Friday, 20 March 2015

Varanasi and Agra


The 17 hour train journey flew by, fortunately for us it was a proper overnight sleep without having to make sure we woke up for 4am or something silly. We got to wake up in a reasonable amount of time, a bed each. Luxury..!

We arrive in the morning and work out how best to get to our location. A rickshaw driver approaches us at the platform and offers to take us as close as possible to the hotel we have booked, and realising half way to his rickshaw he wanted more than we were paying in accommodation to get there, we quickly refused him and found another guy next to him asking for under a third of the first guy. We were on our way.

The traffic was actually a bit of a shock compared to what we had been used to recently. Gridlocked, nobody could move, even pedestrians struggled to get through the bumper-to-bicycle-wheel jam. But, eventually, we were dropped in the middle of nowhere and told we had to walk the rest of the way. We got out, assuming this was indeed the case, and walked on.

To be fair, we didn’t seen many more auto rickshaws up ahead, but there was definitely a road, so we can’t work out if he didn’t want to drive the last kilometre or there was an actual regulation in place (and if there were, it was the first time we’d seen anyone in India care about a traffic regulation). Once we’d cleared this area of road however, it was clear that no vehicle other than a bike would have had a chance of negotiating the narrow labyrinth of streets towards the Ghats. Our hotel was amongst these, and armed with my trusty inaccurate Google Map of the location we were headed, we soldiered on.

Narrow and full of bovine pals


Within seconds we were attracting all kinds of attention, one guy saying he had a hotel and trying to ask us to go to his. Once we confirmed to him we already had a hotel booked, called the Golden Palace, he looked disappointed, but in true Indian fashion proceeded to help us find it the fastest way possible, which was lucky as my map was saying we were a good distance away, but it turned out we were just around the corner. Once we got closer, signs were on every corner of the labyrinth, so fortunately finding our way back to it again after this point was very simple, even though on a couple of occasions we were unable to navigate certain roads due to people queueing up for temples.

We checked into our hotel, a tiny little stuffy room with a bathroom that did have hot water if you could work out which switch in the room operated the boiler, and made ourselves at home. Unfortunately at this point I was still battling with the remnants of my migraines, a strange drunken and disorienting feeling. Another feeling that isn’t ideal when trying to navigate narrow corridors of cows, people, dogs, excrement of all the above, and the occasional joker who decided their Royal Enfield was a perfect fit. I ended up spending a long while sleeping apparently, I don’t really remember this but I’m reliably informed this is the case by my incredibly patient and caring fiancĂ©e, and we wandered out in the evening, unfortunately too late for the evening ceremony that’s held on the Ghats daily, but we decided to explore anyway, and wanted to organise a boat trip for the morning.

After a short walk, the river Ganges was in clear sight. We walked down towards the large entrance to this main ghat off of the main road. Unfortunately this particular part of the story, at least for me, takes quite a downward turn from here. I am actually quite fortunate I am still able to tell this tale, as I honestly believe this moment of my life could have been my last.

As we walked down the ghat trying to take in the sights and bustle of what was going on, an elderly man stood and offered to shake my hand. Now, not being rude, and being quite used to this by this point of our trip as we’ve been heralded as minor celebrities due to our incredibly pale complexions, I took the hand of this gentleman in order to shake it. At this point, a vice-like grip took itself upon the fingers of my right hand. Unable to break free, his left hand begins to strongly and vigorously work up my currently trapped arm, in what some would refer to as a ‘massage’. Diana, looking upon the whole situation with a bemused smirk and nothing in the way of sympathy, did little to help me from my attacker.

Not content with the reckless assault on this arm, his snake like reflexes reach for and successfully capture my other hand. Before I know what’s going on, this arm is also being kneaded like freshly prepared chapatti dough. Figuring that I was now running out of arms, I planned my attempt at a ‘sincere’ thank you for this invasion of my appendages, ready to be on our way. Oh no. Not just yet. We’d only just begun.

Within seconds my entire being had been body slammed, face down onto an old cloth. It’s possible in the delirious stupor of my migraine postdrome that I was hypnotized into doing said action, I can’t fully remember, but my recollection of the attack was this elderly gentleman temporarily turned into a world class wrestler and forced me into said position.

At this point, I look up at Diana. She’s now talking with some lady who only spoke Hindi, her entire attention diverted away from my current state of emergency. Above me I could now tell an accomplice had joined, hands, or possibly large drills, boring down into my very soul via my back. I believe at this point, Hulk Hogan had begun removing my sandals. ‘This is it’ I thought to myself, ‘my time is up, and we’re right by the holy river ready for my cremation. Goodbye world’. The man speaks – “This is a full Ayurvedic massage! Very good for body and circulation!”. Yeah, right. I know a cannibal group when I see one.

God knows what was happening now, my arms and legs were being twisted out of all alignment, a vicious method of tenderisation began on my back muscles as I assumed I would become the main course for a hungry family of 6 in the morning. I tried to steal one last glance at Diana for her to come to my aide – no luck, she’s eating Rice Krispies out of the ladies scarf.

As my thighs and bum get viciously attacked, and Diana’s now being shouted at in a language where we can only just about understand ‘water’ and ‘how much’, I began to slip out of consciousness. My near lifeless body is flipped, and my face is now being aggravated. Accepting my fate, I lose all recognition of my current state. It felt like it was coming to an end, but I couldn’t care any less at this point, I was numb to it all.

Until the man began to speak. A disgusting abomination of a sentence, one that instantly made my blood boil and my fighting spirit return. “This costs 3000 rupees”. Over 30 British pounds for what some people get for free in Guantanamo Bay.

I leap to my feet, suddenly more alive than I had ever felt before.

“Excuse me? I only shook your hand! I didn’t ask to be physically assaulted!”
“Okay sir okay, 1500”
I look over at Diana, who at the mention of this obscene amount of money has realised the severity of my current affair. At the mere mention of 3000 rupees she had spat out her late night neckwear sourced breakfast cereal.
“No, not 1500, I didn’t want it at all”
“No problem no problem, 300!”
Attempting now to walk away - “No. Not 300.”
Wanting to get rid of them, we hold our 100 rupees to get them to leave us alone. They refuse, and say “Ok ok, no charge.”
About to walk away, another guy who didn’t seem to be involved in the process at all asked us for 150. Holding out just the 100 again, he scoffs and turns away. I also turned away, only to have him them ask for the 100 again. Handing it over, we attempt to get as far away from the Ghat as possible, but not before a man came over to fill Diana’s pashmina with her own puffed rice treats (This time with added chilies).

Some of you may think I’m over reacting. That I should have paid their demands. But you weren’t there. You weren’t there…
Anyway, we went onwards to a restaurant along the ghat and got a very cheap meal. Diana managed to offload her rice puffs onto a beggar who clearly wanted money but got what he was given. I spent the rest of the evening consoling myself that it would all be okay now, and getting through the 80rs of chai we got at the restaurant, that turned out to be around 10 cups of sweet caffeinated goodness.

Scarf pops avec chilli



On the way back we managed to find a place to book an early morning boat tour. Up at the crack of just-before-dawn, ready to get the boat for sunrise. Well, almost, it was a bit late and the sun was already coming up by the time we managed to sit in the vessel. We’re shown the different ghats, their purposes and some of the history. Half way along, we pull up alongside another ship in true pirate fashion and plunder their oarsman for our own, in a swap that was never really explained to us.

Here she comes!

Our new sailor friend took us to the burning ghats, about as close to them as possible without actually singeing our eyebrows off. This is where people are brought after death to be cremated and put into the River Ganges, in order to break the cycle of reincarnation and allow the soul to rest (or so I believe – if anyone has better information on this please let me know). It felt a bit too close for comfort, as if we shouldn’t be here and we were imposing a funeral, however nobody seemed to mind or say anything about it.

Preparing bodies for the cremation ceremony
A body being burned to be placed into the river

Knowing that we (the 4 of us foreigners in the boat) considered the river to be full of pollutants, including but not limited to toxic chemical wastes, human remains, animal remains, general plastics and food waste, our guide set about proving to us how clean the water actually is. Using the paddle to scoop the thick scum off the top, revealing the murky water below, he proclaimed “Look! You move this away and it’s clean!” We smiled and nodded, but I don’t think any of us fancied having a mouthful or wash amongst it, unlike some others we saw.

Cleanliness is next to godliness...

I didn't fancy joining in so much
Very little else occurred during the day, however we made plans to go see the ceremony that takes place every evening on the ghats. Whilst not entirely sure what the ceremony was for, but assuming the worship of ‘Mother Ganga’, it involved a lot of incense, flowers, fire and singing. Interesting, even with little idea what was actually going on.

Lassi''s made to order - chocolate and banana and an apple one. With a great view of bodies being carried to the burning ghat,

People everywhere for the late night ceremony, even filling up boats


After this we quickly dashed away before the masses of people could gather and make things difficult, and retired to a restaurant we had been to previously, and Diana had been to on a previous trip, that offered live music. Turns out, the live music is the same performer as the last time Diana had been 2 years ago, playing the same riff over and over. We didn’t buy a CD, but the food, which a guy spent a good 10 minutes describing and dressing up to sound as appealing as possible, was in fact amazing and one of the nicest we’d had in a long time.

Our next plan was to go to Rishikesh, however we’d been told we can’t just simply not see the Taj Mahal and should factor this in. Vaguely en route, we get an overnight train to Agra, sleeper class, which was conveniently timed to arrive at around 6am. This way, we could go straight there, see it, get back and hopefully be in time for one of the trains or coaches to Haridwar, worst case scenario going via New Delhi. We pack up our stuff and head to the main road from the narrow streets and are instantly flagged up by an old man with a cycle rickshaw. Bearing in mind we have quite a few KG of baggage, and two people, we looked at each other as if to ask if this was going to work. He seemed keen though, so we precariously balanced all our bags and our bodies onto the back of the rickshaw. Credit where due, he did very well until a very potholed uphill road struck out of nowhere, and he had to push the bike for the distance. Diana, worried we might be about to kill an old man, gave him a bottle of our water and more money than we originally agreed, and we were at the station.

A little rodent friend who kept trying to nibble through someone;s bag where we were sitting


The train journey started fairly uneventfully, until a group of guys got on and sat in our berth. For some reason, they seemed fascinated by me and made a big group, asking me all the normal questions we expect and others we’d not heard before, such as how much money I made. Eventually I managed to shoehorn Diana into the conversations, where it progressed to her showing one of the guys what music she listened to other than Hindi music, which both intrigued and terrified him. The train ticket inspector came around, and after a short discussion where people started getting up and sitting down again, left. One of the guys who was good at English explained they didn’t have a ticket for the train. Interestingly, this didn’t seem to matter too much. Eventually, after the guy who listened to the music offered to buy Diana’s earphones for 1000 rupees which worried her into thinking he may be serious, we settled down to sleep.

A somewhat disturbed sleep later, with mice and cockroaches scuttling along the carriage floor, I was awoken to find out the guys we were talking to were being kicked off, as the people who actually paid for those beds needed them, shouting ‘DINNER DARLING?’ at Diana as a last ditch attempt at a pick up line. Getting back to sleep again, just, we arrived in Agra around 2 hours later than we’d planned, but hoping our plan would still work out we took our bags to the luggage office at the station (Which was 24 hours but for some reason locked when we got there and nobody would let us in) and headed out to get a prepaid rickshaw to the Taj Mahal.

After working out where we were supposed to go as it was far less obvious than we expected, we got our ticket and our free little bottle of water and white shoe coverings and went to get our bags checked. Not wanting to leave our valuables in the luggage office, I had a backpack containing most of our electronics. The guy searched my bag and told me we can’t take a laptop in to the Taj Mahal, not sure why, but that was that. Trying to work out what we can do about it, we walked up the stairs again where a child insisted we could leave valuables at their shop for free, an obvious ploy to get us to go back there afterwards as everyone was trying incredibly hard to get us to buy their tat on the way there. So we head back to the queue, where we’re now told we can’t even have writing paper, and I still had another electronic item on me. The guard looked at me, laughed and let me in anyway. I’m not sure what the concern was, but I didn’t intend on threatening anyone with a paper cut or minor electric shock.

So we’re in, we’ve done it. In my honest opinion, it’s nice, it clearly took a long time to build and get perfect as we all know, as with most of the palaces and temples we’ve seen. But I’m not a massively architectural person, and with the sheer amount of tourists there all trying to get the best photo opportunities (which we ended up trying to do to some extent as we were there), there wasn’t a lot for me there. Had our whole trip been based around it I’d have been fairly disappointed. Still, obligatory tourist shots were taken, and it’s another one of the 7 crossed off. Worth seeing if you’re in the area, don’t get a trip to India just for it though in my opinion!

A photo you may have seen versions of before


There it be! 

That white girl was just as much of a tourist attracting as that white building



Realising if we didn’t hang around too long we could catch the next train, we make a mad dash back to the station, get a ticket (unreserved 10 hour journey – pray we get a seat!) and go gather our bags to prepare for the next long journey. 


Obligatory sitting-on-the-bench shot!

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