It still seems amazing to me that we are sitting on this train right
now. Last night at 1:00 am, I could barely see the possibility. Let me
explain….
Two days ago in Pushkar (the sacred city where the god Brahma dropped
a lotus flower and Pushkar was established as a holy place, site of
one of the only main Brahma temples in the world, and of a holy lake
that thousands upon thousands of pilgrams visit each year to bathe in
[unfortunately the lake was all but dried up at this time of year due
to poor monsoons and the current dry season] but anyways…) Two days
ago in Pushkar, we arrived in the afternoon after a 5 hour early
morning train ride from Udaipur. We were on the ever faithful
internet, looking at endless combinations of train tickets to help
ourselves get north. We really wanted to visit Haridwar/Rishikesh at
this point, because the Kumbh Mela is in it's final week, and it's the
largest spiritual gathering in the planet, occurring at different holy
places in India every few years. However, all trains up there were
booked, and the prospect of 20 odd hours on a bus didn't *quite*
appeal to us. Carson found two last minute "Tatkal" seats on a train
to Delhi the following night. Tatkal seats are more expensive, because
a limited number of them are released 48 hours prior to
departure--they graciously offer limited admission (at a cost) to an
otherwise sold-out train. We journeyed over to the Pushkar post
office and had perhaps the most fun we've ever had in a post office
with the jokester postman Mr. Meena. He took us back behind the
counter, sat us down by the railway reservation computer, and told us
no way, there's no seats on any train to Delhi right now. But there
are! We insisted, as we had just seen 2 lone seats available online.
He checked, and there they were, just for us! We went ahead and bought
those, as well as a connecting train to Amritsar the same day (the
train we're sitting on now), and as soon as he pushed purchase and the
ticket printed out, the system froze and no more bookings could be
made for the time being. We had just squeezed through! We spent
another half hour there huddled around his computer as he showed us
all his Facebook friends, all his emails from friends, all his
postcards from traveler friends around the world, and photos of his
family and other tourists who have, I think, enjoyed their visit to
the Pushkar post office as much as we did.
Now the one annoyance about this ticket that we had just been lucky
enough to secure was that it departed Ajmer at 1:55 AM, and Ajmer is a
half hour bus ride or a 20 minute taxi ride from Pushkar. Now, who is
up at this hour in Pushkar? Not really anyone except for the dogs, and
at night they aren't quite as lazy and sweet looking as they seem in
the daytime! We talked with Peter, our guesthouse owner who we'd met
on our bus over from Ajmer the day before and who'd invited us to his
guesthouse. He said, no problem, his driver could pick us up at 12:45
AM and take us on over to Ajmer, for a somewhat hefty taxi fee of
course. We had dinner and packed up our things, trying to get a couple
hours of rest in before our ride. We awoke at 12:30, finished packing,
and wondered why the guesthouse attendant (I can't remember his name)
hadn't woken us up yet. We walked down two flights of stairs silently
and saw to our dismay that he was still sleeping in his bed near the
entrance. No driver in sight. No sound. No one. Uh-oh.
12:45.…12:50.…we woke him up and he turned on the bright light as we
explained no driver….He called Peter…no answer…called again…no
answer…12:55.…1:00.…1:15.…1:25.….1:30.….Meanwhile I start to get
slightly hysterical due to lack of sleep over two days, the pervasive
heat, and the worry about losing our two expensive train tickets due
to a driver's lack of hearing his alarm clock…..Peter continues to be
unreachable, and I walk out into the silent street breathing fast, and
Carson steadily watches me freak out and stays calm, and I find my
awareness split between the choice to be unattached and calm and wise
and just take things as they come and accept the situation, and then
feeling so angry and frustrated that Peter is not answering his phone,
and the driver is not there, and it's getting later and later and
later, and I asked the guesthouse guard if we could have our taxi
money back, and he said he doesn't deal with these things, and he
sighed "oh Peter!" which makes me think things like this might have
happened before….He ended up calling "the boys" who are 4 younger guys
that help out around the guesthouse. They arrived 5 minutes later at
1:35 AM, seemingly high on something, laughing, boisterous and loud in
the otherwise silent street. One of them in particular was annoying me
to no end by continuously making fun of our guesthouse attendant, who
doesn't have full use of one of his legs and has to use crutches to
get around. He kept teasing him, and I felt so disgusted by it that I
began scowling at him, and when he told me he was just having fun, I
said "I do NOT find it funny!" I felt like such a brat, with
simultaneous concern for this sweet man just taking the teasing from
this guy, like he must have to do all the time. One of "the boys"
called someone, who called someone else, and then they said a driver
was coming. By this point it was 1:40, and we're thinking, there's no
way we're going to make it, our train LEAVES at 1:55...then….at 1:44
the driver (not the original one, just some other guy who woke up out
of sleep, hopped in his van, and came to our rescue!) pulled up and we
hopped in gratefully…..We sped off (and I mean SPED!) into the night,
winding through the temple strewn small hill/mountain pass, passing
trucks and other lone night travelers in cars, down the hill into the
streets of Ajmer, winding around a cow, a rickshaw, a
tractor….honking, flashing light, speeding though driving expertly,
pulling up outside the train station, dozens of people sleeping on the
ground outside and inside, rushing in, asking an attendant where our
platform is….and there are still people standing there! It's 1:59 and
still the train has not come. We made it! For once we are ecstatic
that a train is late! We gave our driver a tip as he accompanied us
all the way to our platform, amazed that just 15 minutes prior we had
been standing in the alleyway by our guesthouse, convinced that we
were stuck in Pushkar and out 3000 rupees. What a relief that that
wasn't the case!
The experience was so interesting for me internally. I was tired and
semi delirious, and the money-to-be-lost and unavailability of other
trains was also present in my mind during my mental freak out. Things
are going to turn out how they are going to turn out, no matter what
emotional charge you have around it, yeah? I mean, if I were calm or
if I were nervous and anxious, the driver still would have come when
he did, or he wouldn't have, and I couldn't have done anything to
change that. But do I want to stress out about it and be haughty to
the people who are going out of their way to help me, or can I just
breathe and see how things turn out? I definitely vacillated between
both of these extremes last night. I breathed and closed my eyes and
settled down, and I also walked out into the silent road and started
to cry a little and just let myself GO THERE, to the place of
frustration and anger and pissed-off-ness. I think that adrenaline
helped me get through our transport and onto the train and helped to
create what I have now, a very grateful feeling to those few guys who
really helped us out last night!
Pushkar ended up being a pretty brief visit, though our time there
felt complete to us too. At other points of the year, the lake there
is full of water instead of mostly dried out as it was….you can
imagine the difference of the scenery! The main market was quite
touristy, full of clothing, incense, jewelry, travel bookers,
bookshops, holy accoutremonts such as prasad sweets, roses, rose
water, incense burners….A few sweets shops, things frying in pans of
hot ghee...We found a little health food restaurant and had our first
brown rice since, hmm, Thailand? The food there was okay, but we found
our real little heaven at Seventh Heaven Guesthouse's Sixth Sense
restaurant, up on the top floor, *beautifully* laid out, white
pillars, the view, cool music playing (Beck in India, anyone? A first
for us) and really good, clean food. We met a lovely group of
Australians there who we enjoyed talking with for a couple hours our
first night, and a little the next day too. We hired a guide named Mr.
Sharma who took Carson and I on a three hour tour of Pushkar. We
visited several temples, only two that we as non-Hindus could enter….a
Shiva/Parvati/Ganesh temple that was 1000 years old (!!!) and the very
special Brahma temple, where we gave offerings of rose petals to the
priest inside and he gave some back to us for good luck. We had the
typical Pushkar experience of meeting a Brahmin priest down by the
"lake" (they've erected 5 large cement pools for pilgrims to bathe in
since the lake is dried up)….they put rose petals in your hand, and
then have you come to the water and do a prayer with the water and the
petals, blessing everyone in your life, and then they ask for a large
amount of money to donate to them, and then you are in the middle of
what should be a sacred prayer haggling over how much money to give
them, then you agree on a (still too high) price and throw the petals
in and then they tie a piece of red string around your wrist….not our
favorite experience actually, but hopefully the prayers were good luck
and will benefit our families J We really enjoyed having Mr. Sharma
as a guide; for one, he had a sparkle and light in his eyes, and a
real gift for sharing about all of the Hindu stories of the gods. He
has studied the stories for most of his life, as his father and
father's father etc. were all in the similar priestly caste. We
circled the holy lake with him in the (hot) sun, stood aside as he
took a moment for worship of his favorite god Hanuman, and enjoyed how
having a guide already helped to deter other guides and touts from
entering our space. Plus we learned a lot about Pushkar and the
temples we visited.
Before Pushkar was Udaipur, where we spent 3 ½ days. While there,
Carson got violently ill one night and needed extra time to recover.
It seemed a similar illness that I had, but worse in it's intensity,
though it passed in the same amount of time. We were both really
scared the night it hit though, and I found myself praying out into
the world to all of our friends and family, and then to the whole
pantheon of Hindu gods and goddesses, and then even to Jesus (hey, it
was actually Easter on that day!) to come into our sweet little
Panorama Guesthouse room and help Carson get better. (Thanks friends
and families and deities and Jesus, for that was a miraculous and
swift recovery to a very frightening night!) In Udaipur we had many
near disastrous encounters with our feet and a speeding motorbike or
rickshaw (the streets are quite narrow and haphazard). We also smelled
perhaps the most strong and unpleasant smells that we've experienced
anywhere in India so far. Maybe it was the intense heat exacerbating
the condition, but never before have I been so utterly repulsed by
scents back to back to back to back! Urine, cow dung, trash, stagnant
greywater in canals, I don't even know what else, so thick that you
almost gag….lovely! Interspersed with sweet incense, or food cooking,
the pleasantness is nebulous and hard to grasp on such walks through
exhaust laden streets. But it's India, and there's a thousand other
things to catch your eye, like all the shops selling things that you
don't need, and the vendors that spotted you yesterday that you are
trying to avoid today, or the women selling fruit and vegetables, or
the temples interspersed, flames burning and incense wafting, or the
roof top restaurants beckoning. Our favorite thing to do in Udaipur
was sit on the top floor of our aptly named Panorama Guesthouse and
watch the sun set as a large orange ball into the distant mountains,
casting light across the city and the grand palace across the (water
receding) lake, and listen to the sounds of the night emerge. A myriad
of birds flocked to one particular tree near the "lake," and created a
cacophony of sounds. Bells began to ring as families did pujas in
their home; the milkman arrived downstairs in the little square
outside our guest house with his distinctive horn call, dispensing
milk out of a large metal cylindrical container strapped to his bike
to the bowls of women in the neighborhood….chanting flowing up from
nearby temples, children playing…Really gorgeous moments, those
panorama sunsets!
There is also sitting on this train now, eating a Snickers bar with
Carson as a treat.
Typing on this simple but deluxe-feeling-for-the-moment laptop as a
young street kid crawls on the floor of the train, sweeping up
everyone else's garbage in hopes of some rupees from all of us. I
think every train we've been on so far has at least one of these
children coming through, at whatever station they are inhabiting
during a stopover, and sweeping the ground, crawling around on their
knees. This morning as we approached Delhi, the tracks took us right
by many slums huddled on the edge of the railway, small haphazard
dwellings made out of whatever materials available; children playing
on an abandoned couch, a man scrubbing his face with so much soap all
his skin was white, women washing pots and pans, colorful worn laundry
hanging from a clothesline, garbage (always garbage, and always most
of that garbage is plastic). Our four hours in Delhi today were
actually enjoyable and diverse and easy, something that I had not
anticipated whatsoever! We pulled into the Old Delhi train station,
checked our bags in the cloakroom (what a good deal for 40 cents, for
them to watch our bags as we walk around, thanks for the tip Eric!)
and got a cycle rickshaw to a restaurant recommended by our trusty
Lonely Planet. Yum was it good! Haldiram's on Chadni Chawk in Old
Delhi, a bright and clean place with rows and rows of Indian sweets on
the ground floor and a pleasant air conditioned eatery up above. We
had a South Indian plate and the best masala dosa we've had yet in
India, and remembered how much we love south Indian food! YUM!! (Last
night's pleasant enough tasting meal was definitely a low light on our
north Indian meal experience, as we poured literally an entire dishful
of excess cooking oil off of both our entrees.) We took the sleek
shiny efficient underground New Delhi Metro between train stations in
Delhi, and felt like we'd left India for a minute!
India. Yes, forever a constant reflection, lesson learned,
contradiction, pleasant surprise. I realize I'm getting used to being
constantly stared out; it's almost like I don't even notice it
sometimes, and am more able to function normally at all times instead
of being distracted by it. Smiles come easier. I'm still learning the
balance of being open and receptive, and also taking care to not
invite unwanted touts of whatever kind: rickshaws, tailor made
clothing, haircuts, chai, books, jewelry, everything! It's a
difficult balance to strike at times, because I don't always want to
be closed to opportunity, but I also can't stop to talk to every
single person that wants to offer something! The henna is fading on my
hands and arms; I have more freckles and sun on my face. The sun is
sitting on the plains and fields of the Punjab state as we head to
Amritsar, the Sikh religion's holiest city and home to their
splendorous Golden Temple, which we will visit tomorrow. My body moves
with the train's rhythm. I digest MacVittie's Digestive Crackers (our
new favorite snack, imported from the UK, they taste just like graham
crackers and it's somehow comforting to eat something that is not made
in India!) While we were in Udaipur, AirAsia.com worked for us
miraculously (we'd been trying to buy tickets through them for weeks
but they have been having problems with accepting US credit cards) and
we finally purchased our tickets out of India, as well as an
end-of-trip treat of some tickets to Bali for 12 days. Paradise! Both
Carson and I are looking forward to revisiting Bali, and to the
lushness and greenness of that island land, and to the plethora of
good healthy organic food that we can eat there. And to the kind
people, and their rituals, and flower alters everywhere, and
temples….oh yes.
And so India, we are in your motherland for three more weeks, and have
a few more ideas of where to visit. After the Golden Temple, we are
going to head north to the coolness of the mountains and McLeod
Ganj/Dharamsala, the home of the Dalai Lama and so many thousands of
Tibetan refugees. We want to do some volunteering with the Tibetans
there, as well as take some hikes and maybe some yoga or Tibetan
Massage classes. Carson and I both agree that next time we come to
India, we will come at a different season than this, which is the
hottest time of the year everywhere we've been so far! In fact, I
don't think we've been below 90 degrees since our one day in Ooty
three weeks ago! After McLeod Ganj (where we might stay for a week or
so if we like it!) we want to stop by Rishikesh/Haridwar (Haridwar is
where the Ganga river begins to flow, a very holy site in India and
where the Kumbh Mela is happening now) and Rishikesh was made famous
by the Beatles in the 60's….a very holy site as well, with the Ganga
flowing through, several ashrams, and yoga yoga everywhere. We also
want to visit Vrindaven, which is Krishna's home, and Agra of course
for the Taj Mahal. Beyond that, we already booked our train tickets
east, from Agra to Varanasi, and then we will visit Bodhgaya for a
couple of days (one of the Buddha's sacred sites) before heading all
the way east to Kolkata, where we fly out of to Kuala Lumpur and Bali.
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