I was just wondering where to start this one. How about :
Nepal continued...
I was in Kathmandu, but heading for 10 days of white water ... I say 10 days, actually it took 3 days on a bus to get there (see 'struck out' below) one day and night to get back, so we had 6 days on the river - plenty of time to get wet...
High fives
- The Karnali River in the far west of Nepal, a big river on its way from Tibet to India. The water was big, white, wetand cold; the paddlers were not so big, white, wet and cold. But when that grade 4 or 5 wave is heading straight for you, then emerging, with both the boat still the right way up and you still in it, is a triumph which no amount of cold water down your throat can dampen. The scenery was stunning too, narrow gorges, vertical cliffs and somehow superb beaches on which to camp everynight (why these are not washed away by the monsoon I'm not sure).
- On the flatter parts of the river we were allowed to use the safety kayakers boats to play in. They were very short boats (some of the rafters were too tall to fit in them) and almost impossible to keep straight but I did manage a Grade 2+ rapid and my first ever eskimo rolls (however a few times I didn't make it back up and just ended up sitting in an upside down boat thinking "I'm freezing cold, underwater, and upside down in an upside down boat - why the hell am I doing this!")
- After the rafting everyone else was heading for a wildlife park nearby, so I went as well (not to see the wildlife, just to chill out) and spent a week living in a mud hut without electric, water by pump, shower by bucket, cooking by fire and squat toilet. As this was far away from the normal touist places and deep in mousey-maoist controlled areas we were just about the only foreigners in the place. Gone were the locals asking for 'schoolpen' and money - here were the villagers who grinned and looked embarassed at being close to a foreigner. However, once they realised that they could see an image of themselves on the back of my camera, I was besieged by whole groups of people just wanting to stand bolt upright with severe faces, for their photo - getting them to relax and smile a bit was the most difficult part. If you are not good (and I work out how to do it, I may send you some examples). Walking around the paddy fields and tracks of this community was so refreshing. However the objective of taking a few pics of farmers ploughing their fields with oxen became an exercise in recording an image of just about every person I met (and several pics of each of their babies), being an instigator of civil unrest as people surrounded me on the dirt road and causing a huge power drain on my batteries. Simple living, simply brilliant. I couldn't ask for more.
Pains in the butt
- Walking into more mouse traps on the rafting trip in the far west on Nepal which is deep in mouse territory. We knew they were there cos we had a guide. We had to pay USD 20 each to be allowed to travel through the area by bus and then back be raft. I didn't see any guns this time but we were warned not to take any photos in Maoist areas as they like to take away your camera and not give it back. The rafting coy had to give other villagers paddles and stuff on the way down the river but had a note from the head mouse saying they didnt have to give them the raft that they asked for ! Its all such a circus. Both sides know the score - The army are heavily ensconced two hours bus ride from the mouses but there is no attempt to try and break the mouse control. Mind you , the army are equipped with very old (WW2 Vintage) Lee Enfield rifles, so maybe that is why.
- I only know one word of Nepali. After that, if they dont speak English then I automatically revert to Spanish (this is the only other language I can speak). This does not always help a great deal as their knowledge of Spanish may be limited too. Worked all right in south/central america though ... If only I could have spoken Spanish that well when I was actually with Spanish speaking people.
- Wildlife - since I ended up staying about 100 metres from the entrance to a wildlife park I though I may as well go and search (again) for tigers. After spending 2 whole days ( and a load of cash hiring guides, park fees etc) we had seen no rhino, one elephant a long way off, and no tigers. Then as we walked out of the park entrance at the end of the 2nd day, there was a real, genuine, actual rhino slumped against the gates - asleep! So we all posed with it, felt its rough armoured looking skin and looked at it horn ... until it started to move ... then we ran away ... real fast!
- Leeches - not the sort of wildlife I wanted to see close up. They are the most revolting creatures I have ever seen and when they are indulging themselves on my blood its simply not nice. Serve them a bit of salt and they get off pretty quick; however the blood keeps flowing for a while after.
- Squat toilets - you get used to the hole in the floor approach after a while, you have to, you cant hang on for ever. Apparently, they are better for your health than the horrible sit down western ones ... so we will probably see them catching on in western places soon - yeah right!
- Struck out - Getting caught in the strikes called by the mousists to demonstrate their power (in truth Nepal is not a democracy so I have to give them some leeway to demonstate, but it would be preferable to do it when I am not there) - once on the way to rafting, where we had to spend 2 nights in a village fairly near nowhere; then again when I was trying to get to the Buddha's birthplace; I left a day early to miss the strike (no-one knows when they are going to happen, they just happen) and still walked straight into 2 days of no buses. Luckily I was very close to the border at that point so ... despite thinking that the longer I had spent in Nepal the more I had liked it ... decided to quit Nepal and went to India instead ... what was I thinking of!!!
I just realised that my list of 'pains' in far longer than the 'highs' - dont be mislead, Nepal definitely gets the thumbs up.
India
I didn't mean to go there, honest, I was just on a bus one day and suddenly ... (actually it wasn't so sudden, it was after a huge amount of time, filling in a small amout of paperwork) I was in India and everything was more packed, more dirty and much more trouble than before.
When you are the only one (foreigner that is, locals cross the border unrestricted) in the queue at the border, you begin to think why am I the only one crossing over here ...
After a 5 hour shared taxi ride, crammed into a very old 'Ambassador Classic' car, and a puncture, I arrived in Lucklow hoping to get a train out that night to Varanasi. I had no idea how the booking system worked and all the signs were in Hindi (a language nothing like Spanish), and finding someone who spoke English was more than a bit tricky - even trickier was getting two different people to agree on where I had to go to get a ticket. Eventually I found a window with a smaller than normal scrum outside and after some barging and shouting found I had to come back at 9pm to try and get on the 11pm night train. I went back before 9pm (when the magic 'spare seats and beds' printout arrives to find a huge scrum at the said window, and got stuck in. The game is simple: Fill in a train request form. Put on your biggest backpack with daysac on your front (these not only give protection and added weight, but also if the swivel move is used, causes significant damage points against the opposition). Stand in an orderly line and as soon as people from the back charge round the side the game is on - you have to get your form through the tiny gap in the ticket window, from any angle, preferably with hand still attached, and get the official to give attention to your form. I am bigger than most Indians (although not all, as the pot bellied gentleman was keen to make clear) so after 30 minutes of unsporting behaviour, and some brief reforming of the line by an official with a big stick (a sort of half-time, no oranges), I finally succeeded. My form got attention! Victory. But there were no spaces on the train! Bugger. A complete waste of time. Resigned to having to spend a night in a hotel, I asked how I could get a ticket for the 7am day train the next day -
'Come back here at 4.30am' he said.
'You're joking!'
He wasn't.
So ventured into streets in the dark amidst traffic, every vehicle of which was trying to kill me (this must be another game I haven't figured out yet), smoke from fires lit in the road, a herd of cows getting in the way of everything and people jammed in everywhere there wasn't anything else.
After spending (part of) the night at an overpriced hotel I crawled to the station along emptier streets (the cows were sitting down by now) at 5am in dense fog. There was only a small queue and 'the game' wasn't on. I got my ticket after about 10 mins. even after a female pushed-in right in front of me (yes, they really are allowed to do that - even though it doesn't really fit in with 'the game', it does keep women interested in the sport which is presumably the reason for the rule). Then I got my train, 45 mins late due to said fog, and got to Varanasi that afternoon (2 hours late arriving - due to being 45 mins late leaving).
And it was when I got to the old city in Varanasi that I found out that, so far, my introduction to India had been a gentle one. A huge area along the west bank of the Ganges (India's holiest river) is a maze of tiny alleyways threaded between 5 storey buildings, crammed with shops, people, pot bellied cows and large mounds of their steaming dung.
Question: If you are facing the backside of a large cow taking up over half the width of an alleyway and the remaining narrow gap is heavily mined with cow dung, then, bearing in mind that you are wearing open toed sandals, what do you do?
A) Wait for it to move
B) Wait for a local to push it out of the way
C) Try and push the cow out of the way yourself
D) Go another way to your destination
E) Go via the mined route but skip delicately over the dung
F) Walk through the minefield and get covered in shit, or worse, lose a sandal in it.
If you answered:
A - You are still waiting there.
B - No chance, almost all locals are Hindu and they wouldn't want the bad karma of pushing a sacred cow.
C - You will have got beaten up by the locals ('cos you are not as sacred as the cow)
D - You will get hopelessly lost in the alleys and are never seen again OR
If you do know where you are going - you end up in another alley facing the backside of a large cow taking up over half the width of an alleyway and the remaining narrow gap is heavily mined with cow dung. Then you have 6 options ...
E - Ha Ha! the cow moves as it feels you try to squeeze past and you end up covered in shit and get slammed into the wall by the cow.
F - You are a local.
Enough about cows for now!
Varanasi is an assault on all your senses including several you didnt know you had - burning bodies, dung, rotting veg - what more do you want. It is an education, even a priviledge to experience it all. Everything is in your face - all the time - and if something is clean, it wont be for long.
It all happens down at the river which is lined with ghats (platforms) where everything happens. If you are cremated here you go straight to moksha (Nirvana) escaping the cycle of life, death and rebirth (the aim of Hindus) even if you have had a bad life ( seems a bit easy to me). So 150-200 people are cremated on the ghats of the ganges every day, in public with crowds of onlookers. It is sobering watching bodies burn, educational, thought provoking and very hot. Thinly covered bodies and laid on 200kg of prime wood and burnt. It takes about 3 hours, during which the skull is smashed to release the soul and the remains are chucked into the ganges. Within spitting distance are the top bathing spots for Hindus - this is both ritual bathing and to get physically clean, although whether you are actually cleaner when you get out is anyones guess (I didn't give it a go). And in amongst all this are the dohbee-wallahs who are responsible for the city's laundry, and this is where they wash all the clothes. If this wasn't enough this slowly moving river is where most of the garbage is chucked. Thank god I am here in the winter and not the even hotter summer when the place must really stink.
Some more plusses
- The food and drink are great. Marvellous thalis (curries), dhosas (pancakes) and masalas (mixed spices). And then there are the sweets - they are very sweet but after trying a few (not all at once) I have managed to pick a few which are tasty without being sickly.
- There is a Hindu festival here just about every day.
Some more Minusses
- There is a Hindu festival here just about every day. And they really are getting a bit the same. Exactly the same in fact, except as the festival reaches its climax there are more participants and more people watching. And then there is a huge crush and - well it very nearly ended up in bad news last night when whilst waiting for ritual to start there was some major pushing (reminds me of the terraces of English footy matches in the early 1980s).
- There is no alcohol served in the old town - it all to do with the holy influence.
- Hygiene? One restaurant even advertises itself with the slogan 'Yes, We are less dirty...' and fearful of the lack of hygiene I am moving rapidly towards vegetarianism.
- The Scams - Everyone is out to scam any foreigner. Well almost everyone, but trying to sort out the 10% of people who are making casual conversation or genuinely trying to help from the 90% who protest their innocence but are really rolling out a scam to e.g. get money for non-existant lepers, is very difficult.
So fearful of another scam or another Hindu festival starting tonight I am on the night train out of here - heading south ...
Bye for now
Pete
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