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November 28, 1996
A travel day from Madras to Delhi to Amsterdam
There's really little to say today, except that it's been long. Really long. It's entailed lots of waiting: waiting to fly to Delhi, waiting for our flight to land in Delhi, waiting in Delhi for our flight to Amsterdam. This being India, our flight west wouldn't depart til 1am, so we sat in the airport all night and didn't begin the boarding process until midnight. By the time we got on board for the eight-hour flight, we were pretty beat. We slept most of the night away, as our airplane took us north through Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Russia, and then west through the Baltics, Poland, and Germany, before arriving in Holland.
This concludes my original journal entries. I'll try to post our story of our day in Amsterdam, as well as my final thoughts on the trip, a little later.
Posted by acarvin at 07:54 PM
November 27, 1996
Return to Madras
I still wasn't feeling too great, but I was well enough to travel back to Madras. There was an extended break in the rain that morning, so we hired a taxi. The two hour ride back to Madras was smooth and comfortable. This was to be our last night's stay in India, so we decided to splurge and make it a comfy one. We stayed at the Ambassador Pallava Hotel, one of Madras' flagship four-star hotels. Though it was quite lavish by Indian standards, in retrospect I'm not sure if it would have been worth $100 in the states, but after some of the places we had stayed over the last 21 days, it was well worth it at that moment in time.
We chilled out in the room and at the hotel cafe before heading out to the Sri Kapalashwaram temple. An autorickshaw took us to the temple, which was no more than 10 minutes away. It was a typical Dravidian gopuram-style temple, shooting up into the sky like a tall Remington Microscreen electric shaver. The temple was adorned with thousands of brightly painted statue miniatures, which gave it the appearance of a cross between a Grateful Dead album cover and a Heironymous Bosch painting. The rains had departed for a few hours, but the clouds made it difficult to get any pictures. We also weren't allowed inside the temple (Hindus only), so after 15 minutes or so, we were ready to move on to our next stop, Fort St. George.
The fort was set up by the British in the early 1600s, and was the Crown's first outpost on Indian soil. It's still used today as a military and state administrative complex, and because of all the hustle and bustle, the fort felt more like a modern military base than a piece of Raj history. The fort's museum was a ragged display of British weapons, uniforms and documents. Upstairs, though, we found an old ballroom that had been converted in to a portrait hall. 20 large paintings of former monarchs and local Maharajas filled the walls, including a rather famous portrait of a young Queen Victoria. A few buildings south of the museum, we entered St. Mary's Church, the oldest Anglican house of worship east of the Suez. It was a simple stone church with wooden pews and dozens of small marble plaques and memorials, including one to Elihu Yale, former governor of Madras, as well as the eventual founder of Yale University.
Somehow the day had flown by, and it was getting late. The sun was bearing down on my weary body, so I went back to the hotel and rested. It was an anticlimactic last night in India, but I figured I better rest for a healthy trip back and a fun overnight stay in Amsterdam.
Posted by acarvin at 08:14 PM
November 26, 1996
My Day of Agony
There's little to say about today, except that I spent most of it in bed with a fever and a stomach ache. I certainly wasn't deathly ill, and I wasn't running to the bathroom every 10 minutes, but still felt like hell. As I kept asking Susanne, "Who will rid me of this dreaded malaise?" as if I were Peter O'Toole complaining about Thomas a Becket (I must have been really ill). So I slept a lot.
The only story worth telling from this day is from when Susanne dragged me to lunch at the Temple Bay Ashok Beach Resort, about a kilometer south on the beach. After eating, we waited in the lobby for the rain to break. I noticed in the bushes outside that a small puppy had run for cover and was crouching under the leaves. So when the rains let up, we eagerly investigated. In the bush we found this poor, drenched puppy, no more than a few weeks old, shivering and looking scared to death. It was very upsetting, so we broke our cardinal rule over never touching animals in India and picked it up. I took it to a sink by the pool and rinsed it clean with warm water, and then we held it for a while to help raise its temperature. Eventually, we saw another dog, one that we had hoped would be its mother. She made eye contact with our puppy and her ears pricked up. We put the puppy on the ground, and instantly, it took on new life, running over to the mama dog, snuggling it and eventually trotting off side by side down the stone path.
I had done my good deed for the day. Back to bed.
Posted by acarvin at 10:24 PM
November 25, 1996
Exploring Mahabalipuram
We slept pretty late and had a dull breakfast. The restaurant at the Tamil Nadu Beach Resort was horrendous, largely because of its indifferent service. As a state-run hotel, it doesn't worry much about putting the best foot forward, because no matter what, they'll still get subsidized. The staff was slow and lazy, and only tried their best when they wanted to get us to exchange dollars through them or to arrange a private taxi. While at $20 a night, the resort was still a good deal, but its employees left an awful taste in my mouth.
We walked down the beach in the rain. It was a light sprinkle most of the time, so we didn't need to use our umbrellas for the most part. The cold rain actually felt good in the humidity and 90 degree morning temperature. Susanne commented on how strange she felt needing an umbrella on a beach. Being a Floridian who lived less than a mile from the shore, I just felt like I was at home during the late summer rains. We paused for a couple of Cokes at the Luna Magica restaurant, a new place that had just opened on the north end of the beach. We didn't get any meals, but still enjoyed the cozy atmosphere. A fisherman who was temporarily marooned because of the rough seas entered the restaurant and nonchalantly joined us at our table. At first I assumed he wanted us to change money or something, but he turned out to be a really nice guy who just wanted to talk and practice his English. He was about 25, very thin, and extremely dark, with short curly black hair and thick eyebrows - classic Tamil features, I thought. We talked about the monsoon, fishing, and of course, that perennial favorite topic, the weather in America.
As noon passed we left the restaurant and headed down a small street into town. We followed the sounds of a drum and horn ensemble that was playing up-tempo Tamil music. We were curious to see what the celebration was all about. After snapping a few shots of the band as they stood on a street corner, I noticed that to their right was a lean-to attached to a stone and mud hut. There was a group of four or five women in a circle, sobbing and wailing, and in the center of the circle lay a withered body wrapped in garlands of flowers. We had stumbled into a funeral. I was so embarrassed. It wasn't that I minded walking through the street as the funeral got under way - lots of locals were doing just that as well. I just felt awful about how we approached, cameras planted on our faces, snapping away at the band. I hope no one noticed us. We proceeded across the street and were largely ignored by the families in attendance.
We returned once again to Arjuna's Penance, hoping to get a better look at the details of the bas-relief. There was a break in the rain which was nice, but the thick clouds continued to loom overhead, thus once again preventing me from getting any good pictures. The first thing most people probably notice about the Penance is the herd of large elephants on the right panel of the bas-relief. The two adult elephants were life-size, and they dominated the panel. But just below them, you could make out baby elephants as they played, nursed, and even yawned. The realism undertaken by the creators of the Penance is just stunning. I also could make out dreadlocked sadhus smoking hash. One of them was reaching towards the sky, and his ribs protruded under his emaciated flesh. Not far from him, a woman washed her hair in a steam. The relief also had its share of gods, goddesses and epic heroes, but its portrayal of everyday people and animal life was what impressed me most. I'm glad we returned for a second look. There was so much to see, it would have been a shame to have given it only a single chance.
The rains picked up again, but undaunted, we returned to the granite hill behind the Penance in order to explore the small shrines and temples that had been carved into its rear face. On the far west side we found a semi-flooded dirt path that appeared to encircle the entire hill, se we decided to follow it. About half way round, the rains really came down on us, se we took shelter in a shrine whose stone inner sanctum provided ample refuge for us. From inside our 7th century hiding space, we could see a large flooded plain and hundreds of palm trees in the distance. I really began to appreciate what the monsoons were all about as we sat there, watching and listening to the storm.
We remained in the temple cave for a while until the rain let up, and then continued down our mud path. The large pond next to the path was full of frogs, and we stood by its shore for a brief time, watching the amphibians leap through the water and splash around. On the other side of the path, small trees and bushed served as the home for a variety of butterflies. We actually tried to get a few close-up pictures of them. It was an interesting challenge - all the good butterflies would flutter about as soon as you got close, while the plain and ordinary ones seemed more than happy just to sit there on a branch and strike a pose for the camera.
At an intersection in the road, we were approached by a young man. I figured he was just another stone carver trying to sell his goods, but nevertheless, I didn't shoo him away. He decided to start a conversation with us. As I suspected, he was indeed a stone carver, and he claimed he had studied Italian marble carving in Europe. He soon invited us to his studio at his house down the street to see his work. He said time and time again our visit would be "not business" and "only for fun." I seriously doubted this, but then again, it was our first invite to a village home and I was willing to put up with a hard sell just to get the experience.
We walked further down the path, past the lighthouse and an ancient Shiva that stood on the peak of the granite hill. We then weaved through a series of mud and stone huts, naked children, and women washing clothes, before we reached his house. It was a small brick structure, very modest, but quite clean. He asked us to remove our shoes; neither of us felt too hot about it, but once we did take them off, we only had to step around the corner to reach his studio. Inside it were dozens of granite and marble statues, most of them Hindu gods, each no more than six inches high. The workmanship was truly incredible - you could see the tuning knobs on Saraswati's sitar, or a long string of pearls that were frozen in a wind-blown pose around Parvati's neck. As we admired his work, he then began to quote prices, mostly $40 and up. Ouch. If they had been ten bucks each, perhaps, well I might have considered buying one or two. But at these prices, no way. We politely declined, yet he continued to pitch. After a few minutes of these pressure tactics, we stepped outside and put on our shoes. As we tried to leave, he began a typical Indian merchant guilt trip, to which I responded, "Look, you said over and over that this was 'not business, only fun.' I agreed. Now you are breaking your promise to us." This really ticked him off, but at least he gave up, turned around and went back into his house.
Susanne and I continued onward to the Shiva Temple. It was perched high above us on the granite hill's peak, almost parallel to the top of the lighthouse's observation platform 100 yards away. Like most of Mahabalipuram's ancient structures, the temple itself was from the Pallavan period, 7th to 8th century, but was much more worn away than the other temples in town. We admired the view from the top, but the temple's rock floor was wet from the rain, and I didn't feel very comfortable with the traction. So as the winds picked up, we took it as a sign to get back on flat ground. We headed down and started to make our way back to central Mahabalipuram.
On our way to town, that stone carver guy walked by us. I didn't realize it was him at first, until he said, "Go back to your hotel and listen to the BBC. Cyclone is on its wait. It will hit Mahabalipuram tonight." He then walked off. What? We had heard no news about a cyclone, which are the monsoon season's answer to hurricanes. And not unlike hurricanes, they don't just pop up overnight. But just a few weeks earlier, the worst cyclone in 10 years ravaged the coasts of Andhra Pradesh and northern Tamil Nadu, killing thousands, so we were well aware of the dangers. Assuming he was telling the truth, there was little we could do about it, so we decided to go eat and ask the people at the restaurant if they had heard any news about a storm.
We ate at a nice veg restaurant at a hotel in town. The maitre d' assured us that no cyclone was on its way. This only infuriated Susanne. "How dare that jerk tell us that!" she said.
(a side note: two weeks after returning from India, I read a story on the CNN website about a huge cyclone that was battering Bangladesh. The report said the storm had formed two weeks earlier in the south, off the coast of Tamil Nadu, and then abruptly turned north to Bangladesh, and was now heading south again. So perhaps that stone carver was indeed telling the truth. Who's to say...)
We ended up eating a huge dosa platter, and later, some ice cream. I would live to regret it, though. Back at the hotel, I felt like crap and went to bed.
Posted by acarvin at 10:21 PM
November 23, 1996
A relaxing day in Calcutta; rainy arrival in Madras
The Old Kenilworth didn't serve breakfast, of course, so by 8:30 or so we were at the New Kenilworth - a modern hotel down the street. They had a price fixe breakfast for three dollars a person, all you can eat buffet. It was more than we normally spent in India for food, but it was worth every rupee, since we could safely enjoy juices and fruit, along with everything else. Before we left the New Kenilworth, I made arrangements with the doorman to watch our bags for the afternoon - the Old Kenilworth would charge us RS50 per bag, which was outrageous. Before going to check out and get our packs, we first headed to south Calcutta to visit the great temple of Kali, the Kalighat.
Kalighat is the namesake of Calcutta, and is its most important temple. We reached it by taking Calcutta's metro - the only metro in all of India. It was eerily reminiscent of Boston's T system, except this one had the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore scrawled on the walls. From the Kalighat metro stop, we walked up and along Temple Road, which was filled with pilgrims and merchants who bought and sold goods of all kinds, from walking sticks to sunscreen to even small goats for sacrifice. The temple itself was surrounded by dozens of stalls which were linked together in a series of covered markets. Thousands of Hindus were queuing up to enter the sanctum sanctorum of the Temple. Since we weren't allowed there anyway, we entered through a minor gate which brought us into the main inner courtyard. We couldn't get inside any further, but we were at least in the middle of the action now.
Sadhus were pacing all over the place, begging for alms and smoking enormous quantities of dope. Men sheathed in orange garlands stood transfixed in front of mini-shrines of Kali. Women marked each other with fresh tikas. Such commotion, in every direction. Photography was strictly limited to certain areas, but we still managed to get some shots of some pilgrims. I got a great close-up of a sadhu - I'm really pleased with it. We then saw a large crowd gathered around a small walled enclosure. A woman was pouring water onto three small goats which were tied to Kali shrines. A man walked in, wielding a large scimitar. It was time for the morning goat sacrifice. Susanne didn't want to have anything to do with it, and when I saw the size of the sword and heard the goats begin to shriek, I figure that was enough for me. I could leave the rest of it to my imagination.
We briefly explored the market stalls surrounding the temple before crossing the street to Mother Theresa's Home for the Dying Destitute, a hospice for Calcutta's dalit population. Susanne wanted to make a donation, so we entered and found a room with several dozen beds, most of which were filled with emaciated, gravely ill Untouchables. A group of sisters told Susanne that they couldn't accept traveler's checks here, so we had had to spare cash rupees in order to give. After leaving a donation, we returned to the Old Kenilworth to check out, making a quick stop at the local KLM office to reconfirm our flights to Amsterdam and Washington. We dropped our bags at the New Kenilworth and then walked through the Chowringee neighborhood to the maidan, Calcutta's central park.
Our first stop was St. Paul's Cathedral. Not an impressive cathedral by European standards, but a fascinating place nonetheless, especially considering its location in the heart of south Asia. So we made our way to our next destination, across the street at the southern end of the maidan - the Victoria Memorial. The memorial is a massive marble monster of a tribute to the good queen and Empress of India, who died in 1901 after decades of British rule. It reminded me of an English version of the Reichstag or something. We made a circuit around the memorial, trying to stay cool under the hazy, oppressive Calcuttan sun. Eventually, we retreated inside the memorial, where we were moderately entertained by a lackluster museum on the rise and fall of the British Raj.
The museum grew old fast so we started the walk north through the maidan up to Sudder Street, which was where the Fairlawn hotel was located. The maidan was an odd place - wide gravel paths, fields of grass, gardens, memorials, and fountains, with highrises looming in the distance. Susanne and I agreed that it was a dusty and humid clone of Grant Park in Chicago. Very strange. As we walked along, we passed what appeared to be a military ceremony welcoming some brigadier general as commander of some division. It seemed quite British, with all of the pomp and circumstance, though one group of soldiers were parading around on short stilts. Further afield, we saw match after match of cricket. Whether it was a bunch of ragtag kids using tree limbs as bats, or a club of young professionals in freshly pressed uniforms, the cricket matches dominated the activities on the maidan. I just wish I understood how the bloody game was played.
We crossed east back into the northern end of Chowringee to reach Sudder Street. After a brief search, we found ourselves back at the Fairlawn. Since we couldn't stay, we figured we'd at least stop by for some tea or even lunch. After the concierge from the night before recognized us, we were soon greeted by the hotel's owner, Violet, and her husband. She profusely apologized for the mixup. She then said if she had been there the night before, she would have physically prevented us from going to the Old Kenilworth. "It's a disgrace," she lamented. "50 years ago, it was a jewel of a hotel, but when the owner died, her daughter Joyce inherited it and hasn't bothered to fix any of it since. She's ruined it by letting it fall apart. A disgrace." We talked for a while over a cold drink, and she then suggested we stay for lunch, which would be served in about 20 minutes (a uniformed waiter would announce lunch by banging a small gong - how quaint).
At the sound of the gong, we sat with an English couple from Yorkshire who had been traveling around India for two months. They had just returned from a lovely stay at the beach resort of Kovalam, on the southwestern coast in Kerala state. They strongly suggested we go if we got the chance. We were then joined by a fascinating older gentleman from Ireland named Andy. He looked as if he were in his late 70s, his face weathered and unshaven - oddly reminiscent of Timothy Leary in his last year. Andy had ben traveling to India regularly since 1964, and talked at length about Varanasi and the cities of Tamil Nadu. Susanne mentioned she was from Chicago, and Andy said that he had worked with Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1940s. He had traveled the US extensively (probably more than we had), back in the days when "you could hitchhike your way for weeks at a time through Arizona, trading places with the driver and taking shifts while one of you would steer while the other would hold the loaded pistol - just in case..."
Andy was a great fan of the States: "Even though it's changed much over the last 50 years, it's still a place where strangers will help another person in need when they really need it." This, he added, was quite unlike India, where he thought, that there was little regard for human life, sadly. He cited the suffering of street lepers in Calcutta, and how they are ignored by everyone as an example. Andy also discussed the short-sightedness of Jawaharlal Nehru and Muhammad 'Ali Jinnah when they decided to partition the subcontinent into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. "It was the greatest and most foolish political tragedy of the century," he lamented. "India has never recovered from it. It probably never will. They were arrogant men and their countries paid for it." Lunch, desert, and tea were long gone by this point, but Andy kept talking. He was wise and reflective on history, and loved to argue over the course of events - I respected that. As we finally departed, he said, "Andy, Susanne, my dear, if we ever meet again, and I hope we do, I may no longer be able to remember your names, but I promise that your faces and this conversation will be committed to memory. I promise you that." Upon these words, he put on his hat and walked away.
We lingered a while longer at the Fairlawn, sitting in the sunny garden courtyard. I couldn't believe we were in Calcutta. I had expected a city as dismal as Delhi, but instead, I've found it to be a relaxed, cultured, and dignified place, with wide boulevards and green gardens. Of course, poverty ran rampant around the city, but yet there was still something in the air which had everyone smiling. I always thought the nickname "The City of Joy" was a joke. It certainly isn't.
Back at the New Kenilworth, we picked up our bags and taxied over to Dum Dum Airport (whose name comes from the local Dum Dum Barracks, where the infamous dumb-dumb bullets were made). Leaning over to pull my backpack out of the trunk, I hit my head on the trunk door, right on a rusty corner. Good thing my tetanus shot was up to date, because it was a nasty gash. We then entered the domestic terminal - a clean, modern facility that was by far the nicest airport in India. Check-in and security was a breeze, and there was plenty of time for me to wash clean my new wound. We then wrote in our journals as we waited, until the plane was ready to depart. We left on time, just before 6pm.
It was pouring rain when we arrived in Madras, just after 8 o'clock. Unlike the rest of the subcontinent, which had tried out the month earlier, Madras and Tamil Nadu state were just hitting the peak of their second monsoon of the season, averaging about half an inch of rain a day. Because of the storm, the taxi drivers all wanted to charge us an extortionate RS250 for the trip to our hotel, the Broadlands. There wasn't much we could do about it, so we grabbed a cab and headed north. It rained on and off throughout the drive, but when we pulled into the street that led to the Broadlands, the driver told us to get out and walk because the street was too flooded for him to drive down it. Soaked to the bone, we slogged our way through the running rapids that had once been a street til we entered the hotel.
Once there, we were lucky in the sense that we got the last available room. Then again, we were unlucky in the sense that the rooms improved as the number of the room increased, and we were stuck with Room 1. It was dirty, damp, and the toilet wreaked. It was only five dollars for the night, but I was beginning to question how LP goes about choosing hotels for recommendation. Susanne and I were both in a pissy mood from the rain and the lousy accommodations. We decided then and there to get outta Dodge as early as possible the next day and head south to Mahabalipuram, the small fishing village and beach resort famous for its 7th century temples. It may be raining there, we figured, but at least we might get some peace and quiet.
Posted by acarvin at 09:34 PM
November 22, 1996
Our last Kathmandu morning; Our first Calcutta evening
At 8am, Susanne was well enough to join me for breakfast downstairs. I took this as a very positive sign. The Tibetan woman at the restaurant was very pleased to see Susanne up and around. Susanne thanked her for all of her help. As we ate we talked about sending her something from America as a thank you present - she certainly deserved it.
After breakfast, we began our last mad dash shopping spree in Thamel. Susanne had seen a sweater she liked and she wanted to go back and buy it. I desperately needed some t-shirts for my family. We went back and forth between all of the major t-shirt shops on Thamel's main drag. It was obvious there was some collusion going on between the shops, because every shirt carried the same price from store to store, and bargaining was next to impossible. I eventually bought three shirts for my brother and parents, as well as one for myself. Susanne got that sweater she had liked - it fit perfectly. I also grabbed a nice long wool scarf in the sweater shop - at three dollars, a good deal, I thought.
At our final stop, Susanne had her eye on a beautiful leather shirt and a vest for her mom. The Kashmiri shopowner drove a hard bargain, but he eventually settled with her for a reasonable deal. There was a bit of confusion over the exchange rate, but that only delayed us for a few minutes. Back at the hotel, we packed up our bags. The backpacks appeared as though they were about to burst, thanks to our free spending. But I was pretty sure that by this point we had purchased as much as we had planned to for the entire trip, so our lack of any more room in our bags was of little consequence. My only problem was that Kashmiri papier mache plate - it wasn't safe for packing, so I'd have to carry it by hand for the next week. Ah well - vita brevis, ars longa...
We said our goodbyes to our friends at the hotel restaurant and left for the airport around noon. When we reached the terminal, though, I realized that our flight was scheduled at 3:40, not 2:40. This gave us an extra hour to kill at the overpriced airport lounge. Eventually, though, we checked in and went through the efficient immigration process. This left us in the departure lounge for a couple of hours. I was concerned that our flight wasn't listed on the departure monitors, but the airport staff assured me that there was indeed a flight to Calcutta, and that it would be listed as soon as the flight arrived at the airport. So it was running late, and there was nothing I could do except relax, watch CNN and write in my journal. Our plane arrived at 4pm and our new departure time was set for 5pm. I didn't like the thought of arriving in Calcutta so late in the evening - our reservations at the Fairlawn Hotel had been for the day before (it was screwed up because of that cancelled flight) and we were unable to call from Nepal, so we'd have to keep our fingers crossed.
As we taxied along the tarmac, we caught a spectacular view of Bodnath stupa with Ganesh Himal soaring in the background. The sun was setting so it was particularly enchanting. I was also quite glad to see Bodnath one last time, especially as my last view of Kathmandu on the ground. We had wanted to go back to the stupa one last time before we left, but Susanne's illness prevented us from making it back. Seeing it was we coursed the runway was a special moment.
But our wonderful views were only beginning. We took off facing east, and once in the air, the plane made a slow 360-degree turn before heading southeast to Calcutta. This circle offered us a tremendous above-the-clouds view of the Himalayas - we could easily see from one end of Nepal to another. And with the sun so low in the sky, the shadows that reflected off each jagged peak were particularly breathtaking. As we made our final turn to the south, we got what we had been waiting for - a view of Mount Everest. We recognized it immediately. Though it's set back further north than the surrounding peaks, its profile was unmistakable. For a brief time earlier that day, I had regretted our decision not to take a special mountain flight at $100 each just to see Everest. Well, the sight of the world's highest mountain as we departed Nepal did more than make up for it. We had now seen Everest and the entire Himalayas, all aglow from the setting sun in the west. I was content.
The flight to Calcutta took a little over an hour, and we were on the ground by 6:30pm. Immigration and customs were a snap, but our luggage took a bit longer than I would have preferred. We hired a prepaid taxi for RS100, but our driver, a slimeball named Mr. Singh, said the drive to Calcutta would take at least two hours, but that he knew a shortcut that would take less than an hour, if it was worth it to us. Obviously, this guy was trying to scam more money just to take the regular route to town, but I told him to just get us there quickly. If there were any problems with him liking my tip, tough luck. He then took off like a madman, swerving through traffic and driving in breakdown lanes. Twice he had to slam on the breaks to avoid hitting trucks ("No problem, no problem...") He also wouldn't shut up. We finally got to the Fairlawn, at which point I gave him RS50 extra and walked away. He started to yell at me in Bengali, but I ignored him.
The Fairlawn is a lovely green Victorian establishment run by the same English family since the 1930s. I had heard great things about it, so I hoped we'd still be able to get in for the night, even though our reservations were for the night before. Perhaps playing ignorant would be enough. Unfortunately, my luck ran out at the reception desk. Full booked, no exceptions. I played it up by pretending that our reservations were supposed to have been for that night, and that there must have been a mixup. No dice. There were no rooms left, so we'd have to stay elsewhere. The reception clerk was nice enough to make some phone calls for us, and we asked him to ring up the Old Kenilworth Hotel to see if they had any room. They most certainly did. The LP guide recommended it as an aging mansion full of character, and with an eccentric English/Indian proprietress, a Mrs. Joyce Purdy. We decided to give it a go.
Outside the Fairlawn we tried to hail a cab, but none would accept us for less than 60 rupees- an outrageous fare considering the short distance we had to travel. Then, a rickshaw-wallah approached us on foot and offered us a ride at 30 rupees. Susanne and I looked at each other, dumbfounded - have an old rickshaw-wallah walk us to the hotel with all of our bags? We had previously talked about Calcutta's rickshaws, one of the last bastions in South Asia where these poor skinny men actually pulled a giant rickshaw while they ran on foot. Susanne had said she found it to be a humiliating profession and didn't want to patronize is. I too had serious reservations with it, but I concluded that this is how they make our living, and I'd be sure to give him a generous tip for his troubles (besides, Susanne would kill me if I gave the guy anything less than 50 rupees). So, we decided to go for it.
We climbed on the rickshaw seat and held our bags tight. The man then lifted the two polls on each side of the rickshaw and began to run, jingling a small bell with his right hand as we went. I immediately thought of the film City of Joy, which takes place here in Calcutta. I always wondered why in the movie the rickshaw-wallah always jingled that damn bell (it was very loud in the film and got annoying after an hour or so). Now I understood - without that damn bell, we'd be squashed by an oncoming TATA truck or some other form of oncoming traffic. Indian drivers use horns as sonar devices, alerting others of their presence, no matter if it's an emergency or if they're just passing by. Rickshaws were no exception, so the bell jingles and the rickshaw-wallah's precious cargo remain unscathed.
We arrived at the Old Kenilworth 15 minutes later. Let me emphasize the word Old in Old Kenilworth - the place was a decrepit, rundown mansion that was creepy as hell and looked like a backdrop from the Addams Family. We were met inside by Mrs. Purdy, the aforementioned eccentric lady discussed in the LP guide. At first, I thought she was from New York or something - she had an odd, un-British accent, and she looked very Italian or even Jewish. I suppose the blend of an English and a Bengali background will do that. We checked in by signing an enormous old registrar's book that looked like one of those old leather-bound atlases you only see in good libraries. We were given Room 4, a giant suite with antique wood furniture, a vaulted ceiling, and an old-fashioned ceiling fan that hung off a pole that was at least 12 feet long. The room had the potential of being glorious, but the paint was peeling off of the walls, the wood needed a good polishing, and the bathtub, well it just needed to be replaced. No shower for me tonight, thank you very much.
The room was about $30 - typical for big Indian city accommodations. It would have been worth it if the hotel had been kept up, but because of the Kenilworth poor state, I was somewhat frustrated. But it was getting late and we only needed to spend a night there. At least it had character - that much was true.
Posted by acarvin at 08:03 PM
November 21, 1996
Himalayan Sunrise at Nargakot; Overtaken by illness
3:30am. Somehow, we managed to get up. Our taxi to Nargakot was to pick us up around 4am. I wanted to leave at 4:30 or even later, but the travel agency that booked the ride for us said that taxis will leave only on the hour, and that 5am would be too late to catch the sunrise. Our driver actually arrived 15 minutes early, but we didn't head down until the appointed time.
It was cold and dark in Kathmandu as we drove east. Nargakot was well known for having the best views of the Himalaya's Langtang Range, even though it was a mere 30km east of Kathmandu. Overall, the ride was fairly dull; Susanne commented that it was so dark and nondescript outside that the streets of Kathmandu could have easily passed for a suburb in the U.S. "I think we're in Downer's Grove," she said. I disagreed and said, "Skokie." Yet as we began the ascent up the small mountain that lead to Nargakot, the ride turned into a series of treacherous hairpin turns which made me feel like I was dangling over the precipice each time we steered left or right. Around and around, higher and higher we went. And the drop down was getting steeper and steeper. I was actually glad it was so dark out - otherwise I would have been scared to death if I could have seen over the edge of the cliffs. Over and over, our driver would pass a truck or a bus on this single lane road, spinning around 300-degree curves, and with a 600 foot drop down at any given moment. Yes, darkness was my friend this morning.
By around 5am we arrived at the top of Nargakot - 8,000 feet above the valley floor. While Susanne hunted for a bathroom with our driver, I climbed up to a large grass and dirt plateau next to a hotel. It was clearly the best viewing point - high in the air, a broad view of the Himalayan horizon, and not much man-made lighting. Thousands upon thousands of starts were in the sky. I hadn't seen this many stars in years, probably since the last time I spent a weekend in the mountains of northern New Hampshire at my Uncle Jerry's house. All of Orion was visible to the south. I could also count all of the seven major stars of the Plaeides. And due east, a planet shone brightly, marking the precise spot where the sun would soon appear.
The only problem was the temperature - it was freezing, probably no warmer than 40 degrees. We hadn't brought our warmest jackets since we planned to trek back to Changu Narayan and then to Bodnath - a six hour walk that would have us hiking through the warmest part of the day. So there I was, on this large hill in the Himalayas, freezing my butt off in a Yale sweatshirt and not much else. I grimly reminisced about our climb to the top of Masada a year ago in the West Bank. It was just as cold that morning, just as windy, and we had no food or water on our pre-dawn ascent. We climbed 1000 feet straight up just to get a view of the sunrise over the Dead Sea. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Susanne got really sick afterwards and it nearly wrecked our last week in Israel. Would this sunrise adventure do the same?
I assumed not. There was no wind to speak of on the hill, so it could have been far less comfortable there. Also, we were smart enough to bring an ample supply of bagels, croissants and mango juice, which would provide much needed energy. I was sure I'd be just fine. But then there was Susanne. She appeared to be getting sick again. The rough ride up the hill had made her carsick, so was very fortunate to have found an open restroom at 5am in the hotel across from our hilltop plateau. She was back up on the hill with me now, though I'm sure the cold and the lack of sleep wasn't going to make her any better. We now had 90 more minutes to kill before that damn sunrise.
Susanne sat rather quietly, wrapped in a tight bundle. A group of dogs, five of them black and one of them yellow, joined us as well. The black ones appeared to be cold and pissed off at the world, so our driver kept shooing them away with shepherd's calls every time they got a little too close. The yellow dog, with its long fluffy tail permanently curled over and around its back, looked like some kind of scrawny Siberian mix. It was very friendly, though, and stuck close by us, avoiding the pack of black dogs.
I spent much of the spare time talking with our driver, whose name, unfortunately, I can't recall. He was a Newari man, about 30, medium height and build, with strong Mongoloid features. I could picture him on horseback riding the Central Asian steppe northwest of Tibet. His English was limited, but he possessed a strong enough vocabulary for us to carry on a conversation. He asked me about where I lived and what the weather was like in different parts of the US. He apparently had a friend in Atlanta, so we talked about the south, Coca Cola, the Olympics, and CNN. I also asked him about Newari culture. He said that they were the original inhabitants of the Kathmandu Valley, and that very few of them could be found outside this area. Since the Valley had become a crossroads for several major empires, Newaris intermingled with other ethnic groups, which eventually led to a variety of facial features. He, for example, looked Mongol, but many other Newaris look Chinese or Indian, yet they all still consider themselves Newari.
Newaris, he explained, believe very strongly in community life. They build houses around a shrine or a stupa, thus forming a neighborhood courtyard. This explained the abundance of small squares in the residential neighborhoods of Kathmandu. Other local ethnic groups, like the Tamang and Langtang peoples of Kathmandu's hill country, tend to live in isolated houses or farms. They also prefer to carry large loads on or around their heads, supported by a think cloth strap, while Newaris transport things by balancing them on two sides of a pole, carried over a shoulder. We had seen both methods quite often in and around the city.
He then asked me if Americans really ate cow meat. I felt guilty saying yes, even though I personally don't eat red meat. I told him that America was a beef and pork culture, though chicken and fish were also popular. I asked him what other food Newaris wouldn't eat. Dogs and monkeys were both off limits. Monkeys are the agents of the god Hanuman, while dogs were more of a practical issue - they make good pets and house guards. Cats, interestingly enough, are the 'dirty' animals of Newari culture. Nothing is worse than a cat, he said. When I told him that casts were almost as common as dogs as pets in America, he appeared shocked and puzzled as to why on earth we would do such a thing.
The stars had vanished and the sky was a dark blue, which lightened to softer tones as you looked towards the point in the east where the sun would soon rise. The dogs had left the hilltop, but they were soon replaced by a large group of tourists from India. Then came the Germans, the Australians, the French, and then a few Americans. Before long, a group of at least 100 tourists had gathered and were crowding up our once peaceful mountain top. It was like an outdoor cocktail party without the cocktails.
We could now begin to see much of the Himalayas across the northern and eastern horizons. To our left, facing west, the Annapurna Range could just be made out. Much closer to us we could see the Langtang Range, including Gauri Shanker, Ganesh Himal, and Manaslu, which at around 25,000 feet is one of the ten highest mountains in the world. Further to the right, facing almost east, we could barely see the Everest Range. And somewhere, hidden amongst those snow covered peaks was Mount Everest itself, but at this distance, we were unable to tell which was which. Hopefully, our flight to Calcutta would give us a nice view of it. The blue sky lightened even further and then turned almost white, then orange. The sun was still a few minutes away, but the indirect light created marvelous shadowing effects on the eastern face of Ganesh Himal and Gauri Shanker. I took a couple of pictures but decided to hold off on any more shots until sunrise. It was now 6:30am, and still no sun. Rise, dammit! Rise!
Finally, close to 6:55, the sun finally came up a brilliant orange, in what was probably only a matter of seconds. And just as I started to point my camera eastward, everything through my EOS Rebel's lens went out of focus. This brand new camera had a great autofocus - what was going on? I took the camera away from my face and looked at it. A huge fog bank had spontaneously materialized on top of us! Previously, only the valley below was blanked in pea soup. Now it was on top of us too, and my poor camera (as well as my glasses) were completely soaked with dew. I was really ticked off.
Meanwhile, poor Susanne looked awful. Apparently 24 hours of good health ended abruptly here at Nargakot. We agreed that she was in no condition to walk anywhere from here, so we informed our driver that we'd be joining him on the way back to Thamel. No problem, he said, since we were paying for the round trip just to get there in the first place. We briefly stopped at that tea house Susanne had visited early for a bathroom. The tea was expensive, but hot and delicious. I even broke my no milk rule and enjoyed some hot cream with it, for the tea was so dark if tasted thicker than black coffee. The fog had diminished by this point, so we took a few more pictures outside before beginning the 50-minute drive back to town. I hadn't expected driving down those hairpin turns again, but after the yummy tea, I was calm and relaxed. We drove through Bhaktapur before reaching the hotel around 8am.
Susanne wisely went to be while I visited the restaurant for a hot bowl of porridge and more tea. When I returned upstairs, the phone rang. Who on earth could that be? No one knows where we're staying. It was the tour agent who arranged our ride to Nargakot. He said, "There is a problem, please come to my office." I asked him to tell me what the problem is over the phone. He refused. I figured he was trying to take advantage of the fact that we had gotten our money's worth out of the return fare by going both ways instead of one - less commission for him. Since he probably figured I'd give him money if he could confront me behind closed doors, I told him that if he couldn't explain the problem over the phone, then clearly there was no serious problem, was there? Once again, he refused to explain it. Have a nice day, I said, and hung up. What a jerk.
Susanne continued to sleep, so I headed out for a couple of hours to shop in Thamel. Didn't find anything too exciting. I returned to the room around noon to see how Susanne was doing. She wasn't getting sick or anything, but looked very tired. I suggested that we go for a walk to sit in a garden and eat some tea and toast. We went to Le Bistro in Thamel again, but by the time we got there, I realize that it had been a terrible idea. Susanne looked white and sweaty, walking almost in a daze. "I'm having headspins," she said. I knew immediately that the headspins were being caused by dehydration, just as if she had a serious hangover. Unfortunately, it was because she had thrown up so much she wasn't retaining any fluids. I'd have to get her to a doctor if I didn't do something quickly. I got her back to the hotel, where she got very upset, saying that she thought she had ruined the whole trip by being so ill. I assured her that this was crazy, and I'd stay with her as long as it took to get her back on track so she'd be able to enjoy the rest of our stay. But first, I needed to find rehydrating salts, so I went on a hunt for a health clinic.
I discovered a clinic just behind the hotel, as it happened. After I described the symptoms, the nurse there agreed with me that Susanne needed to be rehydrated, and that this was probably her principal problem. I bought several packets of electrolyte solution, enough to make five liters of the stuff, and returned to the hotel. I gave Susanne a liter of the solution and told her if she didn't drink it, she'd just have to be sick for the rest of the trip. I didn't like giving her the tough love treatment, but she was tired and being stubborn about drinking. The only way she'd get better was if she would drink two to three liters of the solution a day, so I laid down the law and described what would happen if she didn't rehydrate herself.
We spent the afternoon and early evening at the hotel, resting, talking, and drinking plenty of fluids. The mineral solution was having profound effects - Susanne was no longer disoriented, she could keep food down, was relaxed, and could sleep without sweating through her sheets. She also started a three day regimen of Cyproflaxin, an antibiotic her doctor had given her for emergencies. This, we decided, was an emergency. The combination of therapies seemed to do the trick, and by 8pm, she was ready to eat some rice - which I had brought up to the room, of course. The Tibetan woman who ran the restaurant was only happy to bring food and other supplies up for Susanne. Every time I saw her downstairs, she'd ask how my 'wife' was doing. I assured her she was better, and that her kindness was most appreciated.
We ate our rice and went to bed early. It wasn't exactly the way I wanted to spend my last full day in Kathmandu, but all things considered, we had to count our blessings. The city had been very good to us, and even though Susanne got very sick, Kathmandu was a great place to recuperate. Hopefully she'd be feeling well enough to walk around the next morning before our flight to Calcutta.
Posted by acarvin at 09:23 PM
November 20, 1996
Random walk redux; a Tibetan shopping spree
When I awoke around 8am, Susanne was already getting out of bed, much to my surprise. Apparently her fever had broken and she hadn't gotten sick in the night. This was quite a relief. We ate breakfast - my usual porridge and sundries while Susanne braved a pancake as her first real meal in days. I told her about the interesting walk I had taken the day before, so we decided to go back so she could see some of the sights as well. The markets south of Thamel were crowded as always, though this time I noticed more spice dealers setting up impromptu shops on the street corners. Since it was still early in the morning, the sun had yet to rise to a point that would make picture taking desirable, so we left our cameras alone for a bit and enjoyed sights and smells of Asan Tole.
We continued to the Sweta Machhendranath temple, the Hindu/Buddhist shrine that had entranced me so much the day before. Today, instead of finding old men chanting through puja ceremonies, we saw a group of seven or eight kids who were horsing around on the smaller statues and chaityas. Significantly more merchants were there as well, mostly selling flowers, rice and other offerings. The swarm of pigeons was still hovering over the same spot, as they were fed diligently by the same man from the day before who threw pints of rice and corn into the air. The iron cage that surrounded the main temple was quite deserted, so we decided to go inside for ourselves to take a look around. Why this metal fence enshrouded the shrine, I'm not sure, but as we walked around, the intricate molding of the iron caused hundreds of detailed shadows to play tricks off of the temple's walls. A small statue of Machhendranath stood at the front and center of the temple. It looked like a four-armed Buddha. Prayer wheels were mounted in the inner frame of the iron cage, so we spun the wheels as we walked clockwise around the temple.
At the end of the circuit was a blind monk holding a large brass bowl. I politely placed a five rupee coin inside of it. On my next circuit around the temple, though, a Newari woman who was walking ahead of me approached the monk, reached into the bowl, and pulled out a handful of rice, which she promptly tossed into the charcoal fires that burnt next to the Machhendranath statue. The monk wasn't a beggar after all - I felt so dumb. In a funny sort of way, I consoled in the fact that the monk was blind, so at least he wouldn't be able to see who this naive American tourist was.
We continued south to Durbar Square. A small family of rhesus monkeys was hanging out on a wooden shrine just next to Nasal Chowk, the old palace square. The papa monkey, big, fat and slow, roamed where he pleased, stirring through trash bins and scaring the hell out of the local pigeons. Two mama monkeys watched after their rambunctious youngsters, who squeaked a lot and hung off of anything on which they could get a good grip. One of the mama monkeys had a lame hand, and was in a pretty bad mood. Two Nepalese schoolkids kept taunting it by rushing back and forth in its direction. The monkey would show its teeth and even charge at them. Personally, I rooted for the monkey.
After taking a quick peak into the Kumari's courtyard to see if the living goddess was around (she wasn't), we crossed east into Basantapur Square to the large souvenir flea market. I started to look at some Tibetan prayer books - handwritten rice paper manuscripts loosely bound by two blocks of carved wood. I found one remarkable specimen that contained ten separate rice paper panels, about 5"x16" each. I asked the merchant how much it would cost. He said "$140 dollars - very old." "140 bucks! Outrageous!" I retorted, and started to walk away. He then grabbed me by the shoulder and began what was to be a long, drawn out haggle. After 15 minutes of serious fun, I purchased the prayer book for $30. Who knows what it was really worth, but to me, it certainly deserved 30 dollars just as a cool keepsake. It's a remarkable piece of art and I'm really glad I got it, though I have yet to figure out how on earth I'll get it framed.
Susanne wanted to briefly check out Freak Street. We were just north of it, so we took a quick walk. I, thanks to my habitual morning pot of hot tea, needed to find a restroom, so we stopped at the Oasis Cafe to take advantage of their facilities and, of course, get another pot of tea. In retrospect, it would have been faster for me to have just run into the closest guest house, acting as if I were a guest there, and then gone to their bathroom, since every cheap guest house has at least one shared restroom on each floor. But hey, this was a chance for more tea, and I was not one to turn down such a chance. Even though tea would just lead to more bathroom stops. Ah, who cares - I shouldn't dwell on such endless cycles. That's what god invented Buddhist monks and koans, I guess.
We finished our mint tea and Sprite and cut through Basantapur to the southwest corner of Durbar Square. Here we found the enormous wooden pagoda, the Kasthamandap Temple. Kasthamandap is one of the oldest pagodas in Kathmandu - so old, in fact, that the city derived its very name from it. Susanne and I spent a few minutes admiring the pagoda, and then decided to begin a walking tour of the southern side of Kathmandu. Before we got started, though, a tall blonde man approached us and asked somewhat sheepishly, "Are you as lost as I am?" I showed him where we were on his map. He was Canadian and was just passing through Nepal after a six-month gig in Australia. We asked him what he did for a living and he said he was "a vet," at which point I had a vision of this lanky Edmontonian diving for cover in the Australian bush. Of course, he was really an animal doc, but the image was pretty funny. Anyway, he had literally just arrived in Nepal that morning and had seen nothing in Kathmandu, so we sent him packing northeast to the rest of Durbar Square. Meanwhile, Sus and I headed south and walked a long circle that took about 90 minutes to complete.
The communities south of Durbar Square were typical Kathmandu - courtyards of Newari neighbors that appeared quite poor, yet teemed with life and activity. There were a few small temples and stupas along the way, but all in all, this was a residential walk. Eventually, we completed the circuit and found ourselves back at Kasthamandap. I was about to make a comment about our Canadian friend being lost in the alleyways north of Durbar, but I looked ahead of me and saw him, standing exactly where we had first found him. I asked what had happened, and he said had spent the time around Durbar and was now trying to figure out how to head west to the stupa at Swayumbunath. Once again, we pointed him in the right direction and sent him on his merry way. We haven't seen him since.
We walked back through Jyatha and into Thamel, having lunch at our hotel. Being the healthy one, I wanted to venture off elsewhere for lunch, but Susanne, being the recovering one, called the shots and insisted we stuck with what we knew would be safe. After eating, we decided to go shopping. First, we'd need to cash some traveler's checks, but before we could do that, one of the boys from the hotel came up to us and said he needed our passports. The hotel had sent him to reconfirm our flights, but apparently the airline office needed to see our passports with our tickets. He headed off to finish the job, passports in hand, but this left us waiting in the lobby for some time, writing postcards and working on our journals. I also read some entertaining anti-Chinese propaganda published by some pro-Tibetan movement. 30 minutes later, the boy returned with our passports and tickets. We tipped him and got ready to shop.
While I normally don't consider myself an avid shopper, it's hard to resist the hundreds of stalls and stores around Thamel - an endless Filene's Basement of cheap wool, rugs, art, and random souvenirs. Thamel is a crossroads of so many cultures that you can buy practically anything here, from Tibetan thangkas to Swiss army knives, all at great prices. First we visited a Kashmiri shop to find a shawl for Susanne. Because of the recent violence at home, many Kashmiris have moved their businesses to Nepal and now appear to be doing quite well. Susanne found her shawl while I fell in love with a large papier mache place that had been hand painted with an incredible Mughal-era seen of a royal hunting expedition. At $50 dollars, it was a treasured find. I just hope I can find a way of getting it home in one piece.
Next stop: clothes. I had wanted to get a light Nepalese windbreaker or perhaps a good wool sweater. There were many items to choose from at every shop. At one store we found several cheap jackets, all ranging from about $5 to $25. The more expensive ones were really amazing, but after feeling the fabric I began to question their durability. I then found a heavier, multicoloured jacket from the kingdom of Bhutan. It almost looked Andean in its many patterns and colors. I asked the store owner how much he wanted for it. He said $40. Once again, I began haggling with the man, and eventually was able to buy the jacket, along with an incredible green and white vest, for about $20. Another shopping success.
Susanne still needed some gifts for her family, so we found a small sweater shop in the heart of Thamel. Susanne saw a nice cardigan for her mom, cheap at around $14. I of course wanted to haggle, but the owner of the shop had a horribly cleft lip, and I could tell Susanne felt bat about negotiating with this poor man over a couple of measly bucks. She bought it for $13. My last purchase of the evening was a Tibetan prayer wheel. I found a style I liked at an open-air stall. The seller quoted a price of $30. All the stalls next to him had the same style of prayer wheel, so I went down the row, quoting the previous seller's price just to see how low I could haggle. I was doing well until I got the price to about eight bucks. It would go no further, so I bought it and proudly claimed victory (even though it probably cost less than 50 cents to make).
After dinner, we hung out at the hotel, admiring our purchases and trying to figure out how we'd be able to pack it all. Then it was off to bed. Tomorrow morning, we're being picked up by a taxi at 4am to take us to the remote hill town of Nargakot, an hour east of Kathmandu. It supposedly had the best morning views of the Himalayas in the valley. But 4am? Ugh...
Posted by acarvin at 11:13 PM
November 19, 1996
A Random Walk in Kathmandu
Our alarm went off at 8am. I was feeling significantly better; unfortunately, Susanne appeared significantly worse. She wasn't able to keep down even the piece of dry toast she had for breakfast, while I successfully (and somewhat guiltily) scarfed down a full course meal. Because of Susanne's condition, it was pretty clear that she was in no shape to wander about just yet. So I agreed to head out on my own for a couple of hours and then check back in at 1pm to see how she was doing.
I spent a bit of time in Thamel browsing for potential souvenirs. Lots of ideas, but nothing stood out and screamed at me. I started to head south to Thahiti Tole, one of the many market squares between Thamel and Durbar Square, but instead of continuing down my usual route south to the palaces and pagodas, I hung a left and walked southeast into uncharted territory. The street and its alleyways were similar to the rest of Thamel - lots of trekking shops, t-shirt stalls, thankga galleries, and curious in every window. But after a couple of minutes of walking, the crass commerce died down and a more traditional Asian market atmosphere rolled in. Women sold huge bouquets of flowers (most of them real, of course, but I did spot a silk flower shop); stall after stall offered fine earthenware, brass and iron crockery. A man squatted under a thin doorway, hammering and polishing gold rings held on a wood rod between his feet. Small crowds gathered to watch two young teenagers playing a game of chess, cheering and passing money back and forth each time a player took one of his opponent's chess pieces, while just across the street, two old men played their own game, in full concentration and bothered by no one.
I slowly strolled the main road, talking it all in as I observed the crowds. The noise level increased steadily the deeper I went, until it peaked at a huge square and intersection. I had found Asan Tole, a major gathering place for commerce and religious ceremonies. Asan Tole is the crossroads for six major streets, always jammed with shoppers, merchants, and worshippers, no matter the time. Situated in the middle of the square was a temple to Annapurna, the goddess of prosperity and abundance. Whether Annapurna brought prosperity to Asan Tole, or Asan Tole brought in Annapurna to celebrate its prosperity, who's to say. There were also two other temples, both very small. I didn't recognize the god in one of them, but the other shrine's elephant-headed deity gave it away instantly as a Ganesh temple.
I stood awhile by a massive spice shop, inhaling the fumes of the essential oils as men used mortars and pestles to grind cumin, tamarind seeds, anise and coriander. Somehow I managed to get into a brief argument with a bicycle rickshaw-wallah who insisted that I had no business walking around on such a nice when I could instead be enjoying his services as my chauffeur for the day. Once he had moved on, I took advantage of the hustle and bustle of the square and took numerous pictures of people going about their business. Vegetable vendors were the easiest target, and only one of them asked for baksheesh in return.
From Asan Tole I headed southwest to Kel Tole, a much smaller square that bustled with activity, despite its size. As I continued, I noticed a gate and a passageway to my right which appeared to lead to some kind of courtyard shrine. I walked in and there in front of me was a magnificently ornate, two-tiered pagoda, guarded by statues on pedestals and a collection of smaller chaitya shrines. A group of eight men were sitting in a semicircle among the pillars and shrines. They were performing a puja of some sort, throwing rice into a wood and charcoal fire. The men were sporting what appeared to be armor-like vests and crowns that distinctly looked like Burger King paper crowns. To the left, three women in saris chatted away while filling several hundred small pottery cups with rice and drops of tika powder. And just behind them, a huge flock of pigeons swooped and swarmed as local devotees through offerings of corn in their direction, which the pigeons would dive for with every handful.
Where on earth was I? I hadn't read about this place in the LP. I pulled it out as I sat by the pigeons, whose collective wing flapping emanated a surprisingly strong draft. I flipped through LP's walking tours of Kathmandu and eventually found a map that seemed to coincide with the route I had just taken from Asan Tole. Aha - there on the map I saw a marking for a shrine. I was at the Sweta Machhendranath Temple, a shrine dating back to at least the 16th century, revered by both Buddhists and Hindus, who interpret the statue of a Buddha-like figure on the main pillar as Buddha himself or an incarnation of Shiva, depending on who you ask. I spent a good deal of time at this temple, walking around the shrines and observing the ongoing rituals. I was the only westerner around, and no one seemed to mind my presence. I was even encouraged to take pictures by some of the people there.
Eventually, though, I backtracked to Kel Tole and hung a left toward Kilgal Tole, a rather dull plaza that served as the entry point to a square that supposedly had several points of interest. I entered a large white courtyard, the Yitum Bahal. Compared to the rest of the neighborhoods adjacent to it, Yitum Bahal was deserted. At the far end of the square was a small stupa, on which three young kids were playing. Behind it, a woman sifted grain into large circles. Just to the right of the stupa, I found the entrance to Kichandra Bahal, a small, but ancient courtyard dating back to the early 14th century. There was a minor pagoda inside it, and on the right was a kindergarten where I could see several dozen kids playing and singing with their teachers. Just above the school were brass plaques of the demon Guru Mapa, including a rather hilarious frieze of Mapa eating a small child, literally seizing the kid's head by his teeth, while a rather surprised-looking mother stood by, helpless. I can only imagine if the teachers at the kindergarten take advantage of this 600-year-old image for reinforcing discipline among the students.
From Yitum Bahal, I took a couple of shortcuts to reach Durbar Square. I had planned to relax for a while here, but I felt some rather unusual rumblings in my stomach, so I figured I'd better high-tail it over to a restaurant with a bathroom, just in case disaster struck. There were no places to go on Durbar Square itself, so at the southern end, I headed east across Basantapur Square, with its flea market assembly of souvenir sellers, and then cut south on Jochne, more commonly referred to as Freak Street. In the 60s, Freak Street was the place for hippies to hang out, listen to western music, and smoke unimaginable amounts of hash. Nowadays it's a quiet neighborhood, with most westerners having adopted Thamel as their new place of choice for food and shelter (minus the hash shops, courtesy of a 15-year-old crackdown by the government). There are still a few old restaurants and guesthouses here, so I went into the Kumari Cafe to find that bathroom I thought I needed so desperately. But by the time I got there, the pains had subsided, so I sat down in the cafe for another pot of black tea. At first, the restaurant played classical Indian music, which was what attracted me into the place from outside. But just as my tea arrived, they changed the radio station and began to blast bad Nepalese pop music. For the first time in Kathmandu, I didn't finish my entire pot of tea. The music made me do it.
It was now around 1pm, so I returned to Jyatha at a brisk pace to check on Susanne at the hotel, stopping only for another roll of film and a few more pictures around Asan Tole (the lighting was irresistible). Back at the hotel, Susanne looked like hell. She tried to get dressed for lunch, but gave up and told me to leave and get lunch on my own. I ended up sticking around the hotel, having a bowl of Tibetan egg drop soup on the roof terrace. It was quite good, but I added a dash of Tibetan chili oil, which transformed my pleasant soup from the mildness of the Dalai Lama to the hot-tempered ruthlessness of the Gang of Four. A mistake made, a lesson learned -hot damn!
I returned to the room to give Sus another opportunity to head outside. We had wanted to return to Swayumbunath to be there for the 4pm Buddhist prayer service at the monastery next to the stupa. Susanne said no way and told me to go on my own, which I resisted at first. Again she insisted, so I agreed, shut off the lights once again, and began the trek through Chhetrapati and across the Vishnumati river to Swayumbunath. The climb to the top was much harder then I remembered. Perhaps it was because I was starting my trip up late in the day, with the sun bearing down on me. Anyway, I was popped by the time I reached the stupa at the summit, and I dropped myself by the railing to recover my breath. It was about 3:30pm, and I could hear the monks making a racket in the monastery. I entered the temple and stood in front of their large golden Buddha, who towered a good 10 feet above me. The chanting and music was emanating from behind the Buddha, so I assumed that the ceremony was in a private chamber. Then, about half a dozen Japanese tourists appeared from around the corner. I decided to go from where they came to see what I could find.
The monastery was certainly not designed for tour groups, I soon concluded. It was painfully obvious: around the corner was a long thin corridor, and at its centerpoint stood a door to the right, which led to the main prayer sanctuary. The monks were in the middle of a service there, and a huge group of tourists, mostly Asians, had jammed themselves around the doorway to get a view of the service. I decided it was hopelessly crowded, so I found a another corridor that ran parallel to the sanctuary and positioned myself by a window that opened up into the sanctuary at its midpoint. It would have been the perfect observation spot if it hadn't been for a thin curtain on the other side of the window that obscured the view. Nevertheless, I stayed for a while to listen and peer between the curtains to watch the monks perform their rites.
Then, I saw the entire tour group enter the sanctuary and walk through its center, taking pictures of the monks with flash cameras. It seemed rather rude, but the monks didn't even miss a beat. The good news was that the tourists' intrusion had opened up the space around the main doorway, so I made myself comfortable in the corridor and enjoyed the rest of the ceremony. The monks performed a cycle of activities, starting with a round of low-toned chanting, then a drink of butter tea from large bowls, a blast of horns and cymbals, and then back to more chanting. At one point, they broke out a pair of Tibetan alpine horns, which created tones so low that the floorboards rattled. There were also many young monks in training, probably around 10 years old or younger. Most of them were sitting off to one side, trying to keep up with the chanting. One boy served as a waiter, vigilantly refilling the monks' bowls with fresh butter tea. Another boy swept the floor, though instead of dragging the broom along the ground, he pushed it ahead, which seemed to make the task more difficult than it needed to be. Perhaps that was the whole point.
It was now well past 4pm. When I returned outside to the stupa, I could see dozens of rhesus monkeys, apparently reclaiming Swayumbunath from the tourists. Being territorial primates, they would screech at people who got too close to their space. At one point I wanted to walk between two chaityas, but when I tried, the monkey who stood guard on one of them showed me her teeth and leaned toward me. None shall pass, apparently. By 5pm, I was growing tired of playing Jane Goodall, so I began the 30-minute walk back to the hotel.
Susanne was half asleep when I arrived, so I sat downstairs for an hour, reading the International Herald Tribune and writing in my journal. When I returned to the room , she was awake and getting dressed, apparently feeling significantly better. Her fever had subsided and she was hungry, so we had dinner downstairs. I had more momo soup and some fried rice, while Susanne stuck with plain rice and lemon tea. I also had a Tibetan desert of hot rice pudding topped with cold custard and raisins. It was very good. The rest of the evening was spent reading, writing and talking about tomorrow's plans. Considering Susanne's earlier condition, I was glad to see that the next day was going to have a plan in the first place.
Posted by acarvin at 08:41 PM
November 18, 1996
Pashupatinath, Bodnath, and other Kathmandu antics
We got up before dawn to get a fresh start for the day. Well, at least I did. Susanne's stomach problems only seemed to worsen as time passed, so while I showered, she stayed curled up in bed, a bottle of Pepto by her side. At first, she told me to go to Pashupatinath and Bodnath by myself. I refused. It was one thing for me to go wander the streets of Kathmandu on my own, but for me to conquer new places while leaving her behind at the hotel, well, that dog don't hunt. So with a bit of prodding, she acquiesced.
From Thamel, we caught a bicycle rickshaw to Pashupatinath. I figured a slow bike ride wouldn't unsettle Susanne's stomach as much as a motorized vehicle would. In that regard, my instincts were correct, but what I misjudged was the hellishness a poor bicycle-wallah would have to endure in order to get us there. The hills that lead to Pashupatinath were so steep, the poor wallah couldn't peddle up to the top. So we took mercy on him and walked the last several hundred feet, as he turned around and coasted back to Kathmandu.
Pashupatinath is to Nepal as Varanasi is to India - it's one of the holiest Hindu sites in the subcontinent, and the river that bisects it is used for ritual bathing cremations. Unlike Varanasi, though, Pashupatinath is much smaller and less crowded, and rituals occur on both sides of the riverbanks. The Bagmati river is only 100 feet across at its widest in Pashupatinath, so a series of small bridges allow pilgrims to cross with ease. Most visitors come to see the Temple of Pashupatinath, but like so many other Hindu sites, we non-Hindus weren't allowed inside. We observed the goings-on from the east side of the river.
On the ghats across from us, five women wailed uncontrollably as they prepared the wrapped corpse of a loved one for cremation. Technically, photography is still allowed here, but I refrained from getting too close to the ceremony. I considered the reverse: if I were about to bury someone and a busload of tourists from Hyderabad pulled over and started to take pictures and videos of my family, I'd be pretty ticked off.
A series of small shrines lead up a hill to the top of Pashupatinath. There was a sadhu sitting by one of them, strategically positioned to get the best photograph (and in turn, the best baksheesh from tourists). I knew he was worth a picture, so I took the shot, at which point he said, "30 rupees." Unbelievable - in Nepal, that's two day's salary for the average person. I gave him five rupees and he glared at me for a minute, but then returned to his peaceful demeanor as soon as the next tourist approached.
At the top of the hill we found more white shrines, many with bells that could ring out for great distances (I tested one while no one was looking). A playful dog followed us around for a bit, but by the time I got out my camera, he became bored with us and left. There was a small squatter's camp on the hill's plateau, and behind it we could see a large wooded area. We walked into the woods and looked around - it was a serene, yet strange place, with dusty sunrays falling between the leaves and branches, and a pair of monkeys challenging each other's territory. The trees were large, knotted and bent. I could imagine Buddha himself sitting under one of the banyan trees, contemplating the road to enlightenment.
Eventually, we returned to the path and headed down the other side of the hill, where we found another temple at the foot of the riverbank. From there, it was about a 30 minute walk to Bodnath, the largest stupa in Nepal and one of the holiest Tibetan sites outside of Tibet. The walk led us through a semi-developed, semi-rural community. Lots of young kids in school uniforms were trotting their way to school. Farmers tended their crops while a group of teenagers played a game of Tigers and Goats (the national game of Nepal) at an impromptu cafe stand. The LP Guide wasn't very detailed in terms of how to get to Bodnath, so I was a bit concerned that we might be getting lost. Then, dead ahead of us over a hilltop, I could see Bodnath in the distance, its mesmerizing gaze almost pulling us forward.
We continued up the unpaved road for another few minutes until it terminated at a bustling thoroughfare full of rickshaws, goats and Coca-Cola stands. An elaborate metal and wood gate stood across the street, marking the main entrance into Bodnath. The gate led us up a short step path to the stupa itself, over 150 feet high and occupying at least an acre of space.
At the north end of the stupa, we found the main stairwell that would allow us to ascend the three tiers of the stupa's platform. We walked around Bodnath, its gargantuan white hemispherical body to our right. High up on the stupa I could see several men who appeared to be doing some kind of maintenance work, fastening new streams of prayer flags and tossing buckets of rusty red water that streaked down the side of the stupa, adding flairs of color to its immense whiteness. A monk approached us and asked for a donation to a refugee charity. I have no idea how much money I handed him - I was so absorbed by the experience that he could have probably asked me for a credit card successfully. We made a circle or two around the highest tier of the stupa and then returned to the ground for a climb to the top of a terraced restaurant, the Stupa View. Stupid name, stupendous view. The tea was weak but sat for an hour drawing pictures of Bodnath.
Ever since the Chinese invasion of Tibet, there's been a large refugee presence in Kathmandu, and many of these refugees settled in the neighborhoods surrounding Bodnath. Because of this, the shops around the stupa were some of the best places to find a solid variety of Tibetan goods and artifacts - albeit at highly inflated prices. We decided to look around and see if they had anything unusual. There were the usual prayer wheels, singing bowls and gurkha knives that you could find everywhere in Nepal, but I eventually found a nice little paper shop, where I bought a handmade notebook just in case I ran out of space in my journal.
We returned to Thamel and had what might have been the worst pizzas on earth at La Dolca Vita. This probably didn't help Susanne's stomach, as she almost keeled over in the street. We took a slow pace and walked south through Thamel toward Durbar Square. Susanne had regretted not purchasing a thangka as I had in Patan, so we browsed through several shops until we found one that had a similar selection. We were so impressed with their collection that I ended up buying a second picture along with her.
Once we reached Durbar Square we climbed up the Maju Deval temple, sat ourselves down and began to draw. Susanne tried to capture random individual images, while I attempted to recreate the entire panorama, from the Shiva-Parvati temple all the way to my left to the Kumari Chowk over to my right. During the hour we sat there, numerous kids joined us to check out our work. Most of them were content on watching us draw, while only one or two approached us for "one rupee, one rupee, school pen, or bon bon." A cute 10-year-old girl taught Susanne the Nepali word for eyes - "akka."
As the sun began to reach towards the horizon, the temperature plummeted with it, so we returned to the hotel to try to warm up. We got caught in the rush of the late afternoon markets, as hundreds of people bearing fruits and vegetables made their way along the main road and square, Indra Chowk. We stopped at a chemist on a lark to see if they had any Actifed for our cold symptoms - he did, at about 1 rupee per dose. I bought 100. I figured that was more than enough to get both of us through the trip, and they were a steal here compared to the cost of Actifed in the States. There was a tradeoff, though - these pills weren't coated and tasted absolutely vile. They were so bad we rushed onward to another stall just to buy toffees to get that damn taste out of our mouths.
It's a slow night at the hotel. After a day like this, I'll sleep well.
Posted by acarvin at 08:34 PM
November 17, 1996
Patan and Bhaktapur
I had a pretty poor night's sleep thanks to a serious of unpleasant coughing fits. But a large pot of tea, a couple of hard boiled eggs (whites only) and a pancake for breakfast helped make up for it. Before getting started with our trips to Patan and Bhaktapur (both former city-states and the two largest cities in the valley after Kathmandu), I returned once again to the email parlor in Thamel. I had been short a few rupees the night before, so I settled my bill and sent another brief message home. We then hopped an autorickshaw for the 20-minute ride to Patan, just south of Kathmandu. The roads were congested and the exhaust was thick, so we promised ourselves to switch to taxis for a while just to give our lungs a breather, so to speak.
Patan's Durbar Square is similar to Kathmandu's, with its pagodas, shrines, and royal palace, all contained in a couple of acres. But the square itself was more spacious, thanks to a series of earthquakes that decimated numerous temples over the centuries. As tragic as these losses were, the eventual effect was to create a square that feels much less claustrophobic and crowded than Kathmandu Durbar Square. I can only imagine what Patan must have looked like before the tremors, even as recently as 1934, the time of the last major quake. 
Neither Susanne nor I were feeling fully up to snuff this morning, so our stroll around the square was slow and tempered. Within an hour or so of exploring, we were in dire need of refreshment, so we climbed up to a restaurant terrace which afforded a splendid view of the square. It was perhaps one of the few spots one could actually capture much of Durbar Square in a single picture, so we took advantage of it, taking snapshots and enjoying the scenery.
Three cups of tea later, I was ready to explore some more. Below the cafe were several art galleries that specialized in watercolors and thangkas, traditional Tibetan paintings of surreal Buddhist icons and mandalas. I was particularly taken in by one artist who worked in paint and ink to create thangkas with a modern twist - landscapes of Nepal dotted by dozens of small cartoon people, sort of like a Buddhist Where's Waldo poster. His pictures had a wonderfully touching feel to them, so I broke down and bought one for a little less than $30, signed by the artist. Well worth every penny, I thought.
We then spent a short amount of time at Patan's Golden Temple, just north of Durbar Square. It's hidden among modern buildings, which almost caused us to miss it completely. Yet inside the temple's courtyard we found gilded shrines surrounded by dozens of prayer wheels. It was quite a sight, but as is often the case, we had to keep a distance from the shrine itself, as the grounds of the inner courtyard were closed to non-Hindus (read: Westerners). Susanne and I then headed back to Durbar Square for one last look. It must have been early afternoon at this point, and I figured we had just enough time to get to the ancient city of Bhaktapur 10 kilometers east of us. Three or four hours there should be more than enough time for a nice walk around the city.
The cab ride to Bhaktapur was awful. Susanne nearly got carsick, so we had to sit outside the gates of the city just to be sure that everything was ok. Feeling a bit better, Susanne and I headed into Bhaktapur after paying the the whopping $5 entrance fee. The old city of Bhaktapur is completely sealed off from traffic, so it's one of the few large towns in Nepal that still maintains its mediaeval flavour. Through the gate, we were greeted by yet another Durbar Square. It is by far the most spacious of the Valley's three durbar squares, but not unlike Patan's square, this extra room was the unintended consequence of numerous earthquakes. I had read that many travelers consider Bhaktapur Durbar Square to be the best of the bunch, but by this point, I was feeling a little durbared out, kind of like the feeling you get after visiting one too many French cathedral or Egyptian mosque.
We decided to take a three hour walking tour of the inner bowls of Bhaktapur, following a well-tread route suggested by the LP guide. As soon as we began the walk, the presence of other westerners decreased abruptly. Now we were alone among the local Newari people as they went about their daily business - women sifting grain and drying out chilis in large piles; men hanging thousands of feet of freshly dyed wool; mothers nursing babies; old men giving pujas at the corner Ganesh shrine. We walked as slowly as possible trying to absorb every sight, sound and scent. At one point we climbed a hill to a small temple, where a woman sat and kept watch while talking with a young friend. We we explored the temple, I found a small pill of red tika powder by a lingam, so I put a splotch of it on Susanne's forehead. As we left the temple, the woman noticed Susanne's tika and began to laugh hysterically, giggling something in Newari. I took it as a sign of humorous approval. Susanne did not. She removed her tika.
We climbed up another hill into a series of alleyways. Two women were weaving cloth while a boom box blasted some song that sounded distinctly like Motorhead. It was quite odd. As the music faded behind us we returned to a tranquil street setting, with more women sifting grain and drying chilis, while small children in blue school uniforms chased puppies and chickens around the square. (As an aside, the number of puppies in the Kathmandu Valley is astounding. Around every corner, more puppies. I'm convinced that Nepal must have more puppies per square foot than any other country.)
Around 2pm, we reached another square. There was a nice little restaurant with a good view, so we stopped for a light lunch of soup and buffalo milk yogurt - the local specialty. The restaurant had more than its fair share of Americans lounging about, and the amount of English being spoken made me feel claustrophobic. After lunch, we continued east and then south to a rural part of the city. The neighborhood appeared to be poorer than the previous ones we had seen in Bhaktapur, and there were significantly less people around. Clouds appeared overhead, shifting us into a somewhat somber mood. We pushed forward and crossed a river by some small ghats and a Ganesh shrine. Three children were playing on a tree swing above the ghats, so I took a picture with a high shutter speed to see if I could capture one of the kids as the swing reached upward:
We cut back over the river and made a feeble attempt at not getting lost. At one point, we couldn't decide whether to hang a left or a right in order to return to Durbar Square. Susanne said left, I said right. We tried left for a bit, then backtracked and went right. Suddenly, we were back at the small square we had just eaten an hour earlier. We should have gone left. At least now I was able to get my bearings on the map, and in about ten minutes, we were back where we started, among the pagodas and shrines of the square.
I hailed a cabby to take us back to Thamel. He wanted 350 rupees to take us back - seven dollars. I bargained down to 200 rupees, and we got in the car. We didn't get far, though, because the streets ahead of us became blocked by a procession of small children with red costumes and big sticks. Our driver said it would be a few minutes before we could get the taxi through the crowded street, so we got out and watched the parade. It was a Newari stick dance. Lined up in two parallel rows, the children would march and dance in unison, and then engage in ritual combat with their sticks, fencing with the kid in the row across from them. Behind the children, a crowd of cheerful adults played instruments and sang, while teenagers weaved in and out of the procession in large papier mache masks. Susanne and I had a field day with our cameras as the children fought with their sticks and parents smiled proudly at their youngsters' skills.
As the procession moved on, we hit the road again and made it back to Thamel in about 20 minutes. There was still a bit of sunlight left in the day, so I again opted for tea on the roof. A German woman came up top and said guten tag to me, to which I responded with a polite "tag." She then started to talk away in German until I was able to convey to her that I couldn't understand a word she said. Susanne and I wrote on the roof while waiting for dinner - I had ordered Gacok, a traditional Tibetan stew which takes several hours to steam, so we waited patiently and worked up an appetite. It was well worth the wait. The gacok was by far the best meal of the trip and in general, one of the most satisfying dinners I've ever had. The gacok was served in a metal steamer shaped like a goblet with a donut-shaped mold at the top. In the mold were cellophane noodles, meatballs, chicken, buffalo, vegetables, tofu, prawns, and other random Asian delicacies. Below the mold was a self-contained wood stove that had been smoldering for hours. In the center of the mold was a round hole full of boiling water, so when the mold was covered with a lid, the top of the food would steam while the bottom of the food was heated directly by the burning embers. The gacok was also served with fried rice, momos and noodles. An enormous feast for ten dollars. More expensive than any other meal on the trip, but worth every rupee.
Good food leads to a solid night's sleep. Tomorrow's plan: the sacred ghats of Pashupatinath and the great stupa of Bodnath.
Posted by acarvin at 09:22 PM
November 16, 1996
Getting to know Kathmandu - Swayumbunath and Durbar Square
We slept til 7am and had breakfast on the roof. It was a hazy morning, so you couldn't see much of the high Himalayan peaks, but the hills that circumscribed the Kathmandu Valley soared and rolled in all directions. We had hot tea, pancakes and eggs - not the usual healthy fare I would swear by at home, but from the amount of running around we were doing, I figured the extra protein and fat wouldn't kill us. Besides, I already needed to pull into my next belt notch just to keep my pants from falling off. Ah, the side effects of third world travel.
Our first goal of the day was to climb Swayumbunath, the great Buddhist stupa west of the city. For many people, Swayumbunath is the symbol of Kathmandu, with its four sets of eyes peering in all directions. We cut through the main section of Thamel and Chhetrapati, the next neighborhood south, and then headed west over the Vishnumati River. Just before the river we found a small pagoda called the Indrani Temple. It was our first Nepalese pagoda up-close, so it probably got more attention than it deserved. A group of children were wrapping a large banyan tree with yards and yards of string, as if they were having a May Day celebration. We took a few pictures and then continued west for another 15 minutes, as we could see Swayumbunath high up on its hill. The closer we got, the higher it seemed. Man, this was going to be a steep climb.
We were greeted at the base of Swayumbunath hill by several small temple-shrines, as well as artisans, beggars, tourists, autorickshaw-wallahs, and a couple of monkeys. I told Susanne about the 365 steps of Swayumbunath hill - if you can climb to the top without pausing, you'll have a year of good luck. If you stop along the way, well, you don't. But about a quarter of the way up, our ailing bodies reminded us that good health is much more important than good luck, so we used our cameras as an excuse to pause and take some pictures. I tired to get a shot of a monkey as it peacefully ate some fruit. Just as I prepared to snap the pictures, the monkey lunged at me a snarled. I got the shot and got out of its way. Swayumbunath was also known as the Monkey Temple, and its monkeys didn't have a reputation for friendliness. I'd be more cautious from now on.
About 200 feet from the summit, the steps took an extreme increase in attitude. I felt like I had been jogging up Russian Hill in San Francisco. But soon enough, we could see the eyes of Swayumbunath above us. In retrospect, I'm glad my first experience with a Nepalese stupa was right here, high above the Kathmandu Valley. The exhausting ascent made the exhilaration of reaching the top all the more special.
Swayumbunath is a classic Buddhist stupa - a square platform base and a large, white hemispherical body, followed by a square head and a rounded pyramid as a crown. Streamers of prayer flags connected the top of the crown to four smaller shrines that marked off the corners of Swayumbunath, representing the basic elements of earth, water, fire and wind. On the four sides of the head were those mystical eyes of Buddha that make stupas so instantly recognizable. Below each pair of eyes you would see the Nepali number for 'one,' which to most Westerners look like Buddha's nose. And along the round edge of the body, at shoulder level above the platform base, are hundreds of large prayer wheels, each containing thousands of handwritten repetitions of the Buddhist mantra, Om Mani Padme Hum - Hail to the Jewel in the Lotus. As visitors walked around the stupa clockwise (counterclockwise is strictly taboo), they spun the wheels with their hands, emitting the sacred mantra into the ether millions and millions of times.
After pausing to catch our breath and appreciate the moment, we made a semi-circle stroll around the stupa, spinning the wheels as we walked. On the opposite side you could see several hundred people lining up to give pujas to a small shrine of Hariti, the goddess of smallpox and (more importantly) of fertility. Further beyond that were several dozen miniature pagoda shrines of white marble, none larger than a big tombstone, which gave the effect of being at a New Orleans cemetery.
We spent a couple of hours wandering the stupa platform and the shrines surrounding it, taking pictures of monks, children, monkey, and of course, the stupa. The sun was getting at a perfect height for pictures, so we probably went a little nuts with our cameras - I wouldn't be surprised if Susanne took an entire roll of film of monks. (nothing wrong with that, though the 20 rolls we brought with us may no longer be enough at this rate.) As late morning approached, we decided to head back down the hill and cut southeast over the river towards Durbar Square, the heart of old Kathmandu.
On the way there, we cut through some fairly poor Newari and Tibetan neighborhoods, but even these appeared to be significantly better off than the slums we saw in Delhi and Varanasi. We also met a pair of girls, around 20 years old, both well-dressed and wearing stylish glasses. I figured they were tourists from India. It turns out they were sisters from Kathmandu who were out seeing the sights of their home town. They had a sister at Georgetown and one of them had recently visited her. They certainly stuck out as being very well off, especially by Kathmandu standards. Before they departed our company, I asked what their family did. "We own the Kathmandu Guest House." Assuming they weren't messing with me, that would explain a lot.
We crossed a metal footbridge over the Vishnumati river and within a few minutes had reached the southwest corner of Durbar Square. All the major cities in the Kathmandu Valley have what is known as a 'Durbar Square' - a 'durbar' is a palace. Until a couple of centuries ago, the three main cities of the valley - Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur - were all rival cities states, often in a state of war. Because of their self-imposed isolation from each other, each city had its royal family, its palace, and therefore, its own Durbar Square. Kathmandu's Durbar Square is actually a series of interconnecting squares and palaces, filled with countless pagodas, shrines, and shops.
It was odd, wandering among the pagodas for the first time. I felt as if I were in Kyoto or Tokyo, for the architecture is so similar. And for good reason - 500 years ago, architects from Nepal went to Japan to help rebuild after a series of earthquakes, so the Japanese picked up and refined the pagoda style into their own architectural form. But just looking at Kathmandu's great pagodas, like the 13th century wooden shrine of Kasthamandap (which gave Kathmandu its name), you really begin to feel like you're in the Far East. Considering we're due south of China, I guess we are in the Far East. It's just strange thinking about it.
Durbar Square is overpopulated with tourists and touts, so we ducked into a pagoda that appeared to lead to an isolated courtyard. We had stumbled into Kumari Chowk, the courtyard of the Living Goddess Kumari. Quite literally, Kumari is a living goddess, a young girl whose divine reign ends when she reaches puberty. She's kind of like a female Newari Dalai Lama, but without tenure. There have been Kumaris in Kathmandu since the mid-1700s, and their worship is taken very seriously. As we looked around the small, ornate courtyard, a guard called out something in Newari and then said to us, "Look up! I present the Kumari." To our left in a 3rd floor window, the Kumari appeared, sporting a headdress and caked in layers of Kabuki-like makeup. She saw us, appeared totally uninterested, and left the balcony in a matter of three or four seconds. The guard then motioned for us to start clapping and to leave a tip on the courtyard shrine. It's good to be a goddess.
Our next stop was Nasal Chowk, the old palace of the King of Nepal. King Birendra recently moved into a new palace complex northeast of Thamel, but the old palace was still heavily guarded as if he were still a resident. Also standing watch was a 16th century statue of the monkey god Hanuman, who had been coated in so many layers of red paint that he was hardly recognizable. Most of the palace is off-limits to visitors, so we made due with a brief stop in the coronation courtyard. From there, we continued north through the rest of Durbar Square. On the far end of it, we noticed a sadhu sitting on a shrine. He obviously wanted people to take pictures of him (for baksheesh, of course), as I was more than happy to oblige. I got the shot and gave him a couple of rupees. As I walked away, he mumbled something in Nepali that we imagined must have meant "bloody cheap American tourist."
We continued up through the city back towards Thamel, stopping at the occasional shrine, miniature stupa, or thangka shop. Back at the hotel, we changed clothes and had lunch down the street at Le Bistro, a popular yet overpriced haunt in Thamel. We then browsed some more in Thamel's many shops, and at one point I made the regrettable decision of asking a wandering Nepalese violin salesman how much his instruments cost. 90 US dollars, he said. I laughed. I had no plans to buy it, but I was just curious as to how much he would try to get from us. Bad idea. The man then started to follow us around for about 15 minutes, ranting about how crazy I must be to ask for a price yet not have an interest in buying. If I'm not interested, why ask, right? An insult! The funniest part of it was that while he followed us and bitched at me, his asking price dropped lower and lower. By the time I got him to buzz off, he wanted only 20 dollars for it. Not bad, but no thanks.
Susanne and I returned to the hotel late in the afternoon to write postcards and have tea on the roof. We ended up having an early dinner as well, with Susanne getting her beloved hot and sour soup, while I had a delicious bowl of Tibetan chicken soup with momos, the Tibetan equivalent to steamed wontons. We then headed back to the room, worked on our journals, and relaxed the evening away, apart from a brief trip I took down the street to pick up email from my dad.
Posted by acarvin at 08:22 PM
November 13, 1996
Arrival in Varanasi; a lazy day of recovery
I awoke around 7am, just as the train had pulled into Lucknow. I asked someone how long it would be until we got to Varanasi. Six hours, they said. So much for the promptness of Indian express trains.
I tried to write in my journal for awhile. Susanne was asleep, dead to the world. I took it as a good sign - at least she wasn't up and around puking her brains out. I too drifted back and forth into sleep for a few hours, but was fully up and running by 10am. Susanne eventually got up, not long after that. She looked exhausted. We were both puzzled by her illness - we had only been in India for a few days, and the so-called Delhi Belly usually takes at least a week to incubate. We chalked up the incident to a combination of her generally weak stomach and bad luck.
I spent the rest of the train ride reading and munching on some sponge cake that had been my only nourishment since Agra (I purchased it at the Mathura train station). We finally pulled into Varanasi Cantonnment Station around 1pm. Susanne was feeling pretty weak, but managed to lug her backpack down to the exit. Getting to a hotel, though, would be trickier than that. We knew that Varanasi's rickshaw-wallahs were notorious for receiving high hotel commissions, and if you ask one of them to take you to a place that wasn't on their commission list, they'd tell you excuses such as "Hotel full," "Muslim problems," or even "Burnt down," and refuse to take you there.
We didn't have a reservation anywhere, but we wanted to stay in the Old Town along the Ganges. The LP guide suggested a few hotels in this area, even though it warned that the accommodations there were much more spartan than those places closer to the train station. But Old Town was where all the action was, and we thought it would be nice to actually have a place to stay with a view of the Ganges down below. So for kicks, just to see if the rickshaw-wallahs would play along, I went up to the first one I saw and said, "Scindia Guest House - how much?" To this, he responded, "Full booked, you should stay at..." We walked away quickly. Our next rick-wallah agreed to take us there, but his autorickshaw wouldn't start. After two or three minutes of him desperately trying to remove the crud off of its spark plug, we climbed out. Susanne was beginning to look really sick, and the cab was so hot, it seemed ludicrous to wait any longer.
Finally, we found a bicycle rickshaw-wallah who offered to take us there for 10 rupees, about 30 cents. We climbed aboard, backpacks on our laps, and started the leisurely ride through the crowded streets of Varanasi's New Town. The roads were filthy and noisy like any other Indian city, but as we got closer to the Old Town, the streets began to thin out. Taxi's couldn't fit through the narrow roads of Gadaulia, the area which separated New and Old Towns. Then, it appeared that even our small bicycle rick wouldn't fit through the twisting alleyways that were up ahead. We must be close to Old Town. Even stranger, the road was eerily silent - at least by Indian standards - apart from the jingling bells of the bicycles.
After a few more minutes, our driver pulled up to an alleyway and said, "Bicycle ends. You walk." Indeed, the alley ahead of us was so thin that you practically had to walk single file just to fit through it.
Once we paid the wallah, a short, bearded man who looked more Armenian than Indian approached us and said, "Where would you like to go today?" Clearly he wanted to take us to a hotel of his choice for a commission, but nevertheless, I replied, "Scindia Guest House. Only Scindia." "No problem, no problem, let's go. You will not be able to find it yourself," he said, as he began to walk and wave his hand for us to follow him. I didn't like the idea of following this guy, but then again, he was right. We had no idea how to get there, and the map of Varanasi in the LP guide would not offer us the detail needed to figure it out on our own. Besides, if he was going to cause problems, there were certainly enough people around in the alleys for us to stir trouble back in his face if necessary. We agreed to give him a chance.
The three of us winded our way down the alleyway from one passage to another. The streets had a truly mediaeval character to them, with paan-wallahs, incense-wallahs, crockery-wallahs, and every other kind of entreprenurial-wallah you can imagine, were crammed into one stall after another. The alleys were never more than four or five feet across, so we had to compete with all the cows, goats, dogs, beggars, and kids that served as obstacles along the path. We walked for five minutes and Susanne was obviously getting tired. The man then said, "First, I show you my hotel, Puja Guest House," to which I retorted, "No, you promised to take us to Scindia. Do not break your promise." "No problem, no problem," he muttered, again motioning us to follow. I was getting a bit concerned since I never figured the walk would take this long. We probably hadn't covered that much distance, but Susanne's illness and my growing impatience were making the walk feel longer and longer.
Then out of the blue, the alleys opened up and ahead of me, I could see the water of the Ganges. We had reached one of the ghats, the ceremonial stone steps that lead down into the water, which allow people to perform their bathing rituals and pujas. This particular ghat wasn't very crowded - perhaps eight or nine Hindus were bathing and chanting. But at last, I thought, I had made it to the Ganges, the sacred river of India and one of the most famous bodies of water in the world. Even though we still hadn't reached our hotel, our proximity to the river allowed me to get my bearings on the map, so if we needed to, we could figure out the way to our hotel if something went wrong.
We started up a dusty, debris covered hill, and we could see the words "Scindia Guest House" on a white brick multistory building above us. The top floor must have been 150 feet over the Ganges - a tough walk up, but undoubtedly worth it for the view, I figured. Indeed, the steep climb exhausted me and damn near killed Susanne, who had to drop her pack and sit in the hallway of the hotel while I examined the room.
To call the room that was shown to me 'spartan' would be generous - it was about 10 feet square, twin bed made out of a slab of wood, half-painted walls, toilet without toilet seat (at least it had a bowl), and moths fluttering around the one working light. Asking price: three bucks a night. We'll take it.
Susanne was really ready to crash as this point, so I decided to hike around and find some bread for her to eat. I had no map of the Old City - I'm not sure if even one exists - so I tried to backtrack along the route from whence we came. It was late afternoon, but because Varanasi's alleyways were so long and thin, very little sunlight was getting through to the pavement below. Cows were everywhere, which made life somewhat difficult, as I tried to climb around then on the common occasions I found them blocking the entire path (and of course, the cow patties they left in their wake were an endless obstacle in their own right). I found a cafe at some crowded guest house near the center of Old Town. I ordered a naan to take back for Susanne, and a pakora for myself. A few minutes later, I was handed a plate with a piece of naan sliced into a dozen thin pieces (not very handy for carrying) and a plate of eight pakoras. Whatever. I ended up eating about half of the pakoras and a couple of Teems to boot.
It was getting even darker outside so I returned to the hotel. The sun was just about to set, so after checking in on Susanne and getting her the naan and something to drink, I climbed up to the rooftop terrace to check out the view. The panorama of the Ganges was spectacular, barren and sandy on one side, and crowded with ghats and temples on the other. Directly in front of me, about 100 feet down river, were the cremation ghats, whose funeral pyres billowed smoke upwards in an endless puff. Sitting on the roof was a Korean man whose name I never got and an American from New York named John who had met the Korean guy the week before in Agra and had been travelling together since. John was a TOEFL instructor who had taken off a few months from work to see India. They had been in Varanasi for six nights, so they were very helpful in offering some suggestions on how we should budget our time during our brief three-day stay.
Once it was completely dark outside, I decide to wander down to the cremation ghat. I figured I would get lost if I tried to go anywhere further afield, so the cremation ghats seemed like an interesting and convenient choice. As I left the rooftop, I could see that the number of cremations had increased, for the plumes of smoke were getting thicker. I could hear metal bells hammering away repetitively in a ceremony that sounded a lot like Indonesian gamelan music, but without a distinct melody.
While I walked, I noticed that I was the only westerner around. There were many people about, hanging out and talking, smoking hash, chewing paan, even playing chess. No one seemed to take notice of me as I passed along through the piles of fresh timber that were stockpiled just behind the ghat. I climbed up to an octagonal tower, where the only other occupant was a large brahma bull that appeared to not mind my company as long as I allowed it to chew its cud in peace. From the edge of the tower, I could look directly down at the main cremation ghat, about 20 feet below. A dozen or so pyres were burning at any given time, some with corpses still wrapped in silk over piles of fresh wood, others not more than a pile of cinders. Other corpses were in between these phases, and you could clearly see and smell the bodies burning away. Arms and legs, torsos and heads carbonizing in the moonlight, with the sounds of pops and squirts breaking the steady crackle of the fires. It was like a group protesters were burning effigies, but I knew better. These were real people that were probably alive just a few hours earlier.
I could only stand about 15 or 20 minutes on my perch above the pyres. The smoke and ash were blowing my way and the sulfuric clouds became unbearable after awhile, so I returned to the hotel to get ready for bed. Susanne was fast asleep, so I treaded as quietly as possible. Tomorrow would be another early morning for us, as we planned to take a boat out on the Ganges before dawn to watch the sunrise. I then looked down at my clothes and realized I needed to step outside for a moment. I gave my shirt a shake. A rain of ash fell to the ground.
Posted by acarvin at 10:31 PM
November 12, 1996
The train to Agra; a tour of the Taj Mahal, the Agra Fort, and Fatehpur Sikri; Mr. Toad's Wild Ride to Mathura; the overnight train to Varanasi
4:30am. God, I didn't want to get up. Of course, if we missed the Shatabdhi Express train to Agra at 6:15am, our plans would be severely tripped up. We needed to get to Agra early enough to see all of the major sites, catch a ride of some kind to Mathura, the home of the Hare Krishna movement, and then hop on the overnight train to Varanasi at 8:55pm. It was gonna be a tight schedule. We took no chances and got to the New Delhi Railway Station by 5:45 or so. The train arrived at six, and left promptly with us securely on board. I talked with a few Brits who had been to India and Agra before, and they seemed confident that we could accomplish all of our day's plans and still have enough time to catch our train from Mathura.
The Agra Cantonnment Station - I had been told that this was the most dangerous train station in India, at least in terms of getting robbed or ripped off. Despite this reputation, we felt that we were clearly in control of the situation. Now we just had to check our backpacks in storage, find a tour that was suitable to our needs, and get started with the day. Baggage check was a breeze at the left luggage facility - nice and bureaucratic, with lots of paperwork - I felt at ease that our bags would survive the day there. We then started to talk to the man at the inquiry counter, but I couldn't understand a word of his English. I then saw another westerner, a man in his mid- to late 20s, with a big backpack in hand. We struck up a conversation quickly - his name was Philip, he was a computer programmer from Boulder, and he had been in India for about as long as we had. We decided that three's company would provide us with better leverage in organizing a private tour, so we checked his bag and prepared ourselves for walking the gauntlet of tourguides, touts, and pickpockets.
We were soon approached by a group of men. One of them said, "Let us be your guide - fixed prices, set by the Agra government, we promise, no problem..." He handed me a laminated card off of the inquiry desk counter - a private tour of the Taj Mahal, the Agra Fort, and Fatehpur Sikri would be 550 rupees for all three of us. About 20 dollars, or seven bucks a head. The price was higher than the standard tourist bus excursion, but this way, we had private transport and could potentially control the time of our return. To be sure that this guy was legit, I asked for his registration as a tourguide licensed by Uttar Pradesh Tourism. He gave it to me. He offered us a private car and driver, with us calling the shots of how much time we wanted to spend at each place. I was prepared to agree to it, but first I made it very clear that we would pay 550 rupees total, for all three of us, and not 550 rupees per person. "No problem, no problem," he said. I repeated my concern, and said that if he asked us for anything more than 550 rupees, we would walk away at the end of the day and pay nothing. "550 rupees, promise," he said, and grabbed my hand to shake it. The man behind the inquiry desk handed him a signout sheet and asked me to initial it. Susanne, Philip and I huddled for a moment and decided to go for it, but we made it clear with the man one last time that there would be no funny business. "No problem," he repeated again, this time with a wide smile on his face.
We exited the train station and climbed into his driver's white Ambassador as we began the short drive to Shah Jehan's masterpiece, the Taj Mahal. After about five minutes, the driver pulled over and our guide, who had finally introduced himself as Bobby, said we would now change cars. Another Ambassador pulled alongside. I looked at our gas gauge and saw we were almost out of fuel, so it appeared we were filling up by changing to a new car. It felt more like a getaway strategy, but we elected to not be overly concerned.
Ten minutes later, we pulled up to the outer gate of the Taj. Bobby, a keen talker whose commanded a strong English vocabulary despite his thick accent, spent a few minutes going over the history of the Taj. He said the Mughals were Persians from Tehran. Whatever happened to them being Mongol/Turkic descendants of Ghengis Khan from Central Asia? Well, I didn't feel like starting an argument. Bobby then surprised us with a warning: "The Taj has many bad people who will rip you off. Hide your valuables under your clothes, hold your camera tight, and don't let anyone touch you." Comments such as these from Bobby were making us feel a lot more comfortable with him, and as the day would progress, we'd recognize that if anything else, he was always sincere and upfront about everything.
We purchased our tickets and headed down a stone path that opened into a garden. Ahead and to our right we could see a large red gate, beyond which lie the Taj Mahal itself. We joined the queue to pass through the gate, where we had our bags searched and had to walk through a metal detector (which seemed somewhat pointless, since each and every one of us set the thing off with our metal-laden cameras in hand). And then there it was, the Taj Mahal. Its status as a national symbol ranks as an equal to the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, or even the Pyramids of Egypt, but unlike those structures I never actually figured I'd have the opportunity to visit them in the foreseeable future. It was in marvelous condition, even by western standards - too many of India's great monuments have withered because of neglect. It may be almost 350 years old, but the Taj still carries the luster of a modern structure.
The morning had turned very hot and rather hazy, and soon felt the oppressiveness of the sun as we walked through the charbagh garden down the Taj's all-white marble (and highly reflective) stone path. I kept stopping for pictures, while Susanne repeated her mantra of the morning: "I will not take 100 pictures of the Taj. I will not take 100 pictures of the Taj..." Philip wisely suggested that we work our pay to the inside of the Taj first and then get our pictures on the way out. That way we wouldn't waste precious visiting time til near the end.
The closer we got to the stairwell up to the Taj's main platform, the more dense the company around us became. There were hundreds of people jammed up front - mostly Westerners in large tour groups, with the occasional large Indian tourist family. I felt like I was at Disney world or back home in Washington lining up to see the Hope Diamond at the Smithsonian. I didn't like it.
We left our shoes outside as we ascended the stairs to the main platform and entered the Taj's tomb chamber. Unfortunately, the basement entrance to the cenotaph of Shah Jehan and his wife, Arjumand Banu Begam (better known as Mumtaz Mahal, "Elect of the Palace"), were closed for renovation, so people prostrated themselves on the floor to get the best angle down the basement steps into the cenotaph. If I didn't no better, it would have looked like people were paying devout respect to the dead emperor. With the real cenotaph closed, we had to satisfy ourselves with the false tombs that sat directly above the cenotaph basement. Hordes of visitors paced the bogus mausoleum clockwise, pressed together as if we were visiting the Mona Lisa. The false tomb was surrounded by a thin, almost translucent wall of intricately cut pietra dura inlaid marble, sparkling with thousands of gems. The costs Shah Jehan spent to build this tribute to his favorite wife must have been enormous (he was probably driven by guilt over her death, for she died in trasit while pregnant with their 14th child, having been dragged by Shah Jehan on one of his many Deccan campaigns in the south). No wonder legend has it that his son Aurangzeb overthrew him when he suggested he'd build a second Mahal (a black one, no less) for himself and his next favorite wife. Wasteful spending gets you every time.
The three of us exited the Taj and walked around its platform, getting a marvelous view of the mosque of Shah Jehan, a stunning red sandstone building just to the left of the Taj, as well as the Jamuna river, which passed behind it, and the hazy, blurred image of the Agra fort, several kilometers upriver. After having our fill of wandering the Taj and its grounds, we headed back to meet up with Bobby. I picked up a few postcards, including a picture of Mother Theresa and a shot of the erotic art at Khajuraho, to the southeast in neighboring Madhya Pradesh.
We then made the short drive up to the Agra Fort, the older brother of Delhi's Red Fort. The Agra Fort's construction was begun by the emperor Akbar in 1565, but additions were made through the time of Shah Jehan 100 years later. It was in marvelous condition, with long courtyards that lead to numerous citadels and hidden chambers. After pausing for some Pepsis, we wandered past the massive Diwan-I-Am and across to the fort's main wall facing the Jamuna river. On the left corner of the rampart was the Mussaman Burj, or Octagonal Tower, a marble, open-air apartment built by Shah Jehan for his beloved wife, the aforementioned Mumtaz Mahal. Ironically, it was here that Shah Jehan died in 1666, having been imprisoned there by his ruthless son Aurangzeb eight years earlier. Aurangzeb is probably best known for his puritanical interpretation of Islam and his wild intolerance of Hindus, who he seemed to slaughter with relish at the drop of a hat.
In an attempt to torment his father, Aurangzeb held Shah Jehan under house arrest inside the Mussaman Burj during his father's final years, so the old emperor could view his masterwork Taj Mahal, but never visit it again. Even though Shah Jehan got the best view in the house, the wily Aurangzeb must have enjoyed knowing that Dad would never be allowed to set foot in the Taj again except for burial. He even sent his father a well-wrapped present with a message: "King Aurangzeb, your son," said the eunuch who brought in the package, "sends this plat to Your Majesty to let you see that he does not forget you." "Blessed be God," Shah Jehan responded, "that my son still remembers me." But inside the inlaid box the old king found the severed head of Dara Shukoh, his favorite son, who had been his heir apparent until the coup. Shah Jehan was so upset he went into convulsions and lost several teeth from a collision with a table. The gruesome prank was thought up by Roshanara Begun, a sister of the two brothers who had sided with Aurangzeb. (To quote Katherine Hepburn in her role as Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter, "What family doesn't have its problems?") Another daughter, Jahanara, responded by nursing him back to health and remained as his nurse until his death. Aurangzeb reigned for almost 50 years; by the time he died in 1707, the empire was in chaos and would not recover until the British co-opted it 150 years later. So even though the Mughals would reign in north India until the end of the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857-58, Aurangzeb was essentially the last Mughal emperor with any effective control of the country.
To the right of the tower was another complex, Jehangir's Palace, the Jehangiri Mahal. Akbar built the palace for his son, crown prince Jehangir, who eventually reigned for a generation following Akbar's death in 1605. Jehangir was later followed by his own son, Shah Jehan, in 1628. Unlike much of the rest of the fort, which typifies Mughal architecture and its Central Asian roots, Jehangir's Palace was influenced by elements of Hindu and Jain art, with the incorporation of elaborately carved buttresses and domed chattris. Adjacent to the Palace was a large courtyard which contained an odd octagonal pit. We couldn't figure out what it was for, but I joked it was His Majesty's Mughal Hibachi.
We wrapped up our trip to the fort and rejoined Bobby and our driver, whose name I never managed to get. Once again, our car had been switched and the original Ambassador from which we first departed had magically rematerialized. Bobby suggested we head to Fatehpur Sikri, an hour's drive to the west. We dissented and requested a lunch break. I wanted to choose something from the LP guide, but Bobby insisted on making his own recommendations. I assumed he'd be getting a commission for it. As it turned out, the first two restaurants he suggested were my first two picks out of LP anyway, but neither of them had opened yet. Bobby then suggested a third restaurant that wasn't listed, but we decided to go with his idea and give him the benefit of the doubt.
Bobby made a pretty good choice. The restaurant had a lovely grass lawn set up with tables, chairs and parasols. It wreaked of English high tea, but we thought that might be kind of cool and worth a try. As we sat outside, a family of Rajput musicians, including an adorable four-year-old in a big red turban, played Central Asian and Rajasthani folk songs. The food was quite good - we ordered afghan chicken (ground chicken with spices on skewers, grilled in a tandoor oven), a mutton curry and potato curry, as well as a selection of regular and stuffed naans. We feasted for an hour in the shade, and as we departed, Susanne got a few shots of the boy in the turban, who seemed delighted by the five rupee reward he received for posing.
We climbed back into our Ambassador and started the long drive west to Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar's mythical abandoned palace city. To get there, we first had to wind our way through the congested, colorful streets of Old Agra. It was an incredible experience, hard to put down in words. Thousands of people in markets and stalls, wearing the brightest colored saris and dhotis imaginable. Scattered pockets of Muslim women, wrapped in black or blue chadors. Little girls draped in yellow, pink, green silk. It was almost like we had been transported back to the time of Aladdin - Agra must have been an amazing crossroads between the heart of Deccan India, Central Asia, and even Afghanistan and Persia. We were also overwhelmed by Diwali candy stalls covered by swarms of flies, brahma bulls lounging around as if they owned the place, motorcycles carrying a full family of five, dogs, hogs, and the occasional monkey wandering the streets for scraps. We tried to get as much of it on film, but no photograph could ever capture the life and color that radiated from the streets of Agra that sunny afternoon.
The traffic began to thin out and we soon found ourselves along a rural path heading due west to Fatehpur Sikri. Fields of anise and other spices were almost ready for harvest. And with each passing vehicle, it always felt like a near miss - we would pass on the right of a donkey cart with ten kids packed in back as a truck barreled towards us, with have the road washed out by monsoons, and cows napping on what was left of the pavement - and yet we would hurl past each obstacle with only inches to spare. No wonder Indian vehicles don't have rear-view mirrors on the sides of the windows, or they'd be knocked off on their first drive through an intersection. Barely a minute went by without us holding our breaths as we avoided another near miss. At one point, Philip said to Bobby, "Tell him he drives very well." The driver, an older and darker man who had yet to speak the entire trip, smiled and said "Thank you. I understand few English." They were the only words he ever uttered.
After an hour of driving, we reached the outer walls of Fatehpur Sikri. I wondered what the circumference of the walls were - they extended as far as the eye could see. We then drove up a hill for half a mile or so to reach the main palace entrance. Akbar had built the palace in the 1570s as a happy response to the successful fertility of one of his wives. For years, they had tried to produce a male heir, so when they finally did, Akbar decided that a new palace was in order. Incredibly, Akbar and his court occupied Fatehpur Sikri for only 14 years, abandoning it for a new capital much further north in Lahore, now in Pakistan. Local storytellers will repeat the tale that Akbar was forced to leave because Fatehpur Sikri had no sustainable source of water. Modern historians now dispute this explanation as apocryphal, though; instead, it is now believed that military pressures from kingdoms to the north forced him to move to Lahore, a strategically located city that would afford Akbar a better perspective of his border situation.
From the gate, we could see a high red sandstone wall that blocked our view of what was beyond it. To the left was the Sikri Mosque - equally enormous, equally red. We headed into the main gate and around the corner of the wall to the main palace area. I know I keep using the word 'red' a lot in my descriptions of India and its stone monuments, but 'red' can't even begin to describe the absolute ruddiness of everything here - the masonry, the towers, the pavement, all a beautiful, dark, almost ochre red, truly unlike any other red I've ever seen.
We headed further into the courtyard and climbed through a small gate. This opened up into an enormous square with a series of pavilions and miniature courtyards extending in several directions for hundreds of feet. To the right, a pool of water shimmered - it had a rectangular platform in the middle of it, with four stone planks radiating out of it in order to connect it to the rest of the courtyard, sort of like a earthen charbagh in reverse. I stood at the center of the island platform while Susanne stopped to take a shot or two of me. I reciprocated and got a good picture of her on the other side of the pool, with an upside image of her reflecting in the green water.
We lost Philip for a while as he wandered off on his own. Susanne and I climbed to the fifth floor of the Panch Mahal, the highest pavilion on the plaza. Akbar apparently used to sit at the top of it to watch performances from it or to play hide and seek with his harem, who would hide within its seven stories. Akbar was also partial to playing games of pachisi or even chess in the adjacent square, using his eunuchs and harems as human chess pieces. He'd even use some of the enclosed courtyards as hunting grounds - wild and exotic beasts would be released, while he perched himself atop a pagoda or other tower with flintlock in hand. Ah, it's good to be the king.
Climbing down from the Panch Mahal, Philip reappeared, so we continued to inspect the grounds, trying to take in all of its splendour. Here was a palace city, built by perhaps the greatest of the Mughal emperors. Parts of it even had an uncanny similarity to the Forbidden City in Beijing, but on a smaller and more compartmentalized scale. Eventually, though, we started to work our way out of the palace. There was a small passageway we had neglected to visit earlier, so Susanne and popped her head in to see what we would find. A few seconds later I could hear her say, "Andy, you want to take a look at this." Inside, the gate opened up to a beautiful courtyard, about 100 feet square, with marvelous tiers of balconies on all sides. I looked to Susanne and said, "The Last Emperor," in reference to the Academy Award-winning Bertolucci film on the fall of China's final imperial dynasty. She simply said, "Uh huh," as she gazed around in wonder. We had discovered Jodh Bai's Palace, the principal residence of Akbar's harem. It was truly incredible what could be hidden around any corner at Fatehpur Sikri, let alone India itself. We would have to be mindful of avoiding other near-misses.
The mosque on the other side of the gate was getting crowded with people for mid afternoon prayers, and the descent of the sun had created a prohibitive glare for our cameras to get any acceptable pictures of it. So after a quick look of the building's entrance, we found Bobby and our driver and headed off. The ride back was quite, for we were all very tired by this point. It was 4pm by the time we reached the train station to reclaim our bags. Bobby, however, insisted that we stop to see "the fine Mughal art" before departing to Mathura. Of course, we knew immediately that this was going to be a sales pitch of some kind or another. Surprisingly, though, Bobby was open about it and admitted that he would get a commission on anything we bought. We told him up front that there was no way we were going to buy anything, but if he wanted to make a quick stop - no more than 30 minutes or so, that would be find. Just as long as we were on the road to Mathura by 5pm, we were game.
The workshop and store he took us to was called the Cottage Industry Emporium, Ltd. Very Indian, I thought. We were led to a room where eight boys, probably around 14 or 15 years old, were making pietra dura inlaid marble platters. Admittedly, the workmanship and the delicate patterns of the inlaid semiprecious stones was impressive, but I kept on seeing child labor laws flashing before my eyes. I asked them how long a single piece, about 15 inches in diameter, would take to finish. "One month," the emporium manager said. I assumed these kids weren't allowed a 9-to-5 lifestyle, so I can only imagine how many hours were put into each platter.
After being taken through a series of rooms full of stones, silks, saris, silver, jewelry, pottery, carvings, carpets, and perfumes, we politely thanked them but declined any purchases, citing the enormous price tags of hundreds and even thousands of dollars per item. We then headed back to Bobby's home base, where all the drivers hung out while waiting for their next assignment. We parted company with Philip and exchanged email addresses so we could get copies of each other's pictures. After taking a picture, we said goodbye to Bobby and our anonymous, quiet driver, as were to now take a minibus to Mathura while they headed home for the night. We paid RS 550, just as he had original quoted, but we threw in another 200 rupees for good measure. All in all, at about eight bucks a person, it wasn't a bad way to spend the day.
Susanne and I hopped into the minibus with our new driver and hit the road. The first hour of the 90-minute trip to Mathura was pretty dull, apart from a brief stop at a train crossing which allowed us to get out for few minutes and watch men on bicycles play chicken with the oncoming locomotive. But once the sun set around 6pm, the real adventure kicked into high gear. While driving Indian-style in the daytime was fun and exciting, at night it was terrifying. Indian drivers, apparently, aren't big fans of using their lights at night, except to flash other cars while passing them for driving too slowly. I felt like I was playing the old Atari 2600 game Night Driver, but instead of hurling down a pitch black, semi-deserted highway, we were hurling down a pitch black, traffic-laden, occasionally paved road that included horse-drawn carts, autorickshaws, bicycles, pedestrians, dogs, hogs, and cows. To top it all off, once we reached what appeared to be Mathura, our driver got lost. He had no idea where the train station was. If it had been any closer to our train's scheduled departure time, I think I might have lost my cool. But since we had three hours to kill there, I relaxed and hoped for the best. Within 20 minutes or so, the driven had gotten enough assistance from the locals that we made it to the train station with plenty of time to spare.
Mathura Railway Station is a swarm of people, luggage and animals coming and going all over India. It was refreshing compared to the Agra and New Delhi stations, for Mathura attracted few westerners apart from the occasional Hare Krishna pilgrim, so there were no touts whatsoever to harass us. The ticket windows had hundreds of people, if not as many as a thousand of them, jammed inside the covered courtyard that made up the entryway into the station. Though the locals stood their ground when it came to queuing for tickets, the lines were occasionally broken up by a chai-wallah offering hot tea or a wandering cow that had made its way into the station.
The train information board was all in Hindi, and the man behind the inquiry desk couldn't speak a word of English, so I made a feeble attempt to find our train number listed on the board, just to see if I could spot a time listed with it. I couldn't find it. I was getting a little concern at this point, so we wandered around until we found someone we hoped would speak English. We eventually did - a large man in a Nehru jacket, Congress hat and thick black glasses. He wore a large gold class ring on his right hand. He kindly helped us and explained that our train would come in on schedule just before 9pm on platform one, just out the next door.
As we walked the platform in search of a place to relax, I was struck by the clothes of the people waiting for the trains. I guess they were dressed just like everyone else in Uttar Pradesh, but now that I had a few hours to sit back and people-watch, the character and style of the local dress began to make sense before my eyes. So many people in heavy shawls and scarves wrapped around their heads. If you had shown me a snapshot of this scene, I would have labeled it as a train station in Kabul or Isfahan. The continuing Persian and Central Asian influence on northern India was everywhere, it seemed. I could hardly wait to see what the south of India would be like, since the Aryans, Persians and Mughals never conquered those cultures.
We sat in the First Class waiting room where we talked to a nice family from Bhopal. Their little girl, who looked around 11, spoke very good English for her age. We talked about where we were going, where she had traveled in India, and what her favorite places were (Gujerat, in western India - interesting choice). After they left for Bhopal, I went outside on the train platform, plopped myself down, and made a feeble attempt to capture the scene in a drawing. My rough image of the platform was pretty good, but I lack the artistic talent or the motor skills to draw details of all the animals and people that were there. So not wanting to ruin the drawing with lots of stick figures, my platform picture is much less crowded than the original scene that night.
At 8:30pm, 30 minutes before the train's schedule departure, an old man who was also going to Varanasi said that the train was running an hour late. No biggy, I thought. At just before 10pm, we headed out with our backpacks to platform one. We waited for a while, but there was no sign of the train. Meanwhile, a crowd had gathered next to us. Clearly we had become the main attraction at Mathura Railway Station that night, being the only westerners there. Soon we were approached by a well dressed young man, about 20ish. Being the suspicious person that I am, at first I was cautious about the questions he asked us. Soon enough, though, it became quite apparent that he was just a typical Indian college kid interested in America and wanting to practice his English.
We talked to him and his friend for about an hour (yes, the train was getting later and later). They were both juniors at Benares Hindu University in Varanasi, studying engineering. We talked about the US elections, world politics, Chicago, and other things, though Susanne and I did most of the yakking. They commented on our big backpacks and how uncomfortable they looked - "Why do you Americans and Australians wear them? They must be bad for your back," one of them said. I insisted he try mine on. "Not bad," he said, after walking in circles with my 25 pounds of clothes and junk on his back.
Finally, our train arrived soon after 11pm. Our university friends first took us to the end of the train, where they had thought our reserved berths were. It turned out we were all the way on the other end, and fearing that the train was about to leave, we made a mad dash for it. We hurdled along, steering around crowds, cows, and luggage, but just before we reached our car, I accidentally collided with a large metal dolly that was being used for loading the luggage on board. I smashed both of my shins into it and nearly did a forward flip over the thing, but I somehow managed to keep both feet planted on the ground (good thing my backpack provided ample ballast to keep me down). As my legs throbbed with pain, we jumped onto the train as it began to roll away from the platform. That was a first for me.
We found the assistant conductor, who started to review our tickets. "One person only," he then said, to our complete shock. I showed him the part of our ticket that said "Persons: 2," to which he responded by pointing to his manifest. Indeed, my name was listed, but not hers. Meanwhile, I began to notice a warm trickle down each leg - apparently the collision with that dolly had done more damage than I had thought initially. Thank god I was wearing jeans or I might had split my skin through to the bone.
Meanwhile, I began to argue persistently with the conductor. "Look, I paid for my two sleepers. What do you want to do, throw one of us off while the other goes solo to Varanasi?" He then started to scribble something down in Hinglish. "40 rupees," he then said to me with a straight face. I knew there were space on the train, but this guy was going to insist on a kickback just to keep our asses from getting tossed of the train at the next stop. "40 rupees, problem solved," he repeated. I then realized that 40 rupees was the equivalent of about $1.10, so if it was going to take a measly $1.10 bribe to avoid unnecessary misery, so be it. 40 rupees.
After our conductor extortionist completed his paperwork, he led us to our sleepers. Unfortunately, we didn't have our own compartment as we had assumed. Instead, we were in a pair of two-tiered bunks that lined the passageway down the train car. Only a curtain separated us from passengers as they walked back and forth down the car. We were given sheets and pillows, but the bunk itself was a little too firm for comfort. It was like camping on a sheet of tight rubber. I was reminded of the Star Trek: Next Generation episode where Data and Picard were getting a ride on a Klingon destroyer. Their compartment was bare, apart from a slab of steel protruding from the wall, which served as their bunk. "This is not a pleasure craft, Picard," the Klingon captain hissed. "This is not a pleasure craft, Sahib," I could hear that damn conductor say to me in my head. I made my bed, washed off my wounds with some handy-wipes and neosporin, and settled in for the night.
Yet despite the hustle and bustle from other passengers skimming by my bunk, I slept rather well. At first, the sleeper was unbearably hot, then cold, then hot again. I became adept at removing and replacing my shirt and sheets as necessary, depending on the current conditions. Then, at some god-awful hour of the night, I awoke to find Susanne plopped on top of my legs. It took me a second to regain consciousness and recognize her, so my first instinct was to give her a good swift kick to get her away from my backpack. Fortunately, I restrained myself for a second to figure out who she was. Once I got my bearings, I asked her what she was doing there. "I am sooo sick," she moaned, apparently after having spent the better part of the evening running back and forth to the Indian-style squat toilet. There wasn't much I could do besides give her some water, and a few Peptos, but I then remembered I had packed some Imodium AD for emergencies. She took one and climbed back into bed. I fell back asleep quickly.
Posted by acarvin at 08:33 PM
November 11, 1996
Qutub Minar, Humayun's Tomb, and a taste of Indian bureaucracy
Susanne and I woke up with a clear plan of being out the door by 7am, seeing some sights for a couple of hours, and then getting to the railway station and the Indian Airlines offices to purchase tickets and reconfirm flights. Task number one was foiled by one too many hits of the snooze bar on our alarm clock. By the time we got our act together it was 8:30am, so we autorickshawed directly to the New Delhi Railway Station, an immense concrete sprawl of rickshaws, coolies, beggars, would-be tourguides, stray dogs, stray luggage, stray children, and lepers, not to mention the thousands of travelers actually trying to go someplace else.
We had been told to go to the tourist office for tourist quota tickets - regular reserved tickets were booked solid for at least two weeks. Traveling during Diwali wasn't going to be simple. I approached the inquiry desk to ask where the office was, and the man behind the counter motioned at me to meet him at the entrance to his office. He asked where we wanted to go, and we said we wanted to reach Agra first thing Tuesday morning and then catch a train to Varanasi later that same night. He shook his head as only Indians do - a left-to-right wobble that means OK - and said, "Acha, give me money and I will arrange it, no problem..." At first I was more than a little suspicious for obvious reasons. He then told us to think about it, and he returned to the inquiry desk, getting back to his regular duties for a couple of minutes.
He soon returned with forms labeled 'VIP Quota Reservations" and then started to quote train schedules and times that I knew were correct, according to that day's commuter schedule in the local English paper. Being that this man came from behind the inquiry desk and not from out of an autorickshaw, I went against my better judgment gave him some cash for the tickets. He sent another man from the office scurrying up the stairs to who-knows-where in order to work a reservations miracle for us. I concluded that the odds were in our favor, because the man went back to work, well aware that we were waiting outside the only exit to his office. If I had to wait all day to get our tickets or our money back, I would do just that.
30 minutes passed. I started to give him dirty looks while he gesticulated apologetically and mouthed the words "No problem, no problem." Susanne tried to strike up a conversation with three Japanese girls, but to no avail - she overestimated their English skills. After another 10 minutes or so, just as I was ready to give this guy an all-American tongue lashing, his young friend returned with our tickets. I took some time to review them and make sure everything was in order, while the man and his gopher waited anxiously for my approval. I told him everything was fine and I gave him 20 rupees as thanks, while he looked back proudly with an expression that screamed "I said you could trust me."
The only minor snag was that the Agra-Varanasi train was full booked for days, so the only chance we'd have to get there would be to backtrack from Agra to Mathura, an hour to the north, and then catch an overnight express to Varanasi by way of Lucknow. There were plenty of ways to get to Mathura from Agra, so our big concern was whether or not there would be time for us to get to Agra, see all the sights, and finally reach Mathura in order to catch the train.
We took an autorickshaw back to Connaught Circus and the Indian Airlines office. We had been warned that the lines for reconfirming tickets were often horrendously slow, so I was prepared for the worst. Instead, we found ourselves in a spacious office with no less than 10 separate counters. I quickly got to an agent who began to look over our tickets. He then developed a puzzled look on his face. "Where are your tickets to Agra, Jaipur, Dhaka, and Amritsar?" he asked. I said we hadn't purchased any. He said we had reservations, and wanted to know why were weren't going there. It turns out that our travel agent in the US booked reservations for every city we brainstormed a trip to, but never bothered to cancel them after we had settled on a final itinerary.
The agent was not pleased. He started to cancel the incorrect reservations, but then he said that there wasn't a flight from Kathmandu to Calcutta on the 21st of November, despite what it said on our tickets. Somehow, our travel agent had booked us on a flight that didn't exist on that particular day. We were potentially stranded in Kathmandu for another day. The reservations agent was clearly irritated by all of this. To make matters worse, he said he saw no trace of our other tickets to Madras and then back to Delhi, but if I wanted it, he would book them for us. My blood began to boil as I considered the prospects of having to repurchase over $700 worth of tickets all over again. But we had little choice but to do whatever he asked, so I frustratingly said, "Just do it." At this point, the computer network crashed. It was almost funny. In fact, I somehow remained mostly unstressed about the situation and patiently sat down with Susanne, who was enjoying the antics of a small French boy.
The computer terminals were up and running 15 minutes later. I occupied myself with a young Sikh boy sitting on the counter. We started to make funny faces at each other, but once I ran out of all the contortions I could think of, he got bored and looked away. Susanne was always better at this kind of stuff. By now, though, the agent was wrapping up his work with us. He handed me my tickets with some new printouts, and then told us to have a pleasant journey. That was it. No more reissued tickets, no new credit card bills. It was almost noon and the morning was wasted, but at least we had the peace of mind knowing that our travel arrangements for the rest or the trip were secure.
We hired an autorickshaw driver for a couple of hours to shuttle us around to some of Delhi's more distant sites. The driver took us south through the heart of Sir Edwin Lutyen's New Delhi - India Gate, Rajpath, and the Secretariat Buildings, all of which looked oddly out of place, perhaps more at home in Washington DC, Paris, or even Nurenburg. The marbled Edwardian grandeur of New Delhi was distinctly un-Indian - another clear reminder of the immortality of the British Raj.
Our first stop was the Qutub Minar, a 12th-century mosque and mausoleum complex best known for its minar, a gargantuan 240-foot tower, the tallest stone tower in the world. We could see the minar in the the distance as we drove closer - the workmanship and detail was magnificent. The minar was constructed by Qutub-id-din Aibak, the Afghan slave-general who sacked Delhi in 1193 for his master, Muhammad of Ghur, and became its sultan upon Ghur's death in 1206, thus beginning an Islamic reign of north India that was to last until 1858.
The ticket line to get in the complex was long, but a woman's only line helped speed up the process. After squeezing through a crowd of autorickshaw-wallahs, postcard salesmen and snake charmers, we entered the site. It was lush and green, with hundreds of Indian tourists and school groups meandering the grounds. We first approached Qutub-Id-Din's mosque, the oldest in India. Much of it was in ruin, but certain sections were still in impressive condition, with several dozen columns gracing the courtyard. In the center of the mosque was a 30-foot iron pillar, estimated to be at least 1500 years old. Yet the pillar has never shown any signs of rust - its iron composite still baffles scientists today. To the right of the mosque lay the ruins of an unfinished tower, the Alai Minar, begun by one of Qutub's successors, Ala-ud-din Khalji, about 100 years later. Apparently Ala-ud-din planned to build this monument twice as high as Qutub's, but he died suddenly and interest in the project soon waned, leaving a huge stump of stone that looked a lot like a replica of Devil's Tower in Wyoming.
We went to the left through the mosque's mausoleum complex. The style of the stone cutting and archways was very reminiscent of an English abbey, it seemed. We then visited the Qutub Minar itself. Up close, it looked like an ancient stone lighthouse - I kept on thinking of the Pharos of Alexandria and whether or not it might have looked similar. Qutub-ud-din's name literally means 'axis of the faith' - an appropriate choice considering how central this tower was to his newly founded sultanate. We weren't allowed to climb inside the tower, due to a stampede incident a few years back that killed several schoolkids. A shame, really, for the view must have been magnificent.
After wandering through the gardens with our driver (a nice enough man but with questionable profit motives), we left for the tomb of Humayun (reigned 1530-1540, deposed 1540-1555, reigned again 1555-1556), the second of the six great Mughal emperors, which therefore made him a direct descendant of Timur and Genghis Khan. Just outside the tomb complex we drove around a small circus, in which stood a large blue domed structure, the Sabz Burj (literally, 'blue tower'). The ancestral link between Mughal architecture and its Central Asian and Turkic forebears was obvious here - its dome and beautiful blue tiles could have just as easily graced the the Registan of Samarkand or the mosques of Bukhara.
Entrance to the tomb was a dollar, most of which went to the outrageous camera fees, as usual. We could see the dome of the tomb jutting out beyond a secondary entrance, and to the right were several temple structures that appeared to be several centuries older than the 16th century tomb (turns out I was wrong - they were contemporary mosques at the time, but had fared less successfully over the centuries). We continued ahead through the next entrance gate and then found ourselves confronting the tomb itself, 100 yards ahead down a gardened path. The tomb was splendid, with red and white sandstone and intricate geometric designs of stars of David and swastikas, both ancient Hindu symbols adopted by the Mughals. The domed tomb complex was on a raised platform which required one to climb a dozen steps on a steep incline. The angle became the obvious butt of jokes, for old Humayun himself died when he tripped down the high steps of the library which stood just to the right of the tomb.
We walked clockwise around the structure until we found the tomb's main entrance on the south side. The tomb itself was a simple marble slab lying directly below the dome. The acoustics inside caused all sound to echo well, which Susanne tested with a short soprano burst when no one else was around. We then climbed down the south side stairs and checked out the aforementioned library of Humayun's unfortunate demise. No one seemed to be going inside of it, but we soon realized why. We poked our heads in and saw scores of bats perched on the ceiling. An unusual rotten smell that we quickly concluded was bat guano permeated the air. Not feeling very welcome, we turned around and strolled back towards the exit, getting a nice picture of a brahma bull munching on some grass in front of the tomb.
We lazily continued along the gardens on the perimeter of the tomb and made our way to the exit. It was now 3pm, and we were quite hungry and parched. A quick bottle of coke helped quench our thirst so we decided to walk down the road to find the tomb of Nizamuddin, the great Sufi saint who died penniless after giving his wealth to the poor of Delhi, including Hindus as well as fellow Muslims. At first we couldn't find the proper side street that lead to the entrance, so we backtracked and turned at the first alley we could find. If we couldn't locate the tomb quickly, we'd skip it, give into our stomachs' demands and return to Connaught for some grub.
We were not prepared for what we found down that alley. Despite the fact we were in New Delhi, we stumbled onto an alleyway that was more tragic and destitute than anything we had seen in Old Delhi. The streets were teaming with Sufi worshippers heading to mid-afternoon prayers at the Nizamuddin shrine, which lay somewhere further ahead. But along the gutter was one wretched leper after another, missing arms, legs, ears, and other indescribable deformities. A small girl, no older than four, filthy and in tatters, began to follow us around trying to grab my hand with every step, while crying, "For food, sir; for food, madam," over and over. No matter where we walked, she followed, inches from my side.
Even though we were a mere dozen or so yards from Nizamuddin's tomb, Susanne and I knew that were not up for the stressful task of visiting it today. So we walked as fast as possible to the closest autorickshaw stand. The little girl followed. We climbed in the rickshaw. She tried to reach in through the side of the cab, grabbing my leg. We began to drive off. She ran along side the rickshaw as fast as she could, until we finally speeded away at too great a speed for her to keep up. We soon arrived at Connaught Place, stunned and silent. I couldn't believe how much the scene at the shrine had affected us. Connaught was such a different world compared to the third world slums around Nizamuddin - now we were among clothing stores, cafes, travel agencies, banks, and upscale shops. I couldn't believe that only a couple of kilometers separated these two existences.
It was now about 4pm. Lunch had turned into an early dinner, so we decided to try the United Coffee Shop. It was a lovely place with high ceilings, large mirrors, and chandeliers, with every table packed with upscale Indians and a few westerners thumbing through Lonely Planet guides. We were soon seated, so we ordered a paneer dosa, rogan jhosh, and a plate of naan. I even broke down and had my first beer of the trip - a large bottle of Kingfisher. Not exactly tasty, but thoroughly refreshing after a long and hot day.
The food was marvelous and the ambience was relaxing, but then they started to play a song that distinctively sounded like the Macarena. We didn't recognize it at first, for it was faster and more techno-sounding than the popular American version. But the CD continued into what was to be an hour-long international Macarenathon, with at least a dozen versions I didn't even know existed. The restaurant's other patrons continued to enjoy their meals while Susanne and I were transfixed by the music. We concluded it was conspiracy of some sort, how the Macarena had successfully penetrated every culture in the world. I was now time for the invasion to begin.
Because we knew we'd have to be at 4:30am the next day to catch the train to Agra, we lazed away the evening back at the hotel. Susanne napped while I returned to Nirula's restaurant for a yogurt and some tea that never arrived, despite several attempts to receive it. I worked on my journal for a bit, but I ended up secretly enjoying the company sitting next to me. There was a thin German man, with specs, a goatee, and covered in sweat - a spitting image of John Hurt in Midnight Express. Next to him sat a tall Tamil man, dressed in a red sweater, who said nothing and did little the entire time except play with his food. And the best of the lot was an honest-to-goodness sadhu - a Hindu holyman - about 50 years old, in saffron robes, shoeless, with long fingernails and dreadlock wrapped up into a vertical beehive. The German talked quickly in Hindi, chugging black coffee and scratching what had to be over 100 mosquito bites on his arms. The Tamil played with his food, still not saying a word. And the sadhu, of all things, chainsmoked while drinking a bottle of Black Label beer and eating two personal pizzas at once. I had found my amusement for the evening.
I returned to the hotel room around 7pm. Susanne was out cold, and when I woke her up, she ordered me away for another hour. I grabbed a Teem from the fridge (yes, they still drink Teem in India) and sat out in the veranda on a wicker sofa under a slowly spinning fan. As I sat there and wrote, I felt as if I were a guest of some dying vestige of the Raj. By 8pm, I returned to the room and Susanne began to stir. We watched the news and some hilarious British children's puppet program that had been redubbed into Hindi. Bedtime was 10pm - that would give us a good six hours to sleep and dream of a successful lightning raid on Agra the next day.
Posted by acarvin at 09:13 PM
November 10, 1996
Getting to know Old Delhi
We got up to the sound of street traffic around 9:30am. I felt I had had a good night's sleep, but Susanne argued otherwise - apparently I had awoken in the night, completely startled and confused, and then began to talk about the FBI in my sleep. She guessed that it had something to do with watching "The Rock" during the flight. I surmised it was some kind of X-Files thing.
Susanne didn't have much of an appetite yet, but I insisted on getting something to nosh on, so we stopped at Nirula's sweet shop. I got a "cheese biscuit," which I soon discovered was a biscuit of cheese-flavored dough and hot chilis. Not exactly what I was used to for breakfast. We walked around Connaught Circus to the Indian tourist bureau, where a nice Punjabi man gave us suggestions for purchasing train tickets to Agra and Varanasi, as well as what reasonable taxi fares around Delhi should be. He also confirmed a rumour I had read somewhere on the Net - the Taj Mahal was closed on Mondays for renovations. This now meant we'd have to go to Agra on Tuesday with our backpacks, store them somewhere, and then catch an overnight train to Varanasi. I wasn't looking forward to figuring out the logistics for that.
We left the tourist office and had a couple of delicious masala dosas for brunch at the Kovil restaurant. From Connaught Circus, we hailed an autorickshaw and headed north to Old Delhi to visit the city's Jama Masjid ("Friday Mosque"), the enormous 17th century Mosque of Shah Jehan, the Mughal emperor best known for building the Taj Mahal. Our timing was quite poor, though - noon prayers had just begun, and the mosque would be closed for the next hour. We decided to hike down and across the crowded streets of Old Delhi, through the maidan (Delhi's equivalent of a Central Park) to Lal Qila, the Red Fort. The fort is an immense red Agra sandstone complex built by Shah Jehan just before 1650. It took us 20 minutes just to walk alongside the fort's western wall and moat to reach the main entrance. While Susanne stopped to tie her shoes, we were accosted by two women in saris who pinned flags of India on our shirts and demanded a donation for their "school." Just to get them to go away, I handed them two rupees, about six cents, to which they responded by saying "Americans must pay paper money," which I ignored as we walked towards the ticket office.
We purchased our passes and entered through the enormous Lahore Gate. Inside we walked through a long covered bazaar, the Chatta Chowk, which was packed with touristy gift shops (interestingly enough, the Chowk was a bazaar in Shah Jehan's time as well). At the end of the bazaar we reached a small roundabout which was followed by another red sandstone building, the Naqqar Khana ('the drum house'). In the Mughal years, the khana was a musicians' quarters, who would perform the the emperor five times a day from its second story. Now, though, it was an empty shell.
I was beginning to wonder when this would get interesting, but finally we found ourselves exiting the structure and entering an elongated grassy courtyard, at the end of which was the Diwan-I-Am, the emperor's hall of public audiences. In its prime, the Diwan and the Naqqar Khana were connected by an ornate covered hall, but the centuries had taken their toll and at that was left was the walkway and the greenery which graced both sides of it. We admired the Mughal architecture of the Diwan, a hypostyle hall nine bays wide and three bays deep. The emperor would use the hall as the place where citizens of the empire could come to redress for grievances and settle disputes. The Mughals prided themselves on their sense of justice, so they would always maintain a Diwan-I-Am at each of their palaces. Eventually, we made our way round to the back of it, where we found acres of grass and gardens, dotted by several white sandstone complexes. The gardens were in the Persian-influenced charbagh style - square grids of grass bisected by marble irrigation channels. It was a peaceful and relatively quite place to relax, so we lounged in the grass for awhile to take in the scenery. As we sat there, we noticed the echo of a feedback-riddled PA system that was emanating from a large circus tent on the northeast corner of the maidan. The effect of the sounds floating over the green pastures of the Fort and its gardens was quite surreal, but yet seemed totally normal for Delhi - a city of so many contradictions and oddities.
Susanne and I spent about 45 minutes wandering from hall to hall in the gardens. At the far end of the fort was the Diwan-I-Khas, the hall of private audiences, where Shah Jehan would sit on his legendary Peacock Throne- that is, until it was hustled away to Tehran by invading Persians in the 18th century. As its name would suggest, the Diwan-I-Khas was where the emperor would meet privately with his ministers and members of his court. The interior of the Diwan was covered with complex pietra dura inlaid engravings of bejeweled flowers. And along the edges of the walls read the famous Mughal exclamation:
"If there be a paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here."
A paradise it must have been, but even today it is an insular one, for just behind the Diwan and beyond the moat we could see an enormous open-air bazaar crowded with thousands of Delhi-wallahs. We could tell from our view next to the throne platform that this bazaar wasn't the type hoarded by throngs of tourists; instead, it was a true-to-life south Asian flea market where everything from carpets to camels could be hocked for the right amount of rupees.
After a brief visit to a dark and dank museum of Mughal art, we paused for a couple of cokes at a refreshment stand. We relaxed for about 20 minutes, which was time well spent for people-watching. The vast majority of visitors going by were Indian tourists, apart from the occasional westerner, who could easily be spotted with a copy of the Lonely Planet guide in hand and that damn paper Indian flag pinned to their chests (as an aside, I should probably point out here that Sus and I had earlier removed our flags, for we concluded they were the equivalent of us wearing badges that announced to Delhi's many touts, "We are tourists, please take advantage of us.")
We headed out of the Red Fort and crossed the road to Chandni Chowk, the largest bazaar in Old Delhi. The Chowk ran east-west for about a mile, with dozens of tributary bazaars radiating down its many alleyways. In Shah Jehan's day, Chandni Chowk was the central commercial thoroughfare of Shahjehanabad, the vast capital city he built after abandoning his other great capital, Agra. Today it is still just as alive with activity, hopelessly congested with buyers, hawkers, and gawkers, though it appeared that most of the items being sold were day-to-day things like shoes, mops, even TV sets. Susanne and I had planned to work our way west and then southeast back to the Jama Masjid, but first we took a side trip down one of the many alleyways extending south of the Chowk. The alley was alive with people preparing for tonight's Diwali festivities, lighting candles, stringing garlands of orange carnations onto strings. A woman began to sing and dance as a man drummed a tabla. A crowd soon formed. It seemed like such a timeless moment, reminiscent of the winding alleyways of Cairo's Khan-al-Khalili or some other eastern market.
As we returned to Chandni Chowk and hung a left towards the road to Jama Masjid, I started to develop what I soon realized was a caffeine withdrawal headache. It became worse with each rickshaw horn blast and with each cry of the chai-wallahs passing by - a tortuous cacophony that was devoid of any potential relief. After ten minutes or so of this, I noticed that my aches were affecting my concentration, and that we were becoming somewhat lost. I felt like we were heading in the right direction, but the distance we needed to travel was much further than I had imagined. Our solution to our dilemma literally ran over my foot - a bicycle rickshaw. We hopped on board, sitting on a thin rubber pad that clung precariously to the bicycle. As we rode along, I could tell that my concerns were justified, for the trip to Jama Masjid took 15 minutes, even by bike.
At the mosque, we climbed the steps once again and started to walk in when we were reminded to take off our shoes. As fate would have it, by the time we bared our feet, the muezzin called out to announce the beginning of late afternoon prayers. Once again, we had been beaten by the tenets of Islam. Before a mullah was able to tell us to leave, we got a brief look at the immense courtyard inside the mosque, which easily held over 25,000 people in prayer. If we had time, we'd try again tomorrow.
Now in an autorickshaw, we rode south into New Delhi and into Connaught Circus. With the passing of each kilometer, we could here more and more cherry bombs and firecrackers going off as the evening Diwali celebrations were warming up. Fireworks, candles and other incendiaries are an intregal part of Diwali, which in Sanskrit literally means 'a row of lights.' For Hindus, Diwali commemorates the mythical return home of Ramayana hero Rama with his wife, Sita. Rama had been long exiled in the forest by the trickery of his stepmother, Queen Kaikeyi - these were his wilderness years, or vanvaas. As a subplot during this exile, Sita was kidnapped by Ravana, the evil god-king of Lanka. After a fantastic battle, Ravana and his troops were destroyed - it was a pyrrhic victory for Rama. When he returned home with Sita to take their place as King and Queen of Ayodhya, the streets of the city were lined with candles and lamps - hence Diwali, a row of lights. Today, Diwali serves as a reminder of the event, as well as the beginning of the Hindu new year and a celebration of success and prosperity.
Back at the hotel, we decided to nap for a while and then head back out around 7pm to get some dinner. When the time came, our plan was to cross over Connaught Place to the southern side of the circus, where there was a string of cheap, yet well-recommended restaurants. Exiting the hotel, we were greeted with mouthful of sulphur as the smoke of dozens of firecrackers drifted down the street. Small explosions occurred all around us, but we didn't comprehend the extent of it until we reached the center ring of the circus. It was, in all honesty, like a war zone - continuous, indiscriminate concussions exploded in every direction. Very few fireworks could actually be seen in the sky; only the incessant thunder and the billowing clouds of smoke were present. It was like a big-city 4th of July celebration, yet without all the bombs bursting over a centralized point. It was festive anarchy.
All of Delhi, both Hindus and Muslims, were celebrating from the rooftops - and that turned out to be a small problem for us. After a full circle around Connaught, we couldn't find a single open restaurant. Apart from the occasional small crowd experimenting with a 50-foot string of cherry bombs, not a soul was in sights. We did, however, manage to pick up a new friend in the form of a thin black dog that followed our every step for 20 minutes. It was eventually scared off by a poodle that started to bark at me as it was being walked by a large family.
Having completed the circuit round Connaught, we found ourselves back at Nirula's whose four restaurants were open (Nirula's, it turns out, is sort of a weird Indian hybrid of Howard Johnson's hotel/restaurant chains, but with better accommodations). The smoky cafe of their main restaurant was filled with upper-middle class Indians, enjoying late night beers and dosas. I ate a mixed tandoori platter, while Susanne attempted to enjoy what had to be the worst French onion soup ever made. Her meal was saved with a nice piece of naan and some curried dal that had come with my dinner.
As we sat there, eating our dinner and observing the restaurant's other patrons, we both had simultaneous flashbacks to two-in-the-morning munchy runs at the local Village Inn or IHOP back in high school. Except at this IHOP, the locals munched on samosas and Zen pancakes (regular old pancakes, but made out of lentil flour, I think). The West had arrived with a vengeance in India, and it was beginning to give me heartburn. Time for a couple of Pepto Bismols and a good night sleep.
Posted by acarvin at 10:18 PM
November 09, 1996
The Marathon Plane Trek from DC to Delhi
Going to work on Friday morning seemed almost laughable. As everyone at CPB knew, today was the day that Susanne and I were going on our latest worldly adventure. This time around, we chose India and Nepal as our destination, both of which had been on our short lists of must-see countries for quite some time. Having spent six months planning and organizing this trip, we were now rearing to go. My only obstacles were a long morning at work and intolerable weather in the afternoon. So because I didn't have to be at the airport before 3pm, I figured it was worth going into work for at least part of the day, if only to avoid wasting a precious vacation day.
Despite beginning that Friday morning with several productive meetings (wrapping up Civic Networking Grant affairs before I left), inevitably the morning slowed to a snail's pace as I set there in my office, staring at my backpack and worrying whether or not the trip would even get off the ground due to a severe storm that was expected to hit DC mid-afternoon. By the time noon came around, I couldn't take it anymore. I strapped on my backpack, walked the halls of CPB saying "I'm outta here" to anyone who cared, and left for the Metro with the dwindling hope that I would at least get to Dulles before the storm broke wide open. I was wrong.
Thanks to a rare case of forethought the night before, I had sprayed my backpack with layers of waterproofing, so I managed to keep it relatively dry en route to Dulles. The rest of me, unfortunately, was soaked. Upon arrival at Dulles, I checked in, headed to the gate where I was to meet Susanne, and began the process of drying off with a fresh pair of socks.
Because of the storm, Susanne's plane from Denver was a little late. It was now 4:30pm, and our flight was to start boarding at 5pm. We hustled over to the gate, sat down, and began what was to be an infuriatingly long wait. One fateful mishap befell another - our plane was two hours late because of the storm, the new crew was late because their minivan died on the way to Dulles. By the time we boarded the plane and started to taxi, it was 10pm. We had assumed that our scheduled five-hour layover in Amsterdam would have been sufficient. Needless to say, the massive delay at Dulles put us into a mild panic, which was made worse by the computer-generated arrival time that was flashing on the plane's TV monitors: 10am, then 10:10am, 10:15am, 10:20am. The longer we taxied, the later our projected ETA got, and our flight out of Amsterdam to Delhi was scheduled to depart at 10:55am. Potentially, this still gave us enough time for us to make it, but it didn't exactly quell the acids in my stomach. Finally, once we took off and started on our path towards Newfoundland, the monitor's ETA stabilized at 10:22am, Amsterdam time. For the rest of the flight, the arrival time remained stable, so we felt somewhat better about our chances of making it to Delhi this weekend.
Saturday morning, the plane arrived at Amsterdam Schipol Airport at 10:24. Close enough. By the time we pulled into the gate and left the plane, it was 10:30 and we were ready to make a run for it. But as we entered the terminal, we were greeted by a KLM rep waving an "875-Delhi/Calcutta" sign. She informed us that she was there to escort us and about two dozen other travellers to the Delhi flight, which was being held for as long as it would take to get all of us on the plane. My loyalty to KLM began at that moment. Thanks to them, we made it on board - a 747 seemingly packed with hundreds of Indian American kids going back to the old country for Diwali, the five-day Hindu festival of lights that began the next day. I felt like I was on a really big field trip. Glad I remembered to get my note signed by my parents.
During the eight-hour flight, we enjoyed delicious Indian food for lunch and laughed our way through an edited-for-inflight-entertainment viewing of "The Rock," starring Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage. I cannot begin to stress the sheer awfulness of that film. Perhaps the highlight of the flight, though, was the flightpath itself. Thanks to the use of global positioning satellites and our TV monitors, we could observe our plane's journey down the Balkans, across Bulgaria and the Dardanelles into Turkey, east through Anatolya, skimming the northern Iraqi border into Iran by way of Mount Ararat. As sunset approached, we could see the red, snowcapped mountains of northwest Iran - the light refracting through the dense atmosphere on the horizon created a dazzling array of colours. Leaving Iranian airspace, we squeezed just under southern Afghanistan into Pakistan, eventually descending into northern India. We landed at Delhi around 11:30pm local time - for Susanne, a 12 1/2 hour time zone difference. We were exhausted.
Immigration took 20 minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. I was concerned that our hotel in Delhi, Nirula's, wouldn't hold our reservations this late (they had already been cancelled once due to a misunderstanding by way of email). Fortunately, outside customs there was an information desk that kindly called the hotel and reconfirmed for us. Everything was ok. This made the rest of the trip into New Delhi a breeze, with the stress of insecurity and loss of shelter having been lifted from our tired shoulders.
The Delhi taxi port was a horrorshow. Hundreds of people jammed themselves behind a railing, all trying to vie for our transport needs. Thanks to some solid advice from other India travelers over the Internet, we ran the gauntlet of touts and successfully found the official cab stand, which offered flat rate rides to New Delhi for RS 190. Hiring the cab was easy. Getting to Nirula's wasn't. First, the cab wouldn't start - the driver had another cabby push us while he cranked it up. Then, the front passenger-side door began to open every time we took a left turn. I offered to hold it closed, but the cabby insisted that he stop and relock it each time, as if his pride would hurt by a concession to my assistance. Halfway to New Delhi, he stopped the taxi again, but this time he opened the front hood. At first, I worried that this was all an act - a "give me 1000 rupees to fix car" scam - but after a minute or so he closed the hood and we were on our way, sputtering along at 30 kph.
When we arrived at Nirula's, which was located at the L Block of Connaught Circus in New Delhi, we were approached by three large men who informed us that Nirula's would no longer accept reservations after 1am. It was 1:05am. Therefore, we would have to stay elsewhere. Susanne and I looked at each other, and I could tell that both of our scam alarms were sounding in our heads. I excused myself, squeezed through the men with Susanne in tow, and walked to the door of the hotel. As one of the men began to plead "But sir, wait, I am the manager, and you cannot stay here," Nirula's doorman let us in and the concierge greeting us with "And how many nights will you be staying with us?". Aha. I was glad to see that our suspicions were correct.
We signed in, climbed the stairs to our room, and unpacked fresh clothes to sleep in. We were on the other side of the globe, almost 10,000 miles from home, and I realized that 15 hours of air travel and an 11-hour time shift had left us pretty beat. Time for a good night sleep.
Posted by acarvin at 10:18 PM