Poop Soup

My time in this amazing country is flying by, as evidenced by my sporadic posts. It's tough to discipline myself to sit down and type when there's so much going on outside, but my mom rightly reminded me that this is the best way to preserve my memories and share it all with you!

Last weekend was probably the most fun, scary, wild, India-with-a-capital-I-N-D-I-A experience yet. Finally the whole group of Robertson Scholars got together to make a weekend trip to Varanasi, a small city on the Ganges river that is one of the holiest sites in Hinduism. We departed the Howrah train station in Kolkata on a Friday night. It is hard to imagine that there are as many people in the whole world as you see in one glance at the Howrah train station - it is massive, dingy, noisy, and absolutely packed! To get there, you must cross over the most trafficked bridge in the world over the Hooghly River, if that tells you anything. I just can't get over the teeming masses of humanity in India. Needless to say, the concept of personal space is almost non-existent.

The train trips, once you make it into the car and clean up your sure-to-be-dirty berth, are kind of fun! Maybe because I've never experienced anything like it before, not even in Europe but especially not in the US. We played Travel Scrabble before dozing off...Grandmommy would be proud, as Yousef and I dominated with a 54-point bomb: "wizard" on a triple-word score. Oh yeah!

We arrived in Varanasi close to noon and thought (oh, how naive) that we'd drop off our luggage at the Ganpati Guest House before grabbing a bite of lunch. We started off from the train station in a taxi. A word about cab fare in India: it's always negotiable and you rarely end up where you expected to be. Most drivers try to wildly overcharge tourists, so we either send Anjali, the godsend member of the group who speaks Hindi, to negotiate a rate while we hide behind a corner; or insist on the meter - that usually involves a bit of yelling. So we get in a cab at the station, which takes us maybe half a mile, the driver all the while trying to convince us that our hotel is dirty and burned down - no joke! Most drivers are in cahoots with hotels that give them a hefty commission for bringing tourists through the front door, so they have a great incentive NOT to take you where you want to go. He then drops us off, telling us he can't go any further, which turned out to be true - at the time we were skeptical - and gave some very vague directions to our hotel. We walked for a bit, then realized we still were nowhere close to our destination, and hailed cycle rickshaws. The cycle rickshaws are cramped, feel absurd and more than a bit colonial, and it became clear after a while that the drivers did NOT know how to get where we had directed them to go. We finally commanded them to stop, refused to pay the exorbitant rate they were charging, and ran into a man who said he would take us there by...boat. Yes, we arrived at our hotel on the river Ganges by rowboat, after 2 hours of transit...I think we tried every method but airplane!

We collapsed for a few minutes in the hotel, which was really quite charming and colorful. It was full of foreign tourists and my room had a great view of the Ganges and a little patio to enjoy. We then ventured out in search of lunch. The streets of Varanasi, at least close to the water, are really better described as alleyways. Even with a map I had no idea where we were. Furthermore, I have never seen a city where cows, oxen, goats, and MONKEYS share the streets so unabashedly with people. We stumbled on the Ganga Fuji restaurant and had a very extended meal - the sweetly eccentric host brought out our meals one at a time over the course of an hour and a half!

We then ventured out in search of the Golden Temple, a Hindu temple with a gorgeous gold dome. It took us ages to find, as we kept being pointed in different directions by various shopkeepers who were simultaneously assailing us with offers. You just have to keep moving or risk being hassled for hours. It was not really visible from the street, but was hidden - almost like a city within a city, for the temple was ringed with shops selling offerings for the gods. The security around the temple was draconian - I was very grateful for the female security guard considering the patdown I was given. We later realized that the extreme measures were in place because the Hindu temple and a Muslim mosque were right next to one another and India is rife with religious terrorism. We could not enter the temple itself, because we are obviously not Hindu, although a few hucksters tried to get us in for pay anyways. But it was cool to see the garlands, sweets, milk, and foods offered to the deities and the outside of the temple, as well as the monkeys casually calling to one another and carrying monkey babies (!) on their stomachs.

I suppose I forgot to mention that during the search and tour mission it was pouring rain. Monsoon season is not particularly predictable, but when it rains it pours...as time progresses it becomes more frequent, crescendoing to quite the flooded finish in August and September. By the time we returned to the hotel we were soaked to the bone, but left soon after to witness the ganga puga ceremony on the banks of the Ganges. Every night at one of the ghats (enormous steps leading down to the river, at the tops of which are scattered more than 100 small temples) a ceremony for Mother Ganges is performed. The seven young brahmin priests perform a mystical, perfectly choreographed, hour-long ritual waving incense and smoky goblets, scattering flowers, and blowing into conch shells. It was a beautiful end to a somewhat frustrating day - an absolutely captivating ritual that was so unique to this area of the world. We ended the night with dinner in a nearby hotel - well actually, I begged the waiter to serve me breakfast and actually succeded!

The next morning we woke up before dawn to experience what is at the top of every tour guide's reccommendation for Varanasi - a sunrise cruise down the river to see the morning light strike the ghats and witness the pilgrims bathing and praying in the river. Although the morning was a bit overcast it was still a beautiful, mist-laden, very spiritual time, moving silently along the banks of an ancient city. We also dropped candles in little boats into the river, accompanied by a little silent prayer from me for good health and great personal growth as I enjoy this summer. Perhaps most interesting were the burning ghats, places where the dead are dipped into the Ganges and cremated on her banks. Varanasi is a very auspicious place to die in Hinduism, because if you are cremated there the cycle of reincarnation is broken...I think. Don't quote me on this!

We returned to the hotel before 7 (I swear I have never been an early riser like I am here) and had a leisurely breakfast. We met up with Micky and Ramesh, two local boys that Anjali and Maggie had met the night before and apparently charmed into giving us a tour. We set out for the middle of town, where we would leave for a Buddhist temple. When we arrived, Micky and Ramesh zoomed off with Anjali and Maggie on the back of their motorcycles, leaving the rest of us confused and more than a little concerned. Yet the most disconcerting thing was the rising water, the more we ventured inland. It first started as a trickle, then came to the ankle, then to mid-calf. As the rain continued to pour we found ourselves thigh-deep in monsoon flooding!!! With the aid of cell phones the entire group met at a gas station - Anjali and Maggie returning when the waters were too much for the motorcycles, the rest of us arriving on foot or the back of a cycle rickshaw.

The flood waters were really a sight to behold. The locals seemed to be enjoying themselves, and it was fun to abandon any hope of remaining dry and splash about. But I was stopped from going in voluntarily by the realization that the poop of all those animals that wander the streets of Varanasi, as well as the trash that is never picked up, mingled in those waters, creating a hygenic horror the likes of which I had never dreamed! Ugh, it was unspeakably disgusting, and after paying an exorbitant rate to a cycle rickshaw driver to return us to the hotel we all took SCALDING showers. The rest of the morning we hung out in the hotel with the foreign tourists, swapping stories and speaking in French, while we tried to formulate a strategy for getting to the train station without going back through the nasty sewage water.

Ultimately we had a hotel employee lead us through some back streets to a waiting autorickshaw that took us to a restaurant near the train station very dry and happy, thank you very much. We spent about 3 hours as the only customers in El Palermo, a Mexican-Italian-Chinese restaurant clearly catering to Western tourists seeking a taste of something...not Indian. The train was delayed by about an hour, and the return trip was pretty miserable for a couple of very sick members of the group (thankfully I was not among them; I have yet to pay my traveller's sickness dues but I know it's coming). Our return to Kolkata couldn't have come soon enough, and I know that Maggie was very grateful for Saraj's motherly care while she was feeling sick. Best house mother ever!

Thus I survived the monsoon in Varanasi. Let me tell you, the inner princess is being quickly stamped out of me as I experience cold showers, constant stares, going to the bathroom in holes in moving trains (a feat of balance and muscle endurance), and wading through waist-deep poop soup. But it's all so much fun, and feels so intrepid and wild, that I just can't complain! I'm doing things that I NEVER thought I would do, and that's exactly the reason that I should be here at this moment in my life. Love to you all...Daron