South Africans in India - Part 2: Agra and Varanasi
AgraDay 17 |
We got up at 9, or so, and hung out in Ankit's room. It was a memorial anniversary for his great grandfather, so he did a ceremony where you have lots of food, sprinkle water on cow coal, and take a bit of every food and burn it on the coal. We ate puri with porridge, aloo (potato) and the exact Indian equivalent of a koeksister. Ankit took us to the rickshaw, and Aurora meeped a bit, as she had got used to this nice life. The bus left at 12:20, and we got there with 5 minutes to spare. It was a very public bus. And it went on well past sunset, until we arrived in Agra. This asshole tells us we're at the city centre, but it turns out to be a rickshaw scam. The Lonely Planet warned about it in the book, and I felt some minor rage. So we fucked with him a bit, walking away. The guy tailed us like a psychopath. We changed sides of the road twice, but he still kept following. Finally, his friend almost catches us, but we say 'No fucking way' and we get into another rickshaw. Feeling victorious, but also a bit afraid of that final look in the man's eye (which was one of deep brooding), we raced away. Trucks had stopped traffic by driving towards each other in the same lane, to the point that it was impossible to fix, so we and everyone else was driving between trees, off-road rickshaw, like maniacs. We went to Hotel Siddartha, which was nice. It was Rs600, and had every channel we could ask for. We watched the Mothman Prophecies. I was a bit suspicious of the film's alleged veracity. According to wikipedia, the incident was probably a scam to increase tourism. 
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Day 18 |
We woke and ate at Shanka Vegis, had a nice banana lassi, a thali and an ommelette. Then as one does in Agra, we went to the Taj Mahal. We tried the East gate, and were told to try the South gate. They confiscated our pens, and charged us an exorbitant Rs750 each, but we got in, and it was amazing. We saw it, and we took lots of photos, and had lots of our photos taken with the locals. We approached and entered the mausoleum. There are signs saying not to take photos inside, but everyone was snapping away. Now, this is the Taj Mahal we're talking about, so excuse the large number of pictures for this day.
We left and went to Cafe Coffee Day. It was our first time, and we fell in love. They had something called the Cookie Monster, which had milkshake and cookie and chocolate syrup, with blue curacao at the bottom. It was freaking hot outside. It was approaching Diwali, and trains were getting really packed. We tried to book a train to Khujaraho, the Kama Sutra temple, and then to Varanasi, but failed. We went to the hotel and went upstairs to the rooftop, to check out their view of the Taj. Some guy on another rooftop beckoned us to come to his. We were like 'Uh, no, it's ok, we're on a rooftop already'. Amusing. The hotel manager also failed to book us a train. He was a funny guy. He tried to learn a phrase or two in every language, so he was like 'Dankie wel!' in a monotone accent. He confused Dutch with Afrikaans, but we were happy to hear the effort. We asked about the books, and he said just take them. We took '100 monkeys' about how nuclear war is bad. We went to Agra's red fort for sunset. Then tried at the train station, but there was a tourist quota waiting list of 7, so the man advised that we probably wouldn't get it.
Back to town, we had supper on a roof lured by the promise of beers. We got a bit drunk, even. The waiter was funny too, stroking his beard that looked like mine, and making an elaborate show of opening the beers. An English guy and German girl said that train waiting lists weren't so bad. We tried again online, with no luck.
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Day 19 - Oct 29 |
We've still got 8 days til Diwali, so it's not desperate times yet, but we don't want to be stuck in Agra. It's a bit chaotic, like the city evolved outwards from the Taj amoebically. The dogs at night are scary, and we're running out of interesting sites. So we embarked on a day to see Fatehpur Sikri 30km away, and to try get the hell out of Agra.
We give our bags to the luggage room, and went to Igdah bus station. We were at the wrong station to book the Lucknow bus, so we went next door to Hotel Sakura for breakfast. The manager says he can get a train ticket 'definitely'. Cool! So we give him Rs2000, and get his business card. Then we take the bus to Fatehpur Sikri. On board are two French Canadian women and a British girl, Allie. Allie had a strong accent, almost like a Little Britain accent, and sometimes men on the side of the road mocked the whining sound saying 'nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh'. I didn't partake, but I was pleased to know the same concept of 'nyeh nyeh nyeh' existed in India. We all entered the mosque area, which was swamped with salesmen. Aurora bought anklet baubles for the low price of Rs50 each. I bought a chess set for Rs200. It started at Rs800, so I thought it was a good deal, but when destroying some child's dreams, I found out they would go as low as Rs100. These kids were like parasites.
Our 'free' guide, who the girls thought was hot, and who seemed like a conman to me, took us around the place, and finally to his store of marble-y trinkets. He quickly furrowed his brow and turned into a terrorist as soon as it was clear that I wasn't going to buy his crap. Luckily the French women seemed interested, and we got a chance to escape. The kids were still persisting. One of them was funny, and had cut out pieces of newspaper with pictures of Aishwarya Rai. We asked if it was his wife, no, and how much for it? Rs5. I was shocked and insisted on paying 5 crore (an absurdly high figure). The kid caught on, and was demanding his 5 crore, but it's cool, I can pay tomorrow. He follows us when we're done, and asks for our ticket when we're done with the palace. Allie, Aurora and I go to the palace while the French women go to the bazaar.
I was called Ali Baba often. Har har har. I preferred when they called me "Omar Sharief" in Udaipur. We headed back, and almost took a jeep, but saw the bus coming and hopped on. We went to Hotel Sakura, and the man said no luck, so we got our Rs2000 back. He says the 9pm bus to Lucknow has a sleeper available, but we'll need to hurry. We then went on the most hectic rushing to get a bus ticket of our trip. We rushed there, we booked our ticket, rushed back to the hotel, ate quickly, rushed back to the ISBT terminal, and were in time for the bus by 30 minutes. The ISBT rides all took different routes, and were each about 10km of insane near crashes. The coolest thing on the way was when people were honking, and a bunch of teenage guys walking by surrounded a car, said 'Ek... do... teen' (1... 2... 3), and picked up the car, moving it off the road. The bus was a sleeper, and we had a good nap.
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VaranasiDay 20 - Oct 30 |
We arrived in Lucknow at 5am or so, and after a few minutes deliberation, decided to move on. We snuck out and had bread and butter and chai at some local outdoor joint, and give magnets to street kids. They seemed to prefer the magnets to the dirt that had previously been amusing them. The next AC bus was at 8am, and the next public bus was at 6am. We should have took the AC bus. Groan. But it would be a lesson in patience. It took something like 8 hours, travelled at no more than 60kph, and was entirely packed the whole time. 8 hours with our bags on our laps, in squalid heat. One guy is sitting there, staring at me, as though I don't have peripheral vision. I ignore it, but eventually it's just creepy, so I look at him and say 'Hello!' in the voice an evil clown would use to terrorize children. He asks some questions in English, and luckily he runs out of vocabulary. I get some snacks off the bus. Pretty good oily yellow things. By the time we arrive in Varanasi, the sun is setting. We try find the tourist center, but it is a myth. A crosseyed man, with 40 years bicycle rickshaw experience gives us a ride to a place he knows. The poor old guy has to push us up hills, and other drivers are trying to get us to swap carriages. We go to one place, a really seedy room, then are going to another, but I insist on going back to find Aurora. No she's safe. Well, she's probably worried by now. So we both went to the second place the guy knew of, and it was ok. Bugs everywhere, but cute bugs. Like baby cockroachs, not the big ones. Rs350 per night if we stay for 2 days, so we decide we'll just stay for 2 days. We go looking for I-bu restaurant, and can't find it, so we end up at a local joint. I get the mushroom chilli, and Aurora the thali. For the first time, I am pleased with the spices. I blow my nose approvingly. It was Rs225 with drinks, and it was really more food than we could eat. A great deal. Aurora took her last chapatti, and tried giving it away, and a beggar refused. We tried giving it to a dog, and it sniffed it, and wandered away. It didn't make much sense.
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Day 21 - Oct 31 |
We wanted to never repeat that bus ride again, so we went to the train station in the morning, by autorickshaw after a bicycle rickshaw refused to tell us the price. It was a good thing we swapped, because we arrived with 10 minutes to buy a ticket. The tourist counter closed after we got our ticket. So, one week planned for Varanasi, aka Benares. Diwali and move on. We saw a 'Wine and Bear shop', and spoke to an autorickshaw driver to take us back to our ghat. Varanasi is made up of thirty or so ghats, or river-side places, and we only knew the names of a few of them. The guy didn't speak any English, and we ended up in a totally obscure part of town. I said to the guy 'That way' but he grunted as though he knew a better way. Anyway, we arrived, and some guy tried to help, and it turned out the burning ghat was close by, so we decided to get off and walk. The helping guy obviously tried to show us his store. Varanasi is a maze, and we never found the burning ghat that day. We walked with the flow of people, and a woman was hit by a rickshaw. I said 'Jees' and some Muslim man said 'It's terrible'. So we got talking, and he invited us to join him on his walk, to the mosque by the ghats. Sure. The guy looked alright, and we hadn't even seen the Ganga yet (aka the Ganges).
The mosque was cool, and the ghats were cool. The sky was grey, and not too hot. The North, from about Agra onwards had been covered by the haze of a million small rubbish fires. He invited us to check out his silk shop, and we agreed, because he was the owner and not a salesman. We walked through these narrow streets, almost like in Barcelona, and I witnessed an amusing thing. Old women sat with their reed brooms, and brushed away the rubbish that had accumulated on their door step. But they only brushed it away from their own door. These streets were so narrow, however, that it meant it was now just on all of their neighbours front steps. My vision of endless rubbish shuffling was hilarious at the time - the Myth of Sisyphus for India. The guy had a silk factory, and there were various boys from about age 10 to 16 working the machines. We bought some silks, since that is the thing to do in Varanasi. It was inevitable. He said their best worker was paid Rs200 per day. Sounds terrible, but we heard in Udaipur from a rickshaw driver that with Rs300 a day, he could live like a king. So it's all relative.
I tried some paan from a street vendor. It had a betel nut in the middle, and I barely understood what I was eating. I ended up throwing away the nut, because it had the texture of a rock. I chewed the baking powder in my leaf for a minute and spat it out. We later learned about the secret paan underworld from my friend Brijminder. Who knew? The man arranged a rickshaw for us to get home. We used the internet at a shop where kids ran out and chased you yelling 'internet!' We went to Chatni to eat, and there was a strange sight. An 8 year old Indian boy with earmuffs on was speaking fluent English with these two Israeli girls, who seemed to be treating him to supper. I asked 'Mize ha-yeled?' to the girl, who explained in Hebrew that they met him and he acted as a guide. My Hebrew wasn't good enough to understand that though. She repeated it in English. We went at night to the ghat and saw baby goats everywhere. They were too stupid to eat our cookies which were placed at their feet. Though I guess ruminants shouldn't eat cookies. Rabid dogs chased us away, and luckily we find the place we want to stay tomorrow.
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Day 22 - Nov 1 |
We checked out of the place we were staying. The bugs got to be too much. There were ants everywhere, and earwigs in our beds. Crickets coming out of the tap, and roaches mingling with geckos. We decided to go to the Lonely Planet hotel. The owner was forlorn, and angry at his workers that we already had gone silk shopping, and weren't poached in time. We walked to the Sahi River Guest House, and eat breakfast. We walked to the University. The Benares University is more or less the best India has, academically. It was an Indira Gandhi social project, and it is a really nice campus. An enormous semi-circle with leafy trees everywhere, and a temple at the middle. We buy a 'veg puff' for Rs7 each. And then we go to a local ice cream place and get milkshakes. If I regret anything in India, it is buying these milkshakes. They were damn tasty, but we saw the guy put ice cubes in the blender. We thought 'hey, the guy must know that foreigners can't drink local water, right? right, surely'. Wrong. So wrong. We think it was the milkshake. We hire a bicycle rickshaw man, and haggle over the price. The locals pay Rs30 per hour. The guy is not too happy about it, but accepts it, and tells us that it's a good thing we went with him, cause everyone is a cheater. We go to the museum first. The sign says "Arms are not allowed inside museum". We lolled. Then we went to the temple. I ran back to tell the rickshaw driver to bugger off. We didn't want him to wait for us. He said he would. Well OK man, you sit here if you really want to, but we're not coming back. The temple is ok, though its garden is awesome.
We walk out and the man is still there, so we hop on. Men stare, and he apologizes for it. We rode for about 10 minutes, and I gave him 30, and he said no, 100. I said 'What the fuck - it was 30 for an hour earlier'. But he was on some power trip, and had forgot his anti-cheating philosophy. I was fuming, and gave him 50 and said this is with tip. And walked away. It is strange how in India you can get riled up over what in South Africa would be a pretty small issue. If someone charged R16 to bicycle us for 10 minutes in Cape Town, I probably wouldn't yell at him about how it should cost R8 and storm off. But by now I had cemented a prejudice in my head that Indians are opportunistic. In their driving style, and in their business relations, they are the most opportunistic people on Earth. I don't care if it's a generalization, and that whiteys do it too. Anyway, that's what I thought. I won't push it, for fear of offending readers, but really. It is obviously a problem from the economics of scarcity, but it is fucking annoying. At sunset, we go to the ghat, and try get a boat, but there is more ridiculous scheming, so we refuse. Sometimes the opportunism lets you enjoy being mean back. The kid is saying things about prices and we say 'We don't even want your stupid boat, loser'. It was twice the normal price, so we felt justified to be mean. Then came the candle children. Like little Village of the Damned children, they came towards us with candles. Otherwise they were nothing like the kids in that movie. Sweet kids, and quite entertaining, and they were flower candles. The one kid asks if Aurora and I are married. No. "Oh, maybe in a month then.". Are you married? "Yes, maybe in a month". We share the expensive candle joke again, and he demands 500 crore for his candles. We bought one candle for Rs10. We sat and watched the candle ceremony with a guy studying Mech. Eng. at Benares. He was an atheist, which was refreshing. We ate pizza and filter coffee. It was amazing, having not had much cheese in India. Olives, pineapples, mushrooms, yum. Even jalapeno-esque sauce. We burned a CD, and went home to watch TV. Masterchef Australia was really enthralling. This commercial was also great. It showed a person picking up a candy, and some voice yelling 'e-stop!', and again, and again, like the voice was scaring the people picking it up. Then it showed a test tube which turns blue when some powder is added. Something about consumer awareness.
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Day 23 - Nov 2 |
As I said, the milkshake's ice cube probably did it. Both of us suffered all day. We did not leave the hotel room except for water, TP, and 8 pieces of toast. As later joked online, I was a human Catherine wheel.
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Day 24 - Nov 3 |
Aurora felt better. I was feeling better, but it was an illusion. We went to McDonalds for lunch, and their measly burger was almost too much food. But it felt great afterwards. How odd. We checked our emails, and had a late supper at Festive Villa.
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Day 25 - Nov 4 |
Woke up late and ate at the hotel. I was still sick. But I managed to get down to the ghat for a boat ride. We see a funeral taking place at the burning ghat. Some body on fire, about to be set into the river. According to Hindi beliefs, you leave the cycle of Samsara if you are set on fire at the Ganges. This is like an express ticket. We were interested to learn that the constant flow of burning dead bodies into the Ganges only accounts for 5% of its pollution. The majority is caused from the sewerage pipes that flow straight into it. The fecal matter particulate count per liter was something like a billion times higher than it should be. We went to I:bu for supper. Nice wraps and pasta and brownies and ice tea and a beautiful water bottle. We went home and met a Dutch guy who lived in Varanasi for 3 years, trying to improve the Ganges water quality. He gave up. We go to bed, but get caught watching a SA vs. Pakistan cricket match. We win it, just barely.
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Day 26 - Nov 5 |
Diwali. We set the alarm for 5:30 to try do a sunrise cruise, but forgot to press the snooze alarm, so we woke up at noon. We went to Open Hand, a strange friendly place with couches and good coffee. I went to the bathroom, and it reminded me distinctly of nice holiday home bathrooms you get along the garden route in South Africa. The music was even Christian shmooze rock, which you just don't hear in India. And then a bunch of women came in and started speaking Afrikaans. It was bizarre. It turned out to be a South African owned shop, and they are one of some number of groups who are trying to help people find Jesus... through coffee. Jesus, indeed. But they were awfully nice, and suggested I eat bananas for my sickness. So I had a banana smoothie. I was going to anyway. I was still really sick. I slept for a bit while Aurora went out with her camera and spoke to the flower children, Priya and Golu. Priya said they do go to school, but that it was finished already. She proved it by writing her friends' names. Selling flowers is just what they do after school. They all spoke English pretty well.
I woke up and we went for a rickshaw ride, and saw a rocket show. We went out again to see a fireworks show, but I got the wrong hotel location, so Aurora ran away and cried. I trotted after her, but it was some estrogen-fueled rampage, which had nothing to do with the fireworks, but manifested itself as such. Starting about now, we'd start having fights occasionally. They ranged from me being a chauvinist, to Aurora being what I can only describe as a crazy woman. Living with someone for 3 months with hardly any time apart will do that to people. But Assi Ghat was ok. There were lots of bombs. Ear piercing noise makers. We bought some sparklers and gave some to happy street urchins. They were genuinely happy with the sparklers, whereas the school kids were like 'Sparklers whatever'. One girl clung to us and asked us to buy her bombs. She had a pack of 'Turkey fireworks'. But we hated those things. They just scare the bejesus out of you, and it's not really responsible to go buying bombs for children. The girl said 'You buy from me. Not you and you and you. Just me. Only me.' It was pretty funny. She kept saying 'Only meeee', and tried to cry to help her case.
We put two flower candles onto the river. They seemed to get stuck with water cohesion to the side of boats. I felt sorry for the poor bastard who parked his boat right at the water's edge, because his boat probably wouldn't be there by morning.
We went home, and watched another SA vs. Pakistan match. It was so ridiculously close. 1 run, 2 balls, 9 wickets, and the Pakis got it. Down to the wire.
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Day 27 - Nov 6 |
I woke up with some horrible bug bite under my eye. We didn't know what it was, but it would eventually change red then white then scab up and disappear, over the course of a month.
I was still feeling horrible, so we kept our distances to a minimum. I got out of bed at sunrise to take photos, and slept til 11. We went to Open Hand again, and chatted with some Americans. A girl was studying singing and Hindi, on gap exchange. She mentioned 'cloud burst' which I thought was a joke. I said, I believe that is called 'rain', with as much sarcasm as I could muster, my stomach hating me. But it was some actual meteorological condition when cumulonimbus clouds more or less precipitate entirely over a short time. Cool. This other guy, a PhD in EE/CS, was into machine learning, so we chatted a bit, myself being a small expert on the topic. He was temple hopping. We played Rummikub Word Magic. He had some useless ideas about reincarnation, and was jovial. We got our bags, and a rickshaw to the train. There was some confusion as there was no train 2506 announcements. The robot lady mentioned train numbers in Hindi and English, followed by an absurd symphonic flurry. It came 30 minutes late. We saw the British people from Udaipur, and they had been waiting for a train to the same location for 24 hours. They were pissed off. I was pretty happy. My 6-day sickness seemed to be over. The Brits were told 'But it is the oldest train in the country. You should expect it to be late'. We got on the train, in comfortable AC2, which is about as good as it gets.
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