The Journey from Lumbini to Varanasi: The Most Frightening Travel Day of My Life:

Varanasi, India

November 29, 2012

Altitude: 252'

There was a growing pit in my stomach about the journey from Lumbini to Varanasi.  It was only a distance of about 250 miles but there is where the similarities would end.  It would involve crossing the Indian border, getting to the first city, finding a train or bus to Varanasi then from the station to my hotel.  In most countries, this would be straight forward.  But in India...well...this could take on a life of its own.

But I also knew that the owner of the guesthouse would have the answer, and he did.

"I have a car and driver and he’ll bring you to the border. He’ll wait for you and then transfer you to your Indian driver. The journey should take about eight hours," he said.  At $120.00 it was far more than local transport would cost, but it would, I assumed, be a whole lot easier.

Sometimes things just seem to be the right thing to do.

We left Lumbini at 6:00 am.  Fog still covered the flat Terai. By the time we got to the border the sun was rising--an orange wafer gorgeously muted by polluted air. That would be my good bye to Nepal and hello to India.

I passed customs without a hitch and the driver met me on the other side, introduced me to my new driver.  Six hours I was told.  Why would I not believe him.

Initially, I was encouraged.  Roads seemed better.  At least they were two lanes which was a step up from Nepal. And it was still early.  But by the time we got to the first city of size, Gorkaphur, traffic had picked up.  We weren't speeding by any means as it was impossible to move quickly.  No one had respect for rules of the road.  Huge trucks and busses careened past us, sometime tilting as they did.  I was sitting in the backseat and totally unable to relax, totally unable to read, totally unable to do anything but watch.

The driver spoke English the way I speak French--in one word sentences.  He'd been driving since 1990, so I held on to two things--he was still driving and he'd gotten this far without dying. I also knew that he knew the rules of the road far better than I.

I also knew that God was three steps ahead.  I'd asked him to do that before we left Lumbini.  When in doubt, trust.

I was terrified.  And hungry.  I'd only brought two bottles of Coke with me and four packages of cookies.  I think I also smuggled in three tangerines.  

Whenever the driver would stop we'd open all the windows.  I felt way too vulnerable and never stepped more than a few feet from the door.  Once he bought me a liter of water.  Flies landed all over the interior of the car.  All around me was filth, squalor, noise and chaos.  I hated to think where those flies had been.

Six hours!  Six hours indeed!

A long way in India feels a lot longer than anywhere else.  After passing two elephants, numerous monkeys, horses, donkeys, sheep, goats--goats on the side of the road, goats in herds, bloodied dead goats in the road, goats recently killed and hanging by their feet at a market--dogs, and cows--cows darting across the road, cows eating from piles of garbage, cows with tikka markings on their skin--and chickens on the road, chickens in yards, chickens for sale in bamboo cages; after passing thousands of homes made from mud or thatch; after passing homes with large piles of dried cow dung drying in the heat; after passing thousands of children who should have been in school but weren't; after passing women--a million women--Hindu women in colorful saris and Muslim women dressed in full black burkas, women carrying bundles on their heads and women carrying long stalks of sugar cane; after passing 200 gaudily decorated cars indicating a wedding party; after passing five trucks/cars/SUV's/taxis all heading to the Ganges carrying saffron wrapped dead bodies on their roofs for cremation; after passing a thousand Hindu temples/shrines/statues and five hundred mosques; after passing a huge Hindu festival on the banks of a river; after passing 5,000,000 bicycles, 2,000,000 motorcycles, teams of oxen pulling loads of wheat, 1,000,000 rickshaws pedaled by stick-thin drivers who arched and strained against the pedals; after passing 1,000,000 ancient, gaudily decorated buses/trucks all going too fast; after averting twenty near-miss head-on collisions; after listening to piercing Indian music hour after hour; after listening to the almost constant beep of horns--from my driver and from everyone else; after freaking out in the back seat for hours; after screaming about twenty times; after eating nothing for 14 hours but two bottles of Coke, 40 cookies, three tangerines and a liter of water; after trying every relaxation technique I knew; after never seeing another foreigner from the time I left the border, after all this..after all this and after far more...we finally arrived at the outskirts of Varanasi.  

There is a traffic jam.  But it's not like any traffic jam I've ever seen.  We move 100 yards every thirty minutes.  At one point, we are sitting on the tracks of a train and I can see a train coming.  I panic and leave the car, but there is no place to go.  The driver shouts me back in.  Police are forcing cars ahead and we clear the tracks and are safely behind the thing that lowers when a train passes.

It was hard to see any mysticism in modern India.

The driver is as frazzled as I am, but for different reasons. He turns to me and says, "God."

"God," Yes, God.  Despite the pantheon of Hindu gods and goddesses and all their incarnations, there is still...God.

I tell him "Yes, God.  He is with us.  You and me."  I tell him I have been praying all day and that I will pray for him as he returns home.

God.  We are on the same page.  All barriers drop.

All this time I'm thinking the driver is just going to abandon me, make me get out and fend for myself. He apologizes.  "I am sorry, Sir.  India hard.  I am sorry, Sir."  I tell him it's not his fault but I'm insistent that we get to the hotel.  He has the directions. We finally get through this--almost two hours to go a half mile--and we make a left and head into clear streets.  I've been on the verge of multiple panic attack.  He is always asking directions and we ultimately get to a place where the police tell him he can go no further.  I get out thinking this is the end of the road.  He leaves.  The cop tells me to sit.  I have no idea why.  I'm in a sea of people.  Ten minutes later the driver comes back.  I'd given him 500 rupees to park the car.  The two of us--big me, my big suitcase, my day pack and him--get into a rickshaw, but that comes to end and we are on foot again.  Every twenty yards he asks someone the direction of Hotel Alka.

Now I'm actually shaking with fear.  I'm beyond a bundle of nerves and I'm really really close to crying, but not yet. It's been as bad all day, but it's bound to get better.  But through all this my driver never leaves me.  We finally weave our way into a maze of narrow, twisty alleyways--the Old City of Varanasi.

And then...and then...the hotel.  I enter.

"Mr. Daniel?  We have been waiting for you."

All I want to do is eat and drink something, something other than cookies and Coke.  I give the driver a 50% tip and ask reception to ask him if he's happy.  They do.  "Oh yes, Sir.  He is very happy." I also ask them to tell him he's a good man.

We shake hand and I'm "home." Home at least in this corner of India.

They bring me to a table on the roof top restaurant that overlooks the Ganges.  There's a festival going on, but I hardly notice.  I'm still so keyed up that I just can't focus beyond the fact that I'm here and safe.

I notice that my neighbors have a Nepal guidebook and that breaks the ice.  Once I learn they're from Spain I switch to Spanish, but I'm so frazzled that it's useless.  I just can't do it.

By the time, I finish dinner I'm better.  Less jittery.  I check into the room, take a shower.  I email Steve and tell him it's been the most harrowing travel day of my life.  "Ha, Ha," he writes back. "Steve in the Third World."

"No," I tell him.  It's more than that and the only way to communicate it is through Skype.  "I was terrified and alone and frightened all day.  The idea that I'd be robbed, or abandoned or killed never left me.”

You would think I'd have fallen right to sleep, but that wasn't possible.  I was so keyed-up that it took .50 mg of Xanax to quiet me down.

The next morning, I awake far too early.  Echoes reverberate all through the hotel.  I'm hungry and want some caffeine, so I walk out onto the street.  It's not yet 7:00 am.  The street is teeming with early morning devotees near a Hindu temple.  I'm completely disoriented.  Women are on the ground praying and chanting over intricate mandalas they've made.  They must appease the gods and the right number of things and the right dimensions all must be in order.  The mandalas are colorful, with marigolds and different colored powders and lit butter lamps.  Cows are all over the place and piles of cow dung are everywhere. Women are making offerings to the cows, touching their tails. Shiva. Vishnu.  Who knows. Men are walking back from the river dripping water.  This is the most holy spot for Hindus.

I dodge multiple piles of poo--some piles decorated with marigolds--and finally get to the restaurant. For two hours I sit, organizing the six pages of notes I'd taken the day before, then I write.  It's the only thing that works when I've overwhelmed.  Half way through this time I leave to use the bathroom.  I don't know what happens, or why, but the moment I close the door I start to cry.  I'm not a crier by nature, but this one I can't stop.  I just stand in the room and have a total emotional breakdown.  

What is going on? I think.  This is so unlike me.  But it doesn’t take long to figure it out.

I think it’s taken this amount of time for me to comprehend what happened the day before.  That and the writing.  It was the only way to put some catharsis to the day.  And the crying wrapped it up.

I pull myself together, wrap this piece of writing up and leave.  My mother used to say, "This too shall pass."  And I knew it would.  But I make a deep promise to myself. I will never, never, absolutely never, hire a car and driver in a country like this again.  

It was still early and I was in Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganges and, while I wanted to call Qatar Airways to get me home, I said NO. You are here and you will persevere.

I'd been told Varanasi would hold no prisoners.

I was about to find out.

Photos of Nepal

Welcome to Nepal--November 8, 2012 

Pashupatinath Temple and the Bagmati River

Preparations for a cremation at the temple

One of many temples in Kathmandu

Shopping

One of many temple idols

Friendly kids

Women sitting at home

A side street in Bahktapur

Lake Fewa in Pokhara and the Annapurnas

Annapurna

Annapurna at sunset

More friendly kids I met on a bike ride

ki

Chitwan National Park

Thanksgiving with the elephants

Mustard in bloom

Lumbini--the birthplace of the Buddha

Lumbini

Nepal: In the End

Varanasi, India
November 30, 2012
Altitude: 1,010'

In the end, Nepal still has the ability to astound.  What's not to like about viewing the world's highest mountains.  How amazing is it walk around Medieval Newari villages, coexisting just outside the chaos of Kathmandu.  What's not to like about seeing rhinos coming to the river to drink at dusk or elephants lumbering down the only street in Sauraha.

But in the end, Nepal was a bit of a disappointment as well as a lesson very well learned.  At the end of the 1998-1999 world trip Nepal came in at #1 of the 25 countries I visited.  But it's been 14 years between visits and it's mighty hard to stay #1 for that long.

A lot had changed in the travel world since the turn of the 21st century.

In the end Nepal was simply overrun with tourists.  In the past you could always expect  the usual assortment of Central Europeans, North Americans and Australians.  But the past decade has been good to the Chinese and to Eastern Europeans, all of who were in huge numbers. Add to that mix a generous share of retired boomers and you get the idea.  

In the end I was happy to get out of the  major tourist hubs.  I stayed six days in Chitwan, living in my own bungalow, sitting on its front porch, reading the afternoon away. In the late afternoon I'd go down to the river, watch the sunset, eat, and go to bed early.  It wold be the quite, I knew, before the storm of India.

In the end it's hard to top Thanksgiving with the elephants.  And while I missed home, it was a wonderful day.

In the end, I may come back, but I doubt it.  I learned a valuable lesson.  You truly can't go home again.  The Nepal that existed in my memory was still there, but it was more crowded, dirtier.  I was not seeing the country through the same eyes I saw it from in 1998.

The Pokhara I remember was a small town at the base of the Annapurnas.  There were few cars and it didn't take long to bike out of town into an agrarian world that hadn't changed much in centuries.

But this year!  This year motorcycles raced around me. screaming paragliders who'd jumped off a cliff several thousand feet higher were descending.  Range Rovers raced by me as I rode my bike out of the city.

You really can't go home again.  The places in the world I hold special were experienced a long time ago. 

I remember renting an inner tube in the small Laotian village of Vang Viene and lazily drifting down its river,past a herd of water buffaloes, past women modestly bathing by its banks.

I've read where Vang Vien is now the adventure capital of Laos.  The images I hold of that special place probably dont' exist anymore.

I remember sleeping on sandy Greek beaches, "showering" at local tavernas.  I know that's illegal now, and I certainly wouldn't want to replicate it, but it's a fond memory.

I remember touring Anchor Wat in Cambodia with only a large handful of tourists.  The road back to Phenom Phen had just opened.  Hue potholes existed where landmines had recently been removed. Now more than a million people visit that site each year, many flying in just for the day from Bangkok.

There are a million other images.  What I learned is that I'm not going back to some of these places.  They would never equal what they were when I first saw the,

Still, in the end, Nepal was nice.  But it wasn't the Nepal I remember.  

And that's OK.

Lumbini, Nepal: the Birthplace of the Buddha

Lumbini, Nepal
November 27, 2012
Altitude: 600'

In 1980, shortly after the Camp David Accords, I planned a summer trip to Israel and Egypt.  The borders had just opened and this seemed like the time to do it.

"The Holy Land," my mother said.  She was very excited for me.  Just before leaving she handed me a rosary and asked that it be blessed somewhere.

I carried it with me the entire trip.  The day I went to Bethlehem, I brought it with me.  For me, there could be no better place to have the rosary blessed.

This was 32 years ago, before the days of massive tourism, before the hordes of Chinese and Japanese all wanting their pictures taken in front of every possible place.  There were tourists to be sure, but not in the numbers there are today.

When I stepped into the Grotto of the Nativity I was alone.  In that small space there is a gold marker where tradition says that Jesus was born.  I placed the rosary on top of it and simply sat.  For more than ten minutes I was the only person there.  Only when another person came did I give up my seat.

Later, I brought the rosary into the Church of the Nativity, found a priest and asked him to bless it.  But to me, the real blessing on this rosary occurred in ten minutes it rested on the gold marker.

This is the power that Bethlehem had on me and I'm sure Lumbini, in southern Nepal, close to the Indian border, has the same power for Buddhists,. It's here, sometime around the year 563 BC, that Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, was born.

And so it was that I found myself in this town--one of the four most important Buddhist pilgrimage sites in the world.  For Buddhists, this is a place of huge religious experience and it attracts pilgrims from around the world.  For years, though, unlike its Christian counterpart, it lay in ruins and was only "rediscovered" in 1896.  Subsequent digs have concluded that this is the site where the Buddha was born.

I arrived at the site early in the morning.  Mist still hung over the village as I rode my bike into the park that was designed in 1978.  A large, white, square buildings that looks more like a mosque protects the 3rd Century BC remains of stupas and monasteries.  Just outside the building is one of the 33 existing Ashoka pillars put there by the Buddhist emperor Ashoka in the 2,200 years ago.Its these pillars that have in Nepal and northern India that have helped archaeologists the most.

There was a long line waiting to get into the Maya Devi temple named after the Buddha's mother.  We walked on raised walkways peering down at the ruins.  In the center of the temple was the actual spot that tradition said that Siddhartha was born.  It was marked with a small footprint which ancient writers spoke of.  For the Buddhists present, this was a powerful religious moment. They bowed in silence.  Some placed gold leaf on the ruin next to the birth site. Above this was a 2nd century terracotta Nativity.

Outside, three groups of Buddhist pilgrims--two from Japan and one from Tibet--were chanting.  Others stood in silence, hand folded in prayer.  Others sat silent in meditation.

It was still foggy and the nicely landscaped garden and streams and streams of multicolored prayer flags fluttered in the light breeze.

Once outside of the temple complex, I meandered across abridge. Wetlands attract graceful white cranes and the ponds were full of lotus.

Beyond this were newer monasteries that had been erected by every Buddhist nation in the world.

That afternoon I joined a small tour that brought us to significant outer sites associated with the Buddha.

I'm very happy I went to Lumbini, but it's no Bethlehem. How could it be?  it's not part of my imagery or culture.  And while I have a lot of respect for Buddhism, it not my tradition and never will be. The imagery I hold of Nativity is far different.

Knowing what I know now, I doubt I'd ever return to Bethlehem.  It truly is for me "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem."  I remember that I made a day of it.  I visited the church and the grotto and then walked to Shepard's Field where tradition said the angels announced the birth of Jesus to the Shepherds.  "For unto you..."
I had Luke 2 with me and will always remember sitting in that field alone, somewhere on the outskirts of Bethlehem, living very much in my Bethlehem moment.

I walked back into the center of town, but was diverted by a Christian Palestinian family who invited me into their home for lunch.  I have often wondered about them as violence erupted in Israel during the last 32 years.

I have a small hand carved Nativity that I brought from an Armenian man who had a shop in town.  I must remember to take it out this Christmas.

Still, I'm glad I went.  But I just couldn't get excited about it the way I saw Buddhists on pilgrimage get excited.  For them, it was their "Bethlehem."  And I had to respect that.

Nepal: Chitwan National Park and Thanksgiving With the Elephants

Chitwan National Park, Nepal

November 22, 2012

Altitude: 1,250'

On the morning of Thanksgiving, I woke very early--before the sun rose. Dew was dripping off trees above my bungalow and the sound of it was like a slow, soft, rainfall. Other sounds--a rooster crowing, the faint din of a distant conversation,, music nearby--stirred me out of bed.

Outside, it was pre-dawn and cold when I walked to the Rapti River. I was in Saurana, Nepal, in Chitwan National Park.  The river was blanketed in a fine layer of mist that hung over the gently flowing water, creeping through the nearby valley and twining itself here and there about the surrounding hills. I sat by the bank, and waited as the sun rose in the eastern sky.

It was a fine way way to begin Thanksgiving 2012!  I would miss home--the annual walk at Point au Roche, dinner with Steve, Ed and Rita, the first Christmas lights lit on the Blue Spruce in the back yard. But all that was OK.

This would be a Thanksgiving with the Elephants.

I sat on the banks of the river for a long time, until the sun had risen and burned off the swirls of mist.  Only then did I move to a table at a riverside restaurant for breakfast.  In front of me, on a small island, a crocodile was sunning himself.  But my attention was directed to my left when I began to see elephants march towards the river.

I paid my bill and walked about 200 years north.  This was the time of day that the mahouts--the elephant handlers--brought the giant beasts for their bath. And...for 100 rupees--the chance for tourists to ride the elephant into the water and have himself sprayed by the elephant.  I had no intentions of doing so, but after watching ten or tourists doing it, I thought...here I am, far from home.  It's Thanksgiving and what an amazing opportunity lay in front of you.  

So I took the plunge.  I handed my day pack to a couple I was watching this show with, asked them to take photos, took of all my clothes except for my shorts and hopped onto the elephant.

Well...hop on isn't exactly the word.  The mahout gave me a boost and I held on the elephant rose and lumbered into the water. Chowp," said the mahout and up came a spray of water.  I was like a kid, laughing uncontrollably.  What an amazing experience.  A few minutes later he directed the animal into deeper water.  "Let go," the mauhot said.  And I did.  And as the elephant knelt into the water I fell off.  I didn't want to think what was int he water.  It certainly wasn't deep.  I was still laughing.  Again, I was put back on the elephant and it walked toward shore where, safe from the water, it knelt and let me down.

There are not many OMG moments in life, but this was one of them.

I dressed, headed back to the guest house, washed out my clothes and set off on the next adventure.

The night before I'd rented a bicycle.  I headed out of Sauruha into the small indigenous villages of the the Tharu people that dotted the landscape in all directions.

It wasn't long before I was out of town.  I biked past women herding oxen to a grazing area, I rose past flocks of and ducks and more goats than I could count.  I rode through one dusty town to another.  Houses were tiny--most not more than one or two rooms.  This is a climate where people can live most of the year.  Almost all were made of brick and covered in a brown clay.  Many homes were painted with fun designs of hand prints or footprints on the outer walls.

All around the land was flat. Summer's wheat had been harvested.  Tall pyramidal shapes of hay stood next to most of the homes.  Food, imagine, for their animals during the cooler months to come.  Rices was drying on large, flat circular bamboo mats. More than once I saw tiny women carrying large wicker baskets of produce--the baskets attached to their head by fabric bands. Fields of bright yellow mustard were in bloom--a lovely contrast to the brown of late autumn.

Old men were sitting together in the sun and women clustered together chatting.  Children--out of school for the Thihar holiday--were everywhere.

"Hello.  Namaste.  Namaste.  Hello.  How are you?  What is your name?  10 rupees? Namaste. Bye. Bye. Bye."

By now it was noonish and the warm yellow sun felt good on my skin.  It was only in the low 70's, but after a cold night it felt wonderful.  I crossed a bridge and saw a perfect place to park the bike, rest a bit, absorb the landscape and enjoy the late November sunshine.

In the river, groups of women were doing different tasks.  Some were bathing, others were washing their clothes.  A team of six women were as a unit--each carrying a reed basket, attempting to gather fish or crustaceans. I'm still not sure. 

It wasn't long before a group of boys spotted me.  They lived in a small village on the other side of the river and they soon splashed across.  My bike was the big draw.  Each of them wanted to ride it.

I had to be firm.  It wasn't my bike and I didn't want to be responsible for them hurting themselves or their damaging my bike.

Instead, we played marbles.  Two boys had a large handful each.  One dug a small hole and the three of us got equal numbers.  They played just like I did when I was a child.  

Marbles!  I hadn't played marbles since I was in elementary school outside the old St. Peter's Catholic School--Ecole Sainte Pierre--torn down more than fifty years ago.

It was great fun. 

I finally turned my bike around.  I passed a small Buddhist stupa, then a Hindu temple and, to my surprise, a church. I asked later if there were problems--each group living together, but was told things were harmonious on a religious level.

I returned to my guest house, ate a late lunch, read, washed a few clothes and waited for the next adventure...a ride on an elephant. 

At 3:00 I boarded a long dug out canoe and crossed to the river to where elephants waited for tourists. I climbed a tower and stepped onto the back of an Asian elephant a began a two hour safari through tall grasses.  In all there, were six elephants and all would be in search of black-horned rhinoceros.  The idea of riding an elephant is one thing; it's quite another reality as it lumbers slowly through the brush.  The beast often stopped to eat grasses, but ultimately we all reached a point where the six animals and their cargo surrounded a pair of rhinos.  It was an awesome site.

Later, the elephants regrouped and returned a long way to our starts point.  They marched in a long single file.  There were no clouds and to my east the sun was setting in a gold washed sky.  To my west, the last rays of the sun were illuminated the snow-mantled Annapurnas in the far distance.

We returned to the river at dusk.  About three hundreds upstream the guide alerted us to a treat.  A pair of rhinos had come to the river to drink.  They were far enough way not to pose any threat.

Well..what a way to end the series of adventures.

Later that evening I slipped into the town's most popular restaurant and ordered a nice meal--a steak sizzler and a big pot of lemon tea. There would be no traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but that was OK. 

The day had been unforgettable,almost reverential, and when I went to bed I gave a silent, yet grateful prayer, for a Thanksgiving that I won't forget