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| India |
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Varanasi (near the mighty Ganges), 24 February 2004 Sitting here with a red-dot on my forehead as I write. Some religious walla got me when we visted a temple this morning in Varanasi! India is brilliant is just full-on madness, mind-blowing, beautiful easily the most incredible place I've ever been... Absolute chaos!!!! So far we've seen plenty: snake-charmers, elephants (working), a performing troupe of street urchins, beggers, leppers, holy-men, loads of every kind of religion, the worst traffic jams, dead-bodies, cremations, people defecating everywhere and anywhere (mostly along the road side) cows are considered holy and roam wherever they like ,there's shit (and flies) everywhere, all kinds of temples, gurus, buddists, hindus, muslims, sikhs, Gandhis-tomb, the place of Gandhis martyrdom, museums, red fort, a Mcdonalds that doesn't serve any beef or pork in case it causes a riot, rickshaws, pollution you can't imagine. Just walking down the street requires concentration - the traffic is really random and much more dangerous than anything we've experienced so far, even in Hanoi. It comes from any direction on any side of the road horns and bells wailing. This morning we woke up a 5am and went down to the ganges to see everyone, doing the ritual bathing, swimming, praying, laundry, disposing of their dead bodies and wait for it brushing their teeth!! Sunrise exactly how it looks in the brochure - beautiful. I put 50 rupees into an old ladies begging bowl, she was so suprised it wasn't coins she snatched it out of the bowl to make sure none of the kids (Chloe's and Zak's age) snatched it from her. As soon as I'd done it loads of little kids swarmed around me to ask for some too! Horrible. Sarah and I got asked to pose on a photo with some locals where Gandhi was murdered we must've looked very exotic to them. Sarah gets stared at loads, because there aren't many women in the streets. We've developed a new facial expression that says ' yes yes we know but no thanks..' for all the rickshawdrivers and silk emporium owners. More soon. Jaipur Rajasthan, 03 March 2004 Dear all, back to civilisation - we've just spent a couple of days on safari in Rathambore looking for tigers in the national park... and we finally managed to see a tiger!! 9hrs of riding around in a jeep for a good 30 sighting - really amazing and well worth it, mission acclomplished, we managed to see loads of other creatures too: crocodiles, spotted deer, sama deer, peacocks (bizarre to seee them in the wild), turtles, monkies, vultures, jackals, antelope... It's animal bloody magic in india. Just been to the Samode Palace Hotel owned by the local maharaja who's got a chain of forts and palaces that he and his family have turned into luxury heritage hotels. Quite an experience and we miraculously got upgraded to super deluxe room which was a real treat. People keep asking to have their photo taken with us (and sometimes for our autograph!!!) we're not exactly sure why but we've started taking photos with them too everytime it happens that way we'll have an interesting collection. Apart from hawkers and guides, people we've met so far in india have been really nice and quite curious about us. We even met a muslim guy from Bangladesh who seemed elated to meet us beard and jellabah and all! In Jaipur now for a few days waiting for the elephant and holi (colour throwing) festivals. Holy Cow, 18 March 2004 Namaste Folks, Farewell to luxury flying back to squallor of Delhi this afternoon to decompress before going back to Hong Kong in 3 days. In Udaipur at the moment at the end of our tour of Rajasthan. Since the tigers we've toured pretty much the whole state visiting every fort and palace and temple. Being in india is still like being in Star Wars, on planet Tatooine and some of the towns in the desert we've visited are just like Moss Eisley. It's just so weird to wander down the street and see elephants, camels and black spikey-haired pigs , enormous monkies are treated like domestic animals nobody bats an eyelid! People in Rajasthan look amazing they wear the the most outrageous fluorescent turbans and saris. Visited a fortess city in the Thar desert near pakistan called Jaisalmer - brilliant but not quite the isolated walled city we'd imagined there's a sprawling city and huge army base around it and hotels going up every day. Passed within 8km of the place India carries out its nuclear tests - fetch that geiger counter. Mount Abu a weird holiday resort on top of a mountain with palm trees and a lake watched an amazing sunset and saw the end of the India-Pakistan cricket match. Everone went wild when india won at the final ball by 5 runs and fired gunshots into the air!!! We got stranded in Bikaner for a few hours - observed the Hindu festival of Holi which is like a national game of paintball and takes place every year. Everybody (mostly men and children) buys colours, dyes, paint, whatever, either powdered or ready mixed pigment in jumbo waterpistols. Then they fight with it: the whole thing kicks off at 5am on the chosen day and they throw this stuff all over each other until 2pm by which time everybody in every town city and village in the whole country is covered in colour, totally covered even cows. Purple seems to be a popular colour and the longest lasting, we kept seeing dyed faces and clothes for days after. Women apparently play the game within the family or a few days later - women only! Poorer people in rural areas block roads with lines of rocks to extort money from passing traffic and tourists so they can afford to play Holi too!! Brilliant. Some villagers tried this again the following week but our driver accelerated before they could complete it. The caste system thing is all very depressing - Ghandhi called for the caste system to be abolished and even got it written into the constitution but it still continues. Everyone in india has a fate or destiny based on whatever caste they are born into with Maharajahs at the top of the scale and 'untouchables' at the very bottom. There are loads of special castes and sub-castes in between. Maharajahs have huge family fortunes and lands, they've been encouraged by the government to get into tourism turning castles and forts into plush heritage hotels. Some are rich enough to build vast new palaces clad with marble, semi precious stones. Stayed in a palace owned by a local Maharajah who had the whole place moved 50km piece by piece 65,000 of them and reconstructed it next to a tourist attraction! Untouchables are considered the lowest form of human life by fellow indians (from superior castes of course!). Even tiny children are ignored and left to starve, beg and scavenge the streets even the holy cows are treated with more respect, all because they we unlucky enough to be born into the lowest caste. There are loads of special castes and sub-castes: Brahamin - is the highest caste very religious and holy priests etc, Rajput - a special warrior caste, most maharajahs and politicians belong to this one, most are in the armed forces. One of the biggest is the Business caste, castes for artsists and craftsmen, there's even a caste for entertainers who tour the country impersonating government officials and traffic cops handing out bogus fines and tricking people to get backsheesh! Sikhs and Muslims are considered to be castes too. India is the only country in the world where men outnumber women - dowry killings or 'cooking accidents' are still incredibly quite common. Victims get a helping hand from greedy husbands or mother-in-laws who want a bigger dowry or new wedding and another dowry. If the victim is just maimed she can be shamed to leave the family anyway! Widow cremations exist too - the widow is seen a burden by the rest of the family ignored and made to eat meals alone until she meets a happy accident in the kitchen - bingo and saris make great tinder :( of course this is mostly in rural areas and not cities but it still goes on enough to make men the majority in India, a country of 800 million people and counting. The indians drive like macho nutters, use the horn to indicate any manouvre and never give way unless the oncoming vehicle is bigger than their own or confronted by a sacred cow! Even our safe and experienced driver Shivraj does the most outrageous things. A nation of three-lane drivers on two-lane roads. The roads are mostly nightmarish, we've seen loads of road-accidents and every kind of dead animal except for elephants. Some roads of the national highways have only one lane and our driver dodges the buses coming in the other direction at the last minute by turning onto the dust'n'boulder shoulder! Shared some opium tea with a farmer in Luni, I've had it several times since, can't seem to get enough of it, wonder if they do it in bags? - just kidding mum! It actually wasn't that bad even better if you drink it out of the farmers hand. Hilariously our hotel organised the visit to his house. Opium is illigal in india too but the government turns a blind eye to it because its a big part of hindu culture. Farmers reckon it gives 'em strength in the semi-desert where it's hard to make a living and theres precious little food or water. Anyway to cut a long story short me and Sarah have decided to wear only saffron coloured robes from now on, shave our heads, and give all our worldly possessions to our guru and mentor Mango Lassi.......well nah maybe not, Next ... |
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