Trip #1: Varanasi

Oh, hello! The week is moving along quickly and I have yet to update you all on my trip this past weekend to Varanasi. Let's do a little chronology shall we...

Saturday 11 PM: We are driven to the bus station and load onto the sleeper bus! The word "sleeper" does, however, prejudge the assumption that a lot of sleeping took place on this bus. Indian driving, for better or worse, involves a lot of bumps and even more beeping of the horn. My little bed also had a big whole in the center, which things from my pockets invariably kept on falling through and onto the bus floor. We arrived at 7:15 AM and I had slept for a solid 3-4 hours.

Sunday early morning: After a short auto rickshaw ride we arrived at the Hotel Pradeep. While the hotel itself was very nice, the scene indoors was in stark juxtaposition to the street just a few feet from the front door. Dirt roads, fruit and vegetable vendors, and the similar smells of dust, chai and excrement. Yum.

We had breakfast at the hotel restaurant. This is the point at which I will pose the first question of this post to my readers. Is there a difference between Indian meals? By this I mean...is Indian breakfast reallllly different than Indian dinner? Don't get me wrong, I am certainly a fan of breakfast for dinner back in the States. I love me some french toast and eggs at 7 PM. But, as far as I can tell, breakfast, lunch and dinner here in India are all just the same thing. Each meal involves some short of bread (roti or paratha usually) and some sort of mixture of vegetables, potatoes and spices. Surely roti cannot be the base for breakfast vegetables, lunch dal and dinner vegetables and dal? Yes it can. Surely curry cannot be a dish best served at 7 AM, 2 PM and 9 PM? Yes it can. Surely aloo paratha cannot be breakfast food AND lunch "fast food" AND a dinner side dish?! Yes. It. Can. So, after a rousing breakfast of dinner, we headed off to our first destination - Sarnath!

Sunday late morning: Sarnath is supposedly where Buddha gave his first sermon and started his career as Buddha. I say "supposedly" because, as much as I was told this in the World Religion's unit of Global History 9E, I never really believed that Buddha was a real person. No offense to Buddhists at all! I just always had trouble imagining it...especially because he is fat in one tradition and skinny in the other. What's that about? Are there different Buddhas? Is there just one famous Buddhas but lots of other less famous Buddhas? I'd really appreciate a lesson if any of you guys know...I don't mean to be insensitive I'm just clueless. Even with my clear lack of appreciation for Buddhism, Sarnath certainly lived up to its spiritual heritage. You can see in the picture to my left that huge brick construct, its kind of square at the bottom and domed on top - that is called a "stupa." There are, to my knowledge, eight stupas in the world, and they are built to house relics. The stupa at Sarnath, known as the Dhamek Stupa, is the oldest stupa in the world and holds deep within its core some (or all? I don't think all...but I'm a little fuzzy on Sarnath generally because I was so sleep deprised) of Buddha's ashes. The stupa is a part of this larger complex, where there once were many monasteries and other structures of worship. They have long since crumbled to the ground, but the foundations remain. The highlight was the altar, covered in gold leaf over the years by worshipers, upon which Buddha meditated. Don't worry. We quickly took a picture of Emily pretending to meditate on top of it.

There was also a museum at Sarnath with lots of Buddhist relics. Unfortunately, no cameras (or cell phones, or metal of any kind) were allowed in the museum, so I cannot share with you the many, many, MANY statues of Buddha I saw, but I can tell you that I saw the ORIGINAL national emblem of India. See attached picture of lions on a pillar. That was very cool.

Sunday afternoon: At Sarnath, we got a taxi. No more auto rickshaws for us! We paid this driver 1000 rupees...about 20 dollars...and he drove us around and waited where ever we wanted for 12 hours. How amazing is that! He drove us back to Varanasi to go to a drama rehearsal being led by a professor at BHU that Liju happened to know. We walked into a dark auditorium, sat in the back, and watched a very strange drama unfold. I believe it was the story of a warrior who, to repent for a sin he did not commit, had to kill 1000 people. At person 999, he goes a little crazy. This was represented by a lot of stomping and yelling in Hindi. Then Buddha comes and saves the day! They gave us samosas too. Delicious.

After the rehearsal, we went back to the professor's home. This guy was the pinnacle of old guy-artsy-academia. He wore billowy flowing clothes, was unassumingly quiet and sat in a chair (one with arms, mind you) cross-legged. We sat in his parlor for awhile making small talk, which invariably led to discussing his art - DANCE. And not just any dance. He was an expert in bharatanatyam. I cannot explain this very well to be sure, but it is, at its most basic level, dance that tells stories through movement. He showed us the many different hand gestures and the different words or actions they represented. Then he sang and danced while we quietly sat and watched. It was very, very strange. The dance itself was not strange...the fact that we sat quietly as he performed, still cross-legged in the chair, before seamlessly beginning our conversation once again was strange. His wife, who is also an artist, served us lunch and he invited us to her dance performance this evening. We told him we'd try to make it but could not be sure.

After leaving the professor's house we visited the BHU campus and the Hindu temple on the premises. Hinduism is also confusing. But the structure itself was astounding...and rather phallic, as you'll see in the attached photo. There were bells all over the temple that could be rung by visitors and for some reason they were all a minor 3rd apart from one another - does anybody know if this is significant?

Sunday evening: From BHU we headed back to downtown Varanasi for the Aarti at 6:30 on the Ganges. We went down to the river and rented a boat for the next hour or so so we could go out onto the river and watch the waterfront ritual from the center of the river. I'll admit that I am not exactly sure what was going on. There were 7 people on pedestals who did a kind-of fire and smoke dance that, I assume, was to honor some deities. There were a lot of bells and drums and other music going on the whole time, also. Further than that I'm not exactly sure what was happening. I did learn that the wicks of the candles they used had been soaked in ghee, which was not surprising because everything here is soaked in ghee. Other than that it was a generally mystifying and wholly interesting experience. There are some pictures attached of the Aarti also, though the quality is pretty bad because we were far away and it was so dark.

After the Aarti we walked around the downtown area for awhile. The stairs leading up to town from the waterfront were lined with beggars...more than I have ever seen in one place...literally hundreds. Unfortunately for Liju, he has a policy of giving every beggar he sees 3 rupees until he runs out of money. He was mobbed within seconds and I am surprised he made it out of there all right. He gave up a few hundred rupees before running out...but three children continued to follow us down the street. After about 10 minutes of them following us...now a kilometer or so away from the water front...Liju finally took them across the street and bought them some roti and chocolate. Then he took their picture. It was actually very cute.

We walked around downtown for another 45 minutes before deciding to go to dinner. We ended up going to The Gateway Hotel, which was originally a Taj hotel, and ate at their international cuisine restaurant. It had a buffet with yogurt and fruit. This made me happier than I can express.

SLEEP

Monday morning: Wake up call at 5:45 AM. Today was both Republic Day and some type of festival in Varanasi which involved lots of washing in the river. Because of this, we woke up early to rent a boat and travel up and down the river. The whole morning was both eye-opening and mystical. We floated through clouds of dense mist...seeing at once families mourning a dead loved-one burning before them, worshipers bathing themselves in the cold, gray waters of the Ganges...and countless Asian tourist groups pointing and waving at us, the only other foreigners.

I think its worth taking a few moments to explain the funeral situation at the river, because this is something I actually learned about. Varanasi is a place people go to die. Supposedly, if someone dies in Varanasi they will go directly to heaven (or wherever they are supposed to go). There are actually hospice hotels open for rent to people who are waiting to die. After death, the individual is taken to the waterfront and burned. Wood is so expensive to burn (something like 300 Rs. per kg) and so much wood is needed that poorer families use electric fires. Either way, though, the fires are started using the eternal flame - a fire burning at a temple nearby - that has supposedly been burning for the past 3000 years. I find this hard to believe. In fact, I'm pretty sure SOMEBODY let it burn out once, swore a lot and then quickly restarted it. But I didn't say anything.

After our boat ride, the guide we picked up for the morning brought us through the back streets of Varanasi. These streets were more like alleyways, only 4 feet wide and dark due to the imposing buildings blocking light from above. More often than not the entire alley was blocked by a cow munching on some trash so we had to climb over and around the beast, while narrowly missing its poop. Importantly, though, we were told that we should not worry about stepping in cow poop because it is actually good luck! A rather convenient good luck charm for a city littered with dung don't you think?

The morning ended with some street food for breakfast (I apologize to all of you who have told me not to eat street food...I didn't get sick so don't worry). We had poori with something on it...I forget the name...and jalebi. Meera tells me she does not like jalebi, which makes me think she is clinically insane. They are perfect. Picture pretzel shaped thin and airy fried pieces of dough...that kind of taste like doughnuts but without all that pesky and heavy dough in the center. Now picture that pretzel shaped thing covered in a sugary, sticky liquid that you want to swim in. Now imagine that you could buy 100 grams of this sugary, sticky, pretzel-y deliciousness for only 10 CENTS. To tell you the truth I'm surprised that I'm not still standing in Varanasi handing the vendor 100 rupee bills telling him to "keep 'em coming" in between bites.

Monday late morning: We went to the Ramnagar Fort. At this fort was, to my knowledge, the worst museum in the world. Rooms were lit with one fluroescent light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Items were thrown haphazardly on tables so nothing was visible. Signs describing items were either missing or turned in such a way that they were impossible read. And yet, I don't think I have ever enjoyed a museum more. As the museum got worse...we just found it more hilarious. See the photo below, posted at the entrance of the museum, for a taste of the oversight that was obviously gone into the museum's implementation.

After the fort, we went to lunch and then boarded the bus to go home! You'd think this is where the story would end...but the bus was ride was a story in itself. I may have thought the sleeper bus was a bit uncomfortable on the way to Varanasi, but the bus we took back to Lucknow, no more than a glorified schoolbus with open windows and 5 seats per row, was a challenge. To tell you the truth, though, it wasn't that bad. Even though the window next to me wouldn't close so by 11 PM the wind was so cold I had to cover my head and arms with my dirty shirts and boxers to stop from shivering...I kind of enjoyed the experience. If I were in a Calvin and Hobbes comic I'm sure Dad would just tell me that the experience had built character. And they would be right.

And besides, a ticket for the 10 hour bus ride cost only $3.00 so I can't really complain.