Bustling Delhi and Holy Varanasi

Eug and I are very lucky people.  Right after we parted with our dear friends in Bhutan, we met up with one of my best friends Ron in Delhi, India.  Ron had one week in India with us and one week in Egypt on his own before heading home to Seattle.  He really wanted to see the Taj Mahal and the rest was up to us.  Our one week itinerary with him was to visit the sights in Delhi, Varanasi, Khajuraho, and saving the best for last, the Taj Mahal in Agra.

 Eug and I were in Delhi a day before Ron arrived, and we were running errands like there was no tomorrow.  I felt more like a local who just moved to a new city than a tourist.  It was a bit frustrating having to run around everywhere, especially when we ended up not being able to get anything done.  We wanted to mail our wedding outfits back home, get Myanmar visas, and fix the most essential gadget of our trip, our SONY netbook.  Unfortunately our netbook was dropped by the cleaning lady in Bhutan, and it turned very slow ever since.  We need it to upload pictures, research places to stay, and most importantly keep up with our blog!  We were sent to a few places and given a few telephone numbers, but they all led to dead ends.  The netbook is useable still but it’s slowly dying day by day.  For example, Didi gave us some of the wedding pictures he took for us but they all disappeared from our hard drive.  Thanks Susan for uploading them on Facebook for us!  I hope our netbook can survive 3 more months before it completely dies.  And yes, only 3 more months left for our around the world trip, crazy hey?  Due to the Diwali holiday (the Festival of Lights, India’s most widely celebrated Hindu event) we weren’t able to get visas, and the post office was not helpful either.  So big thanks to Ron for offering to take our wedding outfits back home with him.

I was very excited to see Ron in Delhi.  The last time I saw him was in March in Portugal which seemed like a decade ago.  And I was looking forward to doing some sightseeing again like worry-free tourists and not having to run more errands.  We first visited the Red Fort, a massive 2 km long structure.  The Mughal Emperor, Shah Jahan completed this fort in 1648 but never moved his capital from Agra because he ended up being imprisoned in Agra Fort by his own son Aurangzeb.  The fort was pretty cool and we walked across the street to the market in Old Delhi after to see Jama Masjid, India’s largest mosque.  To our dismay the mosque was closed to tourists that day.  We weren’t sure why but a scrawny uniformed man with a bamboo stick came out of nowhere and shooed us away without providing an explanation.  Even though we didn’t see the mosque, we had quite an eye opening experience just walking through the market (Chandni Chowk).  We certainly had never seen such poor hygiene and stunning poverty in the countries we visited so far and Ron had never seen anything like that, period.  Eug and I walked through numerous busy Middle Eastern medinas and souqs, so we thought were used to the sensory overload.  But we definitely weren’t prepared to witness something like ‘Slum Dog Millionaire’ right before our own eyes.  It served as another reminder of how lucky and blessed we all are.  Afterwards we checked out Humayun’s tomb which was very pleasant and peaceful to walk through in comparison.  The city of Delhi itself was beautifully covered in lights and flowers due to the Diwali festival.  The lights were meant to guide the Hindu god Lord Rama home from exile, and at night there was a constant barrage of festive fireworks.

We then took a short flight (instead of a long overnight train ride, thanks to Ron since he only had a limited amount of time with us) to Varanasi.  Varanasi (picture above) is one of the holiest places in India.  Hindus believe that they can wash away a lifetime of sins in the sacred waters of the Ganges River, so a lot of them come to bathe in this water.  They also come here to cremate their loved ones so their ashes can become one with the holy river.  Lastly, many Hindus come here to die with the belief that it offers liberation from the reincarnation cycle of birth and death.  As soon as we checked into our guest house on the riverbank, we quickly got ready, eager to take a stroll down the Ganges to see some action.  Our eagerness soon dissipated after walking no more than 20 minutes down the river.  First of all, the street was covered in cow and goat and who-knows-what droppings left and right.  If you only looked up for a second, you could easily step on one of the dangerous fresh poopie-traps.  There were a ton of stray cows walking around aimlessly, as they are holy to Hindus and this is their holiest city.  Lots of locals (both adults and kids) were just walking around barefoot, not caring if they stepped on crap.  What I found to be the most disturbing was seeing a street dog eating a pile of faeces.  I was seriously grossed out.  Secondly, everyone who passes by you seems to want to shake your hand and talk you into visiting their stores or accepting their massage or shaving service.  No thank you!  I was lucky that they didn’t try to shake my hands because I am a girl.  Poor Eug and Ron had to stick their hands in their pockets to avoid the constant physical contact because once they grabbed your hand, they wouldn’t let go.  Thirdly, witnessing 4 visibly clear corpses being publicly burnt on top of 4 separate stacks of wood didn’t exactly make us feel particularly pleasant.  The sight and smell of everything foul combined together was just unbearable.  It was not an easy stroll I tell ya.  Finally, the Ganges River from up close was very obviously dirty.  There was garbage floating around everywhere and the water was dark greyish brown in colour.  All 116 cities on the Ganges dump raw sewage into it.  Water safe for swimming is supposed to have less than 500 faecal bacteria per litre; the Ganges has 1.5 million/L!  Even with all that, the river was full of people bathing, swimming, drinking, and submerging themselves in its waters repetitively.  We turned back after walking across the cremation site and found refuge in the rooftop restaurant of our guest house.  It had an amazing view of the Ganges minus the distractions from the street.  That evening, Eug and I got a sore throat and Ron got a severe bug bite on his cheek that didn’t stop draining pus for the rest of the night.  We should’ve done what the Japanese tourists did and wear those SARS masks.  We recovered shortly but oh boy, what an introduction to the city.

We woke up very early the next day and hopped on a boat ride down the Ganges to catch the sunrise and the dawn prayer ceremony from the water.  The boat ride was much more comfortable than being on foot.  The devout prayers and washings of the pilgrims were fascinating to see but the most memorable part of the river trip was seeing a dead corpse floating face-down on the river.  When I saw it, I quickly looked away and asked Eug and Ron in Cantonese if it was what I thought it was.  Eug was like “no, it’s a mannequin”.  Then there was a long pause before Eug and Ron both agreed it was indeed a body.  We learned that there were dead bodies in the Ganges from other travellers and our research, however, I didn’t think we’d really see one.   Supposedly some poor families can’t afford to buy firewood so their relatives’ bodies would just be placed in the water.  Others would buy wood but not enough due to lack of funds, so partially cremated bodies would also be placed in the water.  Our boat driver was considerate enough to row away from it, but not another boat that was just 5 feet away from us.  There were 3 western tourists on that boat, and their boat actually rowed into the corpse as it got knocked away.  One of the girls covered her mouth immediately, she looked like she was about to throw up; I felt so bad for her.  At this point, Ron was trying to hold in his laughter so badly that his body was vehemently shaking.  He didn’t laugh because it was funny, but because the whole thing was just so far-fetched that you couldn’t help but to react in some way.  I just had a very grossed out face.  Needless to say, for the rest of the day we chilled in our guest house to recuperate both mentally and physically.  We did manage to find a nice restaurant with an excellent view of the river to have dinner.  In the evening, the river was beautifully lit with lotus flower candles set adrift from the shore, and there were fireworks on land because of the Diwali festival.  We also checked out an evening ceremony which attracted a huge friendly crowd.  In contrast with the day, it was a rather delightful evening. 

That was quite an experience for our first 3 days in India.  I am not sure if I’ve digested all that myself yet, but I know our eyes have definitely been widely opened.  Ron, Eug, and I talked about some of the living conditions we’ve observed and if there could be any feasible solutions to improve these conditions.  Hopefully with the massive economic growth in India we all hear about the government will be able to increase funding in education, infrastructure and housing, thus putting India’s poor on the first rung of the ladder of economic development, lifting them out of abject poverty.