All aboard
Before we left home we either got ‘why on earth would you want to go to India’, or ‘India is my favourite place on earth’. We had a sneaking suspicion that we’d fall into the latter camp, but we have to admit when we got off the plane from Nepal there was a hint of nerves of what was to come, particularly given our first stop was Varanasi, which Lonely Planet describes as “unrelentingly chaotic and the most unapologetically indiscreet place on earth”.
People talk about poverty, the odours and the mass of humanity being the first things to hit you. Instead we had pornography and a stampede of bulls.
We knew were probably paying too much for an air-conditioned van to get us the 60kms to town, but liked the idea of some form of normality to begin the journey. “This car so good, beautiful, feel the leather seats under the towel covers – real luxury’ he enthused. But the peace de résistance he was keen to demonstrate was the DVD player above his head. Of course we were more interested in sneaking a glimpse into rural Indian life for the first time, but not wanting to offend agreed we’d watch a film. Still gazing out the window, Pip glanced at the screen after a few minutes not quite sure what she was seeing, an Asian lady who appeared to be topless with a rather saucy look on her face. Elbowing Duncan at just the right moment for the camera to pan down her body to reveal more manhood than any of the malnourished bulls in the nearby paddocks. After some commotion, the driver was seemingly mortified “my friend borrow my car, naughty, naughty, me so sorry”. Welcome to India a land of contrasts where a moment ago he’d been talking about the worship of women as part of Hinduism and yet here we were being whisked through the countryside with women in full saris working the rice fields while watching some pretty hard-core porn!
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| Just after 'running with the bulls' Pip and her new backpack weave the streets in search of the Ganga |
Our trustworthy driver then dropped us off ‘just a few minutes walk to your hotel”. A typically chaotic Asian street with motorbikes whizzing along ten a breadth, tuk tuks (or as they are known here auto-rickshaws) beeping their way through impossible gaps between buses and cars, plus the Indian addition of cows just lazing about on busy congested roads - some even acting as roundabouts just lying down in the middle of a busy city street. We both just pushed on marching vaguely in the way he’d pointed us, trying to block out the incessant beeping and near misses of cars hitting us.
Leading the charge, Pip only just heard Duncan yell “stampede, move, move” in the nick of time to hide behind a roadside chai stall to see 15-20 fully grown bulls bolting down the main road of Varanassi. Neither of us have been to Running of the Bulls in Pamplona but the added obstacles on an Indian street we think put our encounter up there. Incidentally it’s the only time we’ve seen any cattle move fast since and by the equally worried looks on the locals faces, it seemed to be an unusual incident.
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| Ritual bathing on the Ganga |
Big adventure for a tiny-room
“Just up the road to your hotel” ended up being a 45 minute walk, first along the bull stampede route, before a man in full white flowing linen took pity on no one understanding our question on where the Ganga was (only the most famous river in the world) and walked us most of the way to our guesthouse. We’ve learnt to trust people a lot more and go with the flow, but we were a bit nervous weaving in and out of dark alleyways with a complete stranger, but sure enough we eventually hit the Ganga (known as Ganges in the West) and shortly after passing the burning ghat (more on that later) were shown to the cupboard that was to be our home for the next week.
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| Cows, bathing, teeth washing - you name it! |
Mother Ganga
There are eight holy rivers in India, but none as important in Hinduism or more mythical around the world than the Ganga. It’s reputation as being filthy did not disappoint in Varanasi, with people ceremonially bathing, cleaning their clothes, brushing their teeth all in the same section of the river where bodies are cremated 24/7 and there are numerous dead dogs, cows and other unidentifiable animals bloated floating down the river.
Yet, it’s beautiful. Not for swimming, you couldn’t pay us enough to swim in this section of the Ganga (we did later swim several hundred kilometres upstream – details in next blog!). But watching pilgrims bathe, burn their loved ones and just go about their every day life on the Ganga is captivating. And it literally didn’t get boring for the seven days we were there.
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| Looking in the general direction of the burning ghat |
Most famous in Varanasi is probably the burning ghat, (Manikarnika Ghat), which is right beside Schindia ghat where our guesthouse was, providing not only a view of the burning ghat, but also the smell of burning flesh if we left the window of our shoebox room open. Photography at the burning ghats is strictly banned and anyone that tried was verbally abused by bystanders. It’s amazing how little respect some tourists have, after all people are cremating their mothers, children and other loved ones and while relatives are happy for you to observe it’s not a circus.
The idea of the burning ghats is that if a person has lived a good life and is cremated on the Ganga that they will be set free from the cycle of reincarnation. It’s a beautiful idea, but with dogs and cows scavenging through the ashes and an endless procession of bodies being set alight with little care taken it sounds nicer than it looks. We saw one guy retrieving a stretcher used to carry the bodies through town and getting part of it stuck on an old ladies face who was about to be set alight and aggressively tugging it from her– no ‘sorry’ to the family, nor any anger from the family for disrespecting their mother.
To us the most brutal of the ceremony is that the duty of the eldest son is that once all the skin is burnt to take a hammer and crack open the head of the deceased, to ensure that their soul is released. For us this is hard to translate to our own way of dealing with death, not only trying to cope with a loved one passing on, but also having to bash their burnt skull in. Welcome to India.
Being cremated in Varanasi is only for the lucky. Most people have to burn their relatives elsewhere and just scatter the ashes when they can afford to make the pilgrimage, if ever. For this reason there are many old people around Varanasi, so they are in the right spot when the time comes.
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| Having refused several times, Duncan still got a shoulder massage that had him in pain for days. |
How much money you earn?
In India there is no privacy and no personal space. People regularly get right up in our face to ask “where you from? How much money do you earn? Why no children?’ or you might be sleeping on a train to be woken by a man with his face centimetres from yours just looking, or we spot men filming Pip on their mobile phones on trains. The same applies with life, death and everything in between. We were invited to a wedding by a couple we met on a plane, as well as a tout who after unsuccessfully trying to get us to buy something from ‘his uncles’ silk shop still invited us to his friends wedding.
The most helpful people on earth
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| Chai with Shubham our under-aged guide and his uncle |
In a country of 1.3 billion people it’s not surprising that Indians are such forceful business people and looking for opportunities wherever they can get them. As long as you know that generally speaking, no one just wants to ‘just be friends and practice my English’ then you are in good stead to use their services, earn them a little commission along the way and save yourself hours of time getting frustrated trying to get anything done.
Our favourite guide in Varanasi was little Shubam, aged just 9 he overheard us squabbling about where a yoga studio was and jumped at the opportunity, promptly weaving us through the maze of narrow alleyways that make up the old town section of Varanasi. Shubam then found us a bank, some yoga pants and then of course took us to his ‘uncles’ shop, which for once generally was his uncles shop and we ended up hanging out for some chai and being taken to their house to see the uncles cricket trophies.
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| Not an overly enthused bride |
The happiest day of your life?
The most holy river in Hindi not only takes the dead, but also blesses many newly weds. In contrast to a seriously overexcited Pip at our wedding we saw more smiles on people at funeral processions than on brides faces. We’ve been told that looking happy ‘isn’t the done thing’, but looking near tears is another stark contrast to what we are used to. Most people we chat with are in favour of arranged marriages, rather than love marriages but not knowing who you were committing yourself to might prevent a smile on the big day.
Here they are called ‘holy men’
We think we went to uni with lots of holy men, if what we saw in Varanasi is anything to go by. Don’t get us wrong there are plenty of legitimate holy men, but by the looks of it there are more stoners just masking their addictions by wearing orange robes or loin clothes. It was impossible for Duncan with a wild bushy beard, to walk down the dark winding alleys without someone jumping out of a shrine every few meters “hashish, opium?” Thankfully crawling into a dark seedy shrine to smoke opium with a man in a loincloth, with people lurking in dark corners was not our idea of spiritual enlightenment.
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| We couldn't believe our luck when we spotted the famed 'Elephant bubba' seen here passing a hash pipe onto the next bubba |
The love affair begins
Like all wives (still weird!), Pip loves to be right. So when Duncan admitted that he ‘loved yoga’ instant looks of ‘I told you so’ came across her face. Despite years of trying to get Duncan to come to a yoga class it took India to get him to one. With a week in an ashram fast approaching we were both a bit worried about no stretching for five months, so signed up for three introductory days. Bharti, our instructor decided Duncan wasn’t quite ready for the group session so we settled on the much more expensive private classes.
Bharti failed to see a fellow great yogi in Pip (refusing her to let her join a group class) but succeeded in noticing Pip’s worsening sinus infection, courtesy of cold weather in Nepal. Her solution “you come tomorrow and Samil, my husband will fix you with Neti”.
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| A unique cure to a sinus infection - worked! |
Water in one nostril and out the other
Going with the flow seems to be the theme of our trip so what the hell, we turned up at 10am for ‘Neti cleansing’ and before giving too much thought to whether it was even possible, Pip was pouring warm salty water in one nostril and out the other. Duncan also gave it a go for his allergies and is a massive convert! We did Neti four days in a row, day three with fresh cows milk (not fans) and on day four he tried to get us to put a rubber tube up one nostril and pull it out our mouths. Given this was all being done in full view of the morning yoga classes it was not only embarrassing but impossible. Gagging and gross noises could not force the tube up our sinuses and out our mouths and we both wandered what the hell the benefit of being able to do so would be anyway so abandoned the disgusting attempt, hopefully giving those trying to meditate beside us half-a-chance.
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| A shrine at the birthplace of Buddhism |
“Just like Superman with a H”
Hanerman was an auto-rickshaw driver in Varanasi that we took a shining to after a good tour of Sarnath the birthplace of Buddhism, which incidentally Buddha started after becoming disenfranchised with the caste system of Hinduism. Hannerman weaved that little auto-rickshaw through manic-traffic with a smile and the famous Indian head wobble. As always there was a catch and we knowingly agreed to go to a silk shop with him, where we knew he’d get a very good commission if we bought anything. Seeing the silk sari’s being handmade was worth it – 28 days just for one and all hand sewn from patterns that are made by someone piercing cardboard with rocks by hand. A seriously laborious process.
Pip was keen just to get a few silk gifts and move on, but while Duncan hates shopping, once he gets in a shop he suddenly needs things and finds fictional money to ‘treat ourselves with’. So with a few nights at luxury hotels coming up, Duncan was being measured up for an all white raw silk suit! AKA his ‘leisure suit’.
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| Enjoying the good life |
A holiday from our holiday!
Compared to many travellers who survive purely on toast and any other scraps they can find and won’t settle for rooms unless they have rodents, we are doing pretty well. But our accommodation is still pretty basic. So all trip we have been eagerly awaiting catching up with Duncan’s parents in Delhi and Agra (Taj Mahal). Unfortunately they had to change their plans and were no longer India bound. We were seriously disappointed we couldn’t catch up for a few days, but also upset that our much talked about few days of five star luxury were slipping away. Not to worry, in the typical generous spirit of the Band’s they kept our rooms at the Oberoi in Agra and the Imperial in New Delhi (not to rub it in too much, but two of the best hotels in India, if not the world). AMAZING!
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| Only a few hours earlier our usual digs |
Thank you SO MUCH Viv and Roger, they were four amazing days. Particularly after security and concierge accepted we were guests. It turns out not many of their clientele walk up the long palm lined driveway with backpacks!. Unfortunately in our typical style, once we are somewhere expensive we think we are rock stars. So in four days we spent more on meals, mini-bar, drinks, expensive nightclubs and massages than what we normally spend in four weeks.
To ensure we took full advantage of the Oberoi facilities we even arrived in Agra a day earlier to see the Taj Mahal and visit the Red Fort. We expected to be underwhelmed by the Taj Mahal, but the pure size of the marble beauty built in 1631 is an architectural marvel and all we can say is “wow” Despite the crowds, we did not leave disappointed at the monument built for a wife who died during child birth.
International incident
Three days hanging out in Delhi (mostly at our luxury hotel) was enough and we were looking forward to heading north into the hills for some clean living before going to an Ashram for a week. The Imperial’s customer service failed on one important task, booking a forward train ticket. So we grabbed our backpacks from concierge (conveniently located beside a Chanel boutique) and headed to the backpacker district. Just as suddenly as we were transported into the land of luxury and opulence we were back to cold bucket baths and filthy bed linen. But price doesn’t always reflect customer service and the manager kindly pointed out what even customs had failed to notice – ‘excuse me Sir your visas expire tomorrow so I can only book you for one night”.
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| Duncan checking the cricket at one of many waiting areas |
Oh s**t! We had heard overstays were serious in India, like jail serious. So we read up and were at the Foreigners Regional Registration Office or FRRO for opening and wasted several hours there going from one line to the next while being screamed at “sit down, no pushing, name on chart”. After defying the incessant screaming into a megaphone by some dude on a power trip we found out we actually needed to go to the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Here we waited in one line for two hours waiting for our number to be called, which then got us through the metal detector, only to find there were another two waiting areas to go before we even got to chat to anyone. A nice, but very stressed young man just asked when we’d like our visas extended to and pointed us in the direction of the next waiting area. The next person we met gave a simple response ‘no way. Tourist visa never extended’.
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| Praying for the happiness of our families on the Ganga hopefully would help... |
We were prepared for this having read in the Lonely Planet that at best people could hope for a two-week extension, but given the stuff up had been by the Indian consulate in Tanzania we naively thought they’d give a damn. OK regroup, “is there nothing that can be done, the error was with the embassy in Dar es Salam we only just realised yesterday’ which over and over again we heard ‘your passport, your visa, your responsibility to check’.
So regroup again, admit we were at fault, played the honeymoon card and asked if there was anyone we could speak with. With a grudge we were marched up the archaic halls of Indian bureaucracy with rusty old lockers making the hallways only wide enough for one person to pass at a time. Inside the first office we’d been in that didn’t have stacks of manila folders with paper exploding out of them (not too many computers in sight) we awkwardly sat on a faux leather chair while the man behind the oversized desk pretended to not notice us. Eventually we were summoned to his desk where we got the same response “your visa, you should check, we can’t control what Dar es Salam does and the rules are very strict and can’t be changed because of your mistake”.
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| We don't want to leave such an amazing country! |
Pip had talked up stage tears in the auto rickshaw between the departments, but suddenly the stage tears welled up and felt pretty real as our dream of two months in India looked like ending the next day. With the tears he offered us the two week lifeline, but “what good is this to us with a booking on the 25 January to fly home?. We obviously aren’t overstaying, we always planned to stay in your beautiful country until the end of January and now you tell us we have to leave tomorrow?”. Using the drama of wiping a tear from her cheek Pip asked “is there no one else we can speak to – “your manager?”. With a big look of f**k you, he told us a room number, no doubt hoping there was no chance we’d find it in the labyrinth of buildings and narrow corridors.
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| Hopefully he was praying for us |
Sucker, we soon had a meeting via one of three assistants to the Deputy Secretary of the department and sat diligently outside his office until he was ready to see us. The nicest of all the men we’d come across, sat calmly behind his enormous desk surrounded by flags and gave us the usual response, but was more patient and interested in how two Aussie honeymooners came to be in the predicament where they both looked completely beaten and close to tears. So with an air of ‘as if it will ever happen’ he suggested if we got a letter from the Australian consulate explaining that Australians are afforded six-month visas in India and that a reciprocal arrangement for Indians is in place (we still have no idea if this is even true, but we said it was) then perhaps “perhaps there is a chance”.
Bowing, putting our hands in prayer position and plenty of danyavaad (thank you) we whizzed out of the complex we’d now spent six hours in and with 20 minutes until the Australian Consulate closed we egged our unenthused auto rickshaw driver on like we were a jockey at the Melbourne Cup. Arriving at the gates at 4:55pm, jumping the fence to sprint through the manicured gardens to make it into the grounds just before 5pm. The look, efficiency and helpfulness of the staff couldn’t be more polarised than the past eight hours and whilst the polite girl behind the counter had to stay back a little late while we carefully crafted our statutory declarations, she assured us if we were back at 8:30am tomorrow morning they would have a letter for us. The Manager of the Consulate even came out to have a chat, explaining that such a request was very very unlikely to be granted. Tourist visas simply weren’t extended.
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| Racing back to the FRRO with a letter from the Australian consulate |
The next morning we were back on home soil at the consulate and hoping it was the only home soil we’d touch until 26 January 2012. With only a short wait we had our letter and whizzed back to the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs and made another appointment with the Deputy Secretary who was clearly impressed with our ability to get the letter so quickly and told us to come back at 2pm. Looking for the positives, the wait now gave us time to check out the museums and art galleries of Delhi we’d missed while living large at the Imperial. They were all interesting, but it’s hard to appreciate modern art, with maybe being deported later that day playing on your mind.
Cutting an already long story short, we arrived back at the ministry and were shown back down the hierarchy looking for a response to our unusual request. The last stop the man told us to come back tomorrow at which point, without even needing to talk to each other, we just staged another Indian style sit in, forcing him into action “let me just have a look”, surprise, surprise our form could be found and had been processed. Nervous looks of anticipation – “accepted”. Being jaded by the ups and downs of the past two days we refused to get excited, but things were looking good for tomorrow – when hopefully our passports would be stamped with an extension stamp.
Unfortunately on day three of the visa fiasco, Duncan was in a bad way with a tummy bug and could hardly stay awake (sleeping in a moving auto-rickshaw, in a crowded Vodafone store and the whole time at the visa place) so Pip was in charge of being pushier than the next immigrant or tourist fighting for the attention of the exhausted looking staff. Miraculously our letter of approval had been faxed over as promised, but the ‘unusual nature’ of it meant that Duncan had a few hours to get some good zzz’s while we waited and waited. Finally Pip successfully elbowed and pushed and was having the visa extension details entered into a computer. A few minutes later a man with a sign saying ‘in charge’ stamped our passports and scribbled something illegible on them and without any payment required we were once again legal tourists! It was hard to get much enthusiasm from a greenish Duncan, but we thanked as many of the 1008 Hindu gods as we could and got on a hellish overnight bus to miraculously make the start of our ashram the next day.
Other photos
Varanasi
(How can you not go crazy with photos in Varanasi. So many more for slide nights!)
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| The end of the stampeding bulls as we arrived in town |
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| Being lead through town by 9 year old part time tout, Shubham |
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| We are keeping Pip's job with the Australian meat industry on the down-low here. |
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| Fancy a shave using water from the Ganga? |
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| Ceremonial bathing at dawn |
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| A random metal detector unlikely to have ever been connected to power on the Ganga banks |
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| Amazing architecture |
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| Fosters might want to follow up on use of their brand for bottled water! |
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| We opted to wash our clothes in the shower |
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| Pip releasing a flower to pray for the good fortune of her family |
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| A huge aarti ceremony - to praise the gods |
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| Tricky load |
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| Duncan possessed after getting a bindi |
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| This cow just plonked down beside Pip during the aarti ceremony. |
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| Our boat man could hardly talk with so much pan (red chewing tobacco style thing) in his mouth, but from what we could tell he was a bit strange |
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| Modest dress required in India - for tourists at least! |
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| Probably more effective than the Govt of India |
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| Zen on a boat tour on the Ganga |
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| Street food, so good but it can bite back! |
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| Take a break |
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| Conquering fear of snake |
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| Wood sold by the kilogram for the burning ghat. Different woods for different budgets, mango is the cheapest option |
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| We could never have imagined catching a glimpse of elephant bubba - twice! |
Agra
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| The tailored leisure suit at an opulent dinner at the Oberoi |
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| Chocolate cakes for newly-weds provided at nicer hotels it seems, we had been hoping for champagne! But desert in our suite was pretty good! |
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| Couples massage at the Oberoi...like we said we get into the wrong headspace when we stay somewhere nice. We are not millionaires, but oh so nice! |
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| Pool complex at the Oberoi |
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| The thinker at the Taj Mahal |
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| Pip must be a celebrity in India, because school girls and families love to get their photo with her... really slows us down. |
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| We left before dawn to walk through a dark part to hopefully get a perfect shot of the sun hitting the Taj Mahal, but unfortunately another foggy winters day. |
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| "I'll take my G&T at the pool thanks" |
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| Staying zen at the Red Fort. Delhi |
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| Living it large at a Delhi nightclub dancing to Indian pop |
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| Supposedly a Kashmiri prince letting his hair down at the nightclub |
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| Despite legs and arms completely covered, a kimono required! |
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