What We Found in "BabaLand" - Haridwar Kumba Mela Gathering 3/3/10-4/3/10

On the Other Side of the Ganges - Shivaratri Festival, Varanasi 12/2/10

Shivaratri Festival is a day when Hindus gather in temples to do puja, play in the streets, bathe in the Ganges, drink bong lassis and get slanty-eyed with high pleasure. Sashwa and I watched people party into the evening in honor of Shiva, under bright lights and shooting m-80s from the darkness. A  poor elephant was decked out for the celebration and going deaf in the chaos.

We participated in Shivaratri by being guided around via auto-rickshaw through muddy streets out into the countryside. We ate street food across from the Durga Temple and next to the Queen's bath, then visited the soft souls living on the other side of the tracks, the other side of the Ganges River outside of crazy Varanasi city.

Decorating the Nepalese Temple in Varanasi

Partaking in street food across from the Durga Temple and next to the Queen's Bath on the other side of the Ganges River

Temple Boys

Bombarded in the village

Trying to please the kids with a swinging boat ride

Eyes Wide - Varanasi 9/2/10-15/2/10

 Photos by Sashwa; Words by Ann; Experienced by both

Nothing in any traveler's mind is similar to the experience of staying in awe inspiring Varanasi, India. It is true that spirit lives here. Shiva temples abound. The river goddess Holy Ganga flows albeit murky and dirtied by the same people who worship her with such fever. Puja is the most eminent action. There is such fierce love for the Hindu gods and goddesses that parties in their honor go all throughout the night, until the recorded sounds of nasal Muslim chanting, played through loud speakers, changes the tone of the morning around 5AM.

How can a person deny the magic here? This seems like the “real” India to me. But of course we know it’s not. The real India is as bejangled as the markets, as intricate as village people’s patchwork, as mirrored as a gypsies dress, as vivacious as stomping Khalbelia dance, as sad as a fly infested and ragged, dying dog, as holy as the most unsuspecting suspect – a holy cow. Real India is so diverse that it doesn’t exist.

We (Suzette, Jay, Sashwa and I), had just walked through the matrix that is old town Varanasi in search of a beer. The stone isle ways are as wide as Sashwa’s wingspan, separating shops from lodges, yoga centers from bakeries, and peoples’ homes from alters to Ganesha. They are dark and dripping. They are exciting and scary all at the same time. Especially at night it feels as though you shouldn’t be walking here, but yet the adventure of it all keeps you out until the later hours, running into milling cops around some corners, men offering hash and opium around others. 

We’d followed a guy who offered us cocaine thinking he was leading us out of the maze. Instead, wide-eyed and talking incessantly, he led us to the main burning ghats. Varanasi is “The City of Death.” Varanasi is a major pilgrimage site for the dying. Being burned at the Ganges ensures Hindus a more blessed crossover from this incarnation into the next. On the Ganges some 200 bodies are burned 24 hours a day. The reality of how much death happens in the world is conspicuous here as body after body is walked on men’s shoulders down to the various fires where they are laid. The men are wrapped in white cloth, the women are adorned in red silks lined with gold color – it’s apparent that a gentle woman’s touch is present in the decorating of these women even if the woman is not present herself. I imagine this job to be the daughter’s. The elderly travel for days to die at the banks of the Ganges. This is all for the purpose of being closer and therefore getting the opportunity to be burned at the river’s side.

We stood above it all. The smell of campfire and burnt hair was rising to our nostrils. Below us were lit fires numbering way up into the late teens. Suzette and I were the only women as even female family members are not allowed at the ghats due to the expectation that they will cry, and this is bad luck (or so they say). Our coked friend explained that Suzette and I were okay here because we were not Hindu, so we did not fully understand or feel what was happening, therefore we would not cry.

I did feel what was happening; the shadow of death not a stranger to myself or my family. I thought of my high school friends who had died, and many of my friend’s parents who had already passed. There is also my sister-in-law who escaped death because of the luck that the cancer had not spread from her chest to the rest of her 33 year-old body. I thought of my grandparents mostly gone to smoking, and my aunt whose body had wilted before our eyes at the stake of lung cancer. Aunt Terri had never had an easy life and the memory of her bald head, her bitter sadness, the way my father catered to her, how Dad was always adamant about me never smoking cigarettes, and how I had done it sometimes anyway…here at the Ganges amongst the smoke these thoughts floated through my private mind while dead bodies went up in flames in front of my face. I wasn’t that far from crying as we watched a head explode in the fire, bursting beautiful white light and blue.  This explosion was the most beautiful moment for me. I imagined that this was the moment where soul met spirit, where those who had traveled so far were finally free.

May all beings be happy and free.

It’s also wedding season here in Varanasi. Weird techno music plays as wedding parties parade down the streets, men carrying large flashing rave lights on their heads. An Indian wedding would make a good theme camp at Burning Man with its glitz, costumes, and loud music. The wealthiest weddings include decorated horses, the bride and groom sometimes carried on men’s shoulders in a mock carriage, the women are dressed in their best saris, jewels and things that sparkle are everywhere. The mood is celebratory. All but the bride and groom look happy. 

Often in arranged marriages the bridal viewing is the first time the bride and groom meet each other. Sometimes in villages they don’t meet until the wedding itself. Weddings are planned and arranged by the parents, a dowry is paid, and the typically teenage girl is whisked off to live a life with the groom and his family – sometimes working to serve the family as a mock servant.

There are also many stories of a happy union. Divorce isn’t like it is in the United States. Men sometimes fall madly in love with their wife when she produces a son for him. Then of course there are the romantic tales of the gentleman who lets the woman take her time with things like sex, he buys her beautiful jewelry, treats her with tenderness and respect, with or without a son.

At the wedding celebration in Varanasi the bride has her face covered with red silk. Her sari is the finest item she owns and it is as vibrant red as her attentive sister’s lips. The bride shuffles behind the groom. The groom is wearing beige pants. In his hand is also a beige scarf. The scarf is connected to his bride’s hands pulling her behind him like a leash for a dog. Tonight this young girl will sleep with a complete stranger.

It was Valentine ’s Day.

We were on our way to Bodh Gaya – the place where the Buddha received enlightenment under the Bodhi tree thousands of years ago and a peaceful spiritual practice began. A clone of the original Bodhi tree still stands in Bodh Gaya, splaying pretty leafed arms out in all directions across the back of a grand temple built in Buddha’s honor. We were running late at 6 AM on February 14^th. It’s a 5 hour drive from Varanasi, but the journey is well worth it to be able to sit at the same foot, of the same tree, and offer up our prayers. Spiritual intensity was what our week had been all about in Varanasi; Bodh Gaya would be another spice on our already decadent plate. 

It was the day for romantics. The streets were fully awake at 6AM as Sash and I walked at a fast pace down the long path off the main ghats. Men were already offering rickshaws as we walked, possibly having slept there waiting for the first pounding feet of tourists across the wet and cow filled pavement. It had rained a decent amount in Varanasi already. Men were gathered in small circles drinking chai. Stray dogs were milling and looking exactly the same. We noticed a group of Asian men with big tripods and cameras walking towards us from the opposite direction, most likely a film crew.

Then we heard the screaming.

 I saw the toddler first sitting upright on the pavement and I thought it was him. He was next to a vegetable stand and at the opening of an alleyway that led back into the matrix of other skinny alleyways that all connect together in one dark but quaint maze of shops, spices and bangle sellers at the bazaar.

The scream was deeper than a toddler’s whimper. It was more wicked, throaty, like a big cat in an unearthly amount of pain.

There was a shocked look on the film crews faces, their eyes pointed me to the source of the sound, unmovable from what they were seeing as they ascended upon the scene. The child was looking at his mother, too. She was sitting on the ground farther out into the middle of the streets. Her arms flailing in front of her face, her clothes drab and falling all around her, her chin pointed to the sky as she screamed continuously while a man was beating her with a stick. His face was angry and sweaty.  He turned at a fast pace fleeing as the film crew ascended.
Happy Valentines Day.

I couldn’t get the sounds of the woman – pained and humiliated – or the face of the man – eyes rabid – out of my mind as we drove away in a 5 speed, 6 seat diesel Toyota. A cup of chai greeted me. Everything about this journey had been pre-arranged to make us travel safely and with ease to Bodh Gaya.

We were late and the film crew seemed in the position to handle the situation so we didn’t stop to help the woman screaming. The fact that we didn’t stop grew into a fist punching me in the stomach as I sipped on my chai.

I realize that horrible things happen everywhere. Much worse even than what we saw in Varanasi. I also realize that in India there isn’t much you can do for a woman being beaten by a man. There aren’t accessible homeless shelters to bring her to, or a place where she can go to escape this man. She looked very poor, and the way the class system works here, she most likely was born into her situation without much hope for improvement. He could have been her husband. But most likely she worked for him and had pissed him off, maybe not bringing home enough money on any given day.

“We should have stopped,” I kept saying to Sashwa as we skipped between each Buddhist temple representing a different country – my favorites being Tibet and Japan. She probably didn’t speak any English, but I could have it least stopped to ask her story. We had trusted the group of film makers to do the right thing. A group of all men. They might have scared her. She may have responded easier to a woman. Then again, most of the hateful looks I’ve received in India are from the women. Maybe I would have scared her too. But it least I would have given her the decency of trying to hear her story.

 I sat beneath the Bodhi tree where Buddha had sat. With my mala made of sandalwood, one bead at a time, I prayed for wisdom and compassion to grow within me equally. I said this 108 times. I made a pact with myself to always stop in the future no matter who is there to help. I will never walk by again. Under the Bodhi tree I was transported through time and space back to that street in Varanasi at 6AM. It was still dark there. Any number of stories could have been hers.


BODH GAYA

 

No Sleep for the Drenched in Delhi 7/2/10-9/2/10

 

From the Gandhi Museum, Delhi

Where Gandhi spent his last days...

Gandhi's last steps

 

 

We’d started our stay down an alleyway street in the Delhi ghetto. Buildings were dripping with unidentified liquid. We interrupted the hotel manager with some traveler chick I later coined “Rainbow Butterfly” while he was either hooking up or getting high. The entryway felt like the living room of an opium dealer. He’d given away our reservation and shuffled us off to a hotel where oil stains and black hairs greeted me on the bed sheets. The walls were smudged with handprints and the toilet had some reddish brown crusty-thing on it. Sashwa demanded at the very least we get clean sheets.  The man shook his head shyly and said “No ma’am,” when I asked if I could get clean pillow cases with those new sheets.  By night the ghetto was eerie, by day it was a bustling den of hustlers grabbing our arms and sickly looking beggars. A desolate man tried to convince me to give him my hiking boots.

I’d arrived stomach-sick to Delhi and swiftly picked up a sore throat and sinus infection. Delhi will make any environmentalist give up hope for saving the trees and take a seat next to the fires made of plastic kindling burning all over the streets. The streets of Delhi are consistent with taking an outhouse and dumping it on the sidewalk; add in landfills without any garbage can in sight, and ten times the LA smog – this is Delhi. I was literally choking in the streets.

Sounds like a bad place, but I don’t hate Delhi; the ruckus makes it a fascinating city too. And it is progressive. Women aren’t frowned upon for wearing jeans, and some of them are getting college degrees and driving cars. India boasts the richest men in all of the Asia’s, Delhi has a plan to build up the downtown area with skyscrapers; but the poverty was some of the most extreme we’d seen yet.

A woman came asking for rupees as we sat at a stoplight in the back of a rickshaw. Her face was sad and dirty, she had a wild look in her eye that I’d seen elsewhere our first night in Delhi – the look of desperation that is harder here than in the villages. Her hair was short and knotted. We sat feeling horrible and helpless; in India it is impossible to give money to all the people you want to. When her begging didn’t work, her son (maybe 4 years old) held up his finger to show me that it was bleeding. Then her infant also held out his hand. The infant didn’t have any pants on and his penis was infected and cracked, maybe from the dirty streets I’m guessing.

Delhi speaks do or die, hustle or starve. It also speaks boutique shops and Gandhi museums – too many people who need help…and a weirdly nice place. If I hadn’t felt like I was losing precious years off of my life by just breathing the air, I would have stayed a while to wrap my head around what had the makings of being the wiliest city I’d ever been in (and we lived in Oakland).  

We were in Delhi to meet Suzette and Jay, Sashwa’s parents who will be joining us until mid March. We were excited to explore India with them, and Suzette and I were eager to shop! A friend of a friend of Suzette’s met us at an emporium, showed us around, bought us lunch, and invited us to come visit her home and meet her daughters next time we were in Delhi. Her name is Kamal and I liked her immediately. She is a classy and kind woman. We had a wonderful day with her, then that night a heavy rain hit Delhi and I ended up in tears.

We were having dinner after a long and wonderful day with Suzette and Jay, and we’d lost track of time. We weren’t in the part of town where rickshaws and taxis are at every corner. Suzette lent me her poncho and well wishes as we headed out into the rain for our hotel.

The problem was that I was wearing flip-flops.

When the rains hit in Delhi, there is no place for the water to go but into murky little puddles. Burning Man’s toilet was lapping at my ankles and caking between my toes. We found a taxi stand but the two guys sleeping didn’t wake no matter how much Sashwa screamed and banged on the door.

I wasn’t always like this – a mild germ phobic. I can rough it in the wilderness for days without a shower or a toilet. It’s the human nastiness that I get scared of, and people in India piss and shit all over the streets. I was horrified as we waded home to a hot shower and a half hours worth of soap and sterilization for my feet and flops, and for Sashwa’s shoe laces that had untied midway. Sashwa had the ability to laugh it off, but soaking my feet in Delhi was enough to make me weep as hard as the rain. I thought of the begging woman and her two small children and wondered if she was under a tarp in a tent city somewhere (homes made out of bricks and a blue tarp-roof, seen everywhere on the sides of main roads), or herself walking barefoot through the same streets. A feeling of guilt washed over me as I washed my feet.

The next morning we boarded a plane to Varanasi and I met a woman on the plane. She lives in Italy and coincidentally enough she also lived in Northern California and happens to know people that we know in Ohi and Sebastopol. It is a small world.

“This must be a good omen,” I said to her, heart-warmed by the sense of familiarity and feeling, ready for Varanasi.

“Varanasi to me is hell on earth,” she said. She was on her way to Varanasi for the second time.

I grew suspicious. I’d heard from many that Varanasi was one of the most awesome places in India full of chaos, ritual, spirit and splendor. We were committed to staying in Varanasi for a week.

Varanasi is also the “city of death” in that it is a major pilgrimage site for Hindus; because being burned on the banks of the Ganges helps them transition into their next incarnation. People come to Varanasi to die. In Varanasi you see around 200 bodies being burned a day within 24 hours. When the woman on the plane was in Varanasi last she was going through menopause. She said she related the death inside of her to the death she was seeing everywhere. She was even seeing dead puppies. Then she got a phone call from home that her own dog had just died.

“The outside experience is a reflection of the inside experience,” she said.  “I felt like something was dying inside me, and so I was seeing death everywhere.”

I thought about this statement – my outside experience is a reflection of my inside experience. Did that mean my insides were filled with rain and Delhi shit? I was sure that my insides were at least confused. I loved India, but I wasn’t in love with India yet, and I also hated it here too.  In one moment I would have the most beautiful interaction, and in the next a woman would hiss at me when I smiled at her in the streets. Was I watching myself? Because here men stare Western women down without any shame no matter how many scarves we wrap ourselves in. Or were my insides as shallow as pashmina shawls, glass bangles and silk sellers? I knew I felt drenched by the things I still could not fully understand in India. The dynamics of class and religion, the dynamics of men to women, the rules of society, the code of dress, why no one was cleaning up the streets, and why there wasn’t help for that poor woman and her bleeding and infected kids.

As the plane landed I sent up a silent prayer to the gods that I’m sure float through the night skies of one of the most pulsing places on earth, burning Varanasi – I told them that I wanted to understand my outward experience in India, and my inside one too. I was ready to mesh things together and for deep understanding to take over. I wanted this to happen now.

Hampi, India

Curious Monkey Checking Out His Reflection in Sashwa's Camera Lens

Ahhh Hampi. It deserves that big sigh of relief!

We’d been craving small villages, landscapes of endless boulders, sunrises filled with “epicness”, banana trees and the sound of bugs at night; a chilled out sort of place, and interesting backpackers to chatter with. We got all of this here in Hampi, a town full of ruins and mini temples tucked into unexpected places. We arrived to a bathing party in a glistening river. A small boat was waiting to take us to a series of bungalows overlooking rice paddies and the grandest boulder fields I’ve ever seen.

“Yep we’ll stay five days,” Sash and I said, both eager for a decent hammock.  

View From Hampi "Home"

 

We acquainted ourselves with two new friends from England who became our exploring partners all week. Durian is about to go to school for writing, and Heather is a free spirit traveling by herself and containing awesome stories about encounters with sharks – of course I liked them both immediately!

Hampi is a natural splendor. We caught both sunset and sunrise with our friends Durian and Heather. Every sandstone colored rock screamed “Climb me!”  

Sunset Pleasure

Goats and water buffalo were taking midday soaks. We walked for miles to a reservoir and through village after village being chased down by young kids. People are so friendly in the country; as curious about us as we are about them.

Hampi will make you feel famous. I was a bona fide Angelina Jolie just about everywhere I went. The kids here eagerly surround tourists in herds of 20+ wanting to be in a photo, and they are about as sweet and adorable as children come. With the exception of one teenage boy, who went in for a boob-grab while having his friend take a picture of us. I shrunk away in horror; my first lesson in fame – let the boys take a picture with me, but don’t let them put their arm around me! 

The little girls are my favorite - bright eyes and smiles. Ready to tell you how beautiful they think you are when it’s really them who are so stunning. The idea of beauty here is as twisted as it is in the States. It is the grass is always greener sort of mindset. The way we idealize too thin in the US, it seems, is the way women in India strive for light skin. Fairness Cream is a hot seller in the beauty shops. I’ve read that being “too dark” can inhibit a girl's chances for a decent arranged marriage. Yet it is the darkness of these girls skin and the beauty of their black eyes, the softness of their face without make-up that really makes them beautiful to me.  

And then there was Babaji.

Sometimes you meet sadhus trading pictures for rupees, and sometimes you meet the real thing. They say that in India you are supposed to look for guru’s in everyone, that they will surprise you and sometimes be the man sweeping the floors beneath your feet, or any number of gurus in unrecognizable or recognizable clothing. We found Babaji on the side of the road under the shade of a tree. Of course I asked him for his picture. Usually people here want to see themselves when you take their picture, but Babaji waved off my attempt like it was only a hassle. This made me curious, and when he caught up with us walking I took full opportunity of picking my new friend Babaji’s mind.

When he found out we were from America, he said, “I would like to go to the bottom of the Grand Canyon someday and dip in the river, because it is the deepest river on earth.”

We like the idea of running into Babaji at the base of the Grand Canyon someday.

As we walked Babaji spoke about the monkey god Hanuman. He described his next pilgrimage to Haridwar for the Kumba Mela, and talked about the full moon in March. Then a few stacked motorcycles road by (they let tourists rent motorcycles here – very scary), and one of the boys on the back gave an eager wave to Babaji and a thumbs up.

“Funny people come here,” he said with a laugh and a shake of his head.

Temple Ruins in Hampi 

 

Mysore

28/01/2010

We headed to Mysore as it is the self-proclaimed "Ashtanga Capitol of the World." To our surprise yoga was not for sale on every tree post like it is in the rest of South India. Confused by this we just let it go and spent the time chasing another love of mine - the smell of sandelwood, of which there was plenty in incense and oil shops across the city. Turns out Ashtanga yoga is thriving in some suberb on the outskirts of Mysore. Another lesson in India, if you ask one person and they give you the answer you aren't looking for, ask another and another until they tell you what it is and where to find it. Regardless, I now am incensed with sandalwood on my wrists every day.

Woman Rolling Incesne - they say her daily record is something over 6,000

 
   



Our Oil Man - he was once Mr. India

Bidi Making Men in Mysore

Southern India Hang-Time with Katja and Alexei

Photos by Sashwa; Experienced by All-Of-Us

MANGALORE

HOUSE-BOATS in KERALA, BACKWATERS OUTTA ALLEPEY

 

TOURISTY BEACH TOWNS - VARKALA and KOVALAM