Agra, Varanasi, and Bodhgaya

­After taking a rickshaw from Agra’s train station to the main backpacker area of town around the Taj Mahal, we found a nice guesthouse to stay at.  It was in a quiet garden setting despite being right next to the most visited attraction in India.  Not long after we settled in, I looked for my camera and a horrible feeling set in.  I searched and searched, but I couldn’t find it anywhere.  I began to think it might have fallen out of the pocket of my Indian pants, which was starting to tear.  The only place I could imagine having lost it was in the rickshaw, which meant there was practically no chance of getting it back.  Maren and I both thought it would be nearly impossible to ever again find our rickshaw driver (there are an infinite number of them), and even if we did, the chance that he would have found my camera and would give it back to me was even less.  I was completely demoralized that the likelihood of ever seeing my camera again was pretty slim.  It was even more frustrating that we only had a narrow window of time to get to the Taj Mahal before it closed in the evening.  It was Thursday afternoon and the Taj is closed on Fridays, so we couldn’t wait for the next day.  Nevertheless, considering the value of the camera, I thought it would be worth trying to find the rickshaw driver and see if he had it.

We found another rickshaw to take us back to the train station to retrace our steps.  Once there, we went to the same place we had gotten our original rickshaw and were mobbed by drivers asking where we were going as usual.  We split up and tried to pick through all the faces, which wasn’t easy.  But after only 5 minutes or so I turned and saw our driver!  I wasn’t totally sure at first, but when he saw me, I noticed a flash of recognition.  I pulled him aside and he said ‘Iknow, I know.’  I was excited and frantic as I kept asking him if he had my camera, but the only words he would say were ‘I know, I know.’  Finally he walked me to his rickshaw and pulled out my camera!  I felt such a massive sense of relief I thought I might faint!  This tiny old Indian man had just saved this part of our Indian trip from being a total disaster.  He of course demanded a large sum of money for returning my camera.  I already had the camera in my hands, so I could have just said thanks and walked away.  I tried to negotiate a fair amount instead, but Maren finally convinced me to just be grateful and pay the amount he asked, which I did after he drove us back to the Taj Mahal.  Considering the guy could have just taken the camera for himself, I certainly was grateful, and paying him ten times the normal fare definitely made his day.

We walked up to the entrance of the Taj Mahal still with a sense of disbelief that we had gotten my camera back.  It was especially ironic that this had happened just before we went to see the most photographed sight in India.  There are three entrances to the Taj which all lead to a large and beautiful garden ringed by red sandstone walls.  As we walked through the gate of the fort-like building leading to the Taj, the giant white domes appeared before us.  The very first thing we noticed is how big the Taj Mahal is!  It is something I had never considered from seeing photographs.  The gardens and fountains between the main gate and the Taj are gorgeous and immaculate.  They are also in perfect symmetry, as is the Taj and all the other buildings in the complex.  The gardens and fountains make a perfect foreground for amazing pictures of the Taj.  There are several other impressive red sandstone buildings on either side of the gardens, including two large mosques on either side of the Taj itself. 

You have to take your shoes off to walk up the stairs to the Taj and the two mosques.  The temperature was still in the low to mid-40s this evening, which meant the stone tiles were very hot.  We had to practically run to the shade inside one of the mosques, and then had to tiptoe around the back of the Taj above the river in order to see it from all angles.  Finally we walked up the stairs to the giant white marble pedestal to the most beautiful building in the world.  The massive onion-shaped domes really tower over you.  When you get close enough, the craftwork and design of the marble itself is incredible.  Inside the Taj, the marble is just as beautiful and intricate.  There are only two tombs inside, one for the maharaja who built the Taj and the other for the wife he built it for.  We walked through the forested section of the gardens on our way out where there were hardly any other tourists.

As I mentioned, our guesthouse was situated right next to one of the entrances to the Taj.  This area of Agra was originally built to house the 20,000 workers the maharaja brought in to build the Taj.  Now it is filled with guesthouses, restaurants, and tourist shops.  Fortunately a few of the guesthouses have rooftop restaurants with nearly unobstructed views of the Taj Mahal.  We picked one for dinner and another one for breakfast the next morning.  That night, however, was the worst of all our nights in India.  As I wrote in my last blog, we were drinking tons of water all day long.  We usually bought two or three 1.5 liter bottles at a time.  When we went to sleep that night, we somehow miscalculated how much we had.  One thing I haven’t mentioned so far about India is the power outages.  Nearly every place we visited has regular power outages.  They usually affect different sections of the city at different times.  Sometimes they last a couple of seconds, other times twenty minutes, and occasionally even longer.  Despite the insane heat which was now pushing close to 50 degrees in the middle of the day, neither Maren nor I wanted to pay double the price for rooms with air conditioning.  Therefore we were relying on a single overhead fan.  The location of our room in this particular guesthouse in Agra made the room, despite the fan, hotter than any other place we had stayed.

 I woke up in the middle of this particular night to the sound of the fan clicking off, which had become familiar due to the power outages.  I discovered I was lying in a huge pool of my own sweat, with more sweat literally running down my skin all over my body.  Maren and I drank what was left of our water supply, then began to get very nervous.  I decided to go wake up the reception and buy some water, but the guy told me some nonsense about the water being in the restaurant and he didn’t have the key.  No shops were open at this time, so I returned to the room to suffer.  The next few hours were miserable.  The power did not come back on.  Neither of us could sleep.  We were both becoming very dehydrated very quickly.  Finally we went to our last resort: tap water.  We each drank just enough to make it through the night and hopefully not get sick.  We finally left the room at about 5:30 and miraculously found a shop that was just opening.  The bottles of water we each drank next were the most refreshing of our lives.  When the fan finally clicked on, my sheets were so soaked with sweat that the air from the fan completely chilled them and I actually became cold!

The next day in Agra we spent at the other impressive building in town: Agra Fort.  The walk there was mostly through a peaceful park.  It also passed a temple and some ghats on the riverbank.  We had read that one of them was a ‘burning ghat’ which means bodies are cremated on the steps next to the river.  We passed by some fires and then later a funeral procession passed us with men carrying a body over their heads on its way to be cremated.  This was an unfamiliar event and gave us both a strange feeling.  Before we went to the fort, we first bought our train tickets at the Agra Fort station for our overnight train that evening.  We were told that all the tickets, both AC and regular sleeper, were sold out, but that we should still pay for the AC sleeper to get on the waiting list.  We were numbers 9 and 10 on the waiting list, so there was a good chance we would get on if we showed up a couple of hours before the train left to check.

Though obviously overshadowed in fame by the nearby Taj Mahal, Agra Fort is a gigantic, impressive red sandstone fortress with beautiful gardens and a maze of white marble architecture, detailed stonework, staircases leading to nowhere, and windows facing the Taj Mahal.  The Taj is just a few kilometers away, and the view of it across the river is a cool perspective, though probably not for the maharaja who built it.  His son took over and imprisoned him in Agra Fort, where he had to stare at the Taj from afar for the last 8 years of his life.  There is an incredible amount to see at Agra Fort, and the architecture is phenomenal; it is a shame it is not in another city where it would be much more famous.  An interesting phenomenon happened as we walked through the fort.  Several of the Indian tourists asked if they could take a picture with either Maren or I.  One of them shoved this chubby baby right into Maren’s arms and started snapping photos.  The annoyed look on the kid’s face combined with the confused look on Maren’s face while she awkwardly held him was hilarious.  We started refusing people who asked after that because it seemed weird and no one would explain why they wanted a photo.  When a group of young guys asked for a photo with only me, and Maren not included, I definitely began to get a creepy feeling.  Later in the evening, we gathered our things and made our way to the train station.  We found out we were now numbers 3 and 4 on the waiting list, but there was not a lot of hope that that would improve.  Our best bet was to talk to the reservation guy once the train arrived. 

Our destination was Varanasi, to which there is only one train per day.  We were told that we could get a refund for our ticket and leave the next day, but I felt like that would be a waste of time as we had already seen the two highlights of Agra.  I decided I was not going to take ‘no’ for an answer.  We started talking to everybody we could, the inquiry booth, the reservation staff, even the station manager.  Unfortunately no one seemed to speak English quite well enough for them to help us.  One of them seemed to say that we were allowed to just go on the train and try to figure it out onboard.  When the train finally arrived we were running around in a panic.  We found the reservation guy who pretty much told us, ‘No seat for you.’  We ran around more talking to more people, the station manager in particular seemed very confused about what we should do.  Finally we found someone who said yes, we were allowed to go on the non-AC, sleeper class train and try to find a bed or wait for a bed to open up.  We went back to the reservation guy to ask him if that was OK, and now he just nodded his head to the side, which means ‘Sure.’  We climbed onto the train and prepared for what was to be our 2^nd most uncomfortable night in India.

Our overnight train left Agra just after 10 PM.  We spent the next 6+ hours on the dirty, metal floor of the sleeper class car next to the toilets.  There were lots of other people all around us doing exactly the same thing.  There were people constantly walking past and over us.  We found some newspaper to lie out and attempt to sleep on, but most of the trip we were sitting on our bags or trying to sleep while lying against them.  We also didn’t want to both sleep at the same time for fear of thieves.  The heat was stifling which meant we had plenty of sweat to go with the filth and grime we had acquired from the dirty train.  Our space was also tiny and horribly uncomfortable, and the smells from the squat toilets one meter away sure didn’t help.  We finally arrived at some station in the early hours of the morning where many people got off the train.  We managed to find two empty top bunks and fell asleep clutching our backpacks, dirty and exhausted.

Varanasi is located directly on the Ganges River and is one of the most holy sites for Hindu pilgrims.  The center of the old town is filled with narrow alleys and tiny shops and is closed to rickshaws.  We took a rickshaw as close as possible with a truly infuriating driver who repeatedly tried to take us to the wrong place, then stopped several kilometers short of where we told him we were going.  After that, we got quite lost in the alleyways looking for our guesthouse.  One of the problems is that there aren’t addresses in India.  I don’t mean they aren’t labeled, I mean they literally do not exist!  If the street has a name (which is only common for major roads), that is the address, but there aren’t numbers.  We asked some clueless people which direction the river was and got very conflicting directions.  We even said the name of the river to some people, pronouncing it the Hindu way, and got some blank stares.  I still have no idea why.  When we finally made it to our guesthouse, Maren and I both enjoyed long showers and a large breakfast.

The Ganges River in Varanasi is lined with dozens of ghats and is truly a sight to behold.  The ghats are the lifeblood of the city and there are people around them twenty four hours a day.  We walked to the river in the evening, and were surprised to see tons of people all moving in the same direction.  There was a Hindu ceremony taking place at the first ghat we got to, which we later found out happens every single night.  The steps were filled with crowds of people, and even the river was filled with boatfuls of onlookers as well.  Several guys wearing traditional Hindu outfits stood on pedestals on the ghat and performed rituals.  While music played, they made loud noises, waved sticks of incense, and lit some things on fire.  We walked around the ghats for awhile and found some other smaller, similar ceremonies happening nearby.  Because it was the hot season and the water level was at its lowest point, we could easily walk from ghat to ghat all along the river. 

We organized an early morning boat ride with our guesthouse, in time to see the sunrise.  In the morning, however, the guy didn’t show up at reception.  So we walked to the river, found a boatman, and settled on a price which was lower than what we had booked.  The sunrise turned out to be less than impressive as it was overcast, but the boat ride was phenomenal nonetheless.  Our boatman turned out to be a very good pick, because he spoke English quite well.  For an hour as he rowed he gave us commentary on each of the ghats we passed.  We learned about the history of some of the ghats and the buildings on the riverbank.  At the furthest point of the ride, we reached the main burning ghat in Varanasi.  Because the Ganges is the holiest river, Hindus often come here to die.  It is believed that dying in Varanasi can end the cycle of reincarnation.  Cremations happen at this ghat all day and all night long.  There is a very complex process of how people pay to be cremated here, because the wood used to burn the bodies is expensive for most Indians.  When we arrived we saw a few fires and bodies being prepared for cremation.  It is quite shocking to see this happening in the most public of surroundings.  The ashes, or sometimes even partly charred bodies, are dumped straight into the river.

There were tons of people swimming in the river as we passed by in the boat.  It was Sunday, which meant there was even more than usual.  I would have thought that a pilgrim bathing in a holy river would be a solemn and private affair, but that could not be further from the truth.  It appeared to be any other day at a beach: groups of boys laughing and splashing in the water, families, people swimming across the river, and guys waving at us.  It looked like fun, and Maren and I both would have liked to have a swim ourselves in the holy water.  The only catch is the one thing that cast a bit of a shadow over the whole Ganges experience:  the river is incredibly polluted.  Not by farming chemicals or some factory or even ordinary garbage, but by raw sewage.  There are over a hundred sewage pipes in Varanasi alone leading into the river.  We read that the contamination levels are thousands of times higher than what they should be for safe swimming.  The hundreds of not-always-completely-cremated bodies every day don’t help the situation either.  So we dipped our hands in the water during our boat ride, but a swim in the ‘holy’ water would have more likely resulted in an infectious disease than a purifying experience.  There are some recent efforts to clean up the river by establishing a real sewage system in the city, hopefully they work.

It is a bizarre sight to see cows living in the middle of a city, but they are everywhere in India.  Cows lying around, walking the streets, and in the case of Varanasi, even hanging out in the middle of the crowded train station!  We found out from an Indian guy we met later that no one actually owns them.  Cows are used on dairy farms, but once they get older they are just abandoned.  No one cares for most of them; they pretty much just eat garbage, create traffic jams, and are ignored.  The amount of garbage is another sight to get used to in India.  There doesn’t seem to be any public sanitation service, garbage cans are few and far between, and there are makeshift dumps on the side of the road, in rivers, or in random holes in the ground.  When you combine this with the lack of any sidewalks, it makes for very, very dirty feet!

The next stop on our way east was Bodhgaya, a famous Buddhist pilgrimage sight.  Bodhgaya is the site where Prince Siddhartha attained enlightenment while meditating underneath a Bodhi tree and became Buddha.  We took a train from Varanasi to Gaya, where we arrived late at night.  We found a place to crash before taking a rickshaw to the small town of Bodhgaya in the morning.  While on the rickshaw, we passed tiny villages of mud and straw huts, and people that appeared to be living an agricultural, subsistence lifestyle.  Bodhgaya is in the state of Bihar, which is one of the poorest in all of India.  When we arrived, we walked through the quiet town until we found our guesthouse.  It was located in a tiny little village on the edge of the city, complete with primitive houses, small farms, and half naked children running about.  It was quite a different experience from other guesthouses we had stayed in and it was intriguing to ‘live’ and experience this side of India.  We spent our first afternoon at the main Buddhist attraction, the spot of Buddha’s enlightenment.  The small complex is filled with plants and greenery and is a great spot to relax.  The main temple has stood in its location since nearly the time of the enlightenment itself.  The actual Bodhi tree surprisingly still exists there, well, kind of.  The current one grew from a branch taken from the original Bodhi tree which was taken to Sri Lanka.  The tree and a small monument where Siddhartha sat meditating are behind the temple.  There are tons of other Buddhist relics all around the area.

The town of Bodhgaya is filled with monasteries from every Buddhist country.  As this is one of the holiest places for Buddhist pilgrims to visit, many of the monasteries are quite impressive.  There is also a massive Buddha statue in town, which we visited the next day.  It was ordered by the Dalai Lama fairly recently and has a 30-some meter high sitting Buddha surrounded by his disciples.  Apparently the Buddha is hollow and filled with 20,000 miniature Buddhas, though I am not sure what the point of this was because there is no way to look inside.  We spent the rest of our time in Bodhgaya just relaxing and trying to stay out of the heat, which had climbed into the high 40s.  In the evening, we took a rickshaw back to Gaya, where we caught an overnight train to Kolkata (the new spelling of Calcutta).

Maren and I met a young Indian guy in Gaya on his way to Kolkata as well.  He spoke decent English and was pretty helpful answering our questions about the train trip and India in general.  In Kolkata the next morning, we arrived at a chaotic train station jam packed with people in the center of the city.  We had to fight our way through the crowds, and then took a taxi with our new friend just to get across the river to the nearest metro stop.  After getting directions, Maren and I headed to the north of Kolkata near the airport.  There was more chaos and an unbelievable number of people everywhere.  We somehow managed to get on a bus which dropped us off close to the airport.  We had incredible difficulty finding a cheap hotel next to the airport which Lonely Planet had recommended, and when we finally found it, it was full.  No problem though, the place next door had better prices anyway.  We had some grand plans to explore Kolkata on our final day in India, but the long train rides and one uneasy stomach finally caught up with us.  We walked through the markets and neighborhoods around our hotel, but that was the extent of our Kolkata experience.  The next morning, we woke up early and made it to the airport in time for our much-anticipated flight to Bangkok, Thailand!