Well, it's ironic that I started my last blog post saying
that unless something goes drastically wrong in the next couple of days then
that would have been my last blog post from India! And yet here I am, sitting at another train
station, awaiting another train, having had another 2 weeks of travel
adventures rather than the Vipassana course I was meant to go on.
So instead of 10 days silence I headed on an overnight train
to Varanasi to experience the holiest city in India, home of the mighty Ganges,
liberator of reincarnation and gateway to Nirvana. This is the Indian belief if you are cremated
(definitely not in a Western way!) in the Burning Ghats in Varanasi in the
Ganges which naturally makes it a huge pilgrimage place for families with the
bodies of their beloved. Don’t think in
any way however, that this means that the Ganges here doesn’t have other
uses. Metres away from the burning bodies’
people are happily bathing, cleaning their teeth, drinking the water – I’m not
kidding!
After a few days in Varanasi it was off to Darjeeling – the home
of tea! And I am very disappointed to
report that despite trying it a few times, I didn’t really like it! The
train journey was an absolute nightmare – the train I was meant to be riding
was 7 hours delayed! I met a Canadian
couple from Quebec after a few hours at the station, so we hung out and played
cards to try and keep our eyes open whilst we waited for the train to keep
being delayed longer and longer. It finally
arrived at 4am and we hopped on with our eyes hanging out of our heads. Of course, there’s no sleeping in on a
sleeper train in India surrounded by people from a culture where respect for
others basically doesn’t exist. I was
awoken to one of my booth-mates blaring his Hindi music from his mobile at 7am –
just what the doctor ordered! We finally
arrived in NJP at 10pm, the closest station to Darjeeling from which we were a
3 hour jeep ride away. We were meant to
arrive at 1.30pm. so consequently we
were too late to be able to get a jeep to Darjeeling and ended up having to
stay in NJP. We finally, finally made it
to Darjeeling and into a guest house at 4pm, so the entire journey from my Guest
House in Varanasi to my guest house in Darjeeling took over 48 hours!
And just as I’ve typed this paragraph, my train from Agra to
Delhi has just been delayed an hour!
This was how it started in Varanasi – I sincerely hope it doesn’t end up
as late as that or I’ll miss my flight to London – I fly at 7am tomorrow
morning meaning I have the great joy of being up at 3pm – can’t wait!
Ok, thankfully train has now turned up, so I’m on the
road. Slightly annoyed that I booked a
nice hotel for my last night here and now I won’t get to spend long in it –
just to sleep really. Darjeeling once we
finally got there was a lovely place, surrounded by 5 mountains including the
mighty Himalayas. Again I got to visit a
beautiful monastery and meditate with the Monks, but this time they were teenage
kids which was quite funny, watching the naughty ones sitting in the back
sneakily whispering to each other! I
also visited a tea plantation where unfortunately they had stopped production for
the season one week prior, so I got led around an empty factory by a guy who I
couldn’t really understand try and explain to me the tea making process. This particular plantation only makes tea for
Harrods, where a 200g tin of tea apparently costs £20!! Who on earth spends £20 on a tin of
tea?! I could have bought the same tin
for 200 rupees which is about £2 but before you get your hopes up, I didn’t – I
am carrying far too much stuff as it is and really couldn’t fit another thing
in my pack if my life depended on it! There was a very cute village next to the plantation
where I saw two neighbours have a huge domestic which was hilarious! Two tiny old women absolutely screaming at
each other, one hurling big plastic water bottles at the other with the other
one shaking her fist! I would have loved
to have taken a picture, but somehow it just didn’t seem appropriate (and I was
a little scared!).
In order to make it worthwhile going to Darjeeling I needed
to fly back to Delhi in order to have time to get to Agra to see the Taj Mahal
and spend one day in the capital before flying back to Londontown. The day I flew started at 3am, where I was
first going up to ‘Tiger Hill’ for the ‘sunrise’ with a ‘view’ of 5 different
mountains including Mount Everest before heading straight to the airport. Sadly because it is now winter in India there
is also a lot of cloud in the North – it’s actually been pretty cold in the
north – like thermal bottoms and hoody cold so the view was somewhat
limited. Still, I can officially say
that I have seen Mount Everest, albeit not that much of it! I then very briefly got taken to Ghoom
monastery, and then was whisked away to airport 3 hours away.
One thing I hadn’t considered when I was booking my flight was
that the beauty of the mountains also had the potential to be a problem. Winter, clouds and mountains of course leads
to low-visibility, and as disappointed as I was that the views weren’t as great
from Tiger Hill as they would have been at a different time of year, I was even
more disappointed when my flight was first delayed for 2 hours, and then
cancelled. Whilst waiting in the airport
restaurant I met an American girl Lauren who was also meant to be flying that
day. All flights were cancelled, and as
it turned out, so had they been for the previous 2 days! Not a great sign! I explained that I was flying from Delhi to
London and needed to get out of there, and was booked on a flight the next
day. So we were stuck in a tiny airport
village – I’ll leave what that means to your imagination. We grabbed our packs to try and find a
rickshaw and promptly got told the only way we could get to Siligury town was
in a 700 rupee taxi – just less than what I’ve been spending a day including accommodation. We continued to walk confident that there was
no way that could be the only option, and less than 5 minutes later were picked
up by a jeep for 70 rupees for both of us!
I’m sure that was still way more than any local would pay, but coming
from 700 as a base we were pleased enough to take it.
Since we had absolutely no idea what we were doing and the guidebooks
don’t cover small towns lie we were in, our jeep driver showed us a guest house
that was on our way. They obviously knew
flights were cancelled so the prices were ridic, so we kept on going. The jeep driver then dropped us on the side
of the road and told us to take a bus, apparently he wasn’t going to take us
all the way to our destination. So we
jumped on a local bus, and 2 minutes later realised that my camera was still in
the taxi! I yelled at Lauren (the American
girl I’d known all of 5 minutes) to stay on the bus and get off at the junction
as we’d been told by the taxi driver and wait for me – and by the way I was
leaving my pack with her on the bus. I
jumped off the bus and ran back to where we had got on but our taxi driver was
nowhere in sight. I then ran back to the
hotel that he took us to to see if the owner knew him (they usually do), and he
took me to another taxi driver who after a group discussion eventually came up with
the drivers name. One of the taxi
drivers took me to his house to get his number and ten called him for me, and
in about 10 minutes I was reunited with my baby! With one obstacle overcome I now had to hope
that my yelled plan with Lauren was going to work out – after all, she had all
my things! Whilst I was waiting for the
bus one of the guys that I’d asked about the camera was sitting there on his
motorbike, so I hitched a ride with him to the junction. And lo and behold, sitting there with her
pack and mine was Lauren, who had only arrived 5 minutes before. And that, my friends, is the wonder of
India. In Londontown, I would have
kissed my camera goodbye, but through the efforts of a hotel owner, the taxi
driver that took me to his house, the taxi driver who came back to return the
camera, the guy who doubled me on his bike, and of course my new friend Lauren
who was stuck with my pack and waited for me, everything was right again!
So the next mission was to find accommodation in a town we
knew absolutely nothing about, which fortunately didn’t take too long. In the lobby of our chosen guest house we met
a half Norwegian, half Nepalese guy called Robin who was quite fun if slightly
full of himself. So being stuck in a
town with nothing to do we decided the order of the day was beers and cards and
we happily passed the evening by.
Thankfully, my flight the following day did fly, so I
managed to make it to Delhi and then get an unreserved seat to Agra costing all
of 60 rupees (about 65p!) for a 4 hour train journey. Thankfully I found a ladies carriage which
was awesome – because if you read my rant about my sleeper class journey, going
unreserved was only going to be worse, much much worse! But as it turned out it was great, I sat next
to a lovely 18 year old girl who was a boxer and a host of other women who just
stared at me, but versus what I was expecting it was perfect. I arrived in Agra at midnight and very tired
and hungover I got in a rickshaw to take me to the hotel my friend had
suggested, and at 1am, having paid 3 times what my friend did but having
absolutely no option because of the time, having made sure they knew that I
knew they were ripping me off and that I was NOT happy about it (“Bad karma!” –
they really don’t like it when you say that!) I crashed out. `
Which brings us back to today assuming my hotel has internet
and I’m awake enough to post this once I get there. Today, on my last day in India I ticked off
the number 1 attraction and symbol of India – the Taj Mahal. The entrance fees are another wonderful
example of the equality of pricing structure in India – locals pay 20 rupees to
see the Taj, foreigners 750 rupees.
Still, the structure is really is a sight to behold.
And then it was time to go back to the train station to hope
again that I was going to be able to get an unreserved ticket to get back to
Delhi to catch my flight, which of course there is.
I’ve tried to keep this post (more!) brief than those that
have gone before. It’s so hard to put
into words the experience of India. Far
more than the sights which are totally amazing and this country is far more
beautiful than I ever could have imagined, it’s the people, it’s the culture, it’s
the life, but the devil is in the detail.
It’s definitely not all been easy, nor pleasant – but it’s a trip that I
will never forget, that much is for sure – the trip of a lifetime!
So now all (and I say that lightly, this is India, and not
only that but Delhi, the King of the land, there’s still a hell of a lot that
could go wrong from here!), I have to do is get off at the right stop, get from
the station to the hotel, and get to the airport tomorrow morning. And then it will be back to ‘civilisation’
(if you can call London that!). It’s a
very bizarre thought after 2 months here, and it will be with very mixed emotion
that I will board the flight, but as they say, all good things must come to an
end.
IRONIC UPDATE:
So obviously I wrote this email whilst I was at a train station and on a train and therefore not connected to the internet, and also my blog post title written. But to really complete the circle, my journey from train station to hotel was a 2 hour battle that, as per my first taxi out of the airport from Mumbai to my hotel, consisted of my driver driving round in circles cursing me and not being able to find my hotel when he said he knew it. So it ends as it begun - in chaos! And now I have to be up in less than 5 hours, so this really is me signing off from India now. London, see you soon!
Namaste
xx
