Ending my Time on the Subcontinent with Rhinos and Colonialism

Time has gotten away from me a bit, and though I actually returned from Asia last Thursday, I haven't had a chance to recap the end of my trip. Actually there's not all that much to tell, because we were so exhausted from the trek that we decided to take it easy and not try to pack too much in. We headed to the south of Nepal to Royal Chitwan National Park, where we spent a day on a jeep safari, during which we saw rhinos and I learned that they look an awful lot like hippos - most of them were almost fully immersed in water and just sitting there to avoid the heat! We also saw monkeys and various birds, wild boars, and even a bison! I didn't think those existed in Asia... The next day we did another safari, this time on the back of an elephant. We had mixed feelings about this, but the elephants seemed to be well cared for and happy, and we figured that having four people sitting on top of them is roughly the equivalent of my carrying a small backpack, so it's probably not too terrible. Well, our elephant driver did a good job and got us in front of the pack, so we got to see rhinos from a few meters away (they aren't scared away if you are on an elephant, as opposed to a jeep, which makes them run away), but the elephant was not well trained to carry people, so we spent most of the time being hit in the face with branches, which were all covered in some kind of white fungus, such that by the end, we were also covered head to toe in junk. And since it was first thing in the morning, we also got the privilege of knocking down all the spider webs that had been formed overnight... with our faces. At some point, as I was trying to remove a big spider from D.'s back and realized that we were stuck together by the spider's web, there was just nothing to do but laugh, which D. didn't appreciate much, since it delayed my removal of the spider. Nonetheless, it's the closest I've ever been to a wild rhino (or to an elephant, for that matter), so it was still kind of a good experience.

We also visited the elephant breeding center, where we saw adorable twin baby elephants and one very sociable young elephant who was coming up to all the visitors and asking for food. And of course you can't miss the elephant baths: every day they bring the elephants down to the river to wash them, and people can pay to sit on their backs and get sprayed with water, while the elephants' owners give them instructions essentially to dive into the water until the people get knocked off into the river screaming. We didn't participate, but it was definitely funny to watch!

Anyway, this was followed by some well-deserved R&R in Kathmandu for a few days, and then I headed off to Calcutta, where I was connecting to go home. Calcutta was having a heatwave unprecedented since the 1950s, and so it was almost impossible to do anything except stand under a cold shower. Nonetheless, I managed to wander around and was struck by how visible the British presence was compared to everywhere else I'd visited in India. Calcutta was the capital of the British territory in India for most of the time the British were there, so they built huge monuments and British-looking buildings all over the place. This also led to some of the most visible, abject poverty in India, as people left their farms to move to the city and work for the British and then were left jobless and eventually homeless when the British reign came to an end. I don't think I was expecting Calcutta to be so different from all the other places I had visited in India, but it was. It was at once more western, with American fast food chains and fancy restaurants, and more poor, with people living on the streets (and worse, burrowing homes into garbage heaps) everywhere you look. There is a huge volunteer presence there, but the work to be done seems almost never-ending. It was definitely food for thought.

And then next thing I knew, my two months were up and I was back in Belgium, happy for a little cool weather and a washing machine and a clean "sitting" toilet. It's the little things, sometimes. And then that was gone in a flash, too, when I boarded a plane for eastern Europe this morning to begin the next leg of my trip, which promises to be VERY different from my time on the subcontinent. Till next time...

Delhi to Varanasi

My last update was from Jaipur, which didn't impress me too much. The following day I saw the large and maze-like Amber Fort and the "monkey temple," where hundreds of monkeys converge at dusk and come up to you asking for food. In fact, I went with a friend who bought a bag of peanuts for the monkeys, and one actually jumped on his back to get the nuts. It scared both of us!

I arrived the next morning in Delhi, and my first surprise was that, despite it being the capital and an international transit point, almost nobody spoke English. I had received all kinds of dire warnings about Delhi and was expecting to be hassled and groped all day long, but in fact it wasn't so bad at all. The city is big but has a certain charm, with lots of markets scattered around and some interesting monuments. I visited the place where Gandhi lived his last days and where he was assassinated, and they have put together a very interesting exhibit on his life.

From Delhi I went to Agra, site of the Taj Mahal, and I must admit that despite the hype, it was every bit as beautiful as I had imagined. I went in expecting to be disappointed but actually it was wonderful to see it in person. Agra also has some other monuments, including a huge palace complex at Fatehpur Sikri, about an hour away, which are well worth visiting. Mostly I was very impressed once again by the kindness of strangers, as a person I met on the train ended up inviting me to his home for dinner, and then showed me his (Sikh) temple, which was a first for me. I felt honored to be invited in and to receive a blessing from the priest.

From Agra I went to Orchha, a small and relaxed town full of temples and old palaces. I only had a day there, but I could easily have spent a few. Onwards to Khajuraho, famous for its gorgeous and intricately-carved temples, with scenes from the Kama Sutra carved all over the outside walls, which range from shocking to hilarious. I'll be posting the pictures eventually. This town also had the greatest concentration of French people I've seen so far - coincidence?

Short on time, I went straight on to Varanasi, India's holiest city. This is where Hindus come from all over the country to burn their dead and scatter their ashes in the Ganges. It's an amazing sight just to sit in town and watch the people, who come from all walks of life, in all different costumes and colors. The first day we walked up the ghats (the bathing areas) watching people bathing in the Ganges, beating their laundry in the water, praying and meditating. We arrived at the burning ghat, where people are cremated, and were accosted by two men who looked like they meant business, and we were not able to get away without paying money. It was very unpleasant and we resolved only to go back there on a boat.

So later on we took a boat out on the river and were able to watch the burial rites. Young children, pregnant women and sadhus are dumped into the river unburned and tied to a stone, and snake bite victims are wrapped in banana leaves and floated down the river in hopes that someone downstream can revive them. Everyone else is burned and their ashes scattered in the river. It's an amazing experience to witness such an old tradition, but it also gives you pause when you think that just a few meters away people are bathing and doing laundry in this water, which is also the repository of all the raw sewage of the city. The water is incredibly polluted, and yet still they eat the fish out of the river and bathe in it every day.

In the evening we went to watch the big puja (prayer ceremony) at the main ghat. Five Brahmins, dressed in orange, waved a series of flaming and feathered objects around, rang bells and beat drums. We put a candle in a lotus flower afloat on the river and made a wish with everyone else. Not a bad way to end a month in this amazing country.

So after my month in India, I guess my best summary is that the country is a total sensory experience. The smells and colors and tastes all somehow feel more vivid than they do elsewhere. Despite the inevitable hassle, the Indian people have been some of the friendliest people I've encountered anywhere. It's a place that makes you want to stop and stay a while, relax and not do too much. It's not a place, for the most part, that I feel you come to "see the sights"... most of what's so great about being here is just hanging out, meeting people, eating wonderful food, getting to know the culture, and watching a vastly diverse set of people, animals, and vehicles scramble past you in the chaos of the city. People come for a variety of reasons - some for sight seeing, some on a spiritual journey - and I think some people find they love it here, where for some it's just not their cup of chai, but for me, I felt immediately at home. It's a place I hope to return to many times, and for a lot longer.

And tomorrow off to Nepal. I'll keep you posted!

Colorful Rajasthan

Well, friends, my time in India is flying by. I can hardly believe I've been here three weeks already! I have spent the last week in the state of Rajasthan, in northwestern India. The area where I am is known as the Golden Triangle, which means there are lots of famous sights and altogether too many tourists. It is also a bit of sensory overload, with the women decked out in brilliantly-colored saris, and intense colors and smells everywhere you go.

I started the week in Udaipur, famously the site of the filming of Bond movie "Octopussy." The city is known for its fairytale Lake Palace, but last year's monsoon wasn't great, so now it's more of a puddle palace. I honestly found the town rather overrated, though I enjoyed a side trip to Ranakpur, one of the biggest Jain temples, with 1444 white marble columns, and had an interesting cooking class at the Spice Box, where I learned to make chapati (and succeeded in making mine round rather than shaped like India), and a few kinds of curries, and, very importantly, masala chai, on which I am now hooked.

I spent one day in Jodhpur, expecting touristy but finding that tourists only stop by the famous Meherangarh Fort and pass the rest of the town by. Jodhpur is known as the Blue City, because of its Brahmin blue houses, and I was impressed as I exited the train station onto a major road at dawn and had to dodge cars, rickshaws, motorcycles, bicycles, camels and even a guy riding an elephant, in order to cross the road. I wandered the small lanes of the old city as the town slowly woke up, and I watched people feeding chapati to the cows (chapati for breakfast, trash for lunch) who wander freely through all the streets of India. I did see the fort, which is also the home of the maharajah of Jodhpur, and a few other sights, and spent the afternoon wandering through the crazy streets of the market and admiring the apparently controlled chaos.

After a night spent on the train, I arrived in Jaisalmer, a desert town famed for camel safaris, which I did not do. It, too, has a famous old fort the color of sand, and in Jaisalmer it houses several Jain temples, the maharajah's palace, and lots of handicraft vendors. There are also several old havelis, big, ornate houses, outside the fort, and I visited a few of those, including the former prime minister's house, which was a study in primitive defensive tactics. Mostly the city was distinctive for me in that every guy I met seemed to think he could get me to sleep with him, so I wasn't too sad I had opted to leave after only one day.

Another night and morning in the train landed me in Pushkar, which if you don't look too closely, you would swear was in Israel. I knew there were Israeli backpackers chilling around here somewhere, I just hadn't found them yet. Hummus (and bhang) was available in all restaurants, and more signs were in Hebrew than English. However, Pushkar is also an important Hindu pilgrimage town, home of one of the only Brahma Temples in the world. It is centered around a lake with holy bathing ghats where pilgrims wash themselves, including one where Ghandi's ashes were scattered. But mostly you go to Pushkar to chill out and shop.

I, however, was there to watch the Hindu festival of Holi, one of the two biggest Hindu festivals of the year. Celebrating the beginning of Spring, on the first day there is dancing and huge bonfires, and the following day there are "colors" - vast amounts of colored powder that people throw on each other as is, or mix with water and spray or pour on people. The festivities range from all in good fun to vengeful, as sometimes things like acid and glass are mixed with the liquid colors, or people will try to smear it in your eyes, which supposedly burns for days. They also will rip your clothing to shreds, leaving people, only boys as far as I could tell, naked in the street. The festival is often fueled by various drugs, which only adds to the craziness.

So obviously my goal was to find a good vantage point and watch, though many foreigners also participated. However, I didn't get up early enough and on my way to my safe haven was smeared with purple color all over my face and arms amidst cries of "Happy Holi!" The guy did try to smear it in my eyes, but luckily I had been warned and had my sunglasses on. A minute later a band of children pretty much attacked me, grabbing my arms and legs and throwing pink and blue powder on me. When I got away, I ended up asking the next person I saw for directions and thankfully being invited in to watch from his balcony. So I spent the whole day holed up with this guy and his mom, watching people get assaulted and colored from the safety of the balcony. I was infinitely grateful for that, and as a side bonus had a chance to learn a lot about Indian life and culture as we chatted all day.

Anyway, I was sad to have to leave Pushkar, but time constraints being what they are, I headed off to Jaipur, where I am now. I honestly don't understand the draw. It's a big, sprawling city with package tourists here to see the overpriced City Palace (home of the maharajah) and the world's biggest sundial in a park full of strange and huge astronomical measuring devices. There is fairly huge area composed of various bazaars where you can buy lots of handicrafts, and a ton of hassle. So all in all, I guess I shouldn't be surprised since I knew this was on the tourist circuit before I came. It's interesting to see what the other backpackers have to say up here, too: last week they loved India and couldn't get enough, but up here in the tourist triangle, everyone seems to have just about had it with India.

So from here to Delhi and then Uttar Pradesh for my last week in India, and then off to Nepal!

Mumbai and Gujarat

Mumbai (Bombay) was supposed to be a stopover to take care of some practicalities and get a brief sense of the economic capital of India (Mumbai is to India as New York City is to the U.S.), but it turned out to be much more interesting than I would have thought. It is a big city like any other, although unique in the number of cows roaming the streets amidst the crazy traffic, and the most interesting sights, I thought, included Dhobi Ghat, the "largest human-powered washing machine in the world" - essentially it's a huge compound where thousands of people hand wash laundry for Mumbai's inhabitants - and Haji Ali's mosque, built on an island that is only accessible at low tide.

Most interesting was a visit to Dharavi slum, now made famous by the movie Slumdog Millionaire, but to be honest I felt like I visited it despite having seen the movie, rather than because of it. Dharavi is home to more than a million people, and from what I can tell, it's not a typical slum. It is defined as a slum because people are squatting there in makeshift housing in tiny alleys, but they mostly earn a living, they have free education and hospitals in the slum, and there are more than 100 NGOs working to improve conditions there. So I didn't get the impression it was entirely representative of Indian slums. Most remarkable is the amount of industry in Dharavi. People say nothing ever gets wasted in Mumbai. If you throw out a plastic bottle, someone will come along and pick it up and take it to Dharavi, where someone will melt it down into little plastic pellets and sell those to manufacturers, who make other goods out of it and sell it back to you. They recycle not only their own plastic, glass and paper waste, but tons of ours that is shipped to India. The working conditions are of course unsafe and unsanitary, but the people have jobs and don't have to beg. It's an amazingly efficient system that has grown up there.

I left Mumbai on a 16 hour train ride to Ahmedabad, followed by 9 more hours to Somnath, on the little-visited southern Gujarati coast. My train rides were plagued by cockroaches, crawling over the walls and on my bunk (and on me), which made them two of the most horrific train rides I've ever taken. However, when I arrived, it was worth it.

Somnath is home to one of India's major Hindu pilgrimage sites, the most sacred of the 12 Shiva shrines. Upon arrival I was treated to a beautiful pink and orange sunset behind the temple, and as the sun went down I was able to enter the temple and take part in the prayer ceremony. As you walk in you are overwhelmed by the loud beating of drums and the crush of people inside clapping, and you feel you've walked into an ancient ceremony. You immediately walk past a large, painted sculpture of a cow, and then up to the front, where a priest is waving a candelabra and another is fanning incense around. Then you join the throng while the ceremony continues, and afterwards they pass a flame around on a plate and everyone tries to touch it. I don't pretend to understand the meaning behind it all, but it was quite fascinating to see and to feel like I had stepped thousands of years back in time. However, being the only foreigner around, I sometimes seemed to be more of a spectacle to those around me than the service.

The next day I made my way to Diu, a former Portuguese settlement that is now a cute beach town with a huge fort. After a harrowing overnight bus trip and a strange conversation with a guy who worked in a call center for US National Bank, I arrived at 5:30 am the following day in Palitana, the most sacred of Jain pilgrimage sites.

Palitana is the home of Shatrunjaya, a complex of almost 900 Jain temples built on the top of a hill. There are 3200 steps to reach the temple complex, and as the heat builds, you feel each one of them. If you are lazy or ill, you can be carried up the hill in a dholi, but I chose to walk. With views over the surrounding desert for miles and miles, it wasn't a bad walk. At the top you first come across a Muslim shrine, where women deposit small cradles if they want to have a baby and inhalers if they want to cure their asthma (I was tempted). The caretaker showed me around and anointed me with some strong-smelling oil that he said was for "protection by God" but I had to wonder if it was because I had spent the night on a bus without showering and then walked up a big hill in the blistering sun. Anyway, you then walk through some of the hundreds of small Jain shrines, trying not to burn your bare feet on the hot ground and admiring the intricate carvings and ceiling artwork.

Jains believe that constructing temples earns them some kind of merit, and as a community they tend to be very well-off, usually businessmen, so whenever someone has money enough they construct a new temple at Shatrunjaya. Actually, Jains have a serious policy of ahimsa, or nonviolence, and that extends to killing animals or even insects, which means they are strict vegetarians, avoiding even onions, garlic and potatoes, which grow under the ground and might, therefore, kill an insect if you harvest them. They time what they are allowed to eat with what is growing well at the time, so it's a very environmentally friendly philosophy. And Jains are some of the nicest people I've met here in India. One adopted me when I arrived fresh off the bus and exhausted, treated me to breakfast at the place where Jain pilgrims eat, and then made sure I had all I needed before he sent me on my way.

From Palitana I headed north to Rajasthan, where I have been for the last three days. Unfortunately I am back on the tourist circuit, which means it is much less pleasant than Gujarat, but it's interesting in its own way. However, I've already written so much that I will save Rajasthan for next time.

Kerala - A tiny taste of southern India

It has become very clear to me that if I wanted to begin to really feel I had "seen" India, I would need at least 5 months here. Unfortunately, I have only one month. So I have cherry-picked a few places to see in that time, trying to get a little flavor of the south, which I hear is very different from the north, but still hitting a few of the northern must-sees.

So I spent the last week in Kerala province, which is the southernmost province on the western side of India, stretching almost down to the tip of the country. Because the country is so vast, I could not possibly generalize about it after one week, but I will generalize about Kerala. After many warnings about what I should expect here, I could hardly believe how easy the traveling is. Compared to some other places - the closest comparison I have from my own experience in terms of culture and level of development is perhaps China - the people are incredibly friendly, the harassment factor is low (though definitely still present), the mood is laid back, and most of all, there seems to be a sense of respect among the people here. Maybe it goes back to so many religions coexisting in one place, or perhaps it's because the main religions include Buddhism and Jainism, which are both quite peaceful and respectful religions, but there seems to be a general regard not just for other human beings but also for animals, which is really refreshing.

So I can definitely see why India is a backpacker paradise. Not only is it super cheap, but as a woman traveling alone, I felt particularly safe in Kerala. Women here look out for each other. We have separate seats on buses, and separate carriages on sleeper trains. Men will give up a seat to let women sit together, and sometimes there are even separate queues for women. Some people might look at that as old-fashioned, but for me it's great, because it reduces the grope factor, and even better, the worry factor.

As for the food, it redefines "spicy" for me. Not spicy in that it burns your mouth, since really it hasn't been particularly hot so far. However, I have never felt such intense and varied flavors before, even in the Indian food I have had at home. And talk about a vegetarian's paradise! If you think vegetarian food = rabbit food, I would suggest coming to India to get re-educated.

So as for what makes Kerala worth a stop, mainly it's beaches that are the main tourist draw, plus yoga and ayurvedic medicine and massages. There is a huge network of backwaters that you can cruise on, and up in the hills is one of India's biggest tea growing regions. In fact, the visit to the tea plantations of Munnar was probably the highlight of the week, although relaxing on a gorgeous beach after being massaged with hot herbs (that admittedly smelled a bit like dinner) was not so bad either. The coastal portions of the region are rather over-touristed (mainly, it seems, by French and Germans), but I was amazed how even in those places the locals have been generally friendly, and once you get inland a bit, they are some of the most welcoming people I've met.

In a few hours I fly to Mumbai, the end of my tour of southern India. I am sad to have my time in the south cut short, and I know I have missed many, many highlights. If there is one thing I know for sure after this week, it is that I will one day be back to see them.