Varanasi

Humans below, monkeys above at the train station in Hardwar. When one of the monkeys would randomly open up his bladder and douse the people sleeping below, it was a great show.

One of the less than human corpses floating in the Ganges.

And 50 metres up stream from that...a bath.

To get to Varanasi we caught a train from a city called Hardwar, about an hour or so down river from Rishikesh. We quickly visited the train station, then went to find a bite to eat at a restaurant a few blocks away, where we somehow ran into Sesha (friend who I stayed with down in southern India) and his family. This may not seem weird to people since we're both in India, but it would be similar to running into a guy from Toronto, in Vancouver and putting a billion or so people in between the two cities. Needless to say it was a bizarre, yet cool coincidence.

From Hardwar we caught a 20 hour train southeast down to Varanasi, where we are now. Varanasi is famous for its river side body burnings along the Ganges. It's said that if a person dies in Varanasi they ascend directly to heaven (or the Hindu equivelant...might just be breaking out of reincarnation...not clear on that). To be cremated then have your ashes tossed into the Ganges is a form of purification. So, after visiting the local hospital (where I was diagnosed with Giardiasis...a cousin of Beaver Fever who I brought along for the trip around the world all the way from Brazil), we made our way along the Ganges, through the Ghats. Ghats are basically concrete pads and pillars and open areas that have been built right down and into the river. Most Ghats are for bathing, meditation etc, but two of them are there specifically for cremations. There's obviously no photos at the burning ghats so we just sat there and watched it all happen, the process goes something like this. The bodies are first wrapped in cloth and flowers, then paraded through the winding little streets of the old city, where they end up at the burning ghat. The wood is the most expensive part of the process, costing 165-800 rupees per kg, and taking about 200-400 kgs to successfully burn the corpse. The funeral pyre is created, then the body (still wrapped in cloth) is doused in the Ganges, honey, butter, kurd and some other stuff is spread over top of it, then the whole package is put onto the pyre. From there, the head mourner (dad, husband, brother) ignites the pyre using a fire from some temple up the road, and does some circles around the corpse. There are no woman allowed near the ghat, because they believe that showing outward signs of grief disturbs the spirit's departure (that and the odd wife has been known to throw herself onto the smouldering pile in the past and therefore cremate herself as well). The body takes about 3 hours to burn, there isn't much visible to the outsider except when the shroud burns off or falls away, leaving some pale face staring at you or letting a dead arm flop out. The ashes are taken and chucked into the Ganges after the head mourner has deemed the fire done. The body is obviously never totally burnt, so the area surrounding the ghat has floating, charred body parts. Although gross to us, the stray dogs loved it and could be seen throughout the area munching on steaming limbs or chewing on a charred torso. Needless to say it was quite an eye-opener. I was curious as to how I would react given that I had never even seen a dead body before, but I think years of movies and video games have dulled any of those emotions to the point where it just seemed quite regular.

Following that we enjoyed the first steak we've eaten since Kenya (for me at least). Made our way back to the hotel while the town was being swarmed with locusts (not sure why...but there must have been trillions of them all over the town..was quite something). This morning we received another round of massages by strange little Indian men, and tonight we board a train bound for the Nepal border. Hopefully I can get in to the place even though I have no more room in my passport for a visa.

Up into Uttaranchal

Rishikesh and the Ganges.

Hemkund Shrine. Air...so...thin...

Crazy Sikhs bathing in the water. I thought about it, but chose to not get pneumonia instead.

What little money the sherpas/porters and mule-handlers make, they seem to blow on gambling and tobacco.

Just Protectin' the Roof of the World.

Poor old Jas had to stay an extra night in Delhi while I rode the rails up into Uttaranchal, to the capital of Dehra Dun. I spent the day there walking around the giant old British buildings and watching 9/11 documentaries on the National Geographic channel that mysteriously appeared in my hotel room. Jas arrived that night on the train and we quickly left the next morning to Rishikesh.

Rishikesh was put on the map when some little English band holed up here for a couple months in the late 60's and has since been the epicenter of hippy activity for the known universe. We switched hotels the second day here due to an unusually high population of Israelis at the place we originally picked, but unfortunately we found this to be the case everywhere in town. Anyone who has done some backpacking in India, Southeast Asia or South America knows the oddity that are Israeli travelers. They all come travelling after their army service is over, congregate in the same hotels, smoke all day and refuse to speak anything but Hebrew. They're not mean or anything, just hard to infiltrate and therefore usually something to be avoided when in large herds.

We spent one day poking around the ashrams (pilgrim/super hippy living communities) and wandering around the banks of the Ganges. Given that Rishikesh has been coined the yoga capital of the world, we also decided to partake in the local ritual of trudging into the woods and putting ourselves in ridiculous positions on sweat covered mats. Like Jason mentioned, we had a pact that if something should go wrong, the outside world would simply never hear of this particular adventure, but luckily everything seemed to go smoothly, to a degree. I tried to picture the whole experience much like a trip to Gibson's (the dojo I used to go to), except that we simply replaced kickboxing and arm-bars with Aum chants and meditative positions. Mr. Gibson also seemed to have been transformed into a tiny Indian man and the clientele changed from bouncers, bikers and street-toughs to hippies, Israelis and middle-aged Scottish men. For the most part it really wasn't that bad and basically amounted to doing a whole bunch of core and back exercises with brief rests in between. One part I did get a kick out of was when the instructor mentioned that "those of you who lead negative lives and indulge in toxins will now begin to expel those energies", everyone else in the room was bone dry, yet when I looked at Jason and I, I couldn't help but noticed that we were standing in pools of our own sweat and looking as if we just got out of the shower. I looked down at my pool of toxins and negativity and shed a tear for so many good times now lost. The first session left us feeling so good that we returned the next day. I must say that at this point I was really getting the hang of the whole thing and could definitely feel some of the energy. At first it was as if my mind connected with the others in the room and began to move out into the vast universe. The emptiness and endless knowledge swirled around my thoughts, I could feel spiritual enlightenment brushing against the outer reaches of my soul. Finally as the meditation came to a climax, and I envisioned and basked in the warmth of a near-nirvana state, a realization dawned on me: given this particular amount of sunlight, the strange hippy, yoga pants that all the girls seem to be wearing in this room have become nearly translucent to the point that I can make out the different styles of underwear they're all wearing. It all came crashing down as suddenly as it built itself up and I was back to the usual me.

Our last full day in Rishikesh was spent river rafting along the Ganges. It compared nothing to any previous rafting that I've done, but was still a cool experience for the novelty of it and the sight-seeing aspect, and you can't expect much for a $7 trip I suppose. It was at this point I took advantage of a karmic loophole and erased any past evilness I've bestowed to others by bathing in Ganges.

The next morning we were up at 3:30am to catch a bus for Govindghat, high in the Himalayas. The trip was only 250km but somehow took 11 hours to complete. The road was hideous and the bus was even worse, reminding both of us of our near death experiences in Bolivia along similar roads. To prevent motion sickness I started with one gravol but soon began to throw more into the old stomach as one by one the other occupants of our deathtrap spewed their guts out of the bus window. By the end I had taken around 300mg of the magical medicine (I dont remember the exact amount as at one point I began tossing random pills in my mouth during a gravol-induced haze) in an attempt to either overdose and end the pain or simply slip into unconsciousness. I tried to divert my mind by contemplating what steps I could take to further the Committee's goals in India, coming to the conclusion that the first step is to introduce vast amounts of recipe to the local populace. A few hours into the ride I passed out so violently and suddenly that I nearly put my head through the window.

After that experience (the bus looked like it had been painted with vomit by the time we reached our destination), we spent a night in Govindghat, before trekking up the 14km to our next waypoint of Ghangharia. On the bus we met a 20 year old Indian guy named Aashish who spoke great english and basically became our unofficial guide of the area. The 14km trek up to G2 (as Ghangharia was then referred to), was completely uphill, but not overly bad given that we gave both our bags to a little Nepalese sherpa fellow who whisked them away on his flip-flop clad feet. G2 is an awesome little town, nestled at the base of a few valleys and beside some massive snow capped mountains. The only way to get there is the 14km hike so it weeds out any of the weirdos that frequent other Indian towns. The main reason for the entire route (for most people) is that G2 is the basecamp for the 6km pilgrimage up to the shrine of Hemkund, a holy place for the Sikhs. The whole town was full of Sikhs (who have to be the single nicest group of people I've met on this entire trip) and once learning we were from Canada the instant reply would be "from Surrey?". Was weird having all these people know about a suburb so close to home, many of them its one of the only Canadian spots they know.

At 5am the next day we became honorary Sikhs and joined Aashish and the rest of the pilgrims for the 6km (1300m vertical) trip up to Hemkund, although we decided to differ from Aashish and wear footwear. Everyone on the trail was ecstatic to see these two strange white guys doing their holy trip and most of the day was spent talking to the pilgrims and eating the constant stream of candies they fed us. Upon reaching the summit, we declined taking a bath in the sub-zero ice water and hung out up there while Aashish did his thing, then joined him for the return trip down. We had planned to do the Valley of Flowers (original reason for going to this area) the next day, but intense rains and sickness kept us bedridden. For some reason I seem to wake up with some new ailment almost every morning, I'm really not sure what's causing it. Could it be that the food we eat is most likely grown in human feces? Maybe some kind of tropical parasite has taken residence in my body? Or perhaps my new addiction to cheap Indian chewing tobacco is to blame? Who knows. Woke up the following morning with a little sunshine, so it gave us the chance to do the 4-5km trek over to the Valley of Flowers. Although the majority of flowers were out of bloom, the place was still awesome, as it's a vast, green valley surrounded by 6500metre peaks.

As usual the altitude at this point (between 3000-4300metres) was beginning to get to both of us, and that afternoon, we hired a mule (for our bags...after the porter we hired mysteriously broke down a quarter of the way down the mountain) and made the return trip to G1 (Govindghat). From there we spent one last night, then caught an equally brutal return bus trip back here to Rishikesh.

Last night we joined a group of friendly Israelis to celebrate the Jewish new year. After obtaining some gin and other illicit products, we rang in the year 5766 to the sounds of one of the poor guys vomiting all night after introducing him to our whiskey/coke cocktails.

We hope to leave Rishikesh tomorrow in an effort to make our way to Varanasi and eventually Katmandu!

Desert Down!

Random Hindu Temple.

Dinner.

Somehow with the full face shielding and SPF 50 sunscreen I still received a god awful sunburn.

Jas up ahead.

A Dung Beetle making a hasty retreat after penetrating my third line of defence, at some point in the night.

Rajasthani village woman who just didn't understand what I was doing with the camera.

The highs and lows of India continue to amaze the two of us as we made our way out to Jaisalmer. It seems like one day you can be having a fantastic time, everyone is incredibly nice, helpful, generous, and the next you'll find yourself being swindled by taxi drivers, hotel managers and bag repairers. I'll stop that line of thought though because its only headed downhill after a particularly difficult time trying to navigate our way to a working ATM in Delhi this afternoon.

We got into Jaisalmer after a very dusty train ride from Jaipur. Our train there was delayed several hours so it gave us a chance to get up close and personal with the massive rats that infest the train stations here. I would put on here how large they are, but I just don't think anyone would believe me. Jaisalmer was much nicer than Jaipur, much more laid back anyway. The huge fort that towers over the town is a sight to behold and seems like something picked right out of the Aladdin movie (didn't help that the guy who drove us there was named Babu). We quickly signed up for a desert safari along with Tom Longshanks, an english fellow we met on the train, and the next morning we were off, racing across the desert towards the Pakistani border on our camels.

Our guide was a good egg, spoke decent english and had a good sense of humour each time one of us showed how pathetic our desert survival skills are. The guy had been born on a camel from what I can tell and when asked where he lived he would simply state, "the desert". The trip consisted of three days of riding, with two nights spent out on the desert. The Great Thar Desert isn't like your typical Sahara, with endless sand dunes. Much of it was flat, dry land with the odd brush sprinkled around, although there were large sections with some massive dunes as pictured above. Thanks to an unusually powerful monsoon (this was the part of the area of India that was devastated by them this year), there was much more growth than normal.

Both nights were spent sleeping under the stars with the blankets from our saddles and our turbins as pillows. The first night brought with it some unexpected gifts from the local insect population. I have seen a few Dung Beetles on this trip, and each time have been very fascinated at the productive little creatues as they roll their poop around the sand. I had no idea so many lived in the desert. Within minutes of the camels showing up and letting loose their bowels, armies of Dung Beetles descended on us. There were easily hundreds and hundreds of them throughout our tiny camp. We soon realized that we would also be sleeping in the midst of one of their major cities. Not being a fan of having these these crawl on me all night (they would continously try to roll their balls of shit onto our sleeping mats) I set out creating a system of trenches and fortifications to prevent them from obtaining a beachhead on my sleeping mat. Most of them were between one and two inches in length, so it isn't the most pleasant experience to wake up with one trying to roll his treasured ball of camel poo into your ear or hair. Interesting night to say the least, resulting in a very fitful sleep. The next night, our guide managed to obtain a raised platform for our camp, which the beetles had a much harder time reaching.

The safari was a great experience, although I think my buttocks would rather never come in contact with a camel again. We spent one more night in Jaisalmer, then grabbed a train last night to Delhi where we are now. Tomorrow afternoon we leave this chaotic city as we head north toward Nepal, to the town of Dehra Dun.

Up to Jaipur

Life aboard the Indian rails.

Another thing to cross off the todo list: Sipping Bombay Saphire in Bombay.

Palace of the current Maharaj, taken from the courtyard which we presume holds frequent gladiatorial competitions and live sex shows.

The colourful women of Rajasthan.

Just protectin' the Amber Fort.

Our Rickshaw driver. He made 100 rupees a day and blew 42 of those on a bottle of whiskey at lunch. Needless to say he constantly stunk of booze, but drove one hell of a rickshaw.

If only the movie had been as good as the poster.

My 30 hour train ride back up to Mumbai was as fantastic as you can probably imagine a 30 hour train ride would be. I was dumped off in northern Mumbai sometime at night in the middle of a monsoon. After another train ride into the city center, followed by a ride with a cabbie who had no idea where he was, I finally arrived at the Salvation Army, where I intended to stay. It was a little odd sleeping in a rundown soup kitchen, but given the costliness of Mumbai, beggars can't be choosers. The following afternoon saw the arrival of cousin as well as the return of my stomach issues.

Jas and I decided to make the most of our one night together in Mumbai by visiting the nicest hotel there and having a drink worth about as much as the average monthly income of the regional citizen. The next day saw us grabbing a quick 18 hour train up to Jaipur, in the state of Rajasthan. Jaipur has traditionally been known as the "Pink City" because many of the downtown buildings were painted a "welcoming shade of pink". The pinkness of it is still quite evident, but the heaps of garbage and human debris tend to detract from the "welcoming" side of it all. We managed to find a great little hotel amidst the destruction of the city and luckily have had a nice, peaceful getaway each night while running from the smells and sights of the outside world.

Our first night in Jaipur was another hotshot night (they're just so cheap and fun here...). We started off at the OM Revolving Restaurant, I think we were seated somewhere behind the Cache Manager (ha, yes, finally a nerd joke), where we feasted on yet another fantastic Indian meal. From there we jumped into a rickshaw and were pedalled over to the movie theatre (apparently the nicest in India) where we bought box seats to the latest Bollywood blockbuster, Munna Bhai. Although we ended up walking out during the intermission, the movie was a great experience. The crowds are much more involved in the whole production as they constantly cheer and clap at anything that the actors do. I've seen a few bollywood films now and am actually starting to like how they spontaneously combust into music videos throughout the show, although I suspect it's because that's the only thing I can kind of understand.

The next day Jas arranged for a rickshaw driver to wisk us around to Jaipur's main sites. We visited the current residence of the Maharaj as well as the Pink Palace among other things. It was this day that we also got our first glimpse into the shady underworld of Indian gem scams. I had been warned about this by so many people and actually wanted to take advantage of them a little bit. When asking how I would find some gem scammers, I was always assured that when arriving in Rajasthan, the gem scammers will find me, and sure enough they did. Our rickshaw driver took us to a gem shop (one of probably 9000 that inhabit this city) where we were slyly told about how much money we could make if we exported some of these priceless stones back to Canada. Having met some seasoned vets of this type of thing I knew what to expect and sure enough we were soon offered trips out to the gem dealers private ranch and free meals etc, all in an attempt to gain access to our credit card (as collateral for the gems we're exporting of course). I would have liked to continue the whole tirade but was simply too tired and the slimy salesmen irritated the both of us.

Sunday saw us with the same rickshaw driver headed up to the Amber fort. The fort was built by Akbar, a great Rajasthani general or some such thing. Parts of it were quite cool and looked like something out of Aladdin. On the way back we of course visited different shops so that the goddamn rickshaw driver could earn a commission from each. We knew it was coming because we didn't pay him much for the day and he had to make it up somewhere. Luckily one of the worst stomach attacks of my life hit during the middle of an intense carpet selling speech and I spent the majority of the time in a cell-like Indian bathroom with pain shooting through my torso while Jas had to listen to the guy, pretty sure I came out on top. Following that episode we thought it best to get our Ayurvedic massages done. These maseuses go to school for 4-5 years before practicing their trade and a massage that would cost a helluva lot more in Canada went for about $19 here, so we figured it was worth it. I wasn't expecting the transparent, g-string-like underwear that the fellow made me put on, but when in Rome...

Today was spent lounging around and eating, with the highlight being the guy who stitched a cover for our package home at the post office. Tonight we board a train bound for the deserts of Jaisalmer, where we hope to partake in some kind of camel safari to further our dislike of the cartoonish beasts.