Hiya,
In May Mango Mania arrives in India - yes it is the time of the year when mangoes are ripe and the whole of India goes nuts for them (well the rich people anyway). Everything that can be made out of them is. And some are even eaten as they are - especially the Alphonso variety, the king of mangoes.
And after 4 months sitting around doing nuff... meditating and stuff ... I finally managed to remind myself that travelling is about going places (and it was getting very hot in Pune) - and so I went somewhere, some places in fact, although at first I was wondering why ...
To start with something familiar kicks in - here I am on a train or a bus... then I encouter the disgusting squat toilets which look lke they have been just used by a herd of free roaming cattle which had a particularly bad beer and curry night the night before and whose aim was worse than a Peter Crouch penalty. Then the poverty - no matter what I have seen one day there is always something worse to see the next. Everyone walks round it, ignores it and builds huge very posh hotels next to it ... thats just the obscene way it is. And if you want to see the worlds biggest toilets just look out of the train window in the early morning as it pulls into a big city - endless rows of people squating down baring all (nearly all men oddly enough - I dont know where the women go)???
First stop Udaipur, which is a pretty place (well the bit around the lake and palace is at least) and spent most of the 3 days on the open air restaurant of the place I stayed looking at the views, but hardly moving cos it was so hot (over 40C in the shade) and once the palace and the odd temple had been viewed there wasnt really that much to do. So I decided to go to Jaipur...
Big mistake! Not only was Jaipur hotter than Udaipur - about 45C - (too hot to even lie under the fan comfortably), but it has to be the most scummy city I have been to in India, and you can imagine that is up against some pretty stiff competition. And since India can pride itself at being top of the world scummy city league then you may be able to imagine what Jaipur is like. Suffice to say that the description in LP of Jaipur being 'Whacky Races on acid' is about right. Traffic is constant and choking and constantly choking and when I tried to avoid it, it came looking for me! Everything is crammed in to small spaces. There are twice as many people, cars, rickshaws, cows per sq metre than in most cities in India, and more animals per sq metre than an english farm. The piles of rubbish and muck that line the streets are competed over by cows, goats, water buffalo, dogs, pigs and rats and often people as well, (cardboard is a delicacy for the pigs, cows and goats - Ive never seen humans eat it, yet) and then once they have eaten, they wallow in it. Then they follow me! I have been closely followed by people, dogs and cows (and in the mountains by monkeys) - I dont know which is worse, but it is best not to turn your back on any of them...
However I did realise that there is some value in a society that castes everyone into a specific role in life - opportunists follow the water buffalo herds as they trundle along the street and as soon as the poo hits the floor they grab it and mould it into rounds the size of chappaitis and dry it out for cooking fuel (it is normally poo of good consistency, unlike the liquid splodge left by cows - you cant spend time in India and not be an expert in poo - its everywhere - Regular washing of footwear is advisable).
Out in the villages things are not as bad although the transport can be worse. I was in a normal size jeep heading to a local market with 5 (inc driver) in the front, 6 of us in the 2nd row and about a dozen in the back (several hanging on the rear door). Now even for India I thought this was pretty full but was astounded to find that the next time we stopped to pick up passengers there was a brief discussion and no -one got on. At last I have been on a vehicle in Inida that even the locals considered was full - a first for me! Then at the next stop 2 people got out of the 2nd row ... and 4 got in. I think that in the school syllabus here, maths has been replaced by people management!
Travelling by state owned bus on the narrow winding roads in the hills of Northern India has to be about the worse transport experience I can remember - not only was I jammed in, knees crushed against the seat in front, but after about 5 minutes I was feeling like decorating the bus a queasy shade of green. Luckily it was only a 5 hour trip and I got over it in a few days (just in time to catch the next state owned bus on the narrow winding roads in the hills of Northern India...)
After trying to see the Dalai Lama and finding that he was busy, I went to Dalhousie, a place where Indian tourists go and there are hardly any foreigners, so it was kindda weird. But I did bag myself a small cottage in the hills where I stayed and meditated, and read and found I could sit on my porch gazing out at the spectacular view with one eye whilst watching England play Sri Lanka (live) at Cricket with the other. One eye is all you need to watch cricket anyway...
__________________________________________________________________
Interlude
Its hot, hot , hotter here. At least in the hills it was a lot cooler, even cold. And it rained. And when it rains it rains.
Cool and wet? Reminds me of home.
__________________________________________________________________
Now a bit just for the travel averse, who think an Indian is a restaurant in the high street, and a taste of India means going into an 'Indian' after a large number of beers, here is some other true stuff about India:
- Onion Bhajis - forget it, India's best food is not actually available in India! Well i did find one place that did them ... and they were rubbish, the english versions far better.
- And whilst we are on the subject they dont do poppadoms and pickles like we do either ...
- And Cobra beer doesnt exist here (cos it was invented in Bradford, England) - although Kingfisher is available (and there is an airline also called Kingfisher which astoundingly uses the same logo as the beer! - what does that say about air safety in India?)
- India has (inventively) partyly solved it transport problems by declaring that on the roads, everyone has right of way over everyone else all of the time. So there is no 'waiting' for other traffic to pass, no 'holding back' to let oncoming traffic through before overtaking, no waiting at traffic lights just because they are red ... everyone just goes for any space that is available happy in the knowledge that he has right of way over everyone else. Even more odd is that there is no road rage either. Despite everyone cutting up everyone else all of the time, no-one gets the slightest bit upset or shouts or says anything at all. And everyone having right of way works - well about 98% of the time. There are clearly some teething problems to be ironed out but I don't want to dwell on the number of dents, the odd vehicle on its side or the occasional bodies strewn across the road; it is sufficient to say that I have been repeatedly reminded by repetition that the word for 'accident' in Hindi is 'accident'! Anyway only 80,000 people a year are killed on India's roads (one every 6.5 minutes) so with a population of this size and growing this quickly it's clearly not that important...
But now (save a taxi to the airport at the dead of night) all that is behind me - I have been vegetarian (the only way to be in India) and had virtually no alcohol in the past 5 months, so to be plunged into several rounds of World Cup BBQs and beer extravaganzas very shortly which will be a challenge ... cos I will be home before the big tournament kicks off (lucky coincidence that!).
And that was all the travelling I did in 5 months. For the other four 'I' was the journey.
See ya soon
Love and Hugs
Ankur / Pete
Showing posts with label Delhi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Delhi. Show all posts
Monday, 5 June 2006
Saturday, 19 February 2005
Where 31 - Delhi, India --OR-- How I Found Out Who I Am in an Underground Padded Room
HI Everyone,
Seems ages since I was in Goa dodging the waves - since then I have spent a month at an ashram followed by a couple of weeks rushing around.
Firstly, the Osho Ashram in Pune (actually it is now called the Osho International Meditation Resort so they can charge loads of cash for meditating there [ashrams are normally funded by donation only]). I was only intending to go for a few days but ... ended up staying a month - you know what it's like when you find somewhere that it so not like real life (or real travelling), it is not only easy to stay, it is frightening just thinking about having to face the outside world again, let alone actually doing it. Some people I met there are still too scared to come out, and a months stay may seem like a long time, but it hardly made me a long term inmate by Osho standards.
If you think meditation is about sitting silently in a room with loads of other people also sitting silently in a room then think again. OK, so some of it did involve sitting silently in a room with loads of other people also sitting silently in a room (the quality of this silence was something else, if you made a sound or coughed you were swiftly thrown out (quietly of course) by the neo nazi guards), but most of the meditations were dynamic, meaning you have to move and make sounds and stuff like that. In the 6am Dynamic Meditation we were encouraged to make as much noise as possible for 10 mins; and immediately after was 10 mins of jumping up and down continuously - call it circuit training if you like!
What kept me there really were the courses - I did two 3-days and one 5-day course - mainly looking at how my childhood conditioning affects me now (yes it is all to do with the people called parents) and how I can change back into who I was supposed to be and not the stranger I had become. The 5-day one was a bit tough as we (30 of us) were in total silence outside the group room for thefirst 4.5 days. I had to get up at 5.30am, and didnt get back to my room until 11.30pm - and then had to do homework! So there wasn't much time for sleep ...
Sharing all those emotionally intimate experiences in an underground padded room with 30 people I didn't know, and wasn't allowed to speak to, was kind of weird but very powerful; then after 5 days when we talked I realised I had 30 intimate friends who I didn't know a thing about - and none of us could think where to start. But when we did get it together it was like having a whole new family of friends, wonderful!
So after a month of what approximates to an exorcism of my past, I turned out to be a completely new person (perhaps a slight exaggeration), although whether I changed back the moment I stepped back into the street I'm not yet sure. Anyway to celebrate being this new person (however briefly) I had my head shaved (OK so that was years ago) and have a new name, Ankur (I'm sure I have been called something similar to that before anyway). Whether this is a final step or just a first step I'm not really sure, but it is a step...
So having gritted my teeth and with one eye on my visas' expiry dates, I left for more orthodox 'adventures' - up north to Rajasthan and into the desert:
Jodhpur (which really did give its name to a pair of trousers) - A huge fort, perched on an enormous slab of rock dominates this town, nearly all of which is painted blue (they reckon it helps keep the mossies away, but what mossies would be doing in the desert I have no idea). And apart from (What have the Romans ever done for us?)the very inpressive fort, the lovely (and cheap) food, superb lassis (note for Scottish people - these are yogurt drinks, not girls), the clock tower, full on sun, views across the town from rooftop restaurants and vibrant markets (there is no aqueduct here), what has this place got that is worth coming here for? Nothing!
The fort was founded in 1459, in was gradually expanded by various rulers, and despite having faced many attacks and sieges was never taken - when I stood at the top of the 125m high rock but still at the bottom of the huge walls I understood why.
Jaisalmer - further into the desert, out of which a walled city rises in defiance of everything that surrounds it (which is nothing except rock and sand, but the thought was there). Started in 1156, inside is a beautifully quaint whole town where even quainter people still live with quaint cramped houses, temples so squashed (and quaint) that they literally merge into one another, quaint narrow winding alleys ... and of course, being India, fat cows, shit excreted by all manner of mammals, an abundance of rubbish and nutcases on motor cycles.
- So I escaped into the desert on a camel for 3 days (with 7 other travellers and 4 guides/cooks/camel herders). Unfortunately ... after being driven by jeep an hour into the desert, when I tried to get on my sitting down camel for the first time, I had half a leg across the 'saddle' and it decided to get up and I only narrowly avoided castration but did lose half a fingernail in the process (a fortunate trade off perhaps), then opening my daysac (to mend my finger), I found I had lost my waterbottle, and then once I did get on my beast, my stirrups (which were only pieces of string) broke. So I rode off into the desert without water, stirrups and with only 9.5 fingernails. I felt that at least one of these was probably not a good idea!
- I didn't like the camel too much after that (it was lazy and always at the back as well) so later I managed to change to the one that was always at the front and was by far the biggest, a magnificent beast and quite well behaved, although he did keep trying to attract the females by blowing up cabbage sized pink sacks from his mouth which drooped (unattactively, need I add) over his bottom lip. Camels mouths are incredible, looking into one is revolting - a kalidascope of geen, red, purple and blue slime resides there - with teeth as twisted and colourful as Bugs Bunny's 85-year-old grandma who had been a heavy smoker (of Camels?) all her life.
- One thing that no-one advises you to take into the desert is wet weather gear, so I didn't. And yes it did rain - luckily only briefly. I do now know the difference between rain and camel spit, and this was definitely rain.
- The desert is not empty - if you have ever wondered where peacocks live, they live (at least some of them do) in this, The Great Thar Desert (Todays useless fact : peacocks are India's national bird). Mainly they walk everywhere although a few did fly briefly, probably just for our entertainment, but we didn't stop to find out why - we got away quick in case they came and hassled us for 'rupees' or 'school pen' - it is like that in India.
- Back inside the walled city the 7 Jain temples with a total of only 3 entrances betweenn them(merged remember) contained a maze of stunning 3D carvings - I could try and describe them but would probably fail and anyway you probably would get bored or have work to do, or most likely, both (and no karma sutra ones this time) - suffice to say they are probably the best I have ever seen for detail and condition given the age (12th - 15th century) - yes even better than Bantrey Srei at Angkor in Cambodia.
Bikaner - Then onto the most shit filled streets I have ever walked (and there is some pretty stiff competition in India). And it rained really heavily during the night and flooded the streets. And I was wearing open toed sandels. Liquid cow shit - and I just had to walk through it - not just for fun, but there simply was no other way to get from room to breakfast.
- This was not the main attraction of going there however. Even worse was 'The Rat Temple!!'. This is a temple filled with rats. They are not just tolerted but actually fed, watered and worshipped, no-one knows how many there are but one guy who worked there (over)estimated 60,000 - they only count the white rats which are considered lucky if you see one - there are 11, I saw 3 (or the same one 3 times).
So just relax and imagine going into this temple barefoot.
Rats are running around everywhere.
And these are not nice, specially bred rats; these are the degenerates of the rat world: scrawny, scabby, brown rats varying from mouse size (presumably younger ones) to the size of, well..., a well-fed rat.
So you are standing there, and just watching hundreds of them crowding round the food only a metre away makes your blood curdle.
You stand close enough to have your photo taken with them, and even crouch down to make it look like you are really pally with them; you may be thinking 'JUST DON'T ... come any closer'.
Then they run really close to you and you may think 'I'm OK'; breathe deeply, 'I'm bigger than them, they're not going to attack me or anything'.
And then they come right up to you, the scabs on them screaming 'I'm a scabby rat' at you. Then they nibble your toes ... Urrrgg ... and you try not to scream.
Then they run over your foot ... and you try and remember how honoured you are to have this happen to you.
Then they run up your leg!
F**K OFF ME!
It was just like that - and yes I do have the pictues to prove it!
- Agra - Couldn't leave India without seeing the Taj Mahal (completed in 1653 so fairly old). Got up an hour before first light to see it wake up. It is spectacular as it changes its hue in the early light, a wonderful testament to a man's love for a women and what happens when the King has too much money to waste. The best views are from a distance; I immersed myself in its shape, its form, its colours and its beauty - it makes an impact. But the closer I got the less interesting it was. Then I got too close and realised that apart from a few bits of intricate inlaid stones, it is just huge slabs of marble; just a building and not an overly interesting one at that.
And nearby there is a fantastic Red Fort made out of red sandstone, and adorned with white marble palaces - all built by the same people who built the Taj Mahal.
Delhi
Onto the capital, just for a couple of days. I expected this to be a modern westernised place, and some of it is. But it also boasts roads covered in muck (those cows again) and traffic jams of cycle rickshaws (a really slow but pleasant way to travel if you can stand the pollution). It also has a red fort (made of red sandstone!) which isn't a patch on the one at Agra, and India's largest mosque (completed in 1658) which can hold 25,000 people. Surrounding this mosque are streets of butchers shops, something of a surprise in India - the muslims eat stacks of meat, and judging by the displays of the shops, goat's heads are a speciality. Strangely there were no cows wandering the streets near here - wonder what happened to them?
So after 3 months I am nearly finished in India - just up to the Golden Temple at Amritsar and then over the border to Pakistan. I feel like I am heading home - well at least I am heading NW which is pretty much the right direction - may take a few months to get back but the food might be better than if I went by 'plane.
- Incidentaly I have been travelling nearly 5 months in Nepal and India, eating fantastic food and haven't been ill once. I will regret writing that sometime soon!
- I was tying to think how to sum up India in a few words or a picture. After careful(?) thought it would have to be a picture of a man pissing up against the wall of the Taj Mahal!
India is the best and the worst of everything expertly blended together.
So what is happening with you ... ?
Home soon(?)
Love
Ankur/Pete
Seems ages since I was in Goa dodging the waves - since then I have spent a month at an ashram followed by a couple of weeks rushing around.
Firstly, the Osho Ashram in Pune (actually it is now called the Osho International Meditation Resort so they can charge loads of cash for meditating there [ashrams are normally funded by donation only]). I was only intending to go for a few days but ... ended up staying a month - you know what it's like when you find somewhere that it so not like real life (or real travelling), it is not only easy to stay, it is frightening just thinking about having to face the outside world again, let alone actually doing it. Some people I met there are still too scared to come out, and a months stay may seem like a long time, but it hardly made me a long term inmate by Osho standards.
If you think meditation is about sitting silently in a room with loads of other people also sitting silently in a room then think again. OK, so some of it did involve sitting silently in a room with loads of other people also sitting silently in a room (the quality of this silence was something else, if you made a sound or coughed you were swiftly thrown out (quietly of course) by the neo nazi guards), but most of the meditations were dynamic, meaning you have to move and make sounds and stuff like that. In the 6am Dynamic Meditation we were encouraged to make as much noise as possible for 10 mins; and immediately after was 10 mins of jumping up and down continuously - call it circuit training if you like!
What kept me there really were the courses - I did two 3-days and one 5-day course - mainly looking at how my childhood conditioning affects me now (yes it is all to do with the people called parents) and how I can change back into who I was supposed to be and not the stranger I had become. The 5-day one was a bit tough as we (30 of us) were in total silence outside the group room for thefirst 4.5 days. I had to get up at 5.30am, and didnt get back to my room until 11.30pm - and then had to do homework! So there wasn't much time for sleep ...
Sharing all those emotionally intimate experiences in an underground padded room with 30 people I didn't know, and wasn't allowed to speak to, was kind of weird but very powerful; then after 5 days when we talked I realised I had 30 intimate friends who I didn't know a thing about - and none of us could think where to start. But when we did get it together it was like having a whole new family of friends, wonderful!
So after a month of what approximates to an exorcism of my past, I turned out to be a completely new person (perhaps a slight exaggeration), although whether I changed back the moment I stepped back into the street I'm not yet sure. Anyway to celebrate being this new person (however briefly) I had my head shaved (OK so that was years ago) and have a new name, Ankur (I'm sure I have been called something similar to that before anyway). Whether this is a final step or just a first step I'm not really sure, but it is a step...
So having gritted my teeth and with one eye on my visas' expiry dates, I left for more orthodox 'adventures' - up north to Rajasthan and into the desert:
Jodhpur (which really did give its name to a pair of trousers) - A huge fort, perched on an enormous slab of rock dominates this town, nearly all of which is painted blue (they reckon it helps keep the mossies away, but what mossies would be doing in the desert I have no idea). And apart from (What have the Romans ever done for us?)the very inpressive fort, the lovely (and cheap) food, superb lassis (note for Scottish people - these are yogurt drinks, not girls), the clock tower, full on sun, views across the town from rooftop restaurants and vibrant markets (there is no aqueduct here), what has this place got that is worth coming here for? Nothing!
The fort was founded in 1459, in was gradually expanded by various rulers, and despite having faced many attacks and sieges was never taken - when I stood at the top of the 125m high rock but still at the bottom of the huge walls I understood why.
Jaisalmer - further into the desert, out of which a walled city rises in defiance of everything that surrounds it (which is nothing except rock and sand, but the thought was there). Started in 1156, inside is a beautifully quaint whole town where even quainter people still live with quaint cramped houses, temples so squashed (and quaint) that they literally merge into one another, quaint narrow winding alleys ... and of course, being India, fat cows, shit excreted by all manner of mammals, an abundance of rubbish and nutcases on motor cycles.
- So I escaped into the desert on a camel for 3 days (with 7 other travellers and 4 guides/cooks/camel herders). Unfortunately ... after being driven by jeep an hour into the desert, when I tried to get on my sitting down camel for the first time, I had half a leg across the 'saddle' and it decided to get up and I only narrowly avoided castration but did lose half a fingernail in the process (a fortunate trade off perhaps), then opening my daysac (to mend my finger), I found I had lost my waterbottle, and then once I did get on my beast, my stirrups (which were only pieces of string) broke. So I rode off into the desert without water, stirrups and with only 9.5 fingernails. I felt that at least one of these was probably not a good idea!
- I didn't like the camel too much after that (it was lazy and always at the back as well) so later I managed to change to the one that was always at the front and was by far the biggest, a magnificent beast and quite well behaved, although he did keep trying to attract the females by blowing up cabbage sized pink sacks from his mouth which drooped (unattactively, need I add) over his bottom lip. Camels mouths are incredible, looking into one is revolting - a kalidascope of geen, red, purple and blue slime resides there - with teeth as twisted and colourful as Bugs Bunny's 85-year-old grandma who had been a heavy smoker (of Camels?) all her life.
- One thing that no-one advises you to take into the desert is wet weather gear, so I didn't. And yes it did rain - luckily only briefly. I do now know the difference between rain and camel spit, and this was definitely rain.
- The desert is not empty - if you have ever wondered where peacocks live, they live (at least some of them do) in this, The Great Thar Desert (Todays useless fact : peacocks are India's national bird). Mainly they walk everywhere although a few did fly briefly, probably just for our entertainment, but we didn't stop to find out why - we got away quick in case they came and hassled us for 'rupees' or 'school pen' - it is like that in India.
- Back inside the walled city the 7 Jain temples with a total of only 3 entrances betweenn them(merged remember) contained a maze of stunning 3D carvings - I could try and describe them but would probably fail and anyway you probably would get bored or have work to do, or most likely, both (and no karma sutra ones this time) - suffice to say they are probably the best I have ever seen for detail and condition given the age (12th - 15th century) - yes even better than Bantrey Srei at Angkor in Cambodia.
Bikaner - Then onto the most shit filled streets I have ever walked (and there is some pretty stiff competition in India). And it rained really heavily during the night and flooded the streets. And I was wearing open toed sandels. Liquid cow shit - and I just had to walk through it - not just for fun, but there simply was no other way to get from room to breakfast.
- This was not the main attraction of going there however. Even worse was 'The Rat Temple!!'. This is a temple filled with rats. They are not just tolerted but actually fed, watered and worshipped, no-one knows how many there are but one guy who worked there (over)estimated 60,000 - they only count the white rats which are considered lucky if you see one - there are 11, I saw 3 (or the same one 3 times).
So just relax and imagine going into this temple barefoot.
Rats are running around everywhere.
And these are not nice, specially bred rats; these are the degenerates of the rat world: scrawny, scabby, brown rats varying from mouse size (presumably younger ones) to the size of, well..., a well-fed rat.
So you are standing there, and just watching hundreds of them crowding round the food only a metre away makes your blood curdle.
You stand close enough to have your photo taken with them, and even crouch down to make it look like you are really pally with them; you may be thinking 'JUST DON'T ... come any closer'.
Then they run really close to you and you may think 'I'm OK'; breathe deeply, 'I'm bigger than them, they're not going to attack me or anything'.
And then they come right up to you, the scabs on them screaming 'I'm a scabby rat' at you. Then they nibble your toes ... Urrrgg ... and you try not to scream.
Then they run over your foot ... and you try and remember how honoured you are to have this happen to you.
Then they run up your leg!
F**K OFF ME!
It was just like that - and yes I do have the pictues to prove it!
- Agra - Couldn't leave India without seeing the Taj Mahal (completed in 1653 so fairly old). Got up an hour before first light to see it wake up. It is spectacular as it changes its hue in the early light, a wonderful testament to a man's love for a women and what happens when the King has too much money to waste. The best views are from a distance; I immersed myself in its shape, its form, its colours and its beauty - it makes an impact. But the closer I got the less interesting it was. Then I got too close and realised that apart from a few bits of intricate inlaid stones, it is just huge slabs of marble; just a building and not an overly interesting one at that.
And nearby there is a fantastic Red Fort made out of red sandstone, and adorned with white marble palaces - all built by the same people who built the Taj Mahal.
Delhi
Onto the capital, just for a couple of days. I expected this to be a modern westernised place, and some of it is. But it also boasts roads covered in muck (those cows again) and traffic jams of cycle rickshaws (a really slow but pleasant way to travel if you can stand the pollution). It also has a red fort (made of red sandstone!) which isn't a patch on the one at Agra, and India's largest mosque (completed in 1658) which can hold 25,000 people. Surrounding this mosque are streets of butchers shops, something of a surprise in India - the muslims eat stacks of meat, and judging by the displays of the shops, goat's heads are a speciality. Strangely there were no cows wandering the streets near here - wonder what happened to them?
So after 3 months I am nearly finished in India - just up to the Golden Temple at Amritsar and then over the border to Pakistan. I feel like I am heading home - well at least I am heading NW which is pretty much the right direction - may take a few months to get back but the food might be better than if I went by 'plane.
- Incidentaly I have been travelling nearly 5 months in Nepal and India, eating fantastic food and haven't been ill once. I will regret writing that sometime soon!
- I was tying to think how to sum up India in a few words or a picture. After careful(?) thought it would have to be a picture of a man pissing up against the wall of the Taj Mahal!
India is the best and the worst of everything expertly blended together.
So what is happening with you ... ?
Home soon(?)
Love
Ankur/Pete
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
