So I think I left off my last entry on traveling with my hasty departure from the mountainous area of Darjeeling on that cold rainy morning. My hope was to make it by bus to the city of Siliguri down in the flatlands below the mountains and then catch a 10 hour train ride west. On the bus ride down I met a man who was born, raised and lived his whole life in a village near Darjeeling. Physically he looked closer to Chinese than Indian. We sat near each other and chatted for the cramped 4 hour bus ride. The bus was small and I had to keep my backpack in my lap. He told me about his family and showed me pictures of his children. He had a cell phone and the ring tone on it was the actually recording of the Toy Train I took up to Darjeeling, except that he has a video clip and audio recording of the steam train engine which no longer runs. I rode up on the diesel version. He said that when we got to Siliguri he would come with me to a travel agent to get my train ticket so that I wouldn't get ripped off. During the bus ride he warned me about touts and thieves in the Indian tourism industry and he was right. The people who I have met in India who are not in the tourism industry are really nice and helpful and will look out for you. However, those that stand to make money off of you in the business of tourism will screw you for a rupee. They will lie, cheat and steal from you at any chance they get and I have not seen it different yet. If you want a truthful answer to anything about your travels you have to ask someone who is not involved in the tourism industry. Any answer you get from someone in the tourism industry will at the very least be skewed towards having you use them to get there or use a friend of theirs who they get a commission off of.
One day I ordered an autorickshaw to come pick me up at my guest house and to take me to the train station at a particular time. I spoke to the guy personally and he said he'd be there at 5pm. At about 4:30pm I stood outside my guest house and waited. There were about 10 drivers lined up on the street but none were my driver. One of the guys walked up to me and said, "You're going to the train station, right?" I foolishly said yes. He said, "Your driver came by earlier and said he couldn't bring you and asked if I could take you." He then asked for double the price I had agreed upon with the first guy. At 5pm my guy pulled up.
Another time, when I had just arrived in a city, I got an autorickshaw driver to give me a ride to a particular monument. He dropped me off and told me it was right around the corner. I paid him the full fare and after he was gone realized he had driven me less than half way there. I had to get another ride.
It's not unusual for someone to ask for triple the going rate.
Later that day when the bus got to Siliguri, my new friend and I went into the travel agency. He did all the talking and I got a good train reservation for a good price. The trip would be 10 hours. I paid my money and the agent said he'd be right back with the ticket, so my new friend said goodbye and went his way. He took my mailing address and said if he got a chance he would send me some tea from Darjeeling. He was a sweet guy.
A few minutes later the agent came back in and saw that my friend was gone. He said he was unable to book the train ticket because it was sold out. He said, however, that he had a 17 hour bus ride he could put me on for about 50% more. 17 hour, instead of 10. The train is a sleeper compartment, the bus would require me to ride with my bag in my lap. I said no and walked to the train station. By the time I got there the train was gone and the next one didn't leave until the next day, so I was stuck in Siliguri for the night.
I went and checked into a hotel room, threw my bag down and went to get something to eat. After that I went and did some emailing. I got back to my room about 3 hours later. When I sat in my room for a few minutes I smelt this nasty toxic smell. I was trying to figure out what it was when it came to me: mold. I looked around the room and could see the lower part of all the walls were covered with this black mold. I sat and tried to see if I could stand it for the night. Even with the windows open it was too much. I went and told the manager, who came and sprayed this aerosol in the room which did nothing. I told him I wanted a different room, he said that they were all filled up. I could see that they were not. Finally I told him I wanted my money back. He said, "That is not possible." After arguing for a few minutes I gave up and just left. I found another hotel that was decent about a mile and a half down the road.
In India, when you are in a market area or a touristy area there will be people selling all sorts of stuff from vegetables to nicknacks and rugs to clothing. And they will be selling these items in store fronts, on carts in the street and many times just carrying them around. Often, when you are walking through these market type areas, the vendors will try and get your attention in hopes that you will buy something. This is true of the rickshaw drivers as well. They will try to get your attention by saying anything from "Hello would you like to buy..." (insert product) to pretending that they just want to talk to you and get to know you. The most common is "Hello my friend, from which country are you?" Initially you stop and chat with them put then realize as they get more and more pushy that they just want you to buy. And some are really pushy. Eventually you harden up a bit and just say no thank you as you pass. But even when you say "no" they will keep on asking.
Now this isn't all the vendors, maybe a third to a half will do this in any given market area. If you are in a part of a city that is not selling things to tourist, like plumbing supplies or household goods, no one bothers you. If they do it's because they do just want to know where you are from and chat. Those are the rewarding conversations but you always have to be aware of where you are and what type of area you are in.
In Siliguri, along the main road, it is an endless line of tourist related stores. And here, EVERYBODY solicits you. Imagine walking down the street in Manhattan where every single store owner is shouting out to you, "Hello" "Come see" "My friend". And every person with a cart or handful of goods is doing it too. Then add a street full of autorickshaw drivers, peddle rickshaw drivers and pull cart rickshaw drivers all shouting out to you to try and get you to buy or purchase something and all you want to do is walk down the road to get away from your mold infested hotel room.
Now imagine a few of them actually grab you by the arm or the shoulder. At what point do you snap. It was hell. I had a peddle rickshaw driver follow me for the full mile and a half, constantly asking if I wanted a ride. I stopped saying no at number 20. When I got to my new hotel he asked again. I said I'm crossing the street to go to my hotel now. He said I'll take you across the street for 15 rupees. I snapped and told him to get the F@*# away from me.
I had a guy ask me if I wanted my shoes shined for 50 rupees, I was wearing flip flops. When I pointed this out to him, he said he would do it for 20.
I left my backpack in the moldy hotel while I went to find a room in a new one. After booking a room in a new hotel I returned to the moldy one to get my bag and then walked back to the new hotel again. They were on opposite ends of the main strip. That means I had to walk that gauntlet 3 times. I got to my new hotel and didn't come out again until the next morning when it was time to leave. I walked up to the main strip and asked a rickshaw driver for a ride to the train station. The price should be 15 rupees. He wanted 150. I told him the going price was 15 and he said I would never find a ride for that. I walked up to the line of rickshaw drivers and yelled, "Who wants 15 rupees right now for a ride to the train station." 4 guys jumped at it. I looked back at the jackass who wanted the 150 and smiled. I did not miss leaving Siliguri behind and pray I never need to go there again.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Daily Routine (from Kolkata)
After looking back at the entries I've made so far, I realize that while I've done a lot of pontificating and soap box preaching about Kolkata, I never really mentioned what my daily routine was while I was working there. I recently thought about some of the daily things and figured I would write them down.
As I mentioned before, when I started working at Mother Teresa's I also moved into a new guest house. As with most guest houses in India that I've seen so far, the staff that works there sleeps on mats in the lobby or hallways of the guest house. I'm assuming they either don't have homes in Kolkata or their homes are so far away it's easier just to sleep where they work. This usually hasn't been a problem except for this guest house because I was on the ground floor and the guys slept right outside my door. I didn't mind that except that they would talk to each other until well past midnite. And I think I've mentioned how loud and angry Bengali can sound. Even with ear plugs in it was hard to sleep. At times something would wake these guys up in the night and then they would start talking. Now remember, these guys spend the entire day together, working together in the day and sitting on the front steps in the evening. All the while talking and talking to each other. What could they possibly be talking about at 4:00am that they didn't get a chance to talk to each other about in the other 18 hours of the day? More than once I had to ask them to be quiet.
In the morning they would still be asleep and I would get up and have to step over them to get out the door. One guy in particular slept right across the front of my door and I couldn't exit, close and lock the door without waking him.
Once out of the guest house I would go to a cafe on the corner and meet an older British man named Walter for breakfast. Walter was probably in his 70s and was just out traveling the world. I met Walter at Mother Teresa's and we'd walk to work together and chat. Walter and I would commute together for about a week and then he would leave Kolkata to continue his travels.
From the cafe we'd walk about a half a mile down the street, past the street people's camps, past the herds of goats and past the people having their morning constitutionals in the street, to the Metro station to ride the subway. The Metro ride to work in the morning was the only place in Kolkata that wasn't a chaotic mass of noise and people. It was actually quite relaxing. The Metro was cleaner than the subways in New York City and at rush hours just as packed. But at this time in the morning there were only a handful of people. There were TV sets that hung from the ceiling of the subway's waiting platforms and the audio was piped over the PA system. There were only 3 things that were shown on the TVs and they were shown at the exact same time every day in every station. I was able to tell how late I was running by what was on the TV. If I was on time I would get to the platform and there would be this strange, old, circa 1950s American movie playing. It was about a bunch of circus performers and their lives. At one point, the hero, Sebastian tries to do some Triple Lindy move on the trapeze and falls. Shortly after this the movie switched, right in the middle of the action, to an elephant movie. The elephant movie was actual documentary elephant footage with human voice-overs to make it seem like the elephants were living out human like lives. The train would come about 2 minutes into the elephant movie so if it was on when I entered the subway, I knew I was running late and had to run to catch the train. The third show would be on when I was commuting back from work. It was an endless showing of the "World's Greatest Goals", basically non stop old soccer scoring kicks. It claimed to be the "World's Greatest" but it only showed teams from England.
Once off the Metro, I would walk through this loud, frenzied market area that was set up along the road to Orphanage. The people at this "market" were all selling clothes but it wasn't really a market, it was just a few thousand people taking up the far left lane of the main road and all trying to sell piles of clothes that were just laying in the street. By midday they'd all be gone. I would turn off this main road onto a smaller one that would cut through an area that had artist that would make large papier mache sculptors for floats. They would make them out of intricately bent bamboo pieces and cover them with heavy plaster. Then sculpt them to really detailed figures and paint them. Many looked like they were sculpted out of stone.
When I got to the orphanage, I would either head to the roof to do laundry or head into the clinic to do wound care depending on what day it was.
After working at the orphanage, I would head back to the Metro, which was really packed by now and then back to the area near my guest house for lunch. I would quickly eat lunch and then meet the Spanish and Chilean nurses and doctors down at the end of the block. We would all walk together for about a mile to a main thoroughfare and catch a bus. The buses are these rickety old, smoke billowing things that are painted all sorts of colors and jam packed with people, mostly men. (There were far more men out in public than women, easily 80% men in public). As the endless flow of buses came down the road, there were men who hung out the side door and shouted at people where the bus was going. It was really hard to hear what they were saying and if there were signs on the front of the bus saying where it was destined, it was in i and impossible to read. So you had to shout at each bus that went by until one of the guys nodded his head 'yes'. On the bus, there were special benches for ladies that men had to give up their seats for. So all the nurses and doctors got to sit (I was the only guy in our group). The bus would lurch and brake and speed up and weave madly side to side and you couldn't see out the little windows, only hold on for dear life. The bus would drop us off near the Sealdah train station where the other medical clinic was.
During this commute and at work in both clinics, I would work most of my time with these doctors and nurses from Spain and Chile. Only the Chilean nurse spoke English so I would speak in really bad Spanish to the rest of them. And they would speak really, really slowly to me. Except for one Spanish doctor who I think thought I was fluent and would speak a mile a minute to me. I never knew what she was saying and would just nod my head like I did. She would also speak Spanish to the patients who most of the time didn't speak English. It was strange but funny to have to be a translator between a Spanish doctor and a Bengali patient.
After finishing work, we would all fight our way back on the bus and then the mile walk to the guest house area, the route which took us through this touristy market area where the vendors hassled you no matter how many times they saw you walk by.
Once back in my neighborhood I would have dinner and then usually just go back to my room, read and try to sleep. A couple of times I went out for a beer with this other volunteer named Mickey. Mickey was Irish and had been coming to work at Mother Teresa's for years. He was about 30, maybe 5'6" and a boxer by trade. He would fight around Ireland to make his money and then come to Kolkata for about 6 months a year to volunteer. He worked mainly trying to get some of the street people into hospitals or some of Mother's hospices. He would also give boxing lessons to a group of the poor kids. Mickey had been volunteering at Mother Teresa's for 10 years. He was from a tribe of travelers in Ireland and he spoke Cant and Gaelic as first languages. Mickey was also hilarious and would tell some of the worst jokes, most of which would have the word 'Willie" in them. He also had a list of really bad pick up lines, like, "How much does a polar bear weigh?", followed by "Enough to break the ice, Hi my name is Mickey." He claimed that Brad Pitts' role in the movie "Snatch" was loosely based on him. Loosely. I had a good time hanging out with Mickey and another Irish volunteer named Colm. Colm was about 40 and his first language was Gaelic. It was really neat to listen to them talk to each other in a language that sounds so familiar yet you can't understand it, but you feel like you should. Mickey said he had a period of being a ruffian when he was younger but had since come back into the fold of the church. Oh, and Mickey liked to drink.
While working at the clinic at the orphanage, there was this guy from Tacoma, Washington who worked there for the last week or so that I was there. He was a 54 year old, thin white guy who went by the name of "Mad Dog". He was doing an around the world trip for a year and was about half way done. He said he was getting married when he got back home. He was an interesting guy with no medical experience but caught on on how to clean wounds very well. He had a strange sense of humor too. On the day I was working on that guy's finger, the really bad one where the guy was screaming in pain, Mad Dog was watching me work and at one point when the guy screamed really loud, Mad Dog looked at me and said, "Welcome to Mama T's House of Pain!" On another occasion I overheard him singing the song from that kids' game "Operation" while he cut into a wound. He worked for a while there and then one day disappeared.
One of the roads that went through the neighborhood was totally ripped up from construction. There was a 10 foot deep trench running down the middle of it and two giant, long piles of dirt paralleling it on either side. The men who worked on the project did all the labor by hand, no machinery at all. Needless to say this project was going to take a long time. On one side of the trench, all of the new gravel and bricks for the fixed road had been delivered and stacked waiting to be used somewhere in the far future. The street people in that area had taken a bunch of the bricks and stacked them so that they all had little brick houses, it was genius. They put tarps over the top and had what was probably the best living space they had ever had. Too bad it will only last until the road is done, which could be a while.
And for those of you who have been wondering, I did finally get up really early one of my last mornings and make it to Mass at Mother House. It was plain and nice and I'm glad I did it. It also gave me an opportunity to see how many Sisters there were, probably 70 or more, all from different parts of the world. And it made my heart sing to look up at the front of the chapel to see that the altar boy, dressed in a white robe, was none other than Mickey.
As I mentioned before, when I started working at Mother Teresa's I also moved into a new guest house. As with most guest houses in India that I've seen so far, the staff that works there sleeps on mats in the lobby or hallways of the guest house. I'm assuming they either don't have homes in Kolkata or their homes are so far away it's easier just to sleep where they work. This usually hasn't been a problem except for this guest house because I was on the ground floor and the guys slept right outside my door. I didn't mind that except that they would talk to each other until well past midnite. And I think I've mentioned how loud and angry Bengali can sound. Even with ear plugs in it was hard to sleep. At times something would wake these guys up in the night and then they would start talking. Now remember, these guys spend the entire day together, working together in the day and sitting on the front steps in the evening. All the while talking and talking to each other. What could they possibly be talking about at 4:00am that they didn't get a chance to talk to each other about in the other 18 hours of the day? More than once I had to ask them to be quiet.
In the morning they would still be asleep and I would get up and have to step over them to get out the door. One guy in particular slept right across the front of my door and I couldn't exit, close and lock the door without waking him.
Once out of the guest house I would go to a cafe on the corner and meet an older British man named Walter for breakfast. Walter was probably in his 70s and was just out traveling the world. I met Walter at Mother Teresa's and we'd walk to work together and chat. Walter and I would commute together for about a week and then he would leave Kolkata to continue his travels.
From the cafe we'd walk about a half a mile down the street, past the street people's camps, past the herds of goats and past the people having their morning constitutionals in the street, to the Metro station to ride the subway. The Metro ride to work in the morning was the only place in Kolkata that wasn't a chaotic mass of noise and people. It was actually quite relaxing. The Metro was cleaner than the subways in New York City and at rush hours just as packed. But at this time in the morning there were only a handful of people. There were TV sets that hung from the ceiling of the subway's waiting platforms and the audio was piped over the PA system. There were only 3 things that were shown on the TVs and they were shown at the exact same time every day in every station. I was able to tell how late I was running by what was on the TV. If I was on time I would get to the platform and there would be this strange, old, circa 1950s American movie playing. It was about a bunch of circus performers and their lives. At one point, the hero, Sebastian tries to do some Triple Lindy move on the trapeze and falls. Shortly after this the movie switched, right in the middle of the action, to an elephant movie. The elephant movie was actual documentary elephant footage with human voice-overs to make it seem like the elephants were living out human like lives. The train would come about 2 minutes into the elephant movie so if it was on when I entered the subway, I knew I was running late and had to run to catch the train. The third show would be on when I was commuting back from work. It was an endless showing of the "World's Greatest Goals", basically non stop old soccer scoring kicks. It claimed to be the "World's Greatest" but it only showed teams from England.
Once off the Metro, I would walk through this loud, frenzied market area that was set up along the road to Orphanage. The people at this "market" were all selling clothes but it wasn't really a market, it was just a few thousand people taking up the far left lane of the main road and all trying to sell piles of clothes that were just laying in the street. By midday they'd all be gone. I would turn off this main road onto a smaller one that would cut through an area that had artist that would make large papier mache sculptors for floats. They would make them out of intricately bent bamboo pieces and cover them with heavy plaster. Then sculpt them to really detailed figures and paint them. Many looked like they were sculpted out of stone.
When I got to the orphanage, I would either head to the roof to do laundry or head into the clinic to do wound care depending on what day it was.
After working at the orphanage, I would head back to the Metro, which was really packed by now and then back to the area near my guest house for lunch. I would quickly eat lunch and then meet the Spanish and Chilean nurses and doctors down at the end of the block. We would all walk together for about a mile to a main thoroughfare and catch a bus. The buses are these rickety old, smoke billowing things that are painted all sorts of colors and jam packed with people, mostly men. (There were far more men out in public than women, easily 80% men in public). As the endless flow of buses came down the road, there were men who hung out the side door and shouted at people where the bus was going. It was really hard to hear what they were saying and if there were signs on the front of the bus saying where it was destined, it was in i and impossible to read. So you had to shout at each bus that went by until one of the guys nodded his head 'yes'. On the bus, there were special benches for ladies that men had to give up their seats for. So all the nurses and doctors got to sit (I was the only guy in our group). The bus would lurch and brake and speed up and weave madly side to side and you couldn't see out the little windows, only hold on for dear life. The bus would drop us off near the Sealdah train station where the other medical clinic was.
During this commute and at work in both clinics, I would work most of my time with these doctors and nurses from Spain and Chile. Only the Chilean nurse spoke English so I would speak in really bad Spanish to the rest of them. And they would speak really, really slowly to me. Except for one Spanish doctor who I think thought I was fluent and would speak a mile a minute to me. I never knew what she was saying and would just nod my head like I did. She would also speak Spanish to the patients who most of the time didn't speak English. It was strange but funny to have to be a translator between a Spanish doctor and a Bengali patient.
After finishing work, we would all fight our way back on the bus and then the mile walk to the guest house area, the route which took us through this touristy market area where the vendors hassled you no matter how many times they saw you walk by.
Once back in my neighborhood I would have dinner and then usually just go back to my room, read and try to sleep. A couple of times I went out for a beer with this other volunteer named Mickey. Mickey was Irish and had been coming to work at Mother Teresa's for years. He was about 30, maybe 5'6" and a boxer by trade. He would fight around Ireland to make his money and then come to Kolkata for about 6 months a year to volunteer. He worked mainly trying to get some of the street people into hospitals or some of Mother's hospices. He would also give boxing lessons to a group of the poor kids. Mickey had been volunteering at Mother Teresa's for 10 years. He was from a tribe of travelers in Ireland and he spoke Cant and Gaelic as first languages. Mickey was also hilarious and would tell some of the worst jokes, most of which would have the word 'Willie" in them. He also had a list of really bad pick up lines, like, "How much does a polar bear weigh?", followed by "Enough to break the ice, Hi my name is Mickey." He claimed that Brad Pitts' role in the movie "Snatch" was loosely based on him. Loosely. I had a good time hanging out with Mickey and another Irish volunteer named Colm. Colm was about 40 and his first language was Gaelic. It was really neat to listen to them talk to each other in a language that sounds so familiar yet you can't understand it, but you feel like you should. Mickey said he had a period of being a ruffian when he was younger but had since come back into the fold of the church. Oh, and Mickey liked to drink.
While working at the clinic at the orphanage, there was this guy from Tacoma, Washington who worked there for the last week or so that I was there. He was a 54 year old, thin white guy who went by the name of "Mad Dog". He was doing an around the world trip for a year and was about half way done. He said he was getting married when he got back home. He was an interesting guy with no medical experience but caught on on how to clean wounds very well. He had a strange sense of humor too. On the day I was working on that guy's finger, the really bad one where the guy was screaming in pain, Mad Dog was watching me work and at one point when the guy screamed really loud, Mad Dog looked at me and said, "Welcome to Mama T's House of Pain!" On another occasion I overheard him singing the song from that kids' game "Operation" while he cut into a wound. He worked for a while there and then one day disappeared.
One of the roads that went through the neighborhood was totally ripped up from construction. There was a 10 foot deep trench running down the middle of it and two giant, long piles of dirt paralleling it on either side. The men who worked on the project did all the labor by hand, no machinery at all. Needless to say this project was going to take a long time. On one side of the trench, all of the new gravel and bricks for the fixed road had been delivered and stacked waiting to be used somewhere in the far future. The street people in that area had taken a bunch of the bricks and stacked them so that they all had little brick houses, it was genius. They put tarps over the top and had what was probably the best living space they had ever had. Too bad it will only last until the road is done, which could be a while.
And for those of you who have been wondering, I did finally get up really early one of my last mornings and make it to Mass at Mother House. It was plain and nice and I'm glad I did it. It also gave me an opportunity to see how many Sisters there were, probably 70 or more, all from different parts of the world. And it made my heart sing to look up at the front of the chapel to see that the altar boy, dressed in a white robe, was none other than Mickey.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
5000 Year Old Fire
The city of Varanasi is one of the holiest cities in India. The Sacred Ganges river, locally known as the Ganga River, flows right along the city's edge and the river's western banks are lined with concrete stepped known as "ghats". It's here on these ghats that Varanasi's residence live out their lives, everything from bathing to washing clothes to offering up floating prayer candles to cremating their dead.
There's a ghat called the Manikarnika Burning ghat which is Varanasi's main spot for cremation and since dying here is believed to offer liberation from the life cycle, there are alot of cremations that take place. I spent a few hours at the Manikarnika Burning ghat one afternoon and watched this process taking place.
An Indian man who worked as a fire tender in the cremations took a break from his work (for a fee of course) to offer up some insight into what was going on. The Manikarnika Burning ghat is divided up into about 5 different levels decending from the street to the river. At the very top of the ghat is a stone pavillion that has a fire burning in it. The fire is said to be 5000 years old, meaning it has been burning continually and fed for 5000 years. This seems doubtful to me since the origins of the city of Varanasi are only 3,400 years old. But even so, it's probably still a pretty old fire. The ancient fire is used to light all the cremation pyres that take place there at the ghat. There were about a dozen or more going at once the day I was there. Needless to say it was hot and smoky. So smoky that it was hard to keep my eyes open at times.
When the deceased person arrives at the ghat, they are being carried by family members, usually male family members, on a stretcher and are wrapped in a sheet and covered with flowers. The only way to get to the ghat is to snake your way through a labyrinth of alleyways that make up that part of the city. The alleyways aren't wide enough for cars so the bodies are by being carried by hand. There are so many cremations that take place here that on the day I was there, bodies were arriving every 10 minutes or so.
The body is taken down the steps of the ghat to the Ganga River, where it is fully dipped in the water then taken back out and set to rest at the water's edge. Then a family member takes 5 handfulls of river water and pours it on the mouth of the deceased as if to offer 5 drinks of the holy water. Now I hate to be the one to say that the Ganges River is polluted but if the deceased wasn't dead already, 5 drinks of that water would certainly finish the job.
The color of the sheet that is covering the deceased has significance. White if you are man, orange for a woman, red for a young girl, etc. Your caste is important here as well. It determines what level of the ghat you can be cremated on. On the uppermost tier is the highest caste, the Brahmins. Down by the water's edge, on the dirt, are the Untouchables, one of Hinduisms lowest castes.
The type of wood you are cremated on tells of your financial standings. If you are being cremated on Bodhi wood, you are poor. If on Sandlewood, wealthy. I say this because your family has to pay for the wood you are cremated on and Sandlewood is more expensive. There are barges full of wood just off shore and the edges of the ghat are piled high with it. The men who work there, the fire tenders, weigh out the wood and charge by the kilo, then they carry it down to your respective level, stack it up and help you get the body onto it. There's a certain amount of wood required to burn a body depending on the body's size and the fire tenders seem to be knowlegable enough to know how much.
Once the body is put on top of the wood pile, a few more pieces are stacked on top. Then a family member, usually the oldest son if both parents are gone, takes a bundle of straw up to the ancient fire and lights the bundle. They then carry the burning bundle down to the stack of wood with the body on it and circle it 5 times, setting bits of it on fire at a time. Eventually the whole stack catches and it's a giant bonfire. Standing amoungst the 12 or so fires that day, some of which were only a few feet away, I really didn't smell anything but burning wood. Now that being said, a day later I would go further up the river to a much smaller, poorer burning ghat where people were using less than half of the wood that they were using at Manikarnika Burning ghat, which means that the fire wasn't that big. This thing stunk like a really bad barbecue. I'm talking about one of those barbecue places you find in Brunswick, Georgia, right near FLETC. It was foul. Lesson learned is, more wood, bigger fire, less smell.
But back at Manikarnika Burning ghat, it was just smoke and fire. Now it may not smell bad but visually it can be quite shocking. As the cremation goes on and the sheet and flowers burn away, you can see the body charring and burning. At certain points the fire tenders, using a long wooden pole, beat the charred body to break it up in order to make it burn more thoroughly. It can be pretty gruesome. The fire tender told me that there are certain ways that people die that does not allow them to be cremated. They are if the deceased is a baby, a pregnant woman, a person with Leprocy, a person with smallpox or a person killed by being bitten by a cobra. I never found out why. Those persons have rocks tied to them and are thrown directly into the river where they sink right to the bottom. Otherwise, once the cremation is complete, the ashes are doused with holy water from the river and then the ashes are put into the Ganges.
The government, in an attempt to reduce smoke and pollution in Varanasi built a giant, electric crematorium right by the river's edge. But due to shortages in power and frequent power outages, I never saw it being used. I would imagine some of the Hindus would think that it wasn't authentic to use the electric one, though supposedly it is much cheaper.
The fire tender told me it takes about 3 or so hours to completely cremate a body. Women's pelvic bones, he said, took the longest to burn.
There's a ghat called the Manikarnika Burning ghat which is Varanasi's main spot for cremation and since dying here is believed to offer liberation from the life cycle, there are alot of cremations that take place. I spent a few hours at the Manikarnika Burning ghat one afternoon and watched this process taking place.
An Indian man who worked as a fire tender in the cremations took a break from his work (for a fee of course) to offer up some insight into what was going on. The Manikarnika Burning ghat is divided up into about 5 different levels decending from the street to the river. At the very top of the ghat is a stone pavillion that has a fire burning in it. The fire is said to be 5000 years old, meaning it has been burning continually and fed for 5000 years. This seems doubtful to me since the origins of the city of Varanasi are only 3,400 years old. But even so, it's probably still a pretty old fire. The ancient fire is used to light all the cremation pyres that take place there at the ghat. There were about a dozen or more going at once the day I was there. Needless to say it was hot and smoky. So smoky that it was hard to keep my eyes open at times.
When the deceased person arrives at the ghat, they are being carried by family members, usually male family members, on a stretcher and are wrapped in a sheet and covered with flowers. The only way to get to the ghat is to snake your way through a labyrinth of alleyways that make up that part of the city. The alleyways aren't wide enough for cars so the bodies are by being carried by hand. There are so many cremations that take place here that on the day I was there, bodies were arriving every 10 minutes or so.
The body is taken down the steps of the ghat to the Ganga River, where it is fully dipped in the water then taken back out and set to rest at the water's edge. Then a family member takes 5 handfulls of river water and pours it on the mouth of the deceased as if to offer 5 drinks of the holy water. Now I hate to be the one to say that the Ganges River is polluted but if the deceased wasn't dead already, 5 drinks of that water would certainly finish the job.
The color of the sheet that is covering the deceased has significance. White if you are man, orange for a woman, red for a young girl, etc. Your caste is important here as well. It determines what level of the ghat you can be cremated on. On the uppermost tier is the highest caste, the Brahmins. Down by the water's edge, on the dirt, are the Untouchables, one of Hinduisms lowest castes.
The type of wood you are cremated on tells of your financial standings. If you are being cremated on Bodhi wood, you are poor. If on Sandlewood, wealthy. I say this because your family has to pay for the wood you are cremated on and Sandlewood is more expensive. There are barges full of wood just off shore and the edges of the ghat are piled high with it. The men who work there, the fire tenders, weigh out the wood and charge by the kilo, then they carry it down to your respective level, stack it up and help you get the body onto it. There's a certain amount of wood required to burn a body depending on the body's size and the fire tenders seem to be knowlegable enough to know how much.
Once the body is put on top of the wood pile, a few more pieces are stacked on top. Then a family member, usually the oldest son if both parents are gone, takes a bundle of straw up to the ancient fire and lights the bundle. They then carry the burning bundle down to the stack of wood with the body on it and circle it 5 times, setting bits of it on fire at a time. Eventually the whole stack catches and it's a giant bonfire. Standing amoungst the 12 or so fires that day, some of which were only a few feet away, I really didn't smell anything but burning wood. Now that being said, a day later I would go further up the river to a much smaller, poorer burning ghat where people were using less than half of the wood that they were using at Manikarnika Burning ghat, which means that the fire wasn't that big. This thing stunk like a really bad barbecue. I'm talking about one of those barbecue places you find in Brunswick, Georgia, right near FLETC. It was foul. Lesson learned is, more wood, bigger fire, less smell.
But back at Manikarnika Burning ghat, it was just smoke and fire. Now it may not smell bad but visually it can be quite shocking. As the cremation goes on and the sheet and flowers burn away, you can see the body charring and burning. At certain points the fire tenders, using a long wooden pole, beat the charred body to break it up in order to make it burn more thoroughly. It can be pretty gruesome. The fire tender told me that there are certain ways that people die that does not allow them to be cremated. They are if the deceased is a baby, a pregnant woman, a person with Leprocy, a person with smallpox or a person killed by being bitten by a cobra. I never found out why. Those persons have rocks tied to them and are thrown directly into the river where they sink right to the bottom. Otherwise, once the cremation is complete, the ashes are doused with holy water from the river and then the ashes are put into the Ganges.
The government, in an attempt to reduce smoke and pollution in Varanasi built a giant, electric crematorium right by the river's edge. But due to shortages in power and frequent power outages, I never saw it being used. I would imagine some of the Hindus would think that it wasn't authentic to use the electric one, though supposedly it is much cheaper.
The fire tender told me it takes about 3 or so hours to completely cremate a body. Women's pelvic bones, he said, took the longest to burn.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Intestinal India
India's advertising motto is "Incredible India". And this, no doubt, is a fair enough statement. But with all of the gastrointestinal attrocities that I've been having lately, I've decided to call them up and propose that they change it to "Intestinal India". I've already got T-shirts and bumper stickers on order. Another pro-India digestive slogan I'm working on is "India: You've never shat so hard." I think this T-shirt will sell as well as my previously released, "I thought I had TB until I realized it was only Kolkata" T-shirt. I can see the tourists flying to India like a flock of Avian Flu chickens. Intestinal issues are so frequent here, and not just with me, that when you meet another traveler it's only a matter of time before you're both sharing war stories on intestinal issues you've had. Take this guy from Canada I met a few days ago who told me about buying an egg omelette on a train that was so greasy that it soaked clear through the piece of old used newspaper it was served on. Oh, he ate it, you always do. How bad could it be, right? He said he was throwing up for days.
There are four types of toilets here. The first is the standard, western, sit down toilet that you are use to seeing in North and South America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The second is the Indian, squat toilet that is essentially just a hole in the floor with a place to put your feet on each side of the hole. These are found throughout Asia and the Subcontinent of India. Inorder to use the squat toilet you need to have done squat lunge exercises for at least 3 months before traveling. The third type of toilet here is the hybrid squat/western toilet. It is an upright western toilet bowl with a wide ridged spot on each side of the bowl rim where you can put your feet. You can either sit down on this toilet like a regular western toilet or you can stand up on the rim of the bowl and squat. You decide which is less awkward. The forth type of toilet is not really a toilet at all. It's just the ground or the street or a field or the gutter. Many is the time when my sleepy morning commute to volunteer in Kolkata was shaken awake by the sight of a person/people squatting in the street dropping trough. And you thought avoiding stepping in dog droppings was bad.
Now, if you are not accustomed to going in an Indian style squat toilet, it is important to take off your pants before you try to go otherwise tragedy is imminent. You really need to have grown up using one to master the whole squatting down far enough and balancing yourself backwards to avoid dropping it in your own trousers. Trust me, take the pants off.
Now on a train in India you are more likely to find a squat toilet, though once in a while you will find a western one. And let me tell you it's like Christmas morning when you find that western toilet. But, for the most part, expect the hole. It's been a while since I rode on a train in the US but trains in India seem to rock back and forth quite a bit when they are rolling. So much so that you would never consider even trying to use the squat toilet while the train is in motion. And since you are not suppose to use it while the train is parked in the train station (remember, it's just a hole, right out to the ground, not a holding tank) because that would be uncleanly, you are left with holding it until you get to your destination. Which can be a real problem when you are on a 17 hour train ride and are having bowel troubles. What was once a initive stance of never using the squat toilet on a moving train becomes an inevitable necessity.
Now if you are going to attempt the moving train squat toilet, you need to strip down completely (except for your shoes of course, wouldn't want to catch a fungus). It is important to tie your clothing off to something up above, way off the floor, like a water pipe or something. Your money belt usually serves as a good device for tying things off.
Keep in mind that there are no hand rails in these toilets. But there usually is a water spiggot just above floor level with a metal cup chained to it (I'll explain later) right in front of the squat area. This spiggot becomes a handy thing to hold onto while you're going and being tossed about the room. When you think you've finished, you take the metal cup and fill it with water from the little spiggot. With your right hand you pour the water down your bum where the small of your back meets your butt and with your left hand, clean away. This is how most of Asia goes to the bathroom. Keep in mind though that the train is still moving and you really need two hands to do this properly. But realize that, one hand or two, it's going to be messy. Now why the metal cup has a chain on it I'll never know. Who in their right mind would steal the toilet cup? But it is important to check the length of the chain prior to setting into your mission. More than once have I realized, after the business was done, that the chain was so short the cup wouldn't reach around back. I won't go into how this was solved, just check the length beforehand. Forget the thought that you are going to use toilet paper in there, you're only asking for trouble.
Now I really like India food, but the food here, though many of the dishes are the same as back home, is a little different. It's heavier, oilier and much spicier. These are the perfect conditions for causing problems when you're eating it 3 meals a day. Also, not all meals are good here. If you ever travel to Thailand, you'll find that every meal is good. Here, it's hit or miss, mixed with the wonder of whether or not you will wake up sick in the middle of the night. This is why it is important to have everything you need for the toilet laid out in your room, ready to go should you get "struck" in the night.
There is one thing that Indian food has in it that we no longer do in the US, especially in soda, and that's sugar. Remember that stuff. I was drinking a Sprite the other day and passed the time by reading the ingredients label and there it was, sugar. Not high fructose corn syrup. It was tasty, I miss that sugar.
I'm now in the midst of a flora war myself. Whether it's a second wave of the Gangidha paying me a visit or just a side effect of the antibiotic Ciprofloxacin that I took about a month ago, I'll have to see. Today marks day number 13 in a row of steady diarrhea. I think I'll try for a Guiness World Record.
There are four types of toilets here. The first is the standard, western, sit down toilet that you are use to seeing in North and South America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The second is the Indian, squat toilet that is essentially just a hole in the floor with a place to put your feet on each side of the hole. These are found throughout Asia and the Subcontinent of India. Inorder to use the squat toilet you need to have done squat lunge exercises for at least 3 months before traveling. The third type of toilet here is the hybrid squat/western toilet. It is an upright western toilet bowl with a wide ridged spot on each side of the bowl rim where you can put your feet. You can either sit down on this toilet like a regular western toilet or you can stand up on the rim of the bowl and squat. You decide which is less awkward. The forth type of toilet is not really a toilet at all. It's just the ground or the street or a field or the gutter. Many is the time when my sleepy morning commute to volunteer in Kolkata was shaken awake by the sight of a person/people squatting in the street dropping trough. And you thought avoiding stepping in dog droppings was bad.
Now, if you are not accustomed to going in an Indian style squat toilet, it is important to take off your pants before you try to go otherwise tragedy is imminent. You really need to have grown up using one to master the whole squatting down far enough and balancing yourself backwards to avoid dropping it in your own trousers. Trust me, take the pants off.
Now on a train in India you are more likely to find a squat toilet, though once in a while you will find a western one. And let me tell you it's like Christmas morning when you find that western toilet. But, for the most part, expect the hole. It's been a while since I rode on a train in the US but trains in India seem to rock back and forth quite a bit when they are rolling. So much so that you would never consider even trying to use the squat toilet while the train is in motion. And since you are not suppose to use it while the train is parked in the train station (remember, it's just a hole, right out to the ground, not a holding tank) because that would be uncleanly, you are left with holding it until you get to your destination. Which can be a real problem when you are on a 17 hour train ride and are having bowel troubles. What was once a initive stance of never using the squat toilet on a moving train becomes an inevitable necessity.
Now if you are going to attempt the moving train squat toilet, you need to strip down completely (except for your shoes of course, wouldn't want to catch a fungus). It is important to tie your clothing off to something up above, way off the floor, like a water pipe or something. Your money belt usually serves as a good device for tying things off.
Keep in mind that there are no hand rails in these toilets. But there usually is a water spiggot just above floor level with a metal cup chained to it (I'll explain later) right in front of the squat area. This spiggot becomes a handy thing to hold onto while you're going and being tossed about the room. When you think you've finished, you take the metal cup and fill it with water from the little spiggot. With your right hand you pour the water down your bum where the small of your back meets your butt and with your left hand, clean away. This is how most of Asia goes to the bathroom. Keep in mind though that the train is still moving and you really need two hands to do this properly. But realize that, one hand or two, it's going to be messy. Now why the metal cup has a chain on it I'll never know. Who in their right mind would steal the toilet cup? But it is important to check the length of the chain prior to setting into your mission. More than once have I realized, after the business was done, that the chain was so short the cup wouldn't reach around back. I won't go into how this was solved, just check the length beforehand. Forget the thought that you are going to use toilet paper in there, you're only asking for trouble.
Now I really like India food, but the food here, though many of the dishes are the same as back home, is a little different. It's heavier, oilier and much spicier. These are the perfect conditions for causing problems when you're eating it 3 meals a day. Also, not all meals are good here. If you ever travel to Thailand, you'll find that every meal is good. Here, it's hit or miss, mixed with the wonder of whether or not you will wake up sick in the middle of the night. This is why it is important to have everything you need for the toilet laid out in your room, ready to go should you get "struck" in the night.
There is one thing that Indian food has in it that we no longer do in the US, especially in soda, and that's sugar. Remember that stuff. I was drinking a Sprite the other day and passed the time by reading the ingredients label and there it was, sugar. Not high fructose corn syrup. It was tasty, I miss that sugar.
I'm now in the midst of a flora war myself. Whether it's a second wave of the Gangidha paying me a visit or just a side effect of the antibiotic Ciprofloxacin that I took about a month ago, I'll have to see. Today marks day number 13 in a row of steady diarrhea. I think I'll try for a Guiness World Record.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Mangroves, Mountains and Monkeys
For those of you who have stuck with reading this blog to this point, I promise that things will get a lot cheerier from here on.
On the bus ride out of Kolkata I met an Indian man who was traveling to the same place I was: Sunderban Tiger Reserve. He was the same age as I was, born and raised outside of Kolkata and we were both heading several hours south of Kolkata to the delta of mangroves that forms the mouth of the Ganges River. This delta is enourmous and part of it lies in India, the rest in Bangladesh. This mangrove forest is considered the largest in the world and is home to none other than the Royal Bengal Tiger. There are Royal Bengal Tigers elsewhere in India, some that are bigger than here, but these Bengal Tigers are considered special because somewhere in their evolution, whether through their environment or human interaction, they have become man-eaters and often hunt the people that live and fish in the mangroves. It is estimated that thousands and thousands of people have been killed by these tigers. (see, I told you it would get cheerier!) By the same token, thousands of these tigers have been hunted and killed over the years and the area is now a protected reserve.
The trip there was an adventure in itself. It would require a 3 1/2 hour bus ride, followed by an hour and a half ferry ride, followed by a 45 minute bicycle rickshaw ride, followed by a short 10 minute ferry ride to the camp I would be staying in. The man I was traveling with was a professional photographer in India and had been to this reserve a number of times. I decided to stick with him for at least the trip there. He would be going on, deeper into the mangroves on a longer trip than I would be but I figured there was less chance of getting lost or ripped off if I stuck with him.
After the initial bus ride, he recommended that we take a 1 hour motor-rickshaw over a dirt road "short-cut" to save time, rather than take the hour and a half ferry ride. Sounded good to me. A motor-rickshaw is basically a small engine motorcycle that has been modified to have an axle and two wheels in the back. The driver sits on the motorcycle seat and the passengers sit on a board that has been mounted over the axle in back. It's really, really comfortable, not! Especially on a pot-holed dirt road. This thing rattles every vertabrae in your back. The good thing about it is that this dirt road took us through jungle vegetation mixed with farm land. and every so often we would come upon a cluster of small, one room, mud homes with grass thatched roofs. These little villages had no electricity or running water. Usually there were cattle, chickens and goats running around, people working in the fields, people bathing in ponds and little kids who would frantically wave and yell, "tata! tata!" at you. If you waved back a huge tooth filled smile would spread across their faces. I have a feeling that not many tourist know or take this "short-cut". I was pretty cool.
After the motor-rickshaw ride, we had to take a small, wooden ferry boat across a river to where the larger ferry would have dropped us off. Once across the river, we were now on an island and had to take a bicycle rickshaw ride for 45 minutes. A bicycle rickshaw is just like a motorcycle rickshaw except that it's a bicycle and yes, powered by a guy who peddles the bike. Initially, I had a bit of an issue with this. It felt a little too colonial for me to have an Indian man bicycle me around. In Kolkata there were also traditional hand pulled rickshaws that many people would use, but I couldn't bring myself to it. The photographer explained to me that the bicycle rickshaw was the main mode of transportation on this island and that it was the only way for some of these folks to make any money. He also explained to me that it wasn't just tourist that use them, the locals use them regularly. With that, I saddled up and me, the photographer and two other locals were wisked away by a 120 pound guy, who to get momentum had to run along side of the bike and then hop on an work the peddles to make it move. It was a flat 45 minute ride.
During the bicycle rickshaw trip, the local guy who sat next to me would point things out as we rolled through the villages. At times it was hard for me to understand him even though he was speaking English. And it was more than just his accent. I've noticed over the past month in India that English has kind of branched off into its own language here that uses a mix of English and Bengali or Hindi and that some English words are used for different meanings than I am used to. Like the word "only". It is used here to mean "exactly". It took me a month to figure that out.
When we reached the other side of the island, the photographer and I hopped on different ferries. Mine across a small stretch of river to my lodge and his to deeper into the mangroves. Before we parted he gave me a fatherly warning about safety while traveling. He warned of theives and cheats and people who will slip drugs into your drink to steal your kidneys. I've found it an interesting paradox that the people I meet who are not involved in the tourism industry will go out of their way to help you, even pay for things for you (the photographer paid for my ferry ride). But those involved in the tourism industry or stand to make a rupee off of you can be ruthless. We said our Namskaars and off I went to my lodge.
The lodge I was staying at was basically a concrete dorm building with a dining room, all surrounded by a barbed-wire topped fence, which was, of course, to keep those pesky man-eaters out. Some of the sections of fence looked like a possum could knock it down. The lodge offered boat tours of the mangroves. The boat ride was a day trip that would bring the tourists to 2 or 3 watch towers where we could try and spy tigers and other wildlife in the thick vegetation.
I'm going to end the suspense now and let you know that I did not see a tiger. I wasn't really expecting to, since it's a rare occassion that someone does. That being said, a tiger was spotted by some tourist at one of the watch towers a few hours before my boat got there. That being said, I did see a bunch of other really cool wildlife. Lots of white spotted deer, wild boar, corcodiles and a water monitor, which is a giant 6 foot plus lizard thing. At one of the watering holes below a watch tower, there was a deer, boar and water monitor all drinking near each other. When the boar unknowlingly wandered into the water monitor's personal space, the water monitor whipped the pig with its tail! It was really funny and the boar ran off scared into the mangroves. There were also plenty of birds including several types of the beautiful Kingfisher, a small, magnificently colored fishing bird. There were also a couple Fishercats. These were jungle cats that are about three times the size of a house cat. About twice the size of a lynx but very lean with long legs.
But better than all these wildlife sightings combined was seeing monkeys. And not just any monkeys, these were monkeys that were extremely habituated to humans. They were habituated from years of people, including the lodge staff and government wardens feeding them scraps. So habituated that they hung around the lodge trying to get food. They would come running when you left your room and would even try to get into your room. When I first arrived, I went into my room and laid down on the bed to rest from the long trip. After about two minutes I heard something at the side of my bed. When I looked, it was a baby Macaque monkey who was standing on its legs looking at me. And this was the inside side of my bed. It had worked its way under my bed to the other side, way inside the room. It made a whimpering little peep at me. I sat up and yelled, "Monkey!!" and off it scurried back under my bed and out the door. Every day these guys would be out on the balcony of the lodge, jumping from the trees to the railings. At night you could hear them on the corrugated metal roof, up there monkeying around. Against stern warnings, I made eye contact with a big one and tried to stare it down. It hissed and bore its fangs at me and then bluff charged. Now I've been bluffed charged by black bears before and was always able to stand my ground. But when this monkey bluff charged me all that ranger wildlife training went out the window and I ran. I ran and didn't stop until I had slammed the bedroom door behind me. I love those monkeys! They're so much fun to watch walk around and poke at things. They're like having little mischievous friends that are always getting into trouble. I could spend hours watching them. Once in a while a mama would come running by with a baby clinging to her back.
Tourists are only allowed into a certain section of the mangroves, locals are allowed to enter into a second section to subsist, which usually entails fishing and gathering honey from wild bee hives. A third section, the "core" is off limits to all but scientists and government personell. I'm thinking of proposing the Wonder Lake area of Denali to become a "core" area where tourists aren't allowed.
When I traveled through Ecuador a few years ago, I went to the coast to see the mangroves but they were all gone. Almost the entire coast of that country used to be covered in mangrove forests but they were all cut down to make way for shrimp farming pools. It was great to finally see what they look like.
While out on the boat tour, we pulled into one of the watch tower stops. The tour boat infront of us was taken up by a large Indian family. When I got off the boat, I was approached by an older Indian man who asked me the usual questions such as where am I from, my work, how long traveling, etc. He also asked me if I was married. This is usually the second question after where are you from. And it is usually followed by how old are you? Which is, of course, followed by "why not?". These questions are not considered too personal in India, nor are they considered rude to ask. Marriage is such a huge, important aspect of this culture that it seems to always be on people's minds. After answering the older man's questions, his family all came walking up, which he introduced me to all of them, his wife, sister, brother in law, father and mother, and children. When explaining who I was to his family, he said, "He is from America, he is an Alaskan bachelor." That phrase was then thrown around the family mixed with Bengali. I kept hearing, "blah, blah, blah, Alaskan bachelor." It made me laugh. It sounded like a new TV reality show, "The Alaskan Bachelor", oh, wait, that's right, that was a reality show, but fortunately I wasn't the Park Ranger on it, that was the park service's own Mike Thompson from Bering Land Bridge National Preserve! Mike, you should come to India, they're waiting for you.
It was really nice to just be out on the water with fresh air, a breeze and sunshine. And no car horns. It was really quiet at night (once the monkeys went to sleep) and I had two really good nights of sleep.
On the third day I left the Tiger Reserve. I decided to skip the motor-rickshaw "short-cut" and take the regular ferry instead. The ferry was a really interesting ride too. It stopped at every little village along the main riverway dropping off and picking up people and cargo. The river is the only transportation access to these villages and you can see that the ferry is the main artery running in and out.
The bus ride back into Kolkata was like a polluted slap in the face. Fortunately, I would only be there a few hours before catching an over night train north to Darjeeling to see the mountains. The last part of the train ride there is on an antique "toy train" that is only a little bigger than the toy trains children ride at an amusement park. It worked its way very slowly up into the mountains, offering great views of the flat plains below.
The vegetation changed from tropical to a mountain forest. Not only did the terrain change but so did the people. The racial features of the people were more like their Asian neighbors to the north and did not look at all like the Indian people I had seen down in the plains.
Darjeeling was unseasonably cold. They had just had snow a few days before I got there. The northern part of India was still caught in a cold wave as transportation to and from the north was being shut down due to the snow. I knew my plans to continue further north to the state of Sikkim were not going to happen. I figured I would spend a couple days in the mountains then head south again. Darjeeling was damp and cold and under fog most of the time I was there. During the day it was really nice to be in fresh air again and great cool weather for walking around all day. There were even a few monkeys in the area! I made sure to avert my eyes anytime one of them contacted me. At night it would drop down to just above freezing which is fine if you've got a heated guest house with a hot shower. But if you are as cheap as I am, you don't. I could see my breath in my room. I took a cold water, bucket shower the first night and then wised up to never try that again. I slept with my fleece on and in my sleeping bag with the two heavy blankets provided by the guest house on top of that. It was kinda like winter camping. There was no heating anywhere in the guest house. I ate my dinner in the kitchen of the restaurant sitting around a coal burning stove with the family that ran the place. They just looked at me wondering why I was there. I looked back wondering why I was there, too. The first morning I woke at 4am and took a shared taxi ride up to a place called Tiger Hill. From there I, and dozens of other people, watched the sunrise on Khangchendzonga, the third highest mountain in the world. Seeing the pink alpenglow on the mountains was worth getting up early and freezing off my butt for. Off to the left, far, far in the distance you could just see the Everest Range. Back down in town, Darjeeling was blanketed in fog. It was also Tibetian New Year, which I thought would be an exciting time to be in Darjeeling since there is a large population of Tibetian refugees there. Unfortunately this only meant that a good number of the shops and restaurants were closed, including the Tibetian Self Help Center where refugees make arts and crafts and there is an orphanage and school. It appears that I had mis-timed my trip to the mountains. But all in all it was still nice to be up there. That night it got so cold that I went to bed at 7:30pm and didn't get out from under the covers until 8:00am the next morning. I looked out the window, it was starting to rain. I packed up and caught the next bus south.
On the bus ride out of Kolkata I met an Indian man who was traveling to the same place I was: Sunderban Tiger Reserve. He was the same age as I was, born and raised outside of Kolkata and we were both heading several hours south of Kolkata to the delta of mangroves that forms the mouth of the Ganges River. This delta is enourmous and part of it lies in India, the rest in Bangladesh. This mangrove forest is considered the largest in the world and is home to none other than the Royal Bengal Tiger. There are Royal Bengal Tigers elsewhere in India, some that are bigger than here, but these Bengal Tigers are considered special because somewhere in their evolution, whether through their environment or human interaction, they have become man-eaters and often hunt the people that live and fish in the mangroves. It is estimated that thousands and thousands of people have been killed by these tigers. (see, I told you it would get cheerier!) By the same token, thousands of these tigers have been hunted and killed over the years and the area is now a protected reserve.
The trip there was an adventure in itself. It would require a 3 1/2 hour bus ride, followed by an hour and a half ferry ride, followed by a 45 minute bicycle rickshaw ride, followed by a short 10 minute ferry ride to the camp I would be staying in. The man I was traveling with was a professional photographer in India and had been to this reserve a number of times. I decided to stick with him for at least the trip there. He would be going on, deeper into the mangroves on a longer trip than I would be but I figured there was less chance of getting lost or ripped off if I stuck with him.
After the initial bus ride, he recommended that we take a 1 hour motor-rickshaw over a dirt road "short-cut" to save time, rather than take the hour and a half ferry ride. Sounded good to me. A motor-rickshaw is basically a small engine motorcycle that has been modified to have an axle and two wheels in the back. The driver sits on the motorcycle seat and the passengers sit on a board that has been mounted over the axle in back. It's really, really comfortable, not! Especially on a pot-holed dirt road. This thing rattles every vertabrae in your back. The good thing about it is that this dirt road took us through jungle vegetation mixed with farm land. and every so often we would come upon a cluster of small, one room, mud homes with grass thatched roofs. These little villages had no electricity or running water. Usually there were cattle, chickens and goats running around, people working in the fields, people bathing in ponds and little kids who would frantically wave and yell, "tata! tata!" at you. If you waved back a huge tooth filled smile would spread across their faces. I have a feeling that not many tourist know or take this "short-cut". I was pretty cool.
After the motor-rickshaw ride, we had to take a small, wooden ferry boat across a river to where the larger ferry would have dropped us off. Once across the river, we were now on an island and had to take a bicycle rickshaw ride for 45 minutes. A bicycle rickshaw is just like a motorcycle rickshaw except that it's a bicycle and yes, powered by a guy who peddles the bike. Initially, I had a bit of an issue with this. It felt a little too colonial for me to have an Indian man bicycle me around. In Kolkata there were also traditional hand pulled rickshaws that many people would use, but I couldn't bring myself to it. The photographer explained to me that the bicycle rickshaw was the main mode of transportation on this island and that it was the only way for some of these folks to make any money. He also explained to me that it wasn't just tourist that use them, the locals use them regularly. With that, I saddled up and me, the photographer and two other locals were wisked away by a 120 pound guy, who to get momentum had to run along side of the bike and then hop on an work the peddles to make it move. It was a flat 45 minute ride.
During the bicycle rickshaw trip, the local guy who sat next to me would point things out as we rolled through the villages. At times it was hard for me to understand him even though he was speaking English. And it was more than just his accent. I've noticed over the past month in India that English has kind of branched off into its own language here that uses a mix of English and Bengali or Hindi and that some English words are used for different meanings than I am used to. Like the word "only". It is used here to mean "exactly". It took me a month to figure that out.
When we reached the other side of the island, the photographer and I hopped on different ferries. Mine across a small stretch of river to my lodge and his to deeper into the mangroves. Before we parted he gave me a fatherly warning about safety while traveling. He warned of theives and cheats and people who will slip drugs into your drink to steal your kidneys. I've found it an interesting paradox that the people I meet who are not involved in the tourism industry will go out of their way to help you, even pay for things for you (the photographer paid for my ferry ride). But those involved in the tourism industry or stand to make a rupee off of you can be ruthless. We said our Namskaars and off I went to my lodge.
The lodge I was staying at was basically a concrete dorm building with a dining room, all surrounded by a barbed-wire topped fence, which was, of course, to keep those pesky man-eaters out. Some of the sections of fence looked like a possum could knock it down. The lodge offered boat tours of the mangroves. The boat ride was a day trip that would bring the tourists to 2 or 3 watch towers where we could try and spy tigers and other wildlife in the thick vegetation.
I'm going to end the suspense now and let you know that I did not see a tiger. I wasn't really expecting to, since it's a rare occassion that someone does. That being said, a tiger was spotted by some tourist at one of the watch towers a few hours before my boat got there. That being said, I did see a bunch of other really cool wildlife. Lots of white spotted deer, wild boar, corcodiles and a water monitor, which is a giant 6 foot plus lizard thing. At one of the watering holes below a watch tower, there was a deer, boar and water monitor all drinking near each other. When the boar unknowlingly wandered into the water monitor's personal space, the water monitor whipped the pig with its tail! It was really funny and the boar ran off scared into the mangroves. There were also plenty of birds including several types of the beautiful Kingfisher, a small, magnificently colored fishing bird. There were also a couple Fishercats. These were jungle cats that are about three times the size of a house cat. About twice the size of a lynx but very lean with long legs.
But better than all these wildlife sightings combined was seeing monkeys. And not just any monkeys, these were monkeys that were extremely habituated to humans. They were habituated from years of people, including the lodge staff and government wardens feeding them scraps. So habituated that they hung around the lodge trying to get food. They would come running when you left your room and would even try to get into your room. When I first arrived, I went into my room and laid down on the bed to rest from the long trip. After about two minutes I heard something at the side of my bed. When I looked, it was a baby Macaque monkey who was standing on its legs looking at me. And this was the inside side of my bed. It had worked its way under my bed to the other side, way inside the room. It made a whimpering little peep at me. I sat up and yelled, "Monkey!!" and off it scurried back under my bed and out the door. Every day these guys would be out on the balcony of the lodge, jumping from the trees to the railings. At night you could hear them on the corrugated metal roof, up there monkeying around. Against stern warnings, I made eye contact with a big one and tried to stare it down. It hissed and bore its fangs at me and then bluff charged. Now I've been bluffed charged by black bears before and was always able to stand my ground. But when this monkey bluff charged me all that ranger wildlife training went out the window and I ran. I ran and didn't stop until I had slammed the bedroom door behind me. I love those monkeys! They're so much fun to watch walk around and poke at things. They're like having little mischievous friends that are always getting into trouble. I could spend hours watching them. Once in a while a mama would come running by with a baby clinging to her back.
Tourists are only allowed into a certain section of the mangroves, locals are allowed to enter into a second section to subsist, which usually entails fishing and gathering honey from wild bee hives. A third section, the "core" is off limits to all but scientists and government personell. I'm thinking of proposing the Wonder Lake area of Denali to become a "core" area where tourists aren't allowed.
When I traveled through Ecuador a few years ago, I went to the coast to see the mangroves but they were all gone. Almost the entire coast of that country used to be covered in mangrove forests but they were all cut down to make way for shrimp farming pools. It was great to finally see what they look like.
While out on the boat tour, we pulled into one of the watch tower stops. The tour boat infront of us was taken up by a large Indian family. When I got off the boat, I was approached by an older Indian man who asked me the usual questions such as where am I from, my work, how long traveling, etc. He also asked me if I was married. This is usually the second question after where are you from. And it is usually followed by how old are you? Which is, of course, followed by "why not?". These questions are not considered too personal in India, nor are they considered rude to ask. Marriage is such a huge, important aspect of this culture that it seems to always be on people's minds. After answering the older man's questions, his family all came walking up, which he introduced me to all of them, his wife, sister, brother in law, father and mother, and children. When explaining who I was to his family, he said, "He is from America, he is an Alaskan bachelor." That phrase was then thrown around the family mixed with Bengali. I kept hearing, "blah, blah, blah, Alaskan bachelor." It made me laugh. It sounded like a new TV reality show, "The Alaskan Bachelor", oh, wait, that's right, that was a reality show, but fortunately I wasn't the Park Ranger on it, that was the park service's own Mike Thompson from Bering Land Bridge National Preserve! Mike, you should come to India, they're waiting for you.
It was really nice to just be out on the water with fresh air, a breeze and sunshine. And no car horns. It was really quiet at night (once the monkeys went to sleep) and I had two really good nights of sleep.
On the third day I left the Tiger Reserve. I decided to skip the motor-rickshaw "short-cut" and take the regular ferry instead. The ferry was a really interesting ride too. It stopped at every little village along the main riverway dropping off and picking up people and cargo. The river is the only transportation access to these villages and you can see that the ferry is the main artery running in and out.
The bus ride back into Kolkata was like a polluted slap in the face. Fortunately, I would only be there a few hours before catching an over night train north to Darjeeling to see the mountains. The last part of the train ride there is on an antique "toy train" that is only a little bigger than the toy trains children ride at an amusement park. It worked its way very slowly up into the mountains, offering great views of the flat plains below.
The vegetation changed from tropical to a mountain forest. Not only did the terrain change but so did the people. The racial features of the people were more like their Asian neighbors to the north and did not look at all like the Indian people I had seen down in the plains.
Darjeeling was unseasonably cold. They had just had snow a few days before I got there. The northern part of India was still caught in a cold wave as transportation to and from the north was being shut down due to the snow. I knew my plans to continue further north to the state of Sikkim were not going to happen. I figured I would spend a couple days in the mountains then head south again. Darjeeling was damp and cold and under fog most of the time I was there. During the day it was really nice to be in fresh air again and great cool weather for walking around all day. There were even a few monkeys in the area! I made sure to avert my eyes anytime one of them contacted me. At night it would drop down to just above freezing which is fine if you've got a heated guest house with a hot shower. But if you are as cheap as I am, you don't. I could see my breath in my room. I took a cold water, bucket shower the first night and then wised up to never try that again. I slept with my fleece on and in my sleeping bag with the two heavy blankets provided by the guest house on top of that. It was kinda like winter camping. There was no heating anywhere in the guest house. I ate my dinner in the kitchen of the restaurant sitting around a coal burning stove with the family that ran the place. They just looked at me wondering why I was there. I looked back wondering why I was there, too. The first morning I woke at 4am and took a shared taxi ride up to a place called Tiger Hill. From there I, and dozens of other people, watched the sunrise on Khangchendzonga, the third highest mountain in the world. Seeing the pink alpenglow on the mountains was worth getting up early and freezing off my butt for. Off to the left, far, far in the distance you could just see the Everest Range. Back down in town, Darjeeling was blanketed in fog. It was also Tibetian New Year, which I thought would be an exciting time to be in Darjeeling since there is a large population of Tibetian refugees there. Unfortunately this only meant that a good number of the shops and restaurants were closed, including the Tibetian Self Help Center where refugees make arts and crafts and there is an orphanage and school. It appears that I had mis-timed my trip to the mountains. But all in all it was still nice to be up there. That night it got so cold that I went to bed at 7:30pm and didn't get out from under the covers until 8:00am the next morning. I looked out the window, it was starting to rain. I packed up and caught the next bus south.
Namskaar Kolkata
My final days in Kolkata turned out to be no less exciting than the preceeding month. I worked my last day up on the roof of the orphanage washing and hanging laundry. There were only a few people working and it was a very peaceful, sunny day. Manjri, the litle girl who would run around and play an imaginary game of Duck, Duck, Goose was up on the roof as usual, weaving her way silently between the laundry as the wind played its own game with the sheets. I will miss this spot most of all.
My last day at the medical clinic turned out to be a doozie. On the good side of things, I had these two little girls come in, one was about 7, the other 5. The 7 year old had been in a few days before when I had bandaged up a cut on her finger. Now she was bringing in her little sister who had a big scrape on her elbow. As I cleaned her scrape the 5 year old was crying and her older sister kept making fun of her. It was hard to keep from laughing. I took out my digital camera and took pictures of them which when I showed the 5 year old, made her stop crying. By the time I was done bandaging up the 5 year old's scrape she was crying again and her sister was back to making fun of her. I laughed with the older sister and then told her I wanted to look at the cut I had bandaged a few days ago. Her facial expression went from making fun of her sister to a serious, "Uh, oh, I'm in trouble now" look. She shook her head 'no', grabbed her little sister's arm and darted out the door. I'll miss those kids too.
My second to last patient on my last day of work at the clinic was the worst I had to deal with in the month I had been here, and if you are faint of heart or have a weak stomach, you can skip this paragraph(seriously). This man had been in a motorcycle accident and had split his head open ear to ear. The cut went over the top part of his head and was all the way to the skull. When he showed up, his head was wrapped in a dirty bandage and the smell was the worst I had experienced yet. When I got the old bandaging off, I could see that someone had stitched his head up with literally with about 7 or 8 stitches. This wound should have had over 200 stitches in it. His whole head and forehead from the top of his crown to his eyes moved around like a mask in a horror movie. It had become so infected that it was bloated and the puss just poured out of the wound and it smelt as if someone had shoved human excrement in my nostrils. It was so bad that I had to call over the Spanish nurse who was volunteering with me that day and have her help or should I say take the lead. It took a while to clean him up and bandage him up and I have no idea how he will do. I will never know.
Half of me was relieved to walk away from the clinic that day. The other half of me wonder how could I possibly leave? All of me knew I would be wrestling with these issues for a long time to come. The patients I met in the clinic live lives filled with more pain and suffering than I could ever have imagined and they will continue to do so long after I am gone.
I loaded up my backpack and hopped on a bus heading south out of Kolkata. For the first hour or so of the trip, the bus paralelled a large, stagnant black river of raw sewage. On the other side of the road were giant heaps of garbaged that were burning as street people picked through them looking for whatever could be reused or eaten.
After about 2 plus hours of the trip, the city gave way to a continual stretch of farm land. Endless patches of green and brown vegetation with the occassional cluster of people working in the fields.
The Bengali term "Namskaar" is used when greeting and saying goodbye to someone. It means 'The God of my soul recognizes the God of your soul." It's a beautiful word that hold so much more in it than just 'hello' or 'goodbye'. I said Namaskar to Kolkata today. It was bittersweet to be leaving.
My last day at the medical clinic turned out to be a doozie. On the good side of things, I had these two little girls come in, one was about 7, the other 5. The 7 year old had been in a few days before when I had bandaged up a cut on her finger. Now she was bringing in her little sister who had a big scrape on her elbow. As I cleaned her scrape the 5 year old was crying and her older sister kept making fun of her. It was hard to keep from laughing. I took out my digital camera and took pictures of them which when I showed the 5 year old, made her stop crying. By the time I was done bandaging up the 5 year old's scrape she was crying again and her sister was back to making fun of her. I laughed with the older sister and then told her I wanted to look at the cut I had bandaged a few days ago. Her facial expression went from making fun of her sister to a serious, "Uh, oh, I'm in trouble now" look. She shook her head 'no', grabbed her little sister's arm and darted out the door. I'll miss those kids too.
My second to last patient on my last day of work at the clinic was the worst I had to deal with in the month I had been here, and if you are faint of heart or have a weak stomach, you can skip this paragraph(seriously). This man had been in a motorcycle accident and had split his head open ear to ear. The cut went over the top part of his head and was all the way to the skull. When he showed up, his head was wrapped in a dirty bandage and the smell was the worst I had experienced yet. When I got the old bandaging off, I could see that someone had stitched his head up with literally with about 7 or 8 stitches. This wound should have had over 200 stitches in it. His whole head and forehead from the top of his crown to his eyes moved around like a mask in a horror movie. It had become so infected that it was bloated and the puss just poured out of the wound and it smelt as if someone had shoved human excrement in my nostrils. It was so bad that I had to call over the Spanish nurse who was volunteering with me that day and have her help or should I say take the lead. It took a while to clean him up and bandage him up and I have no idea how he will do. I will never know.
Half of me was relieved to walk away from the clinic that day. The other half of me wonder how could I possibly leave? All of me knew I would be wrestling with these issues for a long time to come. The patients I met in the clinic live lives filled with more pain and suffering than I could ever have imagined and they will continue to do so long after I am gone.
I loaded up my backpack and hopped on a bus heading south out of Kolkata. For the first hour or so of the trip, the bus paralelled a large, stagnant black river of raw sewage. On the other side of the road were giant heaps of garbaged that were burning as street people picked through them looking for whatever could be reused or eaten.
After about 2 plus hours of the trip, the city gave way to a continual stretch of farm land. Endless patches of green and brown vegetation with the occassional cluster of people working in the fields.
The Bengali term "Namskaar" is used when greeting and saying goodbye to someone. It means 'The God of my soul recognizes the God of your soul." It's a beautiful word that hold so much more in it than just 'hello' or 'goodbye'. I said Namaskar to Kolkata today. It was bittersweet to be leaving.
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