Day 15 – Road to Nepal

I feel bad for whoever paints the lines on the road denoting lanes. What meaningless work.

We’re about five hours into a bus trip that will take at least nine hours, and we’re on our way to Nepal. We pulled over for breakfast about an hour ago and had the most amazing samosas I’ve ever tasted. We also had jelabi, which is about as artery-clogging as it is amazingly delicious, so I’m glad it’s not readily available at home.

It’s been an unbelievable couple of days, and probably my favourite parts of India overall. Varanasi’s just as dirty, just as polluted, just as noisy as the other cities, but somehow it’s more beautiful.

After we got into Varanasi, and after our crazy rickshaw rides through town amidst the celebrations, we walked down the banks of the Ganges and climbed aboard a wooden oat. At one end were our two paddlers, and on the other end, two guys playing sitar and drums.

[I’m completing this entry now – Saturday, January 30, 2010 – as I didn’t finish it when I started it. In my strive for journalistic integrity, I felt that this needed to be disclosed. Because anyone reading this will really care when it was written.]

We rowed over to one of the two main cremation sites, and then took part in a candle ceremony. Little paper dishes are filled with yellow flowers and one red flower, with a candle placed in the middle. Then you make a wish and release it from the boat. Seeing dozens of little dishes of flowers aglow with candlelight floating on the water was beautiful.

We learned that Varanasi has eighty ghats, which are banks of stairs leading from the town down to the water. It’s regarded as the holiest city in India, and many elderly people move to Varanasi so that they will be cremated there when they die. Dozens of cremations take place each day, and once the bodies are burned, the charred remains are tossed into the water. The act of cremation is to remove the sins from the body, so that what remains is pure. People that are already pure, such as very young babies and priests, do not need to be burned, and their bodies are floated into the water intact. The majority of bodies are burned however, so the stories of seeing the Ganges full of dead bodies is untrue.

The water was also littered with effigies, made of clay and paper and wood so they will eventually decompose. While still dirty, the water is still far cleaner than you’d imagine.

Once we were finished on the boat, we returned to land and climbed back into our cycle rickshaws. We saw the same scene on the way back to our hotel as we had seen on the way to the Ganges: dozens of processions, the same loud music and dancing men. It was amazing.

Yesterday, we returned to the Ganges to see it by daylight. We walked along the banks on the ghats, and witnessed people bathing in the water and meditating on the ghats. We came near the larger of the two cremation sites and saw the cremations. Such an unbelievable sight! Families gathered around fires, preparing their deceased loved ones for their journey into the Ganges by burning the sins out of their flesh. We were actually able to walk right up into the middle of the group of fires. I felt a little uneasy because I didn’t want my being there to be disrespectful, but the locals didn’t seem to mind.

The bodies are first washed by the family members with water from the Ganges. Then they are placed on a big pile of wood, with more wood piled on top. The fire is lit using fire from the eternal flame, a fire that has been burning continuously for 3500 years. The bodies take three hours to burn, and we could see chests and heads and feet in the fires. It wasn’t at all creepy or weird to witness it; it was just families saying their goodbyes while the bodies turned to ash. I thought it was beautiful.

Afterwards, we were allowed into the Golden Temple. It’s situated right next to a mosque, so tensions and security are high. It’s been destroyed several times over hundreds of years, as the Muslims would destroy it and build a mosque in its place. Eventually, instead of continually destroying each other’s buildings, the new temple was built next to the mosque, and they’ve managed to co-exist somewhat harmoniously since then.

We also went to a silk factory, where we saw ancient looms that are the last of their kind. Should the strings that create the design ever break or become unravelled, the looms will be finished, as the people that initially made them aren’t alive anymore. Inside, we saw the most amazing woven silks. Using the old-style loom is incredibly slow; an entire day of work will create only one or two centimetres of finished product. One piece took three years to create, and was bigger than a blanket for a king-sized bed. They refuse to sell it, so it’s effectively priceless.

Then we shopped! They had the most amazing pure silk scarves in brilliant colours, so I now own five (or four rather, as at least one is for mom). I also bought two cushion pillowcases. One is turquoise with elephants on the front, and the other is purple with peacocks, which is India’s national bird. They’re both stunning and made of pure silk, and at only $5 each they were an unbelievable deal.

I also scored some other scarves from their odds and ends pile, and one “scarf” that would be horribly uncomfortable to wear as it’s made of stiff material and encrusted with tiny mirrors. It will, however, make a lovely red glittery table runner at Christmas, so into the bag it went.

[Completed more than ten days later because I’m not very good at staying on top of these.]

Next we met for lunch, and we were short one of our group as Julian was buying a sitar! He had gone to the home of the sitar player from the boat the night before, and ended up with a gorgeous sitar, that cost surprisingly only around $500 CDN for both the instrument and the case. The bottom of a sitar is actually made from a pumpkin! Julian’s is adorned with wood carvings and he was given a lesson in playing it. Julian reminds me of Will in so many ways, and if Will ever came to India I could see him buying one too.

After lunch, we wander back onto the street and find that the same processions from the night before are still going on, still in celebration of the goddess of knowledge. As one pack of dancers makes its way past, I can’t help but run into the middle of it. The look on Dinesh’s face was priceless. He had warned that the guys would get grabby, but undeterred I went for it anyway, as it looked like too much fun to pass up. Surprisingly, three or four of the older boys immediately formed a protective wall around me, pushing back the others that were crowding in. I wasn’t too concerned anyway; with only 20 or so people in the pack, and most of them 13-year-old-boys, it wouldn’t have been difficult to get out. Still, it was cute that they stepped in as my bodyguards. A few spins and twirls later and I was back on the side of the road with the rest of the spectators. Dinesh comes over laughing at me, and at that moment a few of the boys from the pack grab my hands and try to pull me back in. Why the women in India don’t join in is beyond me, it was so fun!

Later that day, Dinesh took us into the “real” markets. The shops and stalls that line the roads are aimed at tourists, but the shops inside the markets are mostly for locals. It was a much calmer pace, and the merchants weren’t frantic about convincing tourists to buy their wares. We went to his “uncle’s” (not actually his uncle, but calling someone an uncle is a term of endearment and shows strong friendship) silk and cotton shop.

While I had already bought my share of silk and cotton scarves and wasn’t prepared to buy anything, the experience was awesome. The shop is lined with shelves on all four walls, piled top to bottom with colourful fabrics. The entire floor is a think white mattress, and you shuck your shoes at the door before you walk in. With everyone sitting cross-legged on the floor drinking chai, he gave us a lesson in all the material types, from blended silks to pure silk, brushed wools, and true pashminas. Sorry girls, but the $10 pashminas that we buy from the mall aren’t real pashminas.

Pashmina is a type of goat wool that is from the Himalayas. It’s collected from bushes that snag the wool as the goats walk past. Many scarves are made of real pashmina wool, but there’s a massive difference, both in price and softness, between standard pashminas and true pashminas. For the real deal, only the insanely-soft belly fur is used in making the scarf. The result is the second softest thing I’d felt in my entire life (the first being chinchillas), and I spent the entire two hours we were in the shop manhandling the scarf that was out of my pricerange. At about $175 CDN, it was worth every penny, but I had already bought more than a half dozen scarves for less than that, and so the scarf stayed in Varanasi.

I did, however, promise myself that I’ll have one one day, so when I’m home and working and ready to splurge, I’ll give Dinesh a shout and have one mailed out.

On our walk to get rickshaws to take us to the hotel, I stopped to buy oranges. I had made a deal to buy four oranges at Rs 10 a piece, but Dinesh stepped in and worked his Indian magic. A kilo of oranges was only Rs 40, so I actually ended up with 5.5 (one was a little baby orange) oranges. Next I see the guy that just sold us oranges running across the street, and Dinesh said he was going to get us an auto-rickshaw.

We pile into the rickshaw and it’s brand spanking new! Only 25 days old with less than 600kms on it. The new rickshaws all have the same green body with yellow roof, but the insides can be really fancy. The roof and seats are usually brown vinyl, and they’ll have pink and blue stars and hearts sewn into them. They’re actually pretty cute. I’m definitely going to miss rickshaws, and if Vancouver weren’t such a rainy city they’d be fantastic for the downtown core. Of course, they’re a hell of a lot cheaper here (Negotiating a fair of Rs 20 for a ten-minute ride is completely normal. Only 50 cents!!), but they’re an awesome method of transportation.

We start off down the road and Dinesh points out that the driver is the same guy that just sold us oranges! Sure enough, he had left his post at the fruit stand to drive us across town. And he’s driving fast. I’ve been scared a few times in rickshaws, but this guy was racing through town. He’d been driving for a long time and definitely knew what he was doing, but when you don’t even slow down for a red light–much less stop–it’s a little frightening. But of course, we made it to the hotel unscathed, and when I got out of the rickshaw I could hear the driver giggling to himself. Nothing like scaring the tourists!

Then it was dinner and off to bed for an early morning bus ride to the Nepali border. Chullo!