balancing extremes, winding down

I take back all of my complaints about my experience as an American tourist over the last few days. Sure, I'm still guilty about the hot showers, but thanks to today, I've come to see the merits of simple sightseeing. We got back to the hotel a few hours ago after spending a full day exploring the streets, alleyways, and ghats of Varanasi, a city whose festive disorder can penetrate the walls of even the most Western air-conditioned tour bus.

But allow me to start from the beginning.

My mom and I share similar thoughts on the homogeneity of the standard tourist experience, so last night, we vowed to do things differently today. For one, we agreed to break free from our tour guide. While I realized this meant I'd miss out on the facts, figures, and history of my surroundings, I know that there are other ways to learn about a place. So, when we met up with our driver this morning, we politely requested that we have the majority of the day to explore Varanasi alone. Surprisingly, they complied, and at around noon, my mom and I were dropped off in the heart of Varanasi's oldest, brightest, and most chaotic quarter. This is the area known as the Old City, and the name is literal. Varanasi is one of the oldest living towns in the world, and has served as a spiritual mecca for Hindus for more than a thousand years. It sits on the banks of the Ganges, with nine miles of ghats (steps) leading down to the murky water. The ghats are a community in and of themselves, with daily prayer, bathing, and cremations.

Yeah. Cremations. The sanctity of Varanasi appeals it to Hindus hoping to attain moksha, or escape from the cycle of reincarnation. They say if you die in Varanasi and are cremated on its steps, you reach moksha. Boom. Seems simple, right? Judging by the thousands of Indians that flock to Varanasi every day, it is.

So, we spent the afternoon walking through the narrow alleyways and along the ghats, taking in the scene before us. As night fell, we hired a boatsman and made our way onto the Ganges, from which the city of Varanasi was spread before us like a glowing, colorful birthday cake that happens to be nine miles long. From the water, we saw the burning ghats, where bodies swaddled in bright cloths were being kindled in wood and set ablaze. It was a heavy experience - the plaintive chanting of those praying on the steps echoed throughout the still night, and the smoke of the cremations seemed to glow in the lights of the city.

I guess my point is, I was wrong to bash the whole tourist experience. There is middle ground in this experience, which I learned today. There are countless options that lie on the gamut between the comforts of home, well, asceticism. My transition between these two extremes in the last week has left me a bit shell-shocked, but thanks to today, I think I'm getting better about it.

And just in time, really. Today was our last full day in India; tomorrow, we'll fly to Delhi, where we'll have a chance to spend a few hours in the city before flying to Paris. I'll post for the last time then, but I reckon this was my last chance to document the day-to-day experiences. Hope I didn't disappoint...

tales from the railroad

(originally written tuesday 7.13)

For the last four hours, I've been sitting on a train speeding through the Indian countryside. The sun's starting to set, I'm finally getting used to the cramping in my legs, and the chai-wallah keeps passing our compartment expectantly - I'm entertaining the idea of buying some hot tea in lieu of the dinner I won't be having 'til we get to Varanasi.

Four hours down, seven to go.

We're traversing the north of the country in the quintessentially Indian way: by rail. 1.7 million people travel on Indian Railways each day; today, I'm one of them. I rather like it, to be honest. No near-death collisions, no potholes, no transvestite beggars tapping on your window. And believe it or not, the length of this trip (11 hours - jealous?) has a redeeming quality: my inevitable boredom. In the first two hours of the journey, I'd finished Fight Club and the rest of my summer reading books and extinguished my collection of episodes of The Office on my iPod. In other words, restlessness ensued.

So, I went exploring. I left the air-conditioned comfort of our compartment and made my way into the second class compartment, where men, women, and children sit four to a seat. Where mothers hold their babies to the barred windows to keep them from getting too hot. Where boys half my age sell balloons and cold drinks to the passengers with a few spare rupees, Slumdog Millionaire style. Where I'm almost positive I saw a goat.

Again, cue American consumerist capitalist guilt. I probably deserved the looks I got from those crammed into the coach. After all, it's not every day that a white boy with Ray-Ban aviators and a Nikon D60 stumbles into the steerage compartment of an Indian passenger train. But I ignored the looks, focused on the people, and made my way down the aisle, my boredom now replaced with the sense of curiosity of a seventeen-year-old boy on an adventure. Truth is, I loved it. I've sort of resented the "Westernness" of my last few days - the hotels, the satellite television, the french fries, and all the other homogenized trinkets of tourism. Actually, maybe not the french fries, but my point is pretty clear, I think. All I'm saying is it was nice to be back in a state of simplicity, if even for a few minutes.

I'm back in our compartment now, and night has fallen on the Indian countryside. Every ten minutes or so, we whizz by a blur of dim lights that indicates a village, but we still have hours to go before we arrive in Varanasi, the next big city on this train line (which, by the way, is called Kalka Mail - as the name suggests, it's a mail train that runs from the city of Kalka to West Bengal). Once in Varanasi, we'll probably grab some dinner before settling in for the night. I think we're renting a boat and taking it down the Ganges at sunrise tomorrow. Should be interesting - Varanasi, Hinduism's most sacred city, is famous for the hundreds of cremations on the shores of the river.

Oh, side note. Saw the Taj Mahal yesterday. Felt obliged to mention that. It was beautiful and it lived up to the hype, but monuments, tombs, and forts grow redundant after awhile. Imagine that.