India Part 2 - The Second Half of an Awesome Place

The post I wrote yesterday left off with our SAS trip flying from Delhi to Varanasi.  I didn’t realize this until we reached India, but Varanasi is the center of Indian religious life for Hindus and Buddhists.  The Ganges River flows through Varanasi and each night Hindu priests, called Brahmins, go to the bank of the river to make an offering to the patron god of Varanasi, Shiva.  Varanasi is also the location of the Buddha’s first sermon, and his original home (the Buddha was a prince in Varanasi if I’m remembering correctly what our tour guide said).

I was able to watch the ceremony on the Ganges River and it was extremely intense.  There were hundreds of people gathered around the banks of the river watching the offering, including several dozen people watching from boats on the water.  While we were there were swarmed multiple times by kids trying to sell pens and henna ink of different kinds.  There were also people trying to sell massages (which looked kind of funny for some people).  At one point local police actually came up to our group and stood next us to keep people from constantly trying to sell us things (we weren’t really in any danger).

The next morning at sunrise, my group traveled back to the river and we watched the sun come up over the river from boats.  At sunrise dedicated Hindus go down and bathe in the Ganges to cleanse themselves.  Dead bodies were also being cremated on the banks of the river in order to symbolically send them to heaven.  From what our guide said, every Hindu within several hundred kilometers of the city tries to have their body cremated along the banks of the Ganges.  It was interesting to hear our tour guide explain his Hindu beliefs. He also told us that Buddhism was just a branch of Hinduism, but try telling East Asians that.  Even our guide said that Buddhists outside of India don’t see a connection between the faiths.

After visiting the Ganges we headed to another part of Varanasi called Sarnath.  This was the place in India where Siddhartha Gautama gave his first sermon.  Buddhism isn’t a popular religion in India now, but it has spread to East Asia.  When we visited Sarnath Buddhists from Japan and Burma were all over the place.  There’s a stupa at Sarnath (a stupa is a large monument marking a major event) which commemorates the Buddha’s sermon.  Several groups of Buddhists were saying chants under the direction of monks around the stupa.  We had to walk clockwise around the stupa because the clockwise direction represents creation in Hinduism.  Our guide illustrated this to us by showing us two swastika’s (which were originally Indian symbols before the Nazis used them), and the one with lines pointing clockwise is a good symbol.

We also walked through a museum that held some of the artifacts from the ruins at Sarnath.  The statues were neat to see; apparently some British soldier began excavating them in early 1900s.  One statue was of complete depiction of the Buddha in a position of meditation.

After eating one more meal at our extremely nice hotel (the Clarks Varanasi), we caught a plane back from Varanasi to Delhi. From there we ran to two buses and drove to the new terminal in Delhi (which is an inconvenient 15 minute drive from the old terminals) and flew back to Kochi.  It was late when we reached Kochi and everyone was exhausted. 

We were ready to be back on the ship, however with three buses of SAS kids leaving the airport (we met up with another SAS group flying from Delhi) whoever reached the boat last would have to wait in line at security for another 45 minutes once we reached the dock.  Naturally, our bus drivers (make no mistake, these were greyhound size buses) raced from the airport to the dock.  My bus started the whole thing since we had passed both buses about half way through the drive (we overtook the leading bus by driving onto a detour ramp and merging back onto the highway in front of them…don’t worry mom I felt safe).  We may or may not have taken shortcuts down multiple narrow streets.  Anyway, the other bus passed us less than a mile from the dock because our driver actually slowed down at speed bumps.  It was pretty sweet!

I hit the hay pretty quick once I was back on the ship.  I was determined to make the most of our last two days in India though. For the third time in four days, I woke up at or earlier than 6 AM.  Some friends and I made a bargain with a taxi cab driver to take us to the Kanandu (sp?) Elephant Sanctuary an hour and a half away because we had heard you could wash and ride elephants.  Once we got there we found that we could do neither of those things, but we did get to watch others wash the elephants and pet them.  We heard multiple rumors about why you couldn’t wash or ride the elephants at the sanctuary because it was a recent development.

Afterwards our taxi driver, James, took us to a B&B that was pretty nice, and we ate some local food.  James is Roman Catholic by the way. That surprised me since Christianity is only 2-3% of the Indian population, but the state of Kerala, which is where Kochi is located, is 25% Catholic.  That explained why on the first day I saw a truck drive by with Jesus painted on it (by the way everything is so colorful in other countries, even the money. Why is America so bland looking sometimes?). 

Another commentary about James and taxi drivers in general in Kochi, is that they receive commission or some kind of government (the system varies) benefit for bringing tourists to shops and restaurants.  That is how we ended up at Jew Town market near our dock in Kochi after leaving the elephant sanctuary.  We asked our taxi driver to take us to an open air market, so, he took us straight to the biggest tourist spot in Kochi.  Apparently there was an open air market about twenty minutes’ walk from the Jew Town market, but I never saw it.  So, Stephen, one of our friends Shannon, and I all walked around Jew Town for a couple hours and ate lunch.  Then we rode the ferry across the bay to our dock to eat a free meal on the ship and clean up.

That night, we went to see a movie at the theater.  By the way, theaters in India are way cooler than any I’ve been to in the United States (excluding IMAX and Hollywood).  The theater had a lower area and a balcony, and neon lights were running all along the wall of the theater.  There was even a curtain hanging in front of the movie screen, and it was raised when the movie was about to start.  The movie we watched was almost all in Tamil or Hindi (two of the official languages of India).  There were occasional lines in English, my favorite being, “India is the largest democracy in the world.”  That line was so unexpected (since everything else was in a local language) that I almost laughed out loud.  Thankfully, I didn’t do anything disrespectful.  The movie did have a really cool musical scene where all the people in the hero’s village were singing about how awesome he was (or at least I think that’s what they were saying).  I’m a little upset there weren’t more musical numbers though because that’s Bollywood’s deal.

The next morning, I slept in until 6:30 AM.  With some other friends I caught a cab to a place called the Alleppey Backwaters.  Alleppey is a marshy area with a lot of canals running through it.  Some people call it the “Venice of the East”, but of course there weren’t as many buildings around in Alleppey as in Venice.  It was absolutely beautiful.  The water was so calm.  It was a nice change from the rough seas we had on the way to India.  I’m actually surprised I didn’t fall asleep because the wooden boat we took was shaded and all of the chairs had cushions. Not to mention I was into my sixth day with three days’ worth of sleep. 

Unfortunately Stephen didn’t get to leave the ship the last day in India.  He was sick and never even left our room until dinner.  Sometimes you run yourself into exhaustion (not quite on the level of Singaporean military officer training exhaustion though Jensen), but it’s worth it. That’s why it’s an adventure…

 

P.S.  As a side note, the food in India was awesome.  I’ll be eating at Indian restaurants (and any other ethnic restaurant I can find) once I head back to Bowling Green in the fall.