A Lifetime in a Week

I think I was still in the North of India when I last wrote. The prospect of pushing "back" and checking from the previous post gives me the shivers. Waiting for these dial up connections have put years on my life. Or maybe it's just been the events of the last week.

So lets do a quick recap of Leh, or paradise as I like to call it. It's a small Buddhist village where we stayed in a guesthouse filled with beautiful gardens. Every male is a gentle old man that greets you with genuine kindness when you walk past. It sounds a little like this. "JOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLAAAAAAAAAYYYYY!!!! Jule jule jule jule." In reality, they are saying "jule," which means hello/goodbye/please/thank you in Tibetan. I loved that place. We rode camels to the border of Tibet and drove the group crazy by singing the entire score from "Aladin" (again). Yes, we are American. I've come to terms with that. The prospect of leaving a place like Leh for a place like Delhi makes you wonder what you have done wrong. Maybe it's from a past life. That's what a Buddhist might say.

Delhi was Delhi all over again, but at least we knew what to expect this time. I want to add two more articles to my list of things on/in the streets. A man with elephantitis of his "you know what," and human excrement. Yes human... and I am winning the race for how many times we can step in it in our sandals. Or losing. Let's just say I've done it more than once.

But I've described Delhi before so let's get to the point. Our plan was to find a flight to Kathmandu and get out as fast as possible. That should be easy right? WRONG! Here's a little known fact. There is not one seat available on ANY flight to Kathmandu from ANYWHERE in India until mid-October... I didn't see that coming. After an hour or two of fretting, we concocted a plan to make a trip out of it. Here is a small overview of the immediate future for us from that point. Train to Agra (Taj Mahal), overnight train to Varanasi (Ganges River), overnight train to Gorukphur (shithole), bus to border, bus to Chitwan Nat'l Park in Nepal. Four full days of travel in all and some experiences that have put greyhairs on my head.

So this is my opinion of Agra. "Rickshaw! Rickshaw! Postcard! Postcard! Where are you going? Where are you going?" This was the chorus that followed us through the streets. We drew a lot of attention and only deserved a small fraction of it. But what can you expect? We were in the most "touristy" place in India. To not see it coming would be like visiting Mt Rushmore and acting surprised to see cheesy T-shirts and small plasitc sculptures for sale. That being said, however, the Taj Mahal was worth checking out. Every piece of marble is perfectly handcarved and placed. It suited my OCD mind too because the structure is perfectly symetrical down to the millimeter. We whiled away most of the day taking extra goofy pics and causing some general distress among the middle aged and older demographic of tourists that surrounded us.

We thought we could save some stress by adding a layover night to our journey and sleeping in a bed in Agra. It didn't exactly work out that way. The plumbing in our hotel went awry somehow that evening while we slept. We were greeted with an unpleasant sight from the hallway in the morning and it was the smell that actually woke us. Bad omen? Maybe.

Let's just skip the events of the rest of our 2nd day in Agra for this post... I wouldn't mind having those hours of my life back.

So we got out of town in search of the next big adventure. I should point out the obvious here and say that trains are not the easiest place to sleep. They stop every hour or so and men walk up and down the hallway yelling "chai!!!" I would like to insert a sidenote here that I love my mother. She gave me a small stash of sleeping pills a long time ago and I found my emergency to use them. She is the reason why I made it through.

Varanasi takes an extreme amount of patience to enjoy. This city is overflowing with people and the Ganges river is not much of a sight, although it does have record amounts of fecal matter. But, it is the place of origin for the Hindu religion and people travel from everywhere to bathe in the Ganges. We spent the day fighting off cute little girls trying to sell us Karma candles and taking in all the vibrant colors. I hope I never have daughters because they will walk all over me. They can sense my weakness because they know I think their cute.

The torrential rains started shortly after dark and we were forced to head to the Varanasi train station a few hours early. We had heard that it was busy, but I think I can safely say that is the biggest understatement I have ever heard. There are literally piles of people. Train stations are a good place for people watching. It was mostly just people watching us, though. Here is a list of things we observed during our brief visit: thousands of Indian people, 4 white tourists (including us), and a dirty begging child that grabbed us in the dark when the power went out. We found a place to sit and played cards. Not because we wanted to, but because we had to. We ignored the stares and our play was only interupted twice. Once by an old man wearing a green plastic bag for a hat. He stopped, walked up to us, put his hand on his knees and his face about 12 inches from our. His stare was like he was looking at fish in a tank. It's hard to prepare for that sort of interaction. Here is our dialogue:

Lindsay: Mike, what do I do?
Mike: I guess just ignore him.
L: How?!!
M: Well, let's try to think of the reasons why we shouldn't kill ourselves.

(pause)

M: Ok, I have one. We have some gum to chew. That's it, though.

He did leave eventually and we have a new inside joke to laugh about. The second interuption was one that makes you think a little. There was a cow making the rounds through the station. Who owned him? Which train was he riding? Which bunk would he be on? How can he avoid stepping on people here when I can't? Here's the tricky part, though. He was on the middle platform. That means he would have had to go up and down a flight of stairs and a walkway to get to where we saw him. Hmmmmmm. Another thought nugget to occupy my time.

Let's speed up the pace here. Our train did come (one hour late), Gorukphur IS a terrible town and there is no reason to go there, the bus to the border of Nepal was 6 hours and not the 2 we thought it was, we endured four hours at the border waiting for our crowded bus to leave, and yes, we DID get a flat tire 1km out of town. It rained the entire time too. But we made it to Chitwan National Park. All we wanted was a shower and a good night sleep. There is no way to describe how dirty we were, so I won't. We didn't get it. There was no water pressure and I slept in a bed with blood stains.

I'm sorry for being so graphic but I'm trying to paint a picture here. Things needed to start getting better soon... They did. We switched hotels and the sun came back out (in my soul and outside). Then we spent 3 days in a village in South Nepal. We took canoe safaris and jungle walks. We rode elephants in search of rhinos and tigers, then we swam with them and they sprayed me with water from their trunks. I had just enough time to visit the elephant breeding center and feed the babies cookies before catching a bus to Kathmandu (where I am now).

Together, we feel like we have been tested. We passed, but barely. I feel like I've lost a little innocense along the way. But the upside is that we are weathered and these Nepali touts and scam artists here in Kathmandu seem soft to me. They don't know what we've been through to get here. The end product is that I have this feeling like everything is going to be alright now.

We leave tomorrow to trek to the base of Mt Everest for the next 22-30 days. We've earned it. Hopefully the next post will be all gum drops and lolly pops. Boring for you, but sweet relief for me. Wish us luck and I'll be in touch.