several months and thus knows good mehendi when she sees it. I'd been wanting to do this, but seeing a lot of ugly work on other tourists. We started up a conversation with two of the mehendi-wallahs, Anjali and Rajkumari, who agreed to get their kids to bring us chai so we could do both at the same time. It's a lot like getting your nails done back home. You sit back, relax, have girl talk, and basically have an excuse to do nothing for a long time. And even better, when you leave a nail salon you look ordinary and presentable -- when you get mehendi, you walk out decorated.
The sun went down, and calls to prayer came from every direction, from all the mosques, the Shiva temple, the Hanuman temple. Because Raquel speaks pretty good Hindi, we were able to converse more deeply with the mehendi-wallahs than I usually get to with nail ladies in New York, so lots more idle-yet-intense conversation ensued while they worked, and then in the hour or so that we had to wait for the henna to dry enough for us to use our hands. Another mehendi-wallah came back from the Hanuman temple with prasad for everyone. Prasad is sort of like communion, except way more casual and it actually tastes good. Hanuman temple prasad is a golden sphere of sweetness called a laddu. Since my hands were still way too muddy to touch anything, someone just popped my share right into my mouth.
This is another one of those amazing India moments. Nothing like it can exist anywhere else on the planet. I'm sitting in the middle of a public square, getting my hands painted with mud, and someone comes along and hand-feeds me holy candy.
When our hands finally dried, Raquel asked if I wanted to get dinner. It seemed she had a coupon for Domino's pizza (how surreal is this?). For a second I was mentally rebelling against eating pizza, Domino's no less, in India. Especially to crown my perfect day, and that ridiculously intense moment with the laddu. But then I gave in - I came to India to experience all of it, not just the quaint parts. And for better or for worse, Domino's pizza is India. Luckily Indians have all their own seperate pizza conventions, and we ended up getting chilli paneer on ours (chilli paneer being one of the more popular dishes in the Indian take on Chinese). We went back to Raquel's guesthouse to order pizza and hopefully scrape the dried henna mud off our hands before it arrived.
This whole thing had developed the same way you make friends as a kid - you see some other kids who look interesting for whatever reason and start playing along with them, without the need to join a club or take a class or be formally introduced. This is possible in India in a way that it's just not possible in the west. Raquel and I exchanged info and I bundled into an auto-rickshaw back to Pahar Ganj.
Why can't every day be this awesome? Even in New York - it doesn't have to involve crazy India stuff like randomly making friends in a shop, or having people pop sacred sweets in your mouth.
P.S. I haven't forgotten to blog about Agra, the Taj Mahal, and all that -- I just keep having so much to say about Delhi... It's coming, I promise.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Belly Of The Beast
I've arrived in New Delhi, the last official stop on my itinerary. I'm staying in the part of town called Pahar Ganj, which is sort of the backpackers' mecca of all India. Since most travelers fly into Delhi and spend most of their time in a few other cities which are relatively near here (Agra, Varanasi, Jaipur and a few other cities in Rajasthan), this is the first taste of India for the vast majority of Westerners. It's basically Bourbon Street, lined with little shops selling hippie clothes and Indian trinkets instead of strip joints and dive bars.
Pahar Ganj has a bit of a reputation. If you've heard some traveler's tale of woe in India, it probably takes place within a couple blocks of where I'm sitting right now. Basically take my post about my arrival in Hampi and change the word "Hampi" for "Pahar Ganj", and you have most people's opinion of the place.
And yet, like many other supposedly intimidating parts of India I've visited, I find it to be completely fine. I got from the train to a hotel without drama. The hotel is cheap, clean, and aside from the lack of a window it's one of the better deals I've found. The trinkets on offer are actually surprisingly cheap and nicer than most similar stuff I've found in other parts of India.
This pretty much sums up my experience in India. Shop owners are trolling for customers. Fresh-Off-The-Plane India newbs are having chavvy little panic attacks. OCD tourists (why did you pick India??) are sitting in sidewalk cafes wiping every drop of tap water off their empty glasses, Because You Can Never Be Too Safe. Rickshaw drivers are wiping the dust and pollution off their windshields. Cows and dogs are munching on leaf bowls (have I talked about those? best invention EVER) in the gutters. And I'm just kicking back eating a jalebi, watching it all unfurl.
I can't believe I have to come home next week.
Pahar Ganj has a bit of a reputation. If you've heard some traveler's tale of woe in India, it probably takes place within a couple blocks of where I'm sitting right now. Basically take my post about my arrival in Hampi and change the word "Hampi" for "Pahar Ganj", and you have most people's opinion of the place.
And yet, like many other supposedly intimidating parts of India I've visited, I find it to be completely fine. I got from the train to a hotel without drama. The hotel is cheap, clean, and aside from the lack of a window it's one of the better deals I've found. The trinkets on offer are actually surprisingly cheap and nicer than most similar stuff I've found in other parts of India.
This pretty much sums up my experience in India. Shop owners are trolling for customers. Fresh-Off-The-Plane India newbs are having chavvy little panic attacks. OCD tourists (why did you pick India??) are sitting in sidewalk cafes wiping every drop of tap water off their empty glasses, Because You Can Never Be Too Safe. Rickshaw drivers are wiping the dust and pollution off their windshields. Cows and dogs are munching on leaf bowls (have I talked about those? best invention EVER) in the gutters. And I'm just kicking back eating a jalebi, watching it all unfurl.
I can't believe I have to come home next week.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Behind the Sign
Quick blog from Amritsar, in the state of Punjab.
I'm staying at the Golden Temple, which is the holiest place in the Sikh religion. It's another one of those situations where you can just FEEL the holiness of the place. It's funny, though. When I wrote about Varanasi, I talked about the difference between what this felt like at St. Peter's Basilica, versus what it felt like there. The Golden Temple is kind of a hybrid of the two. It's incredibly serene and peaceful, and yet people are sort of free to be themselves and act like actual humans.
You see two very fierce looking Khalsa dudes in stark black turbans with huge daggers tucked into them taking their ceremonial dip in the holy pool, and then they call out to their friend on the side, "Hey, don't forget to use the flash!" as he snaps their picture. A very pious and upright family with parents showing their kids the right way to genuflect on the way into the temple, and then the kids skip off, bickering about who gets shotgun on the way home or whatever it is Punjabi kids bicker about, and nobody shushes them or calls out for them to Stop Horsing Around Right This Minute, You Two.
It made me think a lot about the role religion has played in my life, especially growing up. That sense of their being Proper Behavior in a church, and having to sit ramrod straight and silent for upwards of an hour even when I was 4 or 5 years old, listening to a service I couldn't possibly understand. And while I know my parents are reading this, and I don't want to bring up stupid drama, there was this very real sense that if we didn't behave ourselves, we'd get "Taken Behind The Sign", AKA spanked. Basically for being normal kids. It's one of the things that has really put me off the idea of raising my kids in Christianity.
There's no behind the sign at the Golden Temple.
Of course, I've heard plenty of stories about the more brutal aspects of being a Sikh kid from Ranbir. And I certainly don't think being Christian makes your parents assholes, while Sikh parents are shining examples of restraint and positive reinforcement. But people here seem normal and not straight-jacketed into some fakely pious posture, and I think that's very cool. That you're actually allowed to enjoy yourself and be human in a holy place is really refreshing.
~~~
Totally unrelated note, but it was so awesome I have to share: passing through Punjab on the way here yesterday, an all-female cricket team got on my train. They had the compartments adjoining mine, and some of them were ballsy and spoke English and decided to befriend me. I spent the whole rest of the journey crammed into their compartment drinking tea and comparing notes on everything from Bollywood to the position of women in India. The coolest slumber party I've ever attended, by far.
~~~
OK, so this is the real instance of me not knowing when I'll have time to blog again. I'm heading into the home stretch of the trip, where I'll spend a day or two in Agra to see the Taj Mahal and a few other Mughal historical sites, then another day or two in Delhi doing the same and also some last minute shopping and the like, before jetting back down to Bombay to come home. I think I should definitely get to blog in Delhi, but the whole thing is running at such a breakneck pace that I have no idea.
I'm staying at the Golden Temple, which is the holiest place in the Sikh religion. It's another one of those situations where you can just FEEL the holiness of the place. It's funny, though. When I wrote about Varanasi, I talked about the difference between what this felt like at St. Peter's Basilica, versus what it felt like there. The Golden Temple is kind of a hybrid of the two. It's incredibly serene and peaceful, and yet people are sort of free to be themselves and act like actual humans.
You see two very fierce looking Khalsa dudes in stark black turbans with huge daggers tucked into them taking their ceremonial dip in the holy pool, and then they call out to their friend on the side, "Hey, don't forget to use the flash!" as he snaps their picture. A very pious and upright family with parents showing their kids the right way to genuflect on the way into the temple, and then the kids skip off, bickering about who gets shotgun on the way home or whatever it is Punjabi kids bicker about, and nobody shushes them or calls out for them to Stop Horsing Around Right This Minute, You Two.
It made me think a lot about the role religion has played in my life, especially growing up. That sense of their being Proper Behavior in a church, and having to sit ramrod straight and silent for upwards of an hour even when I was 4 or 5 years old, listening to a service I couldn't possibly understand. And while I know my parents are reading this, and I don't want to bring up stupid drama, there was this very real sense that if we didn't behave ourselves, we'd get "Taken Behind The Sign", AKA spanked. Basically for being normal kids. It's one of the things that has really put me off the idea of raising my kids in Christianity.
There's no behind the sign at the Golden Temple.
Of course, I've heard plenty of stories about the more brutal aspects of being a Sikh kid from Ranbir. And I certainly don't think being Christian makes your parents assholes, while Sikh parents are shining examples of restraint and positive reinforcement. But people here seem normal and not straight-jacketed into some fakely pious posture, and I think that's very cool. That you're actually allowed to enjoy yourself and be human in a holy place is really refreshing.
~~~
Totally unrelated note, but it was so awesome I have to share: passing through Punjab on the way here yesterday, an all-female cricket team got on my train. They had the compartments adjoining mine, and some of them were ballsy and spoke English and decided to befriend me. I spent the whole rest of the journey crammed into their compartment drinking tea and comparing notes on everything from Bollywood to the position of women in India. The coolest slumber party I've ever attended, by far.
~~~
OK, so this is the real instance of me not knowing when I'll have time to blog again. I'm heading into the home stretch of the trip, where I'll spend a day or two in Agra to see the Taj Mahal and a few other Mughal historical sites, then another day or two in Delhi doing the same and also some last minute shopping and the like, before jetting back down to Bombay to come home. I think I should definitely get to blog in Delhi, but the whole thing is running at such a breakneck pace that I have no idea.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Playing Hooky
I'm sitting in a mall food court, clutching a plastic bag from a big box store, waiting for my fast food order to be ready. I've just finished watching a movie in a megaplex with stadium seating, cupholders in the armrests, capuccino at the snack bar, the whole package.
What country am I in, again?
Aunt Flo's in town, and my tampon supply is dwindling. Anywhere else this wouldn't necessitate a trip to the mall, but bear with me here. You see, northern India is a man's world. There are very few women even out on the streets here in Lucknow, let alone staffing the counters at corner shops and pharmacies. India in general is not really a self-serve culture - every shop is based on the idea that you walk into the store and ask for what you want, compare several options, and basically develop a relationship with a sales clerk. Who, as I've just said, is invariably male, and the sort of male you find in extremely, ummmm, male dominated sorts of cultures. Crotch grabbing. Leering. Men's men in the worst way. Not the sort of person I want to have an intimate discussion with about my flow, wings or no wings, the merits of the phonebook vs. a slim pantyliner option (thank god tampons are generally unavailable in India...).
Making the whole thing worse, as the only white person in a two mile radius, I'm treated as a minor celebrity anywhere I go. Not only am I going to have to talk girltalk with some tobacco-spitting patriarch, he's going to want to know everything about me, ask me if I know his cousin in Ohio, trade email addresses, and invite me to his daughter's wedding. And forty people on the street are going to crowd around to watch the white girl buy pads. And they're all going to want personal interviews, too, possibly regarding intimate details of my girly bits, because NOTHING is off limits in Indian conversation.
I was feeling a little stressed about this.
And then I noticed the huge billboard for Big Bazaar, which is sort of the Indian answer to Target. Conveniently located a mere two blocks from my hotel. They were sure to have a toiletry section, and I was confident that there would be shelves of options I could access myself, an impersonal checkout lane, and all the things I hate about shopping in America. So I walked over and confronted India's third-largest shopping mall, Sahara Ganj. Named after a desert. How apt.
Big Bazaar was everything I'd hoped for. I grabbed some pads, more mosquito repellent, and headed for the checkout, where I managed to pay and get out with minimal fuss. No intimate chats with strange men who seem to think my face is located between my breasts, and only about 30 entire families gaped in my general direction.
On the way out I realized the mall's movie theater was showing the epic costume drama about the Mughal emperor Akbar that I'd wanted to see. It was starting in 20 minutes, which gave me just enough time to get through security, buy a ticket and a coke, and find my seat.
That's right, I said "get through security." Movies are THE mainstream form of media here in India, which makes them great political targets. And just like America, Indian filmmakers tend to be slightly liberal. This all adds up to mean that anytime some conservative political party gets a bee in its bonnet about the latest blockbuster (too positive towards Muslims! too sexy! X movie star supposedly made Y comment about Z ethnic group!) they send goons to bust up the cinema. Flashy western-style megaplexes are expensive to keep repairing all the time, and the middle class families that patronize them frown upon unsightly displays of terrorism. Thus it's harder to get into a fancy movie theater in India than it is to get into some American airports.
Anyway, after 4 hours of Braveheart meets Sholay meets Pride And Prejudice meets West Side Story (I know!!!), I had worked up an appetite. So I went up to the top floor food court and ordered an Idli and Sambar combo meal at a South Indian stall run by North Indian Sikhs, complete with a huge picture of Guru Nanak on the wall between the soda fountain and the fry-o-lator.
Ah, India!
What country am I in, again?
Aunt Flo's in town, and my tampon supply is dwindling. Anywhere else this wouldn't necessitate a trip to the mall, but bear with me here. You see, northern India is a man's world. There are very few women even out on the streets here in Lucknow, let alone staffing the counters at corner shops and pharmacies. India in general is not really a self-serve culture - every shop is based on the idea that you walk into the store and ask for what you want, compare several options, and basically develop a relationship with a sales clerk. Who, as I've just said, is invariably male, and the sort of male you find in extremely, ummmm, male dominated sorts of cultures. Crotch grabbing. Leering. Men's men in the worst way. Not the sort of person I want to have an intimate discussion with about my flow, wings or no wings, the merits of the phonebook vs. a slim pantyliner option (thank god tampons are generally unavailable in India...).
Making the whole thing worse, as the only white person in a two mile radius, I'm treated as a minor celebrity anywhere I go. Not only am I going to have to talk girltalk with some tobacco-spitting patriarch, he's going to want to know everything about me, ask me if I know his cousin in Ohio, trade email addresses, and invite me to his daughter's wedding. And forty people on the street are going to crowd around to watch the white girl buy pads. And they're all going to want personal interviews, too, possibly regarding intimate details of my girly bits, because NOTHING is off limits in Indian conversation.
I was feeling a little stressed about this.
And then I noticed the huge billboard for Big Bazaar, which is sort of the Indian answer to Target. Conveniently located a mere two blocks from my hotel. They were sure to have a toiletry section, and I was confident that there would be shelves of options I could access myself, an impersonal checkout lane, and all the things I hate about shopping in America. So I walked over and confronted India's third-largest shopping mall, Sahara Ganj. Named after a desert. How apt.
Big Bazaar was everything I'd hoped for. I grabbed some pads, more mosquito repellent, and headed for the checkout, where I managed to pay and get out with minimal fuss. No intimate chats with strange men who seem to think my face is located between my breasts, and only about 30 entire families gaped in my general direction.
On the way out I realized the mall's movie theater was showing the epic costume drama about the Mughal emperor Akbar that I'd wanted to see. It was starting in 20 minutes, which gave me just enough time to get through security, buy a ticket and a coke, and find my seat.
That's right, I said "get through security." Movies are THE mainstream form of media here in India, which makes them great political targets. And just like America, Indian filmmakers tend to be slightly liberal. This all adds up to mean that anytime some conservative political party gets a bee in its bonnet about the latest blockbuster (too positive towards Muslims! too sexy! X movie star supposedly made Y comment about Z ethnic group!) they send goons to bust up the cinema. Flashy western-style megaplexes are expensive to keep repairing all the time, and the middle class families that patronize them frown upon unsightly displays of terrorism. Thus it's harder to get into a fancy movie theater in India than it is to get into some American airports.
Anyway, after 4 hours of Braveheart meets Sholay meets Pride And Prejudice meets West Side Story (I know!!!), I had worked up an appetite. So I went up to the top floor food court and ordered an Idli and Sambar combo meal at a South Indian stall run by North Indian Sikhs, complete with a huge picture of Guru Nanak on the wall between the soda fountain and the fry-o-lator.
Ah, India!
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Memsahib?
Ummm, so I think I might have just accidentally bribed someone.
Here's the thing. I'm staying in this nice sort of business class hotel, kind of an Indian equivalent of a Holiday Inn (except still mega-cheap, of course). The morning desk manager is a very nice guy, and we got to talking yesterday about his kids, who apparently collect foreign coins. He wanted to know if I happened to have any small change. I gave him the last of my pennies and dimes, which made him happy. Then he asked, "hey, you know, if you have a dollar or something, I'd buy it from you."
It's important to note that India is NOT one of those countries where you can accomplish anything by flashing around some greenbacks. The exchange rate ain't what it used to be, and the rupee is heavily controlled, which makes it somewhat complicated to exchange money (especially if you're just some random Indian who probably doesn't even have a passport). Indians generally don't want your dollars. So I didn't think much of his request for some USD, though I reminded him of the crap exchange rates these days. He still seemed interested - "Oh, it's just for my kids," he said.
I happened to have a couple of one dollar bills stashed away in the bottom of my bag. Too little to bother exchanging, and not really enough to worry about saving for when I get home. So this morning I shoved them in my pocket and brought them down to Mr. Desk Manager. I didn't ask for the 75 or so rupees in return, mainly because I wanted to pay forward that schoolgirl's gift from the other day, and I really believed this was for his kids.
At the same time, I was going down to take care of a minor issue -- I'd wanted to stay in Lucknow for 4 nights, but I was told when I arrived that my room would only be available for 2 nights. My 2 nights were up, and I wanted to find a way to stay on, either by making a deal on a different room, or maybe just getting a recommendation for another hotel with a room available in my price range (Due to the lack of backpackers, Lucknow hotels aren't cheap). I really meant to settle this issue honestly.
But after handing off my $2, suddenly the manager insisted that there was no problem, I could keep my room at the agreed rate, I was an honored guest in his country, it was his dharma to make sure my stay was as comfortable as possible, and did I need a newspaper or perhaps a rickshaw for some sightseeing?
I went from "grubby tightwad gora" to "anything you want, madam" in about 2 seconds. And I can't figure out what, aside from the money, did this. Even though, of course, it's really not that much money, even here in India. 75 rupees is enough to see a movie, take the wife and kids out for ice cream, something like that. If you even bothered to exchange it.
But all the same, I'm feeling really conflicted about it. Was it wrong to give this guy dollars? It wasn't meant as a tip or a bribe - I genuinely believed him when he said his kids collected foreign coins, and I wanted to spread some of the generosity people in India have shown me. I'm feeling especially weird about it because Lucknow is the first place where I've really had to confront the "rich whitey" stereotype head on. Since this city sees so few westerners, and most who come here are package tourists staying in 5 star hotels, people feel fine extorting me for money. I don't use that word lightly, either. What else is it when someone who doesn't speak English decides you should give him 200 for reciting an inaccurate and unintelligible shpeil in your general direction at a historical monument, after you repeatedly told him you didn't want a guide?
Especially freaky is when you deny them and they actually have the chutzpah to say "madam, you are very rich, and I am very poor..." or "you are from rich country", or similar. I mean, it's true. Even as someone who's pretty poor in the US, what I'm spending on this trip is several times what the average Indian makes in a year. 200 rupees is really not that much for me. At home it's about what I'd spend on a whim at Starbucks. If I dropped $5 on the street in New York, I wouldn't be that broken up about it.
My sense of indignation is more about the principle of the thing, and then of course there's my sense of shame at even feeling put out. It's wrong for them to harrass me about it, but it also feels wrong not to give. And then on the other hand it's wrong to give, for a whole host of reasons I won't get into here. The whole thing really annoys me, more for the mental gymnastics it induces than anything else.
Here's the thing. I'm staying in this nice sort of business class hotel, kind of an Indian equivalent of a Holiday Inn (except still mega-cheap, of course). The morning desk manager is a very nice guy, and we got to talking yesterday about his kids, who apparently collect foreign coins. He wanted to know if I happened to have any small change. I gave him the last of my pennies and dimes, which made him happy. Then he asked, "hey, you know, if you have a dollar or something, I'd buy it from you."
It's important to note that India is NOT one of those countries where you can accomplish anything by flashing around some greenbacks. The exchange rate ain't what it used to be, and the rupee is heavily controlled, which makes it somewhat complicated to exchange money (especially if you're just some random Indian who probably doesn't even have a passport). Indians generally don't want your dollars. So I didn't think much of his request for some USD, though I reminded him of the crap exchange rates these days. He still seemed interested - "Oh, it's just for my kids," he said.
I happened to have a couple of one dollar bills stashed away in the bottom of my bag. Too little to bother exchanging, and not really enough to worry about saving for when I get home. So this morning I shoved them in my pocket and brought them down to Mr. Desk Manager. I didn't ask for the 75 or so rupees in return, mainly because I wanted to pay forward that schoolgirl's gift from the other day, and I really believed this was for his kids.
At the same time, I was going down to take care of a minor issue -- I'd wanted to stay in Lucknow for 4 nights, but I was told when I arrived that my room would only be available for 2 nights. My 2 nights were up, and I wanted to find a way to stay on, either by making a deal on a different room, or maybe just getting a recommendation for another hotel with a room available in my price range (Due to the lack of backpackers, Lucknow hotels aren't cheap). I really meant to settle this issue honestly.
But after handing off my $2, suddenly the manager insisted that there was no problem, I could keep my room at the agreed rate, I was an honored guest in his country, it was his dharma to make sure my stay was as comfortable as possible, and did I need a newspaper or perhaps a rickshaw for some sightseeing?
I went from "grubby tightwad gora" to "anything you want, madam" in about 2 seconds. And I can't figure out what, aside from the money, did this. Even though, of course, it's really not that much money, even here in India. 75 rupees is enough to see a movie, take the wife and kids out for ice cream, something like that. If you even bothered to exchange it.
But all the same, I'm feeling really conflicted about it. Was it wrong to give this guy dollars? It wasn't meant as a tip or a bribe - I genuinely believed him when he said his kids collected foreign coins, and I wanted to spread some of the generosity people in India have shown me. I'm feeling especially weird about it because Lucknow is the first place where I've really had to confront the "rich whitey" stereotype head on. Since this city sees so few westerners, and most who come here are package tourists staying in 5 star hotels, people feel fine extorting me for money. I don't use that word lightly, either. What else is it when someone who doesn't speak English decides you should give him 200 for reciting an inaccurate and unintelligible shpeil in your general direction at a historical monument, after you repeatedly told him you didn't want a guide?
Especially freaky is when you deny them and they actually have the chutzpah to say "madam, you are very rich, and I am very poor..." or "you are from rich country", or similar. I mean, it's true. Even as someone who's pretty poor in the US, what I'm spending on this trip is several times what the average Indian makes in a year. 200 rupees is really not that much for me. At home it's about what I'd spend on a whim at Starbucks. If I dropped $5 on the street in New York, I wouldn't be that broken up about it.
My sense of indignation is more about the principle of the thing, and then of course there's my sense of shame at even feeling put out. It's wrong for them to harrass me about it, but it also feels wrong not to give. And then on the other hand it's wrong to give, for a whole host of reasons I won't get into here. The whole thing really annoys me, more for the mental gymnastics it induces than anything else.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Leaving Banaras today, I'm feeling sentimental. Tempted to wax romantic about What India Is About. The sort of thing I hate when other people write -- before the last few days my response to this was to call bullshit; India is a country, just like any other. It has more than its share of fascinating culture, religion, history, art, wildlife, etc. but it's just a place, and the people are just people, and beyond that you can't make generalizations. There's no particular magic, or spirit, or flavor, or grand theory of all India.
After Banaras I'm not so sure anymore. The last few days I've been charmed, then stripped of my defenses, then blessed, then cut raw, then witnessed minor miracles, the literally gored by a bull (I survived intact except for a really great bruise - I guess milk really does a body good after all), then grinning ear to ear, then cursing this whole damn country and the billion people in it, then awed by generosity and hospitality.
The bad stuff: Spending an entire day lost and at the mercy of ruthless brutes, the possibility of severe financial emergency, a scary situation that involved me wandering the dark and deserted streets of the old city after midnight, the incident with the bull, getting chased by feral dogs, almost being late for my train due to some idiot "sadhu" trying to sell me the prayer beads off his own wrist for 500 rupees (only about $12 US, but a fortune here), constantly feeling betrayed and lost in translation even when doing simple things like trying to buy a goddamn coke on a hot afternoon, and to top it all off aborted calls home in the world's dirtiest and most confusing train station.
The good stuff: Getting rescued by about 30 good samaritans, the financial emergencies turning out to be pretty minor, surviving the bull experience, stumbling on the very shop selling the pretty wooden toy I'd admired in my friend Kiran's bedroom in Kolkata, having the ends of my kurta nibbled by baby goats, running into an old friend from Flux Factory on the way to breakfast, staying up till all hours shooting the shit on the roof while substances holy to various religions made the rounds, and at the end of it all, bonding with a girl named Anjali over the insane weight of my pack, and actually being given a gift by her (a tiny glittering sculpture of Radha and Krishna) when I had nothing but a laugh to give in return.
Going from being threatened and swindled by a so-called holy man to being handed a goodbye present by a schoolgirl in the space of an hour is enough to bring about an existential awakening in anyone, right?
I had written a whole passage this morning on the train about a lost little girl in the train station. In hindsight, I think it's too soppy and even new agey to put up here. But the whole thing did really make me think about a few things I've needed to think about for a long time.
On a more business related note, Internet contact from me might be spotty for the next week or so. I'm in Lucknow now (now now now), which is a city that, even though it's full of amazing historical stuff and beautiful architecture, is really not set up for foreign tourism at all. So far I've discovered one internet cafe, which luckily is near my hotel, but I won't be as connected here as I have been when there's a place to check email on every corner, as there has been everywhere else in India until now. After Lucknow I'm headed for a very quick trip up to Amritsar, in Punjab, which may be so quick I might not get a chance to blog again until I get to Agra or Delhi about a week from now (Taj Mahal, squeee!). So don't worry if you don't hear from me, I'm probably fine. If I'm not, then you'll DEFINITELY hear from me.
Wow. I can't believe how fast this trip is flying by now...
After Banaras I'm not so sure anymore. The last few days I've been charmed, then stripped of my defenses, then blessed, then cut raw, then witnessed minor miracles, the literally gored by a bull (I survived intact except for a really great bruise - I guess milk really does a body good after all), then grinning ear to ear, then cursing this whole damn country and the billion people in it, then awed by generosity and hospitality.
The bad stuff: Spending an entire day lost and at the mercy of ruthless brutes, the possibility of severe financial emergency, a scary situation that involved me wandering the dark and deserted streets of the old city after midnight, the incident with the bull, getting chased by feral dogs, almost being late for my train due to some idiot "sadhu" trying to sell me the prayer beads off his own wrist for 500 rupees (only about $12 US, but a fortune here), constantly feeling betrayed and lost in translation even when doing simple things like trying to buy a goddamn coke on a hot afternoon, and to top it all off aborted calls home in the world's dirtiest and most confusing train station.
The good stuff: Getting rescued by about 30 good samaritans, the financial emergencies turning out to be pretty minor, surviving the bull experience, stumbling on the very shop selling the pretty wooden toy I'd admired in my friend Kiran's bedroom in Kolkata, having the ends of my kurta nibbled by baby goats, running into an old friend from Flux Factory on the way to breakfast, staying up till all hours shooting the shit on the roof while substances holy to various religions made the rounds, and at the end of it all, bonding with a girl named Anjali over the insane weight of my pack, and actually being given a gift by her (a tiny glittering sculpture of Radha and Krishna) when I had nothing but a laugh to give in return.
Going from being threatened and swindled by a so-called holy man to being handed a goodbye present by a schoolgirl in the space of an hour is enough to bring about an existential awakening in anyone, right?
I had written a whole passage this morning on the train about a lost little girl in the train station. In hindsight, I think it's too soppy and even new agey to put up here. But the whole thing did really make me think about a few things I've needed to think about for a long time.
On a more business related note, Internet contact from me might be spotty for the next week or so. I'm in Lucknow now (now now now), which is a city that, even though it's full of amazing historical stuff and beautiful architecture, is really not set up for foreign tourism at all. So far I've discovered one internet cafe, which luckily is near my hotel, but I won't be as connected here as I have been when there's a place to check email on every corner, as there has been everywhere else in India until now. After Lucknow I'm headed for a very quick trip up to Amritsar, in Punjab, which may be so quick I might not get a chance to blog again until I get to Agra or Delhi about a week from now (Taj Mahal, squeee!). So don't worry if you don't hear from me, I'm probably fine. If I'm not, then you'll DEFINITELY hear from me.
Wow. I can't believe how fast this trip is flying by now...
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Jinxed
OK, so right after I finished blogging this morning, I set off to run a few very routine errands I'd been putting off. I needed to mail a couple packages (here's lookin' at you, Gillian!), hit an ATM, finalize some travel details, buy new batteries for my flashlight, and try to touch base with my friend Bharati to see if she wants to do lunch or something when I'm back in her neck of the woods before heading back to the states.
I spent the next several hours lost in the winding alleys I had just finished praising. I never even got all the way to the post office.
To be honest, most of the fault lies with my guest house. Here's a good hint for anyone thinking of going into the hospitality industry. If you put a big sign announcing that no residents of the country you operate in (lets say, for instance, Indians) need apply, you should assume that 9 out of 10 guests will be foreigners with little or no experience with navigating your city (and who likely don't speak the local language, don't know who to trust, etc). This means that places you think are really easy to find may not seem that way to your guests. This is especially true when a guest comes to you for advice about how to get somewhere or accomplish something, already accounting for the fact that she will have a certain degree of trouble.
It IS your problem when your guests spend an entire day wandering around in circles trying to find something you told them was a really easy 5 minute walk. This is especially true when you charge triple the going rate for the services you provide. This isn't the fricking Motel 6, if you get my meaning. And it is SOOOOOO not cool when, after a guest lets you know about how she spent her day, you just shrug and say "sorry, not my problem."
I know, I know, this is India, people are crude and callous, get over it. I am, pretty much. I just need to vent (and yes, mom, everything is pretty much OK with me, don't worry!). Though I have to say that so far, I've paid next to nothing for places to stay, and yet every single member of the staff at every single guest house has been nothing but fair, kind, and helpful. It doesn't really take that much. I didn't expect above and beyond service - just good advice. I'd have happily paid some exorbitant amount for them to arrange a rickshaw, or to give one of their guys the relevant info and have him take care of it.
Bleh. Of course, I still love Varanasi and still vow to come back. I'll just stay at little 200 rupee holes in the wall when I return, and never trust nobody 'bout nothin'.
I spent the next several hours lost in the winding alleys I had just finished praising. I never even got all the way to the post office.
To be honest, most of the fault lies with my guest house. Here's a good hint for anyone thinking of going into the hospitality industry. If you put a big sign announcing that no residents of the country you operate in (lets say, for instance, Indians) need apply, you should assume that 9 out of 10 guests will be foreigners with little or no experience with navigating your city (and who likely don't speak the local language, don't know who to trust, etc). This means that places you think are really easy to find may not seem that way to your guests. This is especially true when a guest comes to you for advice about how to get somewhere or accomplish something, already accounting for the fact that she will have a certain degree of trouble.
It IS your problem when your guests spend an entire day wandering around in circles trying to find something you told them was a really easy 5 minute walk. This is especially true when you charge triple the going rate for the services you provide. This isn't the fricking Motel 6, if you get my meaning. And it is SOOOOOO not cool when, after a guest lets you know about how she spent her day, you just shrug and say "sorry, not my problem."
I know, I know, this is India, people are crude and callous, get over it. I am, pretty much. I just need to vent (and yes, mom, everything is pretty much OK with me, don't worry!). Though I have to say that so far, I've paid next to nothing for places to stay, and yet every single member of the staff at every single guest house has been nothing but fair, kind, and helpful. It doesn't really take that much. I didn't expect above and beyond service - just good advice. I'd have happily paid some exorbitant amount for them to arrange a rickshaw, or to give one of their guys the relevant info and have him take care of it.
Bleh. Of course, I still love Varanasi and still vow to come back. I'll just stay at little 200 rupee holes in the wall when I return, and never trust nobody 'bout nothin'.
Friday, February 15, 2008
I Left My Heart In Varanasi
OK, so, remember that time I was in Goa and I was all like, "well, guys, I don't think I'm ever coming home..."? Well this time it's for REAL. I mean, I obviously will be coming back as planned, having as I do a flight lined up, a job to go back to (yeehaw! thank you WGA!), a limited amount of money, a visa that will eventually expire, etc.
But I really and truly have fallen in love with Banaras. As of right now, if someone walked up to me and offered to pay me a living wage and sponsor a work visa for me to stay here and do something interesting, I would jump at the chance. I do not want to leave here. A tiny part of me has even considered canceling all my further train tickets, moving to a cheaper guesthouse, and spending the rest of the trip in Banaras. Only the headache of getting refunds on my 5 or 6 remaining tickets (or losing a big chunk of change) is preventing it.
I want to write everything I think about Varanasi, but I can't put much of it into words. I can't even tell you why I'm so charmed by it. I'll admit that one aspect is spiritual. Not so much that I've decided I want to be Hindu (not that I could unless it was some offshoot designed for outsiders, like Osho or the Hare Krishnas). It's similar to the way I've felt in certain parts of Rome. I don't want to be Catholic, but there's a presence, a stillness, which tells me god is there. Except with Varanasi it's the opposite, the presence is movement, life. Which jibes much more with my own personal beliefs, which may explain why I'm so drawn to this place. It's New Orleans, if New Orleans was a few milennia older and the center of one of the world's oldest religions. This is about as close as I get to the sort of religious experience I promised I was not going to India in search of.
There's also my history buff side, which likes Banaras because it just feels so damn old. Of course, structurally, the city is younger than most other "old" cities, because it's been rebuilt so many times. It's more about the layout of the streets, the sounds, the smells, the people, the animals, etc. Walking the streets makes me wonder if this is what medieval Europe felt like, or Jerusalem at the time of Christ.
Most of the streets are narrow alleyways about the size of the hallway of a Lower East Side tenement, packed with tiny shops which mainly sell religious items, when they don't sell silk or much more mundane things like tea in disposable terracotta cups, paan, or sweets. Most streets have open sewers on each side, though it's no more disgusting than the gutters of Bourbon Street on a Saturday night, when you think about it. There's very little vehicular traffic; instead the streets are crowded with a parade of pilgrims, cows, running children, hawkers and touts, holy men, and beggars. The whole scene is lit by whatever sunlight can penetrate the tall buildings and narrow alleys during the day, and the fires under pots of boiling tea and pans of boiling jalebis at night. Wherever you are in the old city you can hear hymns being sung, conch shell horns and bells, goats bleating, cows lowing, and the chanting of a thousand mantras. In the midst of all this, little boys fly kites, mothers nurse babies, young couples grin conspiratorially, and everyone talks on cell phones. Even the gurus.
It shocks me that, in another month, I'll be back at my desk in Chelsea, staring at a computer screen all day and bickering about whether to order Thai or sushi for lunch. I have to come back here.
But I really and truly have fallen in love with Banaras. As of right now, if someone walked up to me and offered to pay me a living wage and sponsor a work visa for me to stay here and do something interesting, I would jump at the chance. I do not want to leave here. A tiny part of me has even considered canceling all my further train tickets, moving to a cheaper guesthouse, and spending the rest of the trip in Banaras. Only the headache of getting refunds on my 5 or 6 remaining tickets (or losing a big chunk of change) is preventing it.
I want to write everything I think about Varanasi, but I can't put much of it into words. I can't even tell you why I'm so charmed by it. I'll admit that one aspect is spiritual. Not so much that I've decided I want to be Hindu (not that I could unless it was some offshoot designed for outsiders, like Osho or the Hare Krishnas). It's similar to the way I've felt in certain parts of Rome. I don't want to be Catholic, but there's a presence, a stillness, which tells me god is there. Except with Varanasi it's the opposite, the presence is movement, life. Which jibes much more with my own personal beliefs, which may explain why I'm so drawn to this place. It's New Orleans, if New Orleans was a few milennia older and the center of one of the world's oldest religions. This is about as close as I get to the sort of religious experience I promised I was not going to India in search of.
There's also my history buff side, which likes Banaras because it just feels so damn old. Of course, structurally, the city is younger than most other "old" cities, because it's been rebuilt so many times. It's more about the layout of the streets, the sounds, the smells, the people, the animals, etc. Walking the streets makes me wonder if this is what medieval Europe felt like, or Jerusalem at the time of Christ.
Most of the streets are narrow alleyways about the size of the hallway of a Lower East Side tenement, packed with tiny shops which mainly sell religious items, when they don't sell silk or much more mundane things like tea in disposable terracotta cups, paan, or sweets. Most streets have open sewers on each side, though it's no more disgusting than the gutters of Bourbon Street on a Saturday night, when you think about it. There's very little vehicular traffic; instead the streets are crowded with a parade of pilgrims, cows, running children, hawkers and touts, holy men, and beggars. The whole scene is lit by whatever sunlight can penetrate the tall buildings and narrow alleys during the day, and the fires under pots of boiling tea and pans of boiling jalebis at night. Wherever you are in the old city you can hear hymns being sung, conch shell horns and bells, goats bleating, cows lowing, and the chanting of a thousand mantras. In the midst of all this, little boys fly kites, mothers nurse babies, young couples grin conspiratorially, and everyone talks on cell phones. Even the gurus.
It shocks me that, in another month, I'll be back at my desk in Chelsea, staring at a computer screen all day and bickering about whether to order Thai or sushi for lunch. I have to come back here.
Life is just a bowl of palak paneer
So I'm here in Varanasi, and everything's seemingly fine. I'm not in love with my guesthouse, though more because they're anal and my room is at the top of 4 flights of amazingly steep stairs than because there's actually anything wrong.
I have to say I'm starting to understand why people who come to the northern part of India have such freaked out first reactions to the country. Arriving here today (my first classically "North Indian" city on the tourist trail), I saw a lot of the things I expected to see when I got here and notably didn't. Very, very dirty, dusty, and polluted. Extremely crowded. Crazy traffic. Slums. Beggars. Really blatant touts. Of course, having been here more than a month already none of it affected me in the way it does someone who's been in India for 2 or 3 days and seen ONLY this. I've seen this stuff already, just not as intensely, and also seen a lot of beauty and kindness, too.
Varanasi is amazing. It has a similar vibe to the main village part of Hampi, but exponentially, well, MORE (good news - my guesthouse is one of the easiest to find in the whole city, so I can't really get too lost). Funny, I thought it would be way more crowded. Maybe it's the time of day -- I got in around noon and have been settling in, eating lunch, and exploring in the intervening 3 hours. It seems shockingly empty to me. Emptier even than Darjeeling was, and it's low season there right now. There are also a lot more white people around than I thought there would be.
I've already had to walk by the main burning ghat, which is right next to my hotel. Couldn't bring myself to look around too much; there are some things I just don't want to see. I could feel the heat, though.
I have to say I'm starting to understand why people who come to the northern part of India have such freaked out first reactions to the country. Arriving here today (my first classically "North Indian" city on the tourist trail), I saw a lot of the things I expected to see when I got here and notably didn't. Very, very dirty, dusty, and polluted. Extremely crowded. Crazy traffic. Slums. Beggars. Really blatant touts. Of course, having been here more than a month already none of it affected me in the way it does someone who's been in India for 2 or 3 days and seen ONLY this. I've seen this stuff already, just not as intensely, and also seen a lot of beauty and kindness, too.
Varanasi is amazing. It has a similar vibe to the main village part of Hampi, but exponentially, well, MORE (good news - my guesthouse is one of the easiest to find in the whole city, so I can't really get too lost). Funny, I thought it would be way more crowded. Maybe it's the time of day -- I got in around noon and have been settling in, eating lunch, and exploring in the intervening 3 hours. It seems shockingly empty to me. Emptier even than Darjeeling was, and it's low season there right now. There are also a lot more white people around than I thought there would be.
I've already had to walk by the main burning ghat, which is right next to my hotel. Couldn't bring myself to look around too much; there are some things I just don't want to see. I could feel the heat, though.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Copacetic
And, as usual, everything's going to pretty much be OK. Of course, I'm still stuck with two super-long train journeys when one would have been enough. But I have a seat on the train back down to Kolkata tomorrow morning. Which was the main bit of stress. I've also booked a room at a hotel in Varanasi which is supposed to be one of the nicer affordable ones in town, so I should have a pretty soft landing. It's not like I have to traipse through the streets trying to find a place to stay.
In other news, I'm spending the night in the railway station itself, in what's called a "retiring room", which is an extremely basic hotel-type room with a bed and my own bathroom. I'd put it about comparable to staying in a youth hostel - kind of gross, but it does the job.
Indian train stations are basically the opposite of American ones (or American transit points of any stripe). Rather than being a totally shady place where very little is actually available and what is ends up being way overpriced, Indian train stations are actually sort of a respite from the big dark scary world out there. There are good restaurants. A nice place to wait, often with a shower (especially if you are female -- there are special "Ladies' Waiting Rooms" in every station). Bedrooms to sleep in if you have an early train or you get in at like 4AM or something. Stalls selling everything from bottled water to local handicrafts. Usually a bookshop or at least a newsstand with all the big national papers (I've grown partial to the Telegraph, but I'll take the Times of India in a pinch).
Hilariously, people working for the railway and in the stations actually speak better English than most employees of the MTA in New York.
In other news, I'm spending the night in the railway station itself, in what's called a "retiring room", which is an extremely basic hotel-type room with a bed and my own bathroom. I'd put it about comparable to staying in a youth hostel - kind of gross, but it does the job.
Indian train stations are basically the opposite of American ones (or American transit points of any stripe). Rather than being a totally shady place where very little is actually available and what is ends up being way overpriced, Indian train stations are actually sort of a respite from the big dark scary world out there. There are good restaurants. A nice place to wait, often with a shower (especially if you are female -- there are special "Ladies' Waiting Rooms" in every station). Bedrooms to sleep in if you have an early train or you get in at like 4AM or something. Stalls selling everything from bottled water to local handicrafts. Usually a bookshop or at least a newsstand with all the big national papers (I've grown partial to the Telegraph, but I'll take the Times of India in a pinch).
Hilariously, people working for the railway and in the stations actually speak better English than most employees of the MTA in New York.
Monday, February 11, 2008
What I'm Nervous About Part 2
OK, so on Wednesday and Thursday I have one of the more harrowing journeys of the trip. Most of the reason it's so complicated and annoying is that I didn't get my ass in gear and book the tickets when I was supposed to. Lesson to all of you. If you want to spend months traveling overland all over a foreign country, and you actually have things you want to see and do (as opposed to bumming around from backpacker chillout spot to backpacker chillout spot), BOOK YOUR TICKETS WELL IN ADVANCE. The other backpackers will be all laissez faire about it, "Oh, don't worry, man, it's easy to get tickets whenever..." They are full of shit (or more correctly, on their own trip that doesn't apply to you).
Anyway.
Wednesday morning bright and early, I'm taking a teensy and slow little steam train from Darjeeling down the mountains to Kurseong. This is something I inflicted on myself, but I'm really excited because I think it's going to be really beautiful. This is the train I described as a poncey heritage train the other day. Who cares, I love poncey "heritage" stuff. Who am I kidding? From Kurseong, I'll get another jeep back down to Siliguri to spend the night. Which doesn't thrill me, as Siliguri is basically just a transit point and I wish I didn't have to spend that much time there. But it's necessary, because...
Circa 7AM the following morning, if I'm lucky, I will be getting on a train back to Kolkata. I say "if I'm lucky" because this is the train I waited way too long to book and thus ended up waitlisted. Right now I'm 8th on the list, up 9 places from yesterday, and I have another day and a half to go. Chances are good I'll get a seat, but still, you know how much I love to worry about things.
The main reason I'm so worried about it and not just thinking "Oh, well, whatever, I'll get where I'm going somehow..." is that I have to get this train in order to make ANOTHER train Thursday night from Kolkata to Varanasi. Again, this is a train that (while at least I have a ticket!) I got stuck with because I didn't plan ahead. There's fully a train that goes directly between Siliguri and Varanasi -- it was just completely and totally sold out by the time I got off my ass and tried to book something. So I'm taking twice the time and 3 times the stress to get from point A to point B, all because I was stupid and listened to backpackers in Goa who were all "chill out, man, you'll totally get whatever train you want, whenever..."
And of course this is how I'm traveling to Varanasi (AKA Benares), which is definitely on the list of Top 5 Most Stressful Places In India. It has a reputation amongst travelers, at least, of being crowded, filthy, full of grifters and con artists, and incredibly intense. And this is where I want to go after 2 straight days of the most stressful traveling?
This is going to be an interesting few days... I think I'm just going to brace myself for the worst and keep repeating the folloing mantra -- I Can Leave Anytime I Want*.
~~~~
* That's "leave" as in go somewhere else, not go home. Are you crazy? Why would I cut my whole trip short because I was tired and hungry and lost and accidentally saw some half-cremated body parts in the river?
Anyway.
Wednesday morning bright and early, I'm taking a teensy and slow little steam train from Darjeeling down the mountains to Kurseong. This is something I inflicted on myself, but I'm really excited because I think it's going to be really beautiful. This is the train I described as a poncey heritage train the other day. Who cares, I love poncey "heritage" stuff. Who am I kidding? From Kurseong, I'll get another jeep back down to Siliguri to spend the night. Which doesn't thrill me, as Siliguri is basically just a transit point and I wish I didn't have to spend that much time there. But it's necessary, because...
Circa 7AM the following morning, if I'm lucky, I will be getting on a train back to Kolkata. I say "if I'm lucky" because this is the train I waited way too long to book and thus ended up waitlisted. Right now I'm 8th on the list, up 9 places from yesterday, and I have another day and a half to go. Chances are good I'll get a seat, but still, you know how much I love to worry about things.
The main reason I'm so worried about it and not just thinking "Oh, well, whatever, I'll get where I'm going somehow..." is that I have to get this train in order to make ANOTHER train Thursday night from Kolkata to Varanasi. Again, this is a train that (while at least I have a ticket!) I got stuck with because I didn't plan ahead. There's fully a train that goes directly between Siliguri and Varanasi -- it was just completely and totally sold out by the time I got off my ass and tried to book something. So I'm taking twice the time and 3 times the stress to get from point A to point B, all because I was stupid and listened to backpackers in Goa who were all "chill out, man, you'll totally get whatever train you want, whenever..."
And of course this is how I'm traveling to Varanasi (AKA Benares), which is definitely on the list of Top 5 Most Stressful Places In India. It has a reputation amongst travelers, at least, of being crowded, filthy, full of grifters and con artists, and incredibly intense. And this is where I want to go after 2 straight days of the most stressful traveling?
This is going to be an interesting few days... I think I'm just going to brace myself for the worst and keep repeating the folloing mantra -- I Can Leave Anytime I Want*.
~~~~
* That's "leave" as in go somewhere else, not go home. Are you crazy? Why would I cut my whole trip short because I was tired and hungry and lost and accidentally saw some half-cremated body parts in the river?
One More Thing
Before I sign off and pay what is sure to be a gargantuan internet cafe bill.
Tried the butter tea. It was surprisingly good. Like a cup of half lovely milky tea, half chicken stock. Which sounds gross. But it was good, I promise. The only problem is that it's so rich I can only drink one small cup, and restaurants here only sell it by the pot. Which causes me to become completely tightfisted and decide I must finish the whole thing. Which causes digestive trauma for the next 24 hours.
Tried the butter tea. It was surprisingly good. Like a cup of half lovely milky tea, half chicken stock. Which sounds gross. But it was good, I promise. The only problem is that it's so rich I can only drink one small cup, and restaurants here only sell it by the pot. Which causes me to become completely tightfisted and decide I must finish the whole thing. Which causes digestive trauma for the next 24 hours.
Now That I Have That Out Of My System
Omigod omigod OH MY GOD.
Guess what I saw today.
This is amazing, even considering that I have virtually no interest whatsoever in Tibetan Buddhism outside of idle and semi-ethnological curiosity.
Today I saw, up close and personal, individually, the Tibetan Book Of The Dead.
The One. The real, 100% bona fide original handwriten version.
Not in a museum or at a special show at the NY Public Library. Not a really amazing reproduction. Not in a line of fawning whiteys waiting to go listen to the Dalai Lama speak or take a Transcendental Meditation course. Me, the feeble old Lama who runs the monastery, our breath hanging in the air*, and le book.
OK, let's rewind.
So I was skimming the Lonely Planet's list of things to do in and around Darjeeling. Tea estates, Tibetan handicraft collectives, the godawful idea** of a 4AM drive out to Tiger Hill to watch the sun rise over Kanchenjunga. In a list of the dozen or so Tibetan gompas in surrounding villages, there was a sentence or two about the Bhutia Busty Monastery (I know, here we go again with the unfortunate names). Something about nice murals, and the place was actually within walking distance of the center of town, unlike the rest which involved daytrips. There might have been a mention of the book, but it was directly followed by "but it's off limits and nobody can see it so don't bother mmmkay?"
I headed down towards the gompa, thinking it would basically be a nice walk in the mountains, with the gompa a good stopping point in the middle, some cool Himalayan photo ops, and a stop at one of those Tibetan handicraft workshops on the way back. Good way to spend a damp and chilly Darjeeling afternoon.
The walk really was beautiful, and I managed to warm up a little and get some good pictures. I didn't even get lost (or fall off the side of the mountain) on the steep and winding footpaths. I got to the gompa, and it seemed to be pretty much what I expected. Interesting architecture and artwork, and a wonderfully atmospheric place to catch my breath before schlepping back up the mountain.
There were some monks playing badminton (Priceless!) in the yard, and after a polite "Namaste" I asked them if it was true that the original Book of the Dead was kept inside. Monosyllabic affirmative between volleys. "Do you think it's possible to see it?" Monosyllabic negative between volleys. "Oh, OK. Well namaste, then..." And I headed for another pass around the side of the monastery to make sure I'd gotten a good look at all the paintings of demons and boddhisatvas and such. On my way out, I nodded in greeting to a woman who looked to be a devotee. She looked me up and down, turned around and called out something in Tibetan***. An old man dressed in secular clothes came out and stopped me. "Wait here. I go get keys."
I had no idea what I was going to see. More Tibetan art? Just the quotidian, if neat looking, grounds of the lamasery? Even if what he wanted to show me was boring, I'd never actually been inside a Tibetan gompa before and thus it seemed silly to pass up the oppurtunity.
He came back with a set of keys and asked me to take off my shoes on the porch. When I was stockingfooted on the frigid stone, he opened an ornately carved and painted wooden door and we went into the inner sanctum of the monastery. There was a huge shrine in the center, with the requisite huge statue of Buddha, as well as piles of what looked like fancy shaped puris, white scarves, and other offerings*4. There was a big garlanded photo of the Dalai Lama, and smaller photos of some other important lamas I'm not too familiar with. Amazing gold and silver flecked murals covered the walls, and every surface was painted with auspicious charms. There were smaller shrines with other statues in different corners of the room, and the pillars in the center were covered with Thangkas*5.
This is the part where I start kicking myself for knowing approximately nothing about Buddhist art or iconography - trying to explain what I saw is like coming across the Mona Lisa in someone's attic and describing it as "a pretty nice portrait".
Along the wall on either side of the main shrine were glassed in cupboards containing dozens of identical bundles that sort of looked like bricks wrapped in fabric. I assumed they were more offerings or some symbolic item of little interest to me.
After taking me to different parts of the room and explaining all of the art as best he could in his limited English, as well as the history of the lamasery and his own family's role in its upkeep - apparently he's the direct descendent of caretaker monks who've maintained the gompa since it was built in 1760 - the man who I had by then learned was named Purva Lama (probably mispelled) and despite the civvies really is a Buddhist lama - turned to the glass cupboards.
"This is our sacred book. 100% original."
About a third of his statements about the murals, paintings, sculptures, ritual objects, etc. were followed by this clarification, which is actually important here in India where religious practitioners think nothing of replacing beautiful and ancient devotional artwork with shoddy reproductions in acrylic house paint, brass, or concrete.
"Achcha*6! I've heard about this! This is the original, then?" So much for the Lonely Planet's warning and the badminton-playing monks' denial.
He repeated his catchphrase. "Our book has been kept at this lamasery since it was brought here from Lhasa in 1682. Of course there were no cars or planes back then, so it was carried on horseback and by porters all the way from Tibet. My family have been keepers of the book since then."
He opened one of the cupboard doors with a key and took out one of the bundles, which I could now tell definitely weren't bricks but stacks of manuscript pages about the size of a postcard or 35 millimeter snapshot, carefully wrapped in the same white silk scarves that draped the main shrine. This, and its 100-odd mates, was the real "100% Original" Tibetan Book Of The Dead.
Understandably, Purva Lama couldn't open the bundles to show me the individual pages. Maybe if I were a fellow monk, or if I had demonstrated a huge level of knowledge and interest in Buddhism, I could have convinced him. But if they unwrapped a hunk of sacred manuscript for every silly gora who happened by on her way to look at shawls, there soon wouldn't be any 100% Original book left, because sunlight and damp air and the oils in our hands would erase the whole thing, or break down the paper, or whatever it is that happens to incredibly ancient manuscripts when they're out in the open for anybody to paw at.
After talking a little more about the book, he replaced the bundle in its niche and closed the glass doors of the cupboard. He showed me some other rooms containing more shrines and art, and after a little idle chatter I put my shoes back on and headed uphill and on my way. And that's how I came to see the "100% Original" Tibetan Book Of The Dead.
~~~~
* It's COLD here! Have I mentioned that yet?
** Maybe if every single morning I've been north of Kolkata hadn't been completely opaque with mist - I'm lucky if I can see my breakfast, let alone a faroff mountain range, and if I'm getting up at 3:30 AM I want guaranteed payoff.
*** I think? I'm back in a part of India where I'm never sure what language people are speaking.
*4 Even including packets of cookies still in their flashy plastic wrappers, which is a refreshing approach coming from a religion where our offerings aren't commercially available at the corner bodega.
*5 Incredibly ornate devotional paintings which are done on paper and mounted on silk hangings.
*6 Hindi for "good", which is a garden variety way of saying "OK", "Thanks", "That's fine", "Oh, really?" and the like in most parts of India.
Guess what I saw today.
This is amazing, even considering that I have virtually no interest whatsoever in Tibetan Buddhism outside of idle and semi-ethnological curiosity.
Today I saw, up close and personal, individually, the Tibetan Book Of The Dead.
The One. The real, 100% bona fide original handwriten version.
Not in a museum or at a special show at the NY Public Library. Not a really amazing reproduction. Not in a line of fawning whiteys waiting to go listen to the Dalai Lama speak or take a Transcendental Meditation course. Me, the feeble old Lama who runs the monastery, our breath hanging in the air*, and le book.
OK, let's rewind.
So I was skimming the Lonely Planet's list of things to do in and around Darjeeling. Tea estates, Tibetan handicraft collectives, the godawful idea** of a 4AM drive out to Tiger Hill to watch the sun rise over Kanchenjunga. In a list of the dozen or so Tibetan gompas in surrounding villages, there was a sentence or two about the Bhutia Busty Monastery (I know, here we go again with the unfortunate names). Something about nice murals, and the place was actually within walking distance of the center of town, unlike the rest which involved daytrips. There might have been a mention of the book, but it was directly followed by "but it's off limits and nobody can see it so don't bother mmmkay?"
I headed down towards the gompa, thinking it would basically be a nice walk in the mountains, with the gompa a good stopping point in the middle, some cool Himalayan photo ops, and a stop at one of those Tibetan handicraft workshops on the way back. Good way to spend a damp and chilly Darjeeling afternoon.
The walk really was beautiful, and I managed to warm up a little and get some good pictures. I didn't even get lost (or fall off the side of the mountain) on the steep and winding footpaths. I got to the gompa, and it seemed to be pretty much what I expected. Interesting architecture and artwork, and a wonderfully atmospheric place to catch my breath before schlepping back up the mountain.
There were some monks playing badminton (Priceless!) in the yard, and after a polite "Namaste" I asked them if it was true that the original Book of the Dead was kept inside. Monosyllabic affirmative between volleys. "Do you think it's possible to see it?" Monosyllabic negative between volleys. "Oh, OK. Well namaste, then..." And I headed for another pass around the side of the monastery to make sure I'd gotten a good look at all the paintings of demons and boddhisatvas and such. On my way out, I nodded in greeting to a woman who looked to be a devotee. She looked me up and down, turned around and called out something in Tibetan***. An old man dressed in secular clothes came out and stopped me. "Wait here. I go get keys."
I had no idea what I was going to see. More Tibetan art? Just the quotidian, if neat looking, grounds of the lamasery? Even if what he wanted to show me was boring, I'd never actually been inside a Tibetan gompa before and thus it seemed silly to pass up the oppurtunity.
He came back with a set of keys and asked me to take off my shoes on the porch. When I was stockingfooted on the frigid stone, he opened an ornately carved and painted wooden door and we went into the inner sanctum of the monastery. There was a huge shrine in the center, with the requisite huge statue of Buddha, as well as piles of what looked like fancy shaped puris, white scarves, and other offerings*4. There was a big garlanded photo of the Dalai Lama, and smaller photos of some other important lamas I'm not too familiar with. Amazing gold and silver flecked murals covered the walls, and every surface was painted with auspicious charms. There were smaller shrines with other statues in different corners of the room, and the pillars in the center were covered with Thangkas*5.
This is the part where I start kicking myself for knowing approximately nothing about Buddhist art or iconography - trying to explain what I saw is like coming across the Mona Lisa in someone's attic and describing it as "a pretty nice portrait".
Along the wall on either side of the main shrine were glassed in cupboards containing dozens of identical bundles that sort of looked like bricks wrapped in fabric. I assumed they were more offerings or some symbolic item of little interest to me.
After taking me to different parts of the room and explaining all of the art as best he could in his limited English, as well as the history of the lamasery and his own family's role in its upkeep - apparently he's the direct descendent of caretaker monks who've maintained the gompa since it was built in 1760 - the man who I had by then learned was named Purva Lama (probably mispelled) and despite the civvies really is a Buddhist lama - turned to the glass cupboards.
"This is our sacred book. 100% original."
About a third of his statements about the murals, paintings, sculptures, ritual objects, etc. were followed by this clarification, which is actually important here in India where religious practitioners think nothing of replacing beautiful and ancient devotional artwork with shoddy reproductions in acrylic house paint, brass, or concrete.
"Achcha*6! I've heard about this! This is the original, then?" So much for the Lonely Planet's warning and the badminton-playing monks' denial.
He repeated his catchphrase. "Our book has been kept at this lamasery since it was brought here from Lhasa in 1682. Of course there were no cars or planes back then, so it was carried on horseback and by porters all the way from Tibet. My family have been keepers of the book since then."
He opened one of the cupboard doors with a key and took out one of the bundles, which I could now tell definitely weren't bricks but stacks of manuscript pages about the size of a postcard or 35 millimeter snapshot, carefully wrapped in the same white silk scarves that draped the main shrine. This, and its 100-odd mates, was the real "100% Original" Tibetan Book Of The Dead.
Understandably, Purva Lama couldn't open the bundles to show me the individual pages. Maybe if I were a fellow monk, or if I had demonstrated a huge level of knowledge and interest in Buddhism, I could have convinced him. But if they unwrapped a hunk of sacred manuscript for every silly gora who happened by on her way to look at shawls, there soon wouldn't be any 100% Original book left, because sunlight and damp air and the oils in our hands would erase the whole thing, or break down the paper, or whatever it is that happens to incredibly ancient manuscripts when they're out in the open for anybody to paw at.
After talking a little more about the book, he replaced the bundle in its niche and closed the glass doors of the cupboard. He showed me some other rooms containing more shrines and art, and after a little idle chatter I put my shoes back on and headed uphill and on my way. And that's how I came to see the "100% Original" Tibetan Book Of The Dead.
~~~~
* It's COLD here! Have I mentioned that yet?
** Maybe if every single morning I've been north of Kolkata hadn't been completely opaque with mist - I'm lucky if I can see my breakfast, let alone a faroff mountain range, and if I'm getting up at 3:30 AM I want guaranteed payoff.
*** I think? I'm back in a part of India where I'm never sure what language people are speaking.
*4 Even including packets of cookies still in their flashy plastic wrappers, which is a refreshing approach coming from a religion where our offerings aren't commercially available at the corner bodega.
*5 Incredibly ornate devotional paintings which are done on paper and mounted on silk hangings.
*6 Hindi for "good", which is a garden variety way of saying "OK", "Thanks", "That's fine", "Oh, really?" and the like in most parts of India.
Is there anybody out there?
Ummm, so I've noticed a distinct lack of comments over the last several weeks. Is anybody still reading this? I know I didn't write for a while, but reallyit was, what, a week? Cmon, people.
You don't all have to leave a comment for every entry or anything, but I'd like to know someone other than the occasional ad bot is seeing this...
I'm not sure whether I'd keep this thing up if I knew absolutely nobody other than myself was reading it. On the one hand, I mainly had the idea because I wanted to keep the many worried folks out there apprised of what's going on with me -- if I post glowing praise of Bengali sweets and/or Kashmiri shawls once in a while, you won't worry that I've contracted cholera or fallen off the side of a temple. On the other hand, it's a nice way of documenting my trip and really holding myself to writing down the things I've seen, done, eaten, learned, and felt. It'll be really cool to go back in a year and read all this.
You don't all have to leave a comment for every entry or anything, but I'd like to know someone other than the occasional ad bot is seeing this...
I'm not sure whether I'd keep this thing up if I knew absolutely nobody other than myself was reading it. On the one hand, I mainly had the idea because I wanted to keep the many worried folks out there apprised of what's going on with me -- if I post glowing praise of Bengali sweets and/or Kashmiri shawls once in a while, you won't worry that I've contracted cholera or fallen off the side of a temple. On the other hand, it's a nice way of documenting my trip and really holding myself to writing down the things I've seen, done, eaten, learned, and felt. It'll be really cool to go back in a year and read all this.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Darjeeling, Unlimited
I'd like to preface this post by saying that, in case anybody was wondering, there is not only no such train as the Darjeeling Limited, but A) trains in India are only ever known as Local, Express or Mail, and B) the only train that runs to Darjeeling is a poncey "heritage" line that only passes through a few villages in northern West Bengal (thus avoiding Rajasthan entirely). There is, however, a Darjeeling Mail (which was sold out so I took the Kamrup Express) Take that, Wes Anderson.
OK, now on to the real entry. This is gonna be a long one, so hang on to your hats. This one's for Ranbir, who keeps emailing me and telling me to write.
~~~~
It was one of those hot, muggy urban afternoons from Heck. My overpriced Kolkata taxi dropped me not at the entrance to Howrah station (to banal, I guess), but in some side alley choked with beggars and hawkers, forcing me to extend the Backpacker Walk Of Shame (i.e. anytime I'm encumbered with my backpack in a public place, thus attracting all the wrong sorts of attention) all the way from said alley to the Howrah Ladies' Waiting Room. Which, of course, the attendants were ruling with an iron fist. Five rupees to the ladies-room wallah for the pleasure of peeing in a half-flooded, reeking, and shit-spattered hole in the ground; a humiliating rebuke from the Waiting Rooms Nazi for trying to sneak into the air conditioned Upper Class Waiting Room (off limits to second-class-traveling riffraff like yours truly). On top of all this, I had a blinding sinus headache after 4 days breathing in almost pure car exhaust. Which serves me right for admiring the picturesquely septugenarian Ambassador taxis that dominate Kolkata traffic.
Thankfully my train arrived on time, and before I had a chance to piss a hissy fit I was ensconced in my upper berth drinking chai and reading Anna Karenina. I set the alarm for 6 (NOBODY on an Indian train is going to wake you when your stop is coming up) drifted off to sleep at a respectable hour.
My alarm goes off, and I wake up. I'm thankful every time this happens, not because it ever doesn't, but because the last thing I want is to wake up in Shillong, facing a huge fine for railway ticket fraud, not to mention the wrath of the military for going into Meghalaya without the proper Inner Line Permit. I get my stuff together, brush my teeth, and look out the window. Fog so thick I can't see the edges of the track. We arrive at Siliguri a few minutes later, and I have to ask directions to get out of the station because the fog is so bad I can't read the signs. Thankfully my bike rickshaw driver is used to it and manages to pedal me safely to the other end of town where the land rovers headed for Darjeeling congregate. After a quick breakfast of puri and subzi (that's fried chappati and more vegetable curry/stew/stuff, a north Indian counterpart to the bhaji pao I had in Goa) and the ubiquitous chai, we're off into the mountains.
By "we" I mean me and my 15-odd fellow land rover passengers. Seriously. 4 in the front, for in the back seat, an indeterminantly huge family on jump seats in the trunk, and (I fricken Kid You Not) one brave soul clinging to the luggage rack on the roof. This makes the 3-person nuclear family that typically cruises around in comparably sized SUV's in the US seem obscene.
With a couple kilometers behind us (note: I refuse to become one of those assholes who says "klicks". ew. kilometers they will remain), the fog is replaced with a view so amazing I can't come up with a flippant way to describe it here. It's the Amalfi coast, with many of the same tropes from my Goa arrival entry (livestock, general stores, kids playing cricket), and a dash of suicidal tendencies. We drive past tea plantations and elite boarding schools with names out of a Bronte novel. The road is bound by a mossy stone wall on one side and a sheer drop halfway down the Himalayas on the other. "Road"is a much too fancy word for the ridged and pitted surface we're driving on. Hence the SUV as mandatory mode of transportation.
The six year old girl in the back starts puking out the window. We stop for a rest at a roadside chai stand (have I mentioned that in India, it's always time for chai?). Moments later a convoy of jeeps bearing Gorkha separatists joins us. They brandish the Gorkha flag and shout slogans like "Gorkhaland Zindabad!" (which is, ironically enough, a mix of English and Hindustani, and thus the language of the evil oppressor, but whatever gets the message across, right?) I feel like an extra in the movie version of The Inheritance of Loss. They're not armed or even particularly mean looking, so I don't feel the urge to bail on Darjeeling.
Back in the car, we ascend another thousand feet or so and break through the clouds, revealing my first taste of the five-peaked mountain called Kanchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world. Yes, Lyle, THAT Kanchenjunga, and it looks a zillion times better in person than on your toothpaste label.
Arriving in Darjeeling, things got a little hairy when the land rover dropped everyone across town from my hotel (this trip is full of these annoying realizations, which somehow the Lonely Planet always fails to mention). Darjeeling is a pretty big place, composed of knotted uphill alleyways which aren't labeled and seem to generally act as wormholes (Oh, hm, how on earth did I get here?). There was no way I was going to find my guesthouse on foot carrying this pack uphill on these streets. The only option was to pay a van an exhorbitant amount of money to get me two minutes up the road to the Maple Tourist Lodge.
What I found when I arrived more than made up for the highway robbery. I'd called ahead from Kolkata to reserve a place, and was told the room would be 170 rupees a night. Way too good to be true. I thought I must have misunderstood (always a possibility here where Indians say "fifteen" and "fifty" identically), or that maybe he meant $170, which would be absolutely out of the question. But it turned out that not only was 170 correct, the place was gorgeous and clean and everything you'd want in a hill station guesthouse, except of course for central heat.
And it gets better. Not only was I paying only $4.25 a night to stay in this lovely old mansion smack-dab on the side of the Himalayas, but due to some minor administrative mixup they were upgrading me to a nicer room and still charging me only 170.
After a hot shower in my palatial Himalayan suite (ok, minor hyperbole but seriously this room is half the size of my whole apartment in New York...), I headed out into town for my first taste of the local specialty, Tibetan cuisine. Northern West Bengal is a huge center for Tibetan Buddhist refugees, and regardless of what the local cuisine used to be like pre-exile, it's now been completely taken over, much in the way that bland Anglo pioneer grub (anyone for salt pork?) was replaced by Mexican in Texas. There are a few Tibetan restaurants in New York, so I'm familiar with the basics. But the real thing, only a few hundred miles from its natural habitat, cooked by and for Tibetans, is KILLER. Especially in this cold damp weather.
The main concept is warm hearty comfort food. Momos are the Tibetan take on Chinese dumplings, except not as pork-centric. Then there's thugkpa, which is a garlicky soup full of huge thick noodles and piles of greens. You can get chicken thugkpa as well, but there's a Bird Flu scare going on here in West Bengal, so no thanks. And of course you can't walk two steps in Darjeeling without drinking tea. Chai isn't as popular here, because the locally grown tea here is just way, way too good to drown in spices. It would be like making sangria with Chateauneuf du Pape. With my first few Tibetan meals I've been having just plain straightforward Darjeeling, because I'm a little afraid to try the tea the locals are famous for: salted butter tea. No, that's not a euphemism for anything - it's really tea with butter and salt. I will take the plunge and report back, I promise. Another thing I want to try, which is never on the menu at the New York places because it's a little weird for American tastes, is tsampa, which I think is supposed to be either a sort of porridge or gruel (Like I said, never on menus in the US, so I'm not sure). Luckily there are dozens of Tibetan restaurants here in Darjeeling, and I still have 3 more days here. I'm sure I'll get a chance to try everything and still have room for all the momos in the world.
Another thing Darjeeling is famous for is its status as a British hill station. For the uninitiated, hill stations are the result of the British colonialists' absolute abhorrence (to a superstitious level) of hot weather. Rather than, you know, actually adapt (would they be colonialists if they had?), they went all over the subcontinent finding places that were vaguely reminiscent of Britain in climate and landscape, and setting up resorts they called hill stations. Darjeeling fit the bill beautifully, and even better proved to be a great place to grow tea and a strategic base for military and espionage due to being right on the border of Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, and dozens of other little Himalayan kingdoms the British wanted to colonize. So there's this serious Raj nostalgia vibe, even now that the whole town has become a popular vacation spot for middle class Indians.
I've tended to avoid this sort of thing in India - reading the Lonely Planet and other backpacker/tourist literature, I get the sense that Brits and other Europeans really get off on the Raj-esque aspects of India, especially the sahib/memsahib game. Want to rent a moped but don't have a license? That's what bribes are for, silly! Kolkata wouldn't be Kolkata without the foot-powered rickshaws! I simply won't eat "curry" for breakfast; why can't These People eat toast and jam like everyone else? So I've resisted anything that seemed too colonial.
And then I got to Kolkata, where I was dragged by my very middle class hosts to their country club to drink G&T's, eat steak, and take in some Oscar Wilde. I got over the whole OMG That's So Colonial attitude very quickly. The bottom line is that all the starchiest institutions of British India have been completely co-opted by ordinary everyday Indians. 21st century India is the only place in the world where a traumatic family story about Partition will be followed in the next breath by "Do have more marmalade, darling."
So here in Darjeeling, while I don't think I'll be taking high tea at The Planters' Club, I've stopped being hung up about having shortbread and regular "black" tea sometimes instead of jalebis and chai, or using toilet paper when the mood strikes, or staying in a beautiful gingerbread house of a hotel. I think I'm becoming more comfortable as a gora in India.
OK, now on to the real entry. This is gonna be a long one, so hang on to your hats. This one's for Ranbir, who keeps emailing me and telling me to write.
~~~~
It was one of those hot, muggy urban afternoons from Heck. My overpriced Kolkata taxi dropped me not at the entrance to Howrah station (to banal, I guess), but in some side alley choked with beggars and hawkers, forcing me to extend the Backpacker Walk Of Shame (i.e. anytime I'm encumbered with my backpack in a public place, thus attracting all the wrong sorts of attention) all the way from said alley to the Howrah Ladies' Waiting Room. Which, of course, the attendants were ruling with an iron fist. Five rupees to the ladies-room wallah for the pleasure of peeing in a half-flooded, reeking, and shit-spattered hole in the ground; a humiliating rebuke from the Waiting Rooms Nazi for trying to sneak into the air conditioned Upper Class Waiting Room (off limits to second-class-traveling riffraff like yours truly). On top of all this, I had a blinding sinus headache after 4 days breathing in almost pure car exhaust. Which serves me right for admiring the picturesquely septugenarian Ambassador taxis that dominate Kolkata traffic.
Thankfully my train arrived on time, and before I had a chance to piss a hissy fit I was ensconced in my upper berth drinking chai and reading Anna Karenina. I set the alarm for 6 (NOBODY on an Indian train is going to wake you when your stop is coming up) drifted off to sleep at a respectable hour.
My alarm goes off, and I wake up. I'm thankful every time this happens, not because it ever doesn't, but because the last thing I want is to wake up in Shillong, facing a huge fine for railway ticket fraud, not to mention the wrath of the military for going into Meghalaya without the proper Inner Line Permit. I get my stuff together, brush my teeth, and look out the window. Fog so thick I can't see the edges of the track. We arrive at Siliguri a few minutes later, and I have to ask directions to get out of the station because the fog is so bad I can't read the signs. Thankfully my bike rickshaw driver is used to it and manages to pedal me safely to the other end of town where the land rovers headed for Darjeeling congregate. After a quick breakfast of puri and subzi (that's fried chappati and more vegetable curry/stew/stuff, a north Indian counterpart to the bhaji pao I had in Goa) and the ubiquitous chai, we're off into the mountains.
By "we" I mean me and my 15-odd fellow land rover passengers. Seriously. 4 in the front, for in the back seat, an indeterminantly huge family on jump seats in the trunk, and (I fricken Kid You Not) one brave soul clinging to the luggage rack on the roof. This makes the 3-person nuclear family that typically cruises around in comparably sized SUV's in the US seem obscene.
With a couple kilometers behind us (note: I refuse to become one of those assholes who says "klicks". ew. kilometers they will remain), the fog is replaced with a view so amazing I can't come up with a flippant way to describe it here. It's the Amalfi coast, with many of the same tropes from my Goa arrival entry (livestock, general stores, kids playing cricket), and a dash of suicidal tendencies. We drive past tea plantations and elite boarding schools with names out of a Bronte novel. The road is bound by a mossy stone wall on one side and a sheer drop halfway down the Himalayas on the other. "Road"is a much too fancy word for the ridged and pitted surface we're driving on. Hence the SUV as mandatory mode of transportation.
The six year old girl in the back starts puking out the window. We stop for a rest at a roadside chai stand (have I mentioned that in India, it's always time for chai?). Moments later a convoy of jeeps bearing Gorkha separatists joins us. They brandish the Gorkha flag and shout slogans like "Gorkhaland Zindabad!" (which is, ironically enough, a mix of English and Hindustani, and thus the language of the evil oppressor, but whatever gets the message across, right?) I feel like an extra in the movie version of The Inheritance of Loss. They're not armed or even particularly mean looking, so I don't feel the urge to bail on Darjeeling.
Back in the car, we ascend another thousand feet or so and break through the clouds, revealing my first taste of the five-peaked mountain called Kanchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world. Yes, Lyle, THAT Kanchenjunga, and it looks a zillion times better in person than on your toothpaste label.
Arriving in Darjeeling, things got a little hairy when the land rover dropped everyone across town from my hotel (this trip is full of these annoying realizations, which somehow the Lonely Planet always fails to mention). Darjeeling is a pretty big place, composed of knotted uphill alleyways which aren't labeled and seem to generally act as wormholes (Oh, hm, how on earth did I get here?). There was no way I was going to find my guesthouse on foot carrying this pack uphill on these streets. The only option was to pay a van an exhorbitant amount of money to get me two minutes up the road to the Maple Tourist Lodge.
What I found when I arrived more than made up for the highway robbery. I'd called ahead from Kolkata to reserve a place, and was told the room would be 170 rupees a night. Way too good to be true. I thought I must have misunderstood (always a possibility here where Indians say "fifteen" and "fifty" identically), or that maybe he meant $170, which would be absolutely out of the question. But it turned out that not only was 170 correct, the place was gorgeous and clean and everything you'd want in a hill station guesthouse, except of course for central heat.
And it gets better. Not only was I paying only $4.25 a night to stay in this lovely old mansion smack-dab on the side of the Himalayas, but due to some minor administrative mixup they were upgrading me to a nicer room and still charging me only 170.
After a hot shower in my palatial Himalayan suite (ok, minor hyperbole but seriously this room is half the size of my whole apartment in New York...), I headed out into town for my first taste of the local specialty, Tibetan cuisine. Northern West Bengal is a huge center for Tibetan Buddhist refugees, and regardless of what the local cuisine used to be like pre-exile, it's now been completely taken over, much in the way that bland Anglo pioneer grub (anyone for salt pork?) was replaced by Mexican in Texas. There are a few Tibetan restaurants in New York, so I'm familiar with the basics. But the real thing, only a few hundred miles from its natural habitat, cooked by and for Tibetans, is KILLER. Especially in this cold damp weather.
The main concept is warm hearty comfort food. Momos are the Tibetan take on Chinese dumplings, except not as pork-centric. Then there's thugkpa, which is a garlicky soup full of huge thick noodles and piles of greens. You can get chicken thugkpa as well, but there's a Bird Flu scare going on here in West Bengal, so no thanks. And of course you can't walk two steps in Darjeeling without drinking tea. Chai isn't as popular here, because the locally grown tea here is just way, way too good to drown in spices. It would be like making sangria with Chateauneuf du Pape. With my first few Tibetan meals I've been having just plain straightforward Darjeeling, because I'm a little afraid to try the tea the locals are famous for: salted butter tea. No, that's not a euphemism for anything - it's really tea with butter and salt. I will take the plunge and report back, I promise. Another thing I want to try, which is never on the menu at the New York places because it's a little weird for American tastes, is tsampa, which I think is supposed to be either a sort of porridge or gruel (Like I said, never on menus in the US, so I'm not sure). Luckily there are dozens of Tibetan restaurants here in Darjeeling, and I still have 3 more days here. I'm sure I'll get a chance to try everything and still have room for all the momos in the world.
Another thing Darjeeling is famous for is its status as a British hill station. For the uninitiated, hill stations are the result of the British colonialists' absolute abhorrence (to a superstitious level) of hot weather. Rather than, you know, actually adapt (would they be colonialists if they had?), they went all over the subcontinent finding places that were vaguely reminiscent of Britain in climate and landscape, and setting up resorts they called hill stations. Darjeeling fit the bill beautifully, and even better proved to be a great place to grow tea and a strategic base for military and espionage due to being right on the border of Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, and dozens of other little Himalayan kingdoms the British wanted to colonize. So there's this serious Raj nostalgia vibe, even now that the whole town has become a popular vacation spot for middle class Indians.
I've tended to avoid this sort of thing in India - reading the Lonely Planet and other backpacker/tourist literature, I get the sense that Brits and other Europeans really get off on the Raj-esque aspects of India, especially the sahib/memsahib game. Want to rent a moped but don't have a license? That's what bribes are for, silly! Kolkata wouldn't be Kolkata without the foot-powered rickshaws! I simply won't eat "curry" for breakfast; why can't These People eat toast and jam like everyone else? So I've resisted anything that seemed too colonial.
And then I got to Kolkata, where I was dragged by my very middle class hosts to their country club to drink G&T's, eat steak, and take in some Oscar Wilde. I got over the whole OMG That's So Colonial attitude very quickly. The bottom line is that all the starchiest institutions of British India have been completely co-opted by ordinary everyday Indians. 21st century India is the only place in the world where a traumatic family story about Partition will be followed in the next breath by "Do have more marmalade, darling."
So here in Darjeeling, while I don't think I'll be taking high tea at The Planters' Club, I've stopped being hung up about having shortbread and regular "black" tea sometimes instead of jalebis and chai, or using toilet paper when the mood strikes, or staying in a beautiful gingerbread house of a hotel. I think I'm becoming more comfortable as a gora in India.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Jackpot
I'll write more about Darjeeling tomorrow or the next day when I actually have something meaningful to say, but I just wanted to brag about one thing.
My hotel.
OMIGOD.
200 year old mansion with wood floors, fireplaces, cool old furniture, himalayan views, etc. outside the hustle and bustle of the main commercial center. (not to mention things like hot water and piles of wooly blankets and thick duvets).
The price? Rs 170, AKA $4.25, per night.
God I love India...
My hotel.
OMIGOD.
200 year old mansion with wood floors, fireplaces, cool old furniture, himalayan views, etc. outside the hustle and bustle of the main commercial center. (not to mention things like hot water and piles of wooly blankets and thick duvets).
The price? Rs 170, AKA $4.25, per night.
God I love India...
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Complacency
So I'm sitting here in an internet cafe in the middle of Kolkata. For the first time in a long while, the internet seems to be working well and I have plenty of free time to type my hands off.
And I find myself with nothing to say. I have now been in India for almost exactly a month. Most of the picturesque stuff is sort of business as usual to me at this point. Yes yes, goats on a city street, ancient Ambassador taxis, chai wallahs, beautiful temples and history and art. All that is very nice. But I've talked about it.
Nothing terribly exciting on the culinary front, though I have had some lovely home cooking (including eating rather more meat than I should be considering I've been "vegetarian" going on 6 months now). Friends are showing me a very good time. I'm learning a lot more about Indian art, politics, culture, and general outlook than I'm ever able to in remote spots where "George Bush very bad man!" is a high point of conversation.
Kolkata and Pune are interesting Indian cities to me, because both are similarly sort of un-Indian. In Pune I hung out in bars that could easily pass for any Tigerland hangout in Baton Rouge, down to Superbowl coverage on the TV. Tonight in Kolkata I'm seeing a play by Oscar Wilde. This is the "New India". It's much easier for me to move through than Hampi or Agonda were. Streets and addresses are clearly labeled, taxi and rickshaw rides involve metered fares. Everyone wears jeans and converse sneakers. I could easily live in either city. But adventures have been few and far between, and thus there isn't really much to say.
Veni vidi vici?
--
I was about to hit the "publish post" button, when the guy out on the sidewalk selling cheapo bamboo flutes just busted out with the theme song from Dhoom. Which is only going to be funny for people who know Bollywood (Dhoom is an Indian equivalent of The Fast And The Furious, complete with rockin' techno/hiphop soundtrack). But it kind of sums up my last week or so.
And I find myself with nothing to say. I have now been in India for almost exactly a month. Most of the picturesque stuff is sort of business as usual to me at this point. Yes yes, goats on a city street, ancient Ambassador taxis, chai wallahs, beautiful temples and history and art. All that is very nice. But I've talked about it.
Nothing terribly exciting on the culinary front, though I have had some lovely home cooking (including eating rather more meat than I should be considering I've been "vegetarian" going on 6 months now). Friends are showing me a very good time. I'm learning a lot more about Indian art, politics, culture, and general outlook than I'm ever able to in remote spots where "George Bush very bad man!" is a high point of conversation.
Kolkata and Pune are interesting Indian cities to me, because both are similarly sort of un-Indian. In Pune I hung out in bars that could easily pass for any Tigerland hangout in Baton Rouge, down to Superbowl coverage on the TV. Tonight in Kolkata I'm seeing a play by Oscar Wilde. This is the "New India". It's much easier for me to move through than Hampi or Agonda were. Streets and addresses are clearly labeled, taxi and rickshaw rides involve metered fares. Everyone wears jeans and converse sneakers. I could easily live in either city. But adventures have been few and far between, and thus there isn't really much to say.
Veni vidi vici?
--
I was about to hit the "publish post" button, when the guy out on the sidewalk selling cheapo bamboo flutes just busted out with the theme song from Dhoom. Which is only going to be funny for people who know Bollywood (Dhoom is an Indian equivalent of The Fast And The Furious, complete with rockin' techno/hiphop soundtrack). But it kind of sums up my last week or so.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
I'm Still Alive, I Promise
Sorry it's been a while. Something great is in the works, I promise. There are two major reasons I haven't been blogging this past week or so. Reason #1 is that I've been staying with friends in Pune and here in Kolkata, and this makes it harder to find the time to stop into an internet cafe (or worse, commandeer their computer) and blog my heart out. It also makes for a slightly less eventful trip, because I don't have my standard fare of dirty guesthouses to fall back on. I've had luxuries like indoor plumbing for the last week, and I've been seriously schooled about how to deal with taxi and/or rickshaw drivers. Which eliminates a lot of my standard material...
Reason #2 is one of those "just my luck" things -- several major fiberoptic lines have been cut in the Arabian sea (I think?), making the internet really, really slow across the subcontinent. Which makes even checking my email a huge headache, let alone blogging, facebook, keeping up with the news, etc. This is OK, though, because again, I've been with friends who are wonderful and protective and really know their stuff, meaning that if anything were to happen, I would be well taken care of (cutting down on the urgency of being in online contact with you guys).
Anyway, Pune was super fun, and I'm having a blast in Kolkata. I've got my fingers crossed for Obama today...
Reason #2 is one of those "just my luck" things -- several major fiberoptic lines have been cut in the Arabian sea (I think?), making the internet really, really slow across the subcontinent. Which makes even checking my email a huge headache, let alone blogging, facebook, keeping up with the news, etc. This is OK, though, because again, I've been with friends who are wonderful and protective and really know their stuff, meaning that if anything were to happen, I would be well taken care of (cutting down on the urgency of being in online contact with you guys).
Anyway, Pune was super fun, and I'm having a blast in Kolkata. I've got my fingers crossed for Obama today...
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