Left with all of India (Thanks guys)

I’ve been trying to avoid writing this for at least a week now and for a variety of reasons.  To begin with, as can be inferred from this post’s title, I resent being left with the task of describing our trip along the entire length of the subcontinent.  This burden is as daunting as it is unfair.  Still, I made my first attempt to write about India back when I was in Delhi but I got very frustrated with the overwhelming material I’m supposed to cover.  In my mind, each day–and if I really start to get carried away each hour–is worthy of mention for its novelty and excitement.  And then when I was in the middle of typing up attempt #1 the power cut out for a couple of hours.  Then I came down with chills and a high fever (which was possibly induced by the stress of writing all this!) and then I had to get on a plane to fly to Jordan, then catch the connecting flight to Israel.  And of course the past few days I’ve been discovering Israel, too distracted to sit down and face India again.  But enough.   Maybe I should quit complaining and actually talk about what I’m talking about.

Exactly one month ago today we arrived in Jodhpur, Rajasthan’s second largest city, on camels.  This is as ridiculous as it sounds.  Actually, it was  worse.  We were 4 foreigners, 3 Rajasthani men and 2 camels who had just spent 1 week crossing the desert, and it showed.   Westerners normally attract stares in India just for being foreign; imagine the looks I got while navigating my camel through the mess of cabs, autos, rickshaws, and people that comes standard in every Indian city.   In fact, it all looked something like this:

 

Sakti and I braving the steets of Jodhpur

Anyway, we got to our guest house in the end and, as Liz said, settled our dues with the camel men.  We spent the next few days doing what there is to do in Rajasthan’s “Blue City”: we took an Indian cooking class (ask us for a really good curry recipe, or how to make pakoras), chatted with the local spice dealers, wandered around blue streets and visited the magnificent Rajput fort which towers over the city. 

After three days we were done with Jodhpur and hopped on a train to Chandigarh.  Nehru described Chandigarh as “an expression of the nation’s faith in the future”; Swiss architect Le Corbusier designed it after Partition, organizing a grid system that is divided into numbered “sectors”; it’s the greenest and cleanest city in India, but also the weirdest place I’ve ever been.  The city is unnervingly quiet, sort of like a Connecticut suburb that somehow landed in the Indian state of Punjab.  The place lacks everything that makes India what it is: there’s no chaos, no color, no life–and everyone follows the traffic rules.  (Before I paint a completely biased picture of Chandigarh let me add there is one sight that makes a visit here worthwhile: http://www.nekchand.com/)  We spent one unpleasant night in the “Transit Lodge”, appropriately named, as it is indeed a hotel located in the bus station.  The next morning we were on a bus heading north to Amritsar.

Amritsar was infinitely more appealing.  Although the only attraction this city has to offer is the Golden Temple, visiting this temple (the spiritual and cultural center of Sikhism) is by no means a one day affair.  The temple really is golden, or at least plated in gold, and stunning at all hours; thousands of Sikhs visit each day and go to the temple at any time of day.  In accordance with Sikh principles of equality there is a dining hall on the temple complex open 24 hours with a sign outside welcoming people from all classes to eat at no cost.  Free accommodation is also offered at the temple, and we slept in a dorm with about twenty other foreigners for two nights.  The entire system runs on donations, and the temple’s budget is supposedly larger than Punjab’s.

From Amritsar we took a cab one afternoon to the Pakistani border.  Every day there is a ceremony in which Indian and Pakistani guards, in addition to closing the border gates, provide a highly entertaining (or maybe what I mean is shameless) show of pomp and nationalism.  Soldiers on both sides hold a shouting contest, march around, blast music (each side playing their own patriotic tune at the highest volume), try to get the audience to cheer the loudest, charge towards each other, shake hands and finally close the gates.  This all sounds utterly bizarre but I promise it is exactly what happens.  On a more serious note, we all came away from the border with a very strong image of the separation between Pakistan and India.  The audience behind the gate was small, significantly quieter, and segregated between men on one side of the arena and women wearing burkas on the other.  The audience we were sitting with could hardly fit in the arena; it was loud, colorful and at one point the women rushed to the middle of the stadium to dance to some upbeat Bollywood song.

Our next stop was Dharamsala.  We spent 24 hours there, which was a short stay for the tiresome, long bus ride north into Uttar Pradesh, but certainly worth the trip.  I’d hoped to catch the Dalai Lama giving a talk or soemthing, but apparently he spoke the day before we arrived.  Nevermind.  We learned a lot from the center of the Tibetan Government in exile, even without the Dalai Lama’s presence.  We spent the day in Mcleodganj, where the Tibetan community is based, and took a hike that led to unreal views of the Himalayas.  The next day we left at 3 am in a cab back to Chandigarh.

Yes, we were all very tired by this point.  Enthusiasm was still high, but it had to be: there was a long journey ahead of us.  We left Dharamsala early to catch our 11am train out of Chandigarh; this train, we were told, could take anywhere from 28 to 40 hours to get us to our next destination: Mumbai.  That time range alone, the uncertainty of 12 hours, not to mention the uncertainty of what to expect upon arriving–a combination of factors made the trip both daunting and mysterious.

Sophia and Joe were highly optimistic.  They expected to be in Mumbai exactly on time, 28 hours later, 3 pm the next day.  Liz and I thought we were being more realistic, and grimly prepared ourselves to pull into the station around 3 am after two days in a moving cell.  

I didn’t just brace myself for the journey to Mumbai.  Part of me was dreading what was waiting for us once we got off the train: the city itself.  I read on the way there a famous description of Mumbai as “the most appalling city of either hemisphere”.  You can imagine what this did for my mood.  The four of us knew we weren’t in for a good time.  From what I’d heard, Mumbai is the culmination of what I don’t like about Indian cities: unparalleled crowds, pollution, and poverty.  We didn’t decide to go to Mumbai because we thought we’d enjoy it; we were going to see for ourselves the most populous city in the world.

From the start I was surprised.  Sophia and Joe (the optimisists!) were right about the train–we pulled in exactly on time, after 28 hours on the train.  This phenomenon alone raised my hopes, and things only got better.  I had expected to find an urban mess, something like what we saw in Delhi: cars honking, garbage everywhere and overwhelming pollution.  What I actually found was a cosmopolitan city, with maintained colonial buildings, large trees lining the streets and well dressed business people running all over the place.  This was my first impression of the city.  I was relieved to find myself in a pleasant urban setting and not in the middle of the hellish urban chaos I’d prepared for. 

There are many sides to Mumbai.  We walked by India’s most luxurious hotels and restaurants and also went on a tour of Asia’s second largest slum.  About the latter: I was unsure about going on a “slum tour” at first, and sort of began to dread it as the tour drew nearer.  I imagined feeling excruciatingly out of place while passing by scene after scene of despair in a garbage-filled wasteland.  But my unease vanished after one minute in the Dharavi slum, located in central Mumbai between two major train lines.  We entered Dharavi from the highway, walked down a street lined with small buildings, and were led by our guide into a small block-print factory.  We were welcomed there just like everywhere else in India, we were offered chai, and went on our way.  I couldn’t believe it.

Our departure from Mumbai was madness, an experience than can be expected from a fast-paced metropolis.  The only reason why we all ended up on the train to Kerala (our next and final destination, the southernmost state in India) was because we flew along the highway on a frantic high speed train chase, just like in the movies.  To explain: we left our hotel late.  Liz had slept in by accident, had to pack up all her things that morning, so we all got in the taxi at least 20 minutes later than we should have.  10 minutes into the cab journey Liz, rummaging through her bag, realized she left her necklace back in the hotel room.  While on the phone with the reception trying to coordinate them sending it back to Delhi she discovered that there was an iPod left in her room.  I was too distracted with thoughts of killing Liz to appreciate the irony at the time.  We ended up wasting a valuable 10 minutes on the side of the road for a messenger to meet up with us and drop off the iPod (he didn’t even bring the necklace).  We got moving again, but things were looking very grim.  The driver said we’d be at the station in “40 minutes no traffic, no problem; traffic, problem.”  But how could there be no traffic?  To skip through what seemed like an eternity sitting in the car biting my nails, thinking about how angry I was at Liz for making us miss the train and how I had no idea how we were going to get to Kerala, we eventually arrived at the station.  I didn’t have time to freak out when we got out of the taxi and a man told us that the train was gone.  We were swarmed, yelled at, and whisked away into a second cab–this finally brings me to the high-speed train race.  I had no idea where the next train station was, how far away it was, when the train would get there, but it was clear that our new cab driver was going to put everything he had into getting us there: if we didn’t catch up to our train, he wasn’t getting paid.  I could tell right away he knew what he was doing.  He swerved from one lane to the next and honked at any truck that got in our way, which I usually can’t stand but would have happily encouraged if he’d needed any encouragement at that point.  He lit a cigarette thirty seconds into the whole ordeal and offered his pack around as if we were all in for something exciting.  I could tell he was a professional.

We made it to the station.  We even had about 15 minutes to spare on the platform before our train pulled up. 

We spent our remaining 12 days in India in beautiful Kerala, called “God’s own country” for a reason.  We saw incredible tea plantations, went to a Kathakali performance, got ayurvedic treatments, visited a wildlife sanctuary, and spent our last days relaxing in the Arabian Sea.  At the end of the month the four of us flew out of the state capital, Thiruvananthapuram.  Joe went on to Calcutta to fly back to England, and we went back to Delhi to fly to Israel.

I got an email today from the “yoga master” we took a class with just one time in Varanasi.  Rajnish just sent a few lines to ask how I am and to know if I’m doing my yoga every morning.  I’ll have to respond with the truth: I haven’t done any yoga since that morning with him 6 weeks ago, but I don’t even mind.  Even though I’m far away and in a totally different world again, India can still get to me, surprise me and make me smile.