Ganges River, Buddhist Temple and Farewell Dinner

Today we enjoyed more of the religious offerings of Varanasi.  This morning we went back down to the ghat area of the Ganges river, where all the Hindu pilgrims go to bathe in the river and make offerings to the river, which is, to them, a god.  Even with temps  in the high 40s with cloud cover and fog, these devotees strip down to their underwear and go into the Ganges to bathe and make offerings and prayers.  It is quite remarkable.  We took the bus down as close as we could get and then, once again, walked the gauntlet, being hounded by hawkers and child beggars all the way to the water.  We walked along the waterfront a bit, enjoying the ambiance, which includes hundreds of pilgrims, children, priests sitting under their big orange umbrellas ready to give blessings and say prayers for the devotees before they take the plunge in the river, along with the usual  array of dogs, cows, goats, monkeys and birds!  We took another motor boat ride along the river, stopping at various points to watch the pilgrims do their ritual of bathing and submersing themselves in the river.  Our guide had hired a priest to join us on the boat and he did a prayer ritual in which he chanted mantras for our ancestors.  We were all given a flower to hold while he chanted and when he was done, we tossed them in the river.  

After our sojourn on the river, which included another viewing of the cremation site, we went to visit the place where the Buddha achieved enlightenment and where he gave his first sermon, famously known as the "Deer Park" sermon.  This is Sarnath, a Buddhist learning center with a temple on the site and the bodhi tree that is now there is believed to be a direct descendant of the tree that was there when the Buddha achieved enlightenment on that spot.  We also visited the museum that has numerous artifacts taken from that area when it was made into a pilgrimage site.  There were Buddhist monks and nuns all over the place and as we went through the museum, Buddhist chanting was playing quietly in the background.  So we had a really good dose of both Hinduism and Buddhism in one morning!

Varanasi is an amazing city, absolutely steeped in spirituality and religious ritual.  It is the most holy city for Hindus, but nonetheless, like all the other Indian cities we have seen, it is very, very dirty, covered with trash and litter everywhere, animals roaming all over the place, beggars very much in evidence, buildings exceedingly run down and dirty and in disrepair, air polluted, roads full of potholes and very muddy.  Its surprising that such a holy place is permitted to look so very run down, but that is India.  We came back to the hotel by early afternoon and had some free time.  Tracy and I had a light lunch and then visited a spice shop across the street from the hotel and a shop selling silk goods.  You can't walk down a street in this country, as a tourist, without being corralled by every merchant along the way trying to haul you into their shop and make a sale!  And bargaining is the name of the game!  Its very exhausting after awhile!

This evening we had our farewell dinner and before the dinner we gathered for a concert of traditional Indian folk music, with sitar and drums.  Then all the women were given sarees and a lady from the hotel wrapped us in them and we wore them to dinner.  It was great fun but we learned that draping a saree is not an easy thing!  They are beautiful, however.

Tomorrow is our final day, which is mostly packing, flying to Delhi and getting to our respective middle of the night flights at various times.  We have a yoga and meditation class at 7 tomorrow morning and then time to pack and get organized.  

Pics today include scenes from the river bathing rituals on the Ganges river, Tracy and I on the boat,  in our sarees and shots of all of the women in sarees.  

Temple Erotica, Cremation and Aarti Celebration of Life, Varanasi

Today was truly an amazing day.  We started out early in Khajuraho and went to the temples there that date from the 9th century.  These temples were lost for hundreds of years, covered over by jungle growth.  They were rediscovered in the 19th century, having been buried for almost a thousand years.   There are a cluster of Hindu temples in the Western side of Khahurajo and then in the Eastern part of the town are Jain and Buddhist temples.  The Hindu temples are simply amazing structures, made of sandstone with millions of figures carved on the temples on all sides, many of them depicting erotic scenes from the Kama Sutra.  They are truly the most amazing ancient erotica you could ever imagine, leaving very little to the imagination!  Inside the temples are the statues of the deities of the Hindu religion.  When the Muslims ruled India, they defaced the statues of the deities and many of the carvings on these temples which de-consecrated them so that the temples are no longer able to be used as active temples.  Hindus consecrate their images of their deities and after that ceremony, the "statue" is believed to be divine.  If the statue is defaced in any way, they believe the divinity has left.  We toured the temples for several hours as it was absolutely fascinating to see the erotica everywhere on these buildings.  Only in Hinduism will you find such a full and complete embrace of human sexuality and sexual pleasure as something that is to be celebrated as a gift of the divine and as a way to experience the divine.  

At all of these famous sites, we are bombarded by hawkers the minute we get off our bus.  They are trying to sell trinkets and souvenirs and you have to just keep walking, very fast, making no eye contact and responding to no one and even then its hard to get them to back off.  Our guides have made it a practice to invite some of them to come near the bus when we are ready to leave and the guides negotiate the prices of the items and we choose what we want to buy.  Mandeep, our trip leader, calls it the "bus bazaar."  This morning, the bus bazaar was an experience of organized chaos!  There were so many hawkers pushing their way to the door of the bus, its a wonder anything got done!!

After the temples we returned to our hotel for lunch and then went to the airport to fly to Varanasi.  Its a short flight and the plane was half empty so it was quite comfortable.  Then we drove to our hotel, checked in and left to go to the Ganges river for evening ceremonies.  Varanasi is the holiest city for Hindus, a place of pilgrimage to which millions of Hindus come every day.  It is like Mecca for Muslims.  It is also believed that if you die by the banks of the Ganges you will attain immediate "moksha" which is the Hindu version of salvation, meaning you won't have to be reborn again and again.  To be cremated by the Ganges river is a very special and holy thing for Hindus.  The city is teeming with pilgrims who come for the various religious ceremonies that take place throughout the day, and with those who have come to bury their dead.  When we got down to the river area, we had to get off the bus and walk about 10 minutes down to the ghat, where we were able to board our boat.  We were again swarmed by young children selling the candles that are lighted every evening and set afloat on the river at the conclusion of the aarti ceremony.  Its really very trying to walk through these crowded streets with these children literally swarming around you.  We were very glad to get on the boat.  We sailed down the Ganges for a bit, and stopped first at the place where the cremations are taking place.  That was a powerful sight to see.  We counted 18 funeral pyres burning while we were there.  Hindus cremate their dead within hours of death.  The eldest son in the family is responsible for dealing with the cremation rites.  The body is brought to the Ganges river, having been bathed and placed on a bamboo platform. It is then brought down to the river's edge and washed again in the Ganges water and then placed on the funeral pyre.  The son and other male relatives stay with the body until it is fully cremated, which takes about 3 hours.  It is a profoundly moving sight to see all the funeral pyres burning as the families stand by watching.  Our boat then moved on down the river a bit more for the evening aarti ceremony, which is a daily ceremony where fires are lit and offered to the river, which is considered to be a holy God for Hindus.  There were a total of 12 priests (one group of 5 and one group of 7) doing the aarti ritual which begins with blowing a conch shell and then all the devotees begin ringing bells and chanting as the priests chant (in Sanskrit) and incense is burned and the priests offer prayers in all four directions.  The ceremony takes about 35 minutes.  Words cannot describe what it is like to see this ceremony - thousands of pilgrims gathered on the banks of the river and, like our group, out on boats on the river, chanting, bells ringing, candelabras that look like Christmas trees from a distance (they are in a tree shape to symbolize the tree of life) which the priests wave around in a particular ritual fashion.  When the ceremony is over, all the devotees light small ghee candles that sit in a little boat made from leaves, surrounded by flowers and then put the floating candles onto the river, making a wish and saying a prayer as they let the candle into the water.  Its incredibly beautiful to see the shimmering candles floating on the river.  Our guides had candles for us so we were able to participate in that part of the ceremony.  It was really magical.

Pics today include a couple of shots of the erotic carvings at Khajuraho and some shots from our river cruise this evening, including a shot by the funeral pyres and some shots from the aarti ceremony.  They are not very good as my camera isn't great in the dark, but hopefully it will give a little flavor of the experience!

  

Travel Day

 Today was a VERY LONG travel day, so not much to report.  We were up and out of our hotel in Agra by 7:00 AM to catch an 8:15 train to Jhanci.  The train left on time and was supposed to take 2.75 hours to get to Jhanci, but about halfway there the train simply stopped on the tracks and we sat for more than 90 minutes going nowhere!  Thank goodness we were in the first class car so we had seats.  It was crowded though and got very hot and stuffy while we were stuck going nowhere.  By the time we got to Jhanci we had been traveling for 5 hours!  We then went to lunch, took a little stretch break and then drove 5 more hours to get to Khajuraho.  We drove into the hotel here at 7:30.  We did take an interesting break on the road as we drove through countryside and villages, where our guide showed us how a rural family irrigates their fields.  They have a well and a pulley system to get the water out of the well by turning a wheel that rotates a series of buckets.  The wheel is rotated by two cows yoked together.  It was really like a scene from the 17th century!  There were goats milling about as we watched the cows do their work.  The well was absolutely enormous - very wide and deep.  While very, very long and tiring the drive was entertaining and more than a little hair raising.  The roads are very poor, full of potholes and uneven at best and the bus rocks and bounces unbelievably.  I felt like my brains were scrambled by the time we got here.  And the driving on those country roads is an extreme sport!  Cows, goats, dogs, people, motorcycles, trucks, buses all vie for a very narrow road and pass one another with a hair's breadth of room.  I can't tell you how many near head on collisions we had in the course of the drive, nor how many times the bus drove onto the "shoulder" (there is no shoulder so the bus tips to the side as it slides off the paved part into the dirt along the side and then rights again when the driver gets us back up on the road.)  Those of us near the front of the bus had to stop watching out the window because we were having our hearts in our throats almost constantly!  We decided that whatever they are paying the driver, its not enough!  So we arrived to our hotel feeling pretty jangled and tired from the long drive.  Tomorrow we have a long day of touring with a flight to Varanasi thrown into the mix!

I've included a couple of pics of the train station and of the cows pumping the well!

Taj Mahal and Agra Fort

India Day 11 - Taj Mahal and Agra Fort

Today we saw the two major monuments of Agra, the Agra Fort and the Taj Mahal.  The Fort is really a palace built by and for the Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great in the 16th century.  It took eight years to build and is enormous with many different wings and sections for various palace householders and palace business.  It is a beautiful construction of sandstone and marble, with marble inlay of precious stones which is also characteristic of the Taj Mahal. It is truly magnificent to behold. We toured all over the fort, visiting the King's living quarters, the wing where the 300 concubines lived, the homes of two of the King's daughters, the garden on the grounds.  Akbar the Great was a Muslim ruler but he had a Hindu wife, so the architecture is Indo-Islamic.  In the Fort, he built a prayer room for his wife that housed her Hindu deities, while he had his own mosque for his prayers.  

After touring the Fort, we went to a shop where the hand made marble inlay craft is still done today by skilled artisans whose families have been doing this craft for hundreds of years.   We saw the artisans at work and then went through the showrooms.   The work is absolutely magnificent and I bought a very small table top (which was expensive by my standards even though tiny by theirs!) which will be shipped to me.  It came with a small table stand and a lazy  susan stand so it can be used for either purpose.  I've included a pic of the piece.  It is much smaller than the picture would suggest, but it is a beautiful piece.

After the marble place we went to lunch and I had a South Indian dish I'd never had before, called a dosa, a kind of crepe, that had onions and garlic in the crepe dough and then you stuff it with various fillings, including an onion/potato mixture, coconut curry, a tomato mixture and then a lentil soup that you dip it in as you are eating.  It was delicious.  For Bonnie's sake I include a pic of the crepe and the fillings!  A very filling lunch for $5!

After that we went to the Taj Mahal.  It is truly a magnificent, ethereal building which defies description.  Marble, with intricate inlay work of precious stones, Islamic calligraphy up the sides, everything perfectly symmetrical.  Unfortunately, it was foggy today and even by late afternoon when we went it was still hazy and so the pictures do not do the building justice.   It is easy to see why it is one of the seven wonders of the world, however.  We spent about 2 hours at the Taj, dealing with unbelievable crowds but it was well worth it.  It is truly awe inspiring to look at.  Quite a monument to the love of Emperor Akbar for his dead wife.  

Pics today include a shot of the King's quarters at the Fort, the table top I bought, our lunch, and of course, the Taj!

Tomorrow we leave very early for a 3 hour train ride followed by a 4 hour bus ride to our next city, so it will be nothing but travel all day.  Although experiencing the Indian train system will likely be a cultural experience all its own!

Day in the Life, Night in Tent and on to Agra

Today was a wonderful day!  We did what OAT calls "day in the life" where we spent the day in a rural village and got a taste of rural Indian life.  As our guide tells us, India is over 70% a rural country and so to get an idea of Indian life you have to experience the rural villages.  We started this morning going to a school in the village near Ranthanbore National Park. It is a school in a village that is supported by the Grand Circle Foundation, a not for profit foundation affiliated with Overseas Adventure Travel.  We took the bus up the road into the village and then got off and walked through the village streets to the school.  The children were finishing their morning assembly when we arrived, so we heard them sing the national anthem and then a small group of girls recited a poem in English for us.  Then we went into school with the children, going into different classrooms to spend time with them and to help them with their English lessons.  I was delighted when a couple of little girls came over to me and took my hand and led me right into their classroom!  I was with the very small children, kindergarten/first grade.  The children had their English texts and recited the alphabet for us and we attempted some conversation although it was hard because they know very little English and we know no Hindi at all!  One of our group members had brought balloons for the kids so we spent time blowing those up and playing with them.  The headmaster showed us all over the school and the children were simply adorable - very open and smiling and excited to have us visiting.  It was truly delightful to be there and to interact with them.  It was also sobering to compare the spirit of these children, who are dirt poor by American standards and the school which is also very poor by our standards, to its American counterparts.  These children were so well behaved, exuberant, open and receptive and clearly glad to be in school, respectful of their elders and of us visiting tourists.  It was an atmosphere I'm not sure would be duplicated in a primary school in the US at this point in time.  

After we left the school our guide walked us through the village, which was a real experience of village India.  Cows and pigs and dogs vie with the humans for space on the dirt roads, with the cows getting high preference among all the creatures wandering around!  Goats were also plentiful.  And lots of children who were not going to school were running about or accompanying their mothers on walks to the water pump.  We then went to the home of a village family, where the elder husband and wife entertained us with tea and cookies.  They live in a little two room home, with a courtyard where everything important in life happens - cooking, eating, socializing.  Our host and hostess were in their mid-50s (but looked much older - rural life is tough on folks!) and they had grown daughters-in-law living with them who helped prepare the tea for us.  We were sitting on the pallets that they use as beds.  Through our guides we enjoyed conversation with them.  The woman of the house was very curious and had our guide go through every one of us asking us our name, what we do for a living, and the most important question of all - are you married and do you have children?  We had some laughs during that exchange, as our hostess tried to wrap her head around the concept of people choosing to remain single as adults which is the case for a couple of the people in our group.  As we were sitting there facing the kitchen area where the tea was being prepared we saw a cloth basket hanging from the cross beam near the kitchen and it kept moving.  Finally someone asked our hostess what was in there and she said "My granddaughter."  Then they woke the 9 month old baby up and showed her to us!!  Truly it was hilarious!  The baby looked pretty disgruntled at having her nap cut short!  The most priceless moment of the visit was when a cow stopped by the front door to our hostess's courtyard, and poked her head through the doorway and stood quite a while there looking us all over!  Honestly, it looked like she was checking up on the family and trying to figure out who were all the strangers in their courtyard!  

After we left that family we walked back through the village to our bus.  We then drove to a women's cooperative, a not-for-profit organization that has been around for 25 years, that trains village women in various handicrafts, and through microfinance, manages to help them to earn money to supplement their husband's earnings.  The area around the national park lost a lot of jobs when the park was created and the villagers were left even poorer than before, so this women's cooperative has been enormously important in helping families to increase their incomes and to empower the women by giving them skills and the ability to earn an income and help their families. We shopped and bought some of their goods and then had lunch hosted by the cooperative. At lunch we got to meet some of the women who work there.  At my table, a young woman named Vimla was our hostess.  She is 28 years old, married 8 years with three children and she is an artisan there doing quilting and other fabric crafts.  Her income is now half of what her husband makes in a nearby town working as a sales person in an electronics shop.  

Then we drove for four hours to come to the OAT camp where we are spending the night.  On the road trip we had a few fun moments.  At one point we stopped our bus so we could get out and take pictures of a herd of camels coming down the road behind us.  It was hilarious to watch this whole passle of camels making their way down the highway!  And then when we got closer to our destination, our guide stopped the bus so we could visit a South Indian Hindu Temple, a temple dedicated to the god Krishna.  South Indian temples are much more colorful and elaborate than North Indian temples and it was neat to get to see that contrast.  In the OAT camp, we are staying in tents which are quite luxurious, with private bathrooms and electric heaters and lights. Shortly after we arrived we had cocktails and then an Indian cooking class with the Nepalese sherpa who works here as a cook!  Then after the cooking class we were treated to some traditional folk dancing by some men from the local village. They got everyone in the group up and on their feet dancing!  Then we had dinner.  When we returned to our tents our beds had been turned down and when I got into my pajamas and crawled into my bed I discovered a lovely hot water bottle warming the bed!  So it has been a full and fascinating day!  Tomorrow we head to Agra.  

Today - Wednesday

Today was a travel day.  We left the camp at 9:00 AM and stopped to watch a local potter making his clay pots and his wife making the millet bread that is the staple in that area of Rajasthan and then we saw a phenomenal national monument, a "step-well" dating from the 8th or 9th century I believe which was a magnificent piece of construction.  Very hard to describe in words, and unfortunately today was a densely foggy day so the pictures I took tell you nothing.  The fog never lifted all day, and put a real chill in the air.  We drove most of the day, stopping for lunch and then arrived in Agra about 4 PM.   We're staying in a very luxurious, 6 star hotel the next two nights which is a real treat.  Tracy and I immediately booked massages at the spa and intend to spend the rest of the evening relaxing!  Tomorrow we see the Taj Mahal!

Pics are shots of the schoolchildren and village children, and of our hostess and the baby hanging in the cloth basket (!), and of the young woman and her child at the women's cooperative with whom we had lunch, and a shot of my tent last night!  Tonight's digs are considerably more palatial!!

Bengal Tigers!

India Day 8

Today was Bengal Tiger viewing day.  There were two scheduled safaris into the National Park, one very early in the morning and one in the later afternoon.  I only went on the morning run, which turned out to be fantastic as we actually saw the tigers!  There are only 17 tigers in the preserve here and tiger sightings don't happen all the time.  We were quite prepared to view a lot of other animals but not the tigers, and to our complete amazement, within minutes of getting into the park our guide called out "Tigers!"  When we left at 7:00 it was still dark and very, very foggy and cold.  It was ethereal to be riding through the park seeing only silhouettes of trees and feeling the cold, damp of the fog on our skin.  We were bundled up as if we were going to the North Pole, but I can assure you it felt quite cold because of the dampness.  Our guide spotted three 10 month old Tiger cubs and our jeep moved close to where they were and we waited a long time to see if they would emerge again.  Then we heard a high pitched call which our guide said was a deer's warning call and he had the truck move closer to where the call came from. Lo and behold, we found the tigers again!  We stayed there a long, long time watching them.  Their mother was not with them as she was off somewhere else in the park hunting food for them.  Then we drove around the lake and saw all manner of birds, crocodiles, monkeys, and deer.  On our way out of the park, we found the tigers again.  At that point, the sun had come up and it was clearer and easier to see them.  So we stayed again watching them at the end of the run.  The national park only allows safari trucks in for a few hours in the early morning and a few hours in the late afternoon so as to allow the animals and birds significant amounts of time when they are not being disturbed by human gawkers! 

After that we returned to our hotel.  I'm not feeling very well today, with the progression of the cold I've been dealing with for several days now and then "Delhi belly" hit midday, so I did a few chores in my room and then crawled into bed and slept most of the afternoon!  Its a gorgeous, sunny day, so it annoys me to be out of commission, but if one is going to be convalescing, this hotel is the place to do it, luxurious and comfortable as it is.  Tomorrow we leave here to head out to a local village for our "day in the life" experience where we will visit a school and a women's cooperative and the homes of rural villagers.  We'll spend the night in a camp.  So tomorrow there will be no posting, as there is no internet at the camp!  The pics today are shots of the tigers that the guide took with my camera!  I'm so glad he was willing to do it because I could never have gotten those shots!  They are beautiful creatures.  I've also included a picture of our hotel on the horizon as you come in from the main road and a couple of shots to give you the sense of the misty, early morning ambiance.  It was magical.  There are huge banyan trees in the park and between them and the monkeys cavorting all around we felt like we were in a scene from the Wizard of Oz!

Ranthanbhor National Park and Rural India

 India Day 7

We had a remarkable day today!  Left Jaipur at 8:15 and drove 5 hours to Ranthanbhor National Park.  On the way there we passed through rural villages and what a wonderful experience that was!  Our guide stopped the bus numerous times so that we could get out to take photos and to interact with the villagers who all waved at us as our bus went through their villages, smiling and children jumping up and down and everyone being so incredibly welcoming and friendly.  The villages are, like the cities, run down looking by developed world standards, but they were,for the most part, cleaner than the cities.  As in Delhi and Jaipur, animals are absolutely everywhere.  Cows, pigs and piglets, sheep, goats, water buffalo and camels are roaming all over, or laying by the side of the road, or ambling in front of the traffic or running along the side.  At one point I saw a family group, a mother and a bunch of children walking along and a family of goats were running along beside them like the family dog would do!  It was a riot!  Out in the country the men take great pride in their trucks and tractors and decorate them with all kinds of bright ribbons and banners, and equip them with speakers from which blares Bollywood music.  So you see a tractor ambling along and hear the Bollywood hits playing out of it!  We passed miles and miles of mustard fields, and wheat fields.  

When we got to Ranthanbhor we had to make the daily liquor store stop!  We've got a bunch of drinkers on this trip!  I've included a photo of the sign at the little roadside shack that is the local liquor store, and a photo of the camel that was waiting patiently for its owner who was buying something too!  Then we drove out to our hotel which is just a mile or so from the National Park entrance.  It is a magnificent complex - a huge, castle like building which looks like something out of Jewel in the Crown!  It has 4 courtyards and the rooms are all centered around a courtyard (sort of like the riads of Morocco!).  The floors are marble and the walls are white stucco-like material.  It is very palatial and regal.  We went first to the dining room and enjoyed a fabulous buffet lunch.  I never tire of Indian food and this is really of excellent quality.  We then were shown to our rooms. They are also beautiful, with marble floors, enormous bathrooms with walk in showers, tiled walls, amenities.  I have two four poster beds in my room and a tall armoire and marble topped bedside tables.  Its truly elegant.

Then about half of us went on an afternoon ride/hike to the Ranthanbhor Fort way at the top of one of the hills in the National Park.  We had a local naturalist as our guide and it was fascinating.  We took an open air, rattle trap truck into the park and parked at the foot of the hill upon which the fort sits.  There are a couple of Hindu temples/shrines at the fort and there were many pilgrims coming and going from the temples.  There are tons of monkeys hanging out in the parking area cavorting around, walking among the humans, climbing on the cars and jeeps.  We had great fun watching them, especially the mothers and babies.  We walked up to the top of the fort, which is about 500 feet high up 250 wide stone steps.  The fort was built in the 5th century CE and is now mostly a ruin, but for the active temples that are still up there.  There are at least two HIndu temples up there, as well as a Jain temple and Muslim burial ground.  We went all the way up and climbed to the roof of one of the ruins where we had a terrific panoramic view of the National Park.  This is where the Bengal Tigers live, although they are hard to see.  There are tons of other animals and birds in the park, and tomorrow we will go on two safaris to see what we can see.  Its been pretty cold here - we were quite bundled up for the ride to the fort, although we got lucky and the sun came out once we got to the top which warmed us up a bit.  Tomorrow morning's early departure is going to mean cold temps so we'll be dressing in layers!

When we got back to our hotel they were serving tea in the courtyard, so we enjoyed tea and cookies and relaxed a bit after the excitement of the day.  This evening we have free time, with the dining room open at 7:30-10:00 for us to enjoy our dinner at our leisure.  Some of the group will do cocktails in the courtyard at about 7!  This group does love its booze!!  Tomorrow is a very early day, so an early bedtime tonight is likely going to happen!

The pics today give you a taste of rural India.  The shot of the little girl waving is a gypsy family - she was fascinated by our bus and ran alongside us as we drove by, waving and smiling madly!  I've also included pics of young boys and a group of girls and women who were working in the fields harvesting food for the livestock, a family that was walking through one of the villages.  I love the vibrant colors of the clothes the women wear, even when they are working in the fields.  I've also included a couple of shots of the hotel to give you a flavor of the ambiance. I am off now to the main courtyard which is the only place you can get the wifi signal!  No internet in the rooms here!  More tomorrow....