In the End: In the Very End

Plattsburgh, NY
December 13, 2012
Altitude: 138'

In the end, the very end,I added two countries to the ongoing list--Qatar and Bhutan.  One of these days I'll hit the illusive 100!  Maybe it will take a cruise in the Caribbean to do it.

In the end, the very end, I was gone exactly six weeks.  Any longer would have been suicide.  I simply could not take any more.

In the end, the very end, I retraced my steps back to Montreal, only this time it was a flight from New Delhi to Doha.  It was 18 hours in the air and almost 25 hours door to door.  My body fought against time zones for five days.  Sometimes I wonder if it's worth it to do these long-haul flights.  They're far too stressful on bodies.  From Delhi to Montreal was a total of ten time zones and a total of 8,014 miles.  1/3 of the way around the world!

In the end, the very end, I got as high as 11,059 feet and as low as sea level.  Almost all of Bhutan was well above 5,000'.

In the end, the very end, Bhutan was wonderful.  Yes, it has some ugly history in its past, but any country that puts people first before the bottom line in the form of gross national happiness gets high marks in my book.  I  never saw poverty, nor did I see excessive wealth.  To be fair, I didn't get into the poorer eastern part of the country where things might be different, but from what I could see Bhutan was clean, orderly and it seemed to work.

In the end, the very end, Nepal was Nepal--very touristic, well infrastructured, still cheap and always fascinating.  Wonderful medieval cities and towering mountains, and the finest weather of the year in November when days are in the sunny 70's and nights in he 50's with not a stitch of rain or clouds.

In the end, the very end, I literally counted the hours to departure.  I hated India that much. There has never been a travel time when I've wanted out of a place as much as I wanted out of India.  By the time  I got to Doha early in the morning on the 9th, the airport was abuzz with activity.  There were flights heading to every continent--Cape Town in South Africa, Buenos Aires in South America, multiple destinations in the Europe, North America of course, and many, many to multiple destinations in Asia. Interestingly, I had no interest in any of these destinations.  I'd had quite enough of the "exotic."  I just wanted the flight that said "Montreal."

In the end, the very end, when I finally went through customs and picked up my luggage in Montreal, I was never so glad to see a human  being who loved me more than seeing Steve waiting at arrivals.  I started to cry.

"It was that bad, wasn't it?" he said.  "You have no idea."  But I was home--home to the secure and predictable.  Boring old home without the multiple sensory simulations of the past six weeks. 

Earlier in the trip I'd had dinner with a Danish couple.  When she asked me where I was going, she commented that it was maybe too much.  Really, India AND Nepal aren't exactly stimulus free countries.  She was right.  It really was too much.  I'd seen too much and some of  it was too overwhelming, even for me.

In the end, the very end, two amazing things happenened.  I never lot the baseball cap I started out with and I kicked my Diet Coke habit.  The latter was a planned attempt, complete with four months of drug and alcohol counseling.  Yay!  This I'm proud of!

In the end, the very end, I feel as if I've lost something.  There was a time when I'd just be warming up at six weeks, but I wasn't 63 either and I'd seen far less of the world.  I was a much more curious person.  This doesn't mean it's the end of my travel.  It just means it will be tweaked differently.  there are still too many places I've not seen.  But India will NEVER be part of any itinerary again. 

In the end, the very end, it was very much the right decision to leave early.  I was very, very glad to be home!  But I will not let this temporary set back to affect future travel.  Initially,I felt like a failure coming home early, but that's not the case.  I will not be afraid to try again--just not India. 

In the end, the very end, I missed Plattsburgh, friends, Christmas, December, snow, Steve and home.

Photos of India

Cremation in Varnasi

Cremation in Varanasi

Banks of the Ganges in Varanasi

Another cremation on the Ganges

Sarnath--where the Buddha preached

Streets of the old city of Varnasi

Making an offering to the river goddess

The Ganges at night

A dawn boat ride on the Ganges

Cows on the streets of Varanasi

Nehru's home in Alahabad

The Taj Mahal

From the other side of the river

India Gate in Delhi

India: In the End

Plattsburgh, New York
December 10, 2010
Altitude: 350'

In the end, India was horrible.  That is not something I say lightly.  Perhaps it was the way I entered the country, the 14 hours ride from hell.  Perhaps it was the chaos, filth, squalor, poverty, mayhem.  Perhaps it was the the fact that no one could be trusted, that I always had to be on my guard to protect myself from lies, scams, deceptions.  Perhaps it was because I remember a different India from 1998.  2012 was certainly not the India I experienced 14 years ago.  Perhaps it was because I was no longer the same tolerant/willing/able to put up with the sheer human presence of 1/6 of the world's population in a place smaller than Australia person I was the last time.  Perhaps, perhaps....

In the end, there are over a billion people living in India living in a space less than half the size of Australia.  There are 280,000,000 more people than there were in 1998.  There is no space in India, there is no way to sit and enjoy silence.  It is impossible to sit on a park bench without being harassed in some way.  This is not a country for people in search of some quiet experience.  It's an assault on the senses, it teems with crowds, it's noisy and it's dirty.  And, wuite honestly, while I'm certain there are perfectly nice Indians, they are NOT the ones one meets as a tourist.  I was sick of being lied to.  I as sick of being scammed.  I was sick of smelling urine everywhere.  I was sick of the smell of dirty, polluted air.  I was sick of being stared at.   (One woman and I had a staring match that went on 5 minutes until she finally turned her head.  She wasn't going to stare me down!)I was sick of tring to get simple things done.  I was sick of India and I was sick of Indians!

In the end I say fast track Mother Theresa to sainthood, and all the men and women who have given their lives to make the lives of the Indian poor a better one.  I recoiled at the poverty and recoiled at the beggars and know I am so saint, no Mother Theresa.  I did not like the person I became.

In the end, if I ever return to India it will be an in-transit sort of thing, with flights everywhere and with good hotels.  Dealing with public transportation is too hard.  And dealing with Indians is even harder.  In the end, though, it's highly unlikely I will ever return.  I could not tolerate the squalor and the poverty and,like a character in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, I felt as if I was living in some grotesque fantasy.  "We have to get out of here.  I can't say in this country a minute longer," she quipped.  "This country is driving me mad."  Well...that's exactly how I felt.

In the end, I'm actually sorry I built India into the itinerary. 

Allhahabad, Agra and Delhi

New Delhi, India
December 8, 2012
Altitude: 730'



I finally escape Varanasi on the 11:30 train bound for Bombay.  But unlike the others on the train for whom this would be a 26 hour ride, for me it was only three.  My destination was Allahabad, a city famous as the birthplace of Jawarahul Nehru, India's first PM, and his daughter, Indira Gandhi. 

But by the time I arrive I'm sick--physically as well as psychically.  So I check myself into a good hotel, assess the situation, start a regime of antibiotics and ride out the fever.  Behind the doors in a three star hotel with a good restaurant makes life in India more tolerable.

I ask the guys at reception where I can find a travel agency.  It's still early in the day and there's plenty of time to get an air ticked for the next day.  "OH, Sir," they tell me.  "We can arrange that for you." 

Yeah, right!  For three hours, battling a fever and multiple trips to the bathroom, I approach the front desk.  "Ten minutes, Sir," they tell me.  Ten minutes.  Ten minutes.  Ten minutes.  By the end of the day I still have no ticket and, looking back on it, I suppose I didn't give them the bribe money needed to get this done.  Just deeper confirmations what these people are really like.

But the ball truly is beginning to roll and during my first night there I have to maintain contact with home to secure a seat the following weekend out of Delhi...still a 14 hour bus ride away.  Because of the time difference, decisions have to be made at midnight and 2:00 a.m.  All of this is OK.  I'll do what I have to do go get out of India.

Day two in the city I realize that I have to get myself out and can't rely on anyone else in India.  So I take a cab to the airport, wrangle a one-way ticket on Air India to Delhi.  It's only then that I could sit back and try to enjoy this city.  Which I did...with a good lunch at a good restaurant, with a visit to the lovely and very historic Nehru home and with a visit to four Mughal tombs that predate the Taj Mahal. 

The city was a loud mess, with the usually assortment of cows in the streets, cows lying in the middle of public highways, cows on the highways.  But at least here I didn't smell pee and at least in the places I visited didn't have to navigate piles of poo.  And, even more remarkably, this was a city that was relatively free of in-your-face harassment from vendors and the like.  That's probably because in my three days I was the only foreigner I saw.  Allahabad does not attract lots of out of country visitors.

It was a real relief to board the flight and land in Delhi an hour and twenty minutes later. 

I have three days in the city.  Steve and the travel agency in Montreal have been able to get me home on Sunday.  And I have this deep, deep feeling that I'll never return to India, so I want to see the Taj Mahal one last time.  So I buy a tour, on the Thursday morning, the driver pulls into the hotel.  I find I'm the only one.

As we leave the city on a newly built toll road the sun rises.  It only takes two hours to get to  Agra where I meet my guide.  Once we get out of the city, it's a lovely ride.  A low mist hangs above flat fields full of yellow mustard--a plant that's been a constant and pleasant companion for the past six weeks.

But the Taj!  Another example of possibly leaving past memories intact. 

In 1998 I timed my visit to this amazing building to be there during the time of the full moon.  I'd spent the day there, with tourists of course, but not that many that made the place uncomfortable.  That evening I returned and revisited the site--a site softly bathed in a full December moon.  It's one of the great travel images of my life.

But this year!  It's full of tourists--mostly Indians--who are now able to see their own country.  I have to wait in line to get my photo taken in front of the building.  It's hectic and loud and even though the Taj is still the most magnificent building in the world, the pleasure I experience is nothing like the first time.

One of the most endearing travel images of my life involves the Taj.  It's December 1998, and I step behind the building and face the Yumana River.  Few people are there.  Faintly, in the distance, I hear what sounds like an aria.  Then I see a marigolds floating downstream followed by a man in a boat.  He's singing and his voice fills the air.  I sit and watch as he sings he way along the river until voice and man fade out of distance.  

Sadly that was not the case this year.


By late afternoon we head back to Delhi and arrive as the sun sets.  It's a massive red/orange disk that drops gorgeously  into the heavily polluted sties of India's capital.

I spend my last day wrapping up loose ends, going to Qatar Airways to be absolutely certain I'm on the list to get home and shopping.  But that's not easy.  I'm want a very specific shop--a government run souvenir shop that sells products at set prices, where no one will pressure me.  But can I get there?  No!  I walk, but rickshaw driver stop me,lie to me, tell me it's closed (I know it's not), that I'm walking in the wrong direction I was, so I take up one guy's offer.  "Twenty rupees."  Seems like a decent fellow.  Stupid me.  We end up at his shop--a shop with some of the words in its name that the shop I want has.  Then I walk...and walk..and walk.  Of course no one knows where it is because no one will tell me what I want to know, because there's no commission to be made.  They're pigs, I think. Thank heaven for the Xanax that my doctor gave me.  I've been on it  twice a day since Varanasi. I ultimately do get to the shop I want--and it's no more than a ten minute walk from my hotel.  At least going back was easy.

Sometime back I'd wanted to write a fun piece, full of puns.  And it's only a week after being home, as I write this a week before Christmas, on a day with new snow on the ground, with my body fully back in this time zone, that I can find the humor in India to do so.  So here goes...

I wasn't sari to leave India.  I felt burned, singhed at the edges.  Whatever it was I was sikhing I certainly didn't find.  The country was uttarly frustrating, beyond agravating.  Maybe it was bad karma, maybe it was a bad decision.  I don't know.  It's not that I want to caste bad light on a country and its people, but this time India was too over-the-top for me.  I'm a good traveler and can flow with must about anything.  But, ghee, this place....  Too difficult, at least at this juncture in time.  Maybe it's the new travel-normal.  Maybe it was just a blip in travel.  Who knows.  

I became bone weary of saying..."I khan do this, I khan keep going, I khan do another day."  But there was no pleasure.  None at all. It all really ghat to me by the end.  I mean...if ya have live on Xanax just to get through the day....  What does that say!

And so I left and was very glad of it.  

Holy Shit! Varanasi, India

Varanasi, India
December 1, 2012
Altitude 252'

Maybe it's my second night in Varanasi and I'm walking back to my hotel through the tangled crazy maze of alleyways that makes up the Old City.  It's late and I'm beyond tired.  I've been up since 4:30 a.m. after only five hours of bad sleep, on top of a bad night before that.  My body's used to bad sleep cycles, but this one is particularly bad. I'm zigzagging my way way back to the guesthouse when I round a corner.  A straight line runs a few hundred feet. A right turn would then bring me to the hotel.  The alleyway's no more than eight feet wide and a massive bull cow is standing in the middle.  I've navigated this situation before.  The streets are full of cows.  I walk toward it.  This time the cow snorts, turns its head and threatens me.  I back off and return to the alley's entrance.

Holy Shit! I think. How am I going to get to my hotel? I stand on a raised step and wait, hoping the animal will leave. But no. Instead it sits itself down. I wait 30 minutes. Finally, an Indian on his way to the same place starts. "Hey," I tell him. "There's a cow there and he's dangerous." Probably thinks I'm a crazy tourist.

"Not dangerous," he says. "Mother India."

Mother India, I think. More like Holy Mother of God.
I take the opportunity and follow him, stepping beside yet another pile of shit.  I don't like this.  People have told me they've been shit or peed on as they've walked by.  One woman told me a cow bull-horned her butt and that she had a deep bruise.

We get past.

I'm so tired I can't sleep; I'm exhausted and it just won't come.  But I have meds, and this is the time.  I pop a 10 mg Valium and sleep through the night.

Varanasi!

I want to have respect for it.  I really do. It's been on "my list" for a very long time.  It's one of the holiest and most renowned places for pilgrimage: Varanasi or Benares, it's been considered the cultural, spiritual and religious metropolis of northern India for centuries.

In the broad context of Hinduism it's considered the city of polarities, where materialism and spirituality encounter each other in a way that cannot be explained, only experienced.

And I'm about to do that.

But it's also the filthiest city I've ever been to.  Cows roam freely.  I realize it's a cultural thing, and that the cow is the manifestation of the god Shiva.  Mother India.

Piles of poop are everywhere. I've seen piles of it decorated with marigolds.  I've seen devout Hindu women touch the dirtiest part of the tail in some form of respect.  I'm having a major clash of culture, something that doesn't normally happen to me.  Usually I flow with this sort of thing, embrace it  But this is just too bizarre.

Most  tourists stay in the Old City, close to the Ganges River, near the ghats, or steps, that lead lead down to the water.  This city's been high on my list of places to see.  It's one of the holiest cities in India and to die here, then be cremated on the banks of the Ganges, is supposed to liberate the believer from the cycle birth/death/rebirth.

Despite my response to the city, there's a still huge vitality about life on this river, but it's grotesquely dirty.  People come to it to bathe, to make puja--worshipping the river goddess Ganga; early in the morning I see men walking away from the river soaking wet.  They've just taken a "holy dip."; kids fly kites, play cricket; couples come here here to have their wedding photos taken, and because this is the marriage season, there are lots of them; people wash their clothes, brush their teeth, swim in the river; oxen are brought to the river for bathing; a hundred cows have taken up residence.  Men also use the walls banking the ghats as a place to urinate.  A walk from one end to the other--a distance of about four miles--is a lesson in learning how to navigate multiple piles of cow and oxen poo and avoided the stench of urine.  Each night there's a ceremony--more a show--where Ganga is worshipped with fire and holy music.  Through the "show" kids are hawking leaves in the shape of bowls that are filled with flowers and a small candle.  Ten rupees will buy one that you can set sail on the river--your own offering to the goddess.  Actually, watching these small offerings float down the river--and there are hundreds each evening--is quite magical.  It's about the only thing positive I can say about the place.

I want to sit and enjoy life on this vibrant river, but it's difficult.  Men approach, want to shake hands.  There's nothing friendly about this.  They want something.  they always want some ting.  In this case it's a prelude to a massage, which I've had and they're very good, but not here on the banks of this river.  I want a more relaxing place. 

I don't extend my hand.  I've gone through half a bottle of hand sanitizer in my already-short-stay in India.  I'm terrified of a sickness like I had last winter.

One guy approaches my shoulders.  "Don't touch me," I tell him.  He does.  I told you..."get your fucking hands off me."  The person I've  become is ugly. I pass beggars the same way.  I'm in defense mode.  This is not like me at all.  Something in me is snapping, turning me into someone else.  I have to remind myself that no one forced me to come here.  This is certainly not the India I dealt with in 1998.  But Varanasi, and the horrific ride getting here, is what's doing this.

That and the smell--the smell of poo and piss.  It's the filth of the river and the fact that people consider it "holy."  I'm being very judgemental.   It's the guesthouse where I'm staying and the noise the men who run the place make all day.  It's the fact that I can't sleep.  It's cows and cow shit and cow pee all over the streets of the Old City.  I've stepped in the stuff more than once and feel filthy.  It's watching people brush their teeth from the river, let their kids swim in it.  It's seeing people walk barefoot through the streets--streets that are so dirty I don't even want to walk on them with my shoes on.  I know there are perfectly nice Indians out there.  The man who sells me soda water and the man who gives me a massage are two of them.  But more often then not it's not nice people I come in contact with.

And then there are the cremations.  People come here to be cremated.  Hindus consider cremation along the Ganges to be the most propitious spot in the country. Families will save for a lifetime to buy the wood.  Families will bring their loved ones hundreds of kilometers from their homes to be burned at this spot.  It really is one of the things that makes Varanasi so famous.

There are two "burning ghats" on the river--one more auspicious than the other.  All of us are fascinated by this.  I stop to watch.  But of course in India one can never just stop and watch.  Someone approaches me.  "Burn and learn," he tells me.  "Come."  But I don't come,  of course.  There's always a scam and this one will involve big sums of money.  There are two hospices adjoining the site.  People come here to die.  NO matter what my "donation" will be it won't be enough. 

I ultimately do find a seat and sit with other tourists.  Safety in numbers.  It's a Sunday afternoon and I don't know if what I'm seeing in normal or not.  A new family comes in every five to seven minutes.  Each body is wrapped in a shroud then wrapped in another yellow covering.  Bodies are carried on bamboo stretchers that themselves are colored in saffron fabric. They approach the river, walk in, then submerge the body in the water three times. 

What I'm watching is almost post-apocalyptic.  There must be twenty cremations going on simultaneously--all at various stages.  There's nothing reverent about what I'm seeing.  Plastic bags, garbage, marigold garlands, charcoal float in the water.  Kids are running through the site flying kites.  Cows get in the way and have to be shooed out.  Indian pop-music is playing from a nearby shop.  There are huge piles of burned ash waiting to be shoveled into the river.  The place is crawling with tourists--tourists on shore and tourists on small boats in the river.  And because this is Sunday, there are larger boats full of Indians out for the afternoon.

One family--men only--finds a site, buys the wood and arranges it correctly.  Thousands of years of practice have taught Indians just how much wood is needed to completely cremate a human body.

It's extraordinarily difficult to have any emotion, yet the grief must be overwhelming.  These are human beings, they loved and are loved.  Yet to my Western eye this is just wrong.  But that's just it--my Western eye.  This is what Hindus do and Varanasi is one of the few places on the planet to witness this sort of thing.

The oldest son must light the fire but first his head is shaved bald, then he changes into mourning clothes--unbleached muslin and nothing  more.  He circles the pyre three times then starts the fire.  Then they wait.  It will take three hours for the body to burn.

Twice I see something I learn is very rare.  There are five times when a death does not permit a cremation: if someone dies my cobra bite, if a woman is pregnant, if a child is under 16, if the deceased has leprosy or his a sudhu--a holy man.  In this case the body is strapped to a stone, rowed out into the river, and dumped overboard.  I've seen small wrapped yellow bundles floating in the garbage strewn waters near shore.  I can only imagine.

Life in the "new city" of Varanasi is just a jolting, but in a different way.  The city is full of garbage and cows freely roaming the streets.  Piles of shit are everywhere there,too.  Noise levels are horrific.  Twice I take a rickshaw to the train station--5 miles away.  Just negotiating a price is a nuisance.  "200 rupees," the driver tells me.  "50," I retort back.  We end up with a price of 100--$2.00. The piercing honk of horns and the din of traffic rattle my nerves, but in a different way.  Plus, I'm more vulnerable to the hucksters--all of whom want to sell me something or put me a taxi or rickshaw.  I have a mental picture of a piece of undeveloped land piled high with garbage.  People are pouring through it.  Cows are feeding off it.  There are even two pigs in the mess.

I can only take in so much. I think this is where I snap. There are just some things in life you're not supposed to see. Actually, though, I think it started to snap when I saw man die in a motorcycle accident two weeks earlier while I was on a bus. Traffic was stopped for over an hour. Truly, there was nothing we could do, but people were snapping photos of the accident scene. Life just seemed so disposable.

It doesn't seem possible, but the city does redeems itself, somewhat, with a day visit to Sarnath--only ten miles but world's away from Varanasi.

It's one of the four most important Buddhist sites in the world.  It's here where he preached his first sermon and pilgrims from all over the world come here on what is known as the "Buddhist Circuit."  The other three are where he was born, where he achieved enlightenment and where he died. 

Sarnath is a typical Indian town, but there are no cows on the streets, no piles of poo.  There is the stench of piss--human--but that's normal.

I make way way to the 3nd century archaeological site.  It's fully enclosed, full of trees and ancient stupas and monasteries.  There are palm and bhodi trees all around. I actually hear birds chirping.  In the distance monks are chanting.  It's quiet and peaceful and cool in the shade.  There are squirrels and chipmunks and for a brief, illusory moment I think I'm in Chapultepec Park, in Mexico City.

I spend almost the entire day sitting on one of the benches--reading, writing.  I can't bare to return to Varanasi.  I'm growing increasingly anxious about India.  I hate it, and that's not normal for me.  I'm a very flexible traveller and can flow with pretty much anything, but the entry into the country coupled with the intensity of the city, is too much.

It's also December 1st, and I'm acutely aware of the date.  I'm missing home, and December, and snow and the coming of Christmas.  I'm sick of traveling, sick of India, sick of shit and piss and scams and rudeness.  I'm sick of bad hotels and sick of Indians spitting.

The words to James Taylor's song Sweet Baby James runs through my head.

Now the first of December was covered with snow

and so was the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston.

Though the Berkshires seemed dreamlike on account of that frosting,

with ten miles behind me and ten thousand more to go.

Towards dusk I know it's time to return.  The site is closing, and I don't want to  be on these insane roads after dark in an auto- rickshaw.  But it's here that I have my own bit of enlightenment.  It's time to go  home, cut the trip short, pay whatever it is I have to pay to get back to Plattsburgh.

That night I start the ball rolling.  I send both Steve and my travel agent an email.  If I can't change my ticket, it will only cost me $700.00 to get home from Delhi by the weekend.  I don't care what it costs, I just have to get out.

Varanasi had been high on the list of "places to see," but whoever said it would take no prisoners was right.  I'd been warned. I would either love it or hate it.

Sadly, it was the later for me. I stayed four days--three days too many.  It wasn't only time to get our of Varanasi.  It was time to get out of India!