qWT2K9--the quasi World Tour 2009: Week 9: Kolkata, Varanasi, and Agra

WEEK 9: Kolkata, Varanasi and Agra

Our first week in India has been amazing. The experience has been eye opening to say the least. We left Kolkata early in the morning from a chaotic train station aboard a very calm train arriving at night to Varanasi which was an even more chaotic train station: Touts tried to get our business before we were even off of the train, cows were walking on the platform (we have no idea how they got there), and the main hall in front of the ticketing counter looked like a church lock-in, with what seemed to be a hundred of people asleep on the ground as they waited for their trains.

We awoke the next morning at 5am to take a sunrise boat trip on the Ganges. The Ganges River is holy to Hindus and is very important to the daily life of those who live in Varanasi. With that said, the water is very polluted and yet we saw people bathing in it, drinking it, doing laundry in it, and worshipping in it. Lining the Ganges is a series of Ghats, or steps to the river. Many Ghats have temples at the top of them, some have public plazas, and two of them are known as “burning ghats”. These are where people bring their loved ones after they’ve passed away to be cremated and then have their ashes spread in the river. There are several fire pits with wood stacked high and the fires can be seen burning at all hours of night and day. When the ceremony is performed, the body is first marched to the burning ghat, then placed in the river to cleanse it and then put on the wood pile to burn with family and friends watching. After the body has burned, the ashes are spread in the river and those attending the ceremony bathe in the river to cleanse themselves. We didn’t see the entire process, but parts of each step I believe.

Walking through the streets of Varanasi was just as interesting. The market area was overrun with crowds of people and shop owners begging for you to come in and look at their stuff “looking is free! Very cheap!”. Our hotel was connected to the main area of Varanasi by a 10 minute walk through a very poor neighborhood. On the walk, we had to every now and again look behind us to make sure bulls weren’t charging towards us. There were goats wandering the streets and dogs sound asleep in the middle of the road. There was an area that just had trash all over the ground that we called the “bull market” because bulls were perusing the area, looking for food, the same way people do in real markets. One night walking back on that road the power went off in the entire city. We watched the lights shut off in about 50 yard increments along the water front and soon the entire city was in darkness, the only light from hotels with generators and the glowing fires of the burning ghats. Walking down this street in the dark was fun. People went on with their daily lives with candles lit, but extra caution was made to avoid animals walking in the street so as not to spook them.

That evening around 8 PM a hindu temple one building over from our hotel started a religious service. At first Chels and I thought it was a mosque doing the “call to prayer” because the top of the building had a green light flashing as minarets sometimes do and we could’ve sworn we heard the name “Allah”. After about 10 minutes we realized it was not the call to prayer, but something much longer. The chanting over the PA was so loud we had to raise our voices to hear one another as we ate dinner outside on the Hotel’s terrace. The service went on from 8 AM until around 8 the next morning, stopping only a couple times when the power went out for anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. Sleeping through it was miserable, it was so loud you would think they were chanting in the room we were sleeping on. That night we used the last two things we had packed but not used yet: a flashlight and ear plugs. The next morning the hotel staff informed us that once a year every temple in the city has a worship service that involves broadcasting over a PA system the reciting of some religious writing. Each temple in the city does it on one night a year, and the one next to us just happened to be one of the nights we were sleeping there. It was miserable but interesting to hear. Although we had heard many things about Varanasi, it has been one of my favorite stops on the trip so far and it will be hard to top as we finish out the trip.

We left Varanasi for Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Although the landscaped pools and walkway to the mausoleum were shorter than I had imagned, the building was as beautiful as. The structure was built as a final resting place for a Shah’s second wife who died during the birth of their 14^th child. The Shah was so upset over it, his hair was said to have gone gray overnight and construction on the building started within the year. It took 8 years to complete the Taj, 15 or so more to complete the grounds and structures surrounding it. A couple of years after the completion of the entire site, the Shah was overthrown by his son and for the last 8 years of his life could only see the Taj through a window in his bedroom at the fort he was being held prisoner in. Walking to the Taj is not what I had expected. You are in an old part of town with small cramped roads that suddenly stop at the huge red sandstone wall of the outer boundary of the site. With a building of such national importance and monumentality, I guess I had expected something more of a grand road with the wall as the terminus.

We left Agra on a bus to Jaipur which was about a 5 to 6 hour ride. Chels and I got the last two seats on the bus and were excited to have the back row where the seat was an apholstered bench and not individual seats, which seemed more comfortable. It was comfortable for about 2 minutes until they brought in the other people to sit with us. In a space that was designed for 4 people we had 7 crammed in, 5 adults and 2 children. It was tight, the man next to me could have been friendlier, but then again we were getting quite a bit of attention, being the only non-indian people on the bus. We arrived in Jaipur, Rajasthan and will be here for the next week before we head to Ahmedabad and then to the south!

Pictures:

Sunrise over the Ganges, Varanasi