....Previously on the Ranting Pikey
No wait, that was James Bond. Now I remember...I had fallen asleep to the sounds of an angry Indian cab driver....
The Palaces, Old and New
From Khajuraho I was off to Orchha to see an old Mahal, to see why Taj decided it needed to be updated. No real stories to tell about this place, but it was an amazing town to spend a relaxing day wandering around, and as far as I could tell, I was the only westerner there. It's a bit of a bizarre place to be, as you have all the features of a modern developing Indian town, but sticking up out of the development are these huge beautiful old buildings, all set next to one of the cleanest bits of water I saw in my time in India. |
| The very beautiful, and quite intricately detailed Orchha Palace. |
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| Not a bit of trash, or floating corpse in sight! So clean, it was cleared for use in agriculture! |
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| There are so many ruins in this town that lots of the old temples have been taken over by squatters. |
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| And cows. |
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| I meant to photoshop out those power lines, but this is more representative of India. |
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| Children thoroughly unimpressed by the ruins in the background. |
But the Taj managed to live up to it's billing. It really is a stunningly beautiful building, and there's something about it, something about the seamless curves of its roof, and the juxtaposition of the squalor and bleakness that surrounds it (at least as far as architecture), that makes it quite special. I ended up spending a few hours just sitting, people watching, and admiring the structure. I also spent a lot of time thinking about what a dick Shah Mahan was, to have the architect killed, and the artisan's hands cut off, just so there could never be another Taj Mahal built. It's a dangerous precedent to allow a building like that to enter the 'Wonders of the World', as it may encourage copy-cat behaviour! I think the designer of the new new World Trade Centre should watch his back.
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| Take that whistle man. |
Delhi. No Real Stories, Just Delhi.
By the time I arrived in Delhi, I'd been in India for over a month. I had become hardened to most of the inconveniences of the place, and was really enjoying myself. There were, however, new challenges. I was now completely and utterly sick of Indian street food. It's really delicious stuff, but there are very few things you could eat non stop for a month and not get sick of ( the Taco Bell Crunch Wrap supreme is the only one that comes to mind). I was also getting pretty over the whole developing world thing, and really had a hankering for the finished product. Delhi was the perfect place to seek relief from both of these inconveniences.
Firstly, there were western fast food places everywhere. I am not particularly proud of this, but I ate either McDonalds or Subway for every meal during my first three days in Delhi. You know there's something wrong with you when your body craves a Big Mac and you're neither drunk nor hungover, but that's what non-stop curry does to you. Not that McDonalds was particularly good or satisfying. Thanks to the whole 'cows are sacred' thing, my lust for red meat was not fulfilled, instead having to settle for pathetic vegetarian or chicken patty substitutes. But it was still good to renourish my body with some essential nutrients like cheese and mayonnaise.
The other creature comfort provided by Delhi, were the modern touches of a city that is leading the country into developed world status. From the brand new, clean, and orderly train system, to the paved sidewalks, and the tree lined streets, Delhi is for the most part quite a nice place to be. There are definitely still massive sections of the city which resemble the rest of the country, but the beauty of Delhi is that if you're not ready to face gritty India, you can instead choose to just spend a day in glossy India. As you can tell, Delhi was a holiday from a holiday for me, and while days spent wandering around American style malls and fast food chains are nowhere near as fun or interesting as exploring the rest of the country, these few days did me a lot of good, and I have a new found appreciation for the glossy environment of a shopping mall (especially their fixed prices).
I did manage to check out some local sights while in town. None of them were particularly interesting, but combined in one city it made for a quite interesting visual experience. Here are some highlights:
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| The red fort. It was a fort, that was red... |
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| Welcome India Gate, Delhi, very similar to the one in Mumbai. They probably just made two in case something happened to one of them. |
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| The president's house. |
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| The Indian secret service mobiles. What they lack in top end speed, they make up for in style. |
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| The Sydney Oper....I mean lotus temple. |
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| If only Hare Krishna's stuck to sculptures instead of singing, I think they'd be a lot more popular. |
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| Me being fully Sikh at the beautiful Sikh temple |
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| Tourist central. |
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| The Sikh temple without me hogging the focus. |
My favourite sight in Delhi was Akshardham. It's a beautiful temple complex, which was only recently built (as a tourist attraction for the Commonwealth Games). The whole site features intricately carved stone statues. and the usual Hindu iconography, but also has an entire wall surrounding the central temple devoted to the elephant. The elephant wall was meant as an homage to the role of the Elephant in Indian history, but some of the pieces were quite funny in the bluntness of their propaganda. An example of this was where there were statues of elephants doing hard labour, with plaques beneath describing how elephants are so happy to help humans as it gives them a satisfaction they wouldn't get in their normal meaningless lives in the jungle. There was another which showed the elephants bowing to the Shiva, and describing how the elephants accept him as their deity. In a country where elephants aren't exactly treated too brilliantly, it did reek a bit of bullshit, and the idea of the elephants worshipping a higher power was also was a bit off (especially as it wasn't the elephant God Ganesh, you'd have thought that'd be a no brainer), but a few hundred statues of elephants is never a bad thing, so overall it was enjoyable.
Sadly there were no cameras allowed inside the temple, or electronics of any kind, so the best I could do was a photo from around the back of the complex.
Another interesting place was Ghandi's tomb. Any illusion of Ghandi being 100% adored in India were shattered by CJ, my host in Hyderabad, who described Ghandi to me as a 'fucking prick'. However, I still held him in quite high esteem, and so I checked out his place of cremation (naturally the ashes were dumped in the Ganges, although some were also chucked into other water sources, including the source of the Nile, because, well why not). It was a nice peaceful site, or at least it would've been if it weren't for it being in India. It was pretty amazing that the tomb of someone who Indians respect almost as much as Sachin Tendulkar was still a place where vendors were trying to make a few rupees taking photos of tourists and flogging guided tours. But that's just the way India is, and there isn't a word in Hindi for 'decorum'.
My favourite part of Delhi, however, were my couchsurfing hosts. As I had done in Hyderabad, I found some locals who wanted to go to the cricket with me. This time it was a couple of awesome guys called Rajeev and 'The Captain'. I stayed at Captain's place in a very modern area in south Delhi, and Rajeev was around most nights to hang out. What I enjoyed most about hanging out with these guys, and their mates (apart from the fact they were sympathetic to my woes as an Australian cricket fan), was that these were the first Indian's I'd met on this trip who I could relate to exactly the same as I could relate to my mates back in Australia. Living with locals who I truly identified with gave me great insights into a lot of aspects of Indian culture that I'd previously been unexposed to, but more than anything, it was just nice to finally find true mates in this country, making me feel like far less of an outsider, and preventing me from ever again making sweeping generalisations about the Indian population (or not, this blog would be way more boring without cliches).
One particular highlight of my time with Rajeev and the Captain, was the night we went out to a bar to see a concert. Either as a consequence of my lack of red meat, or my dip in the Ganges, or some other unknown factor, I managed to faint in the middle of the crowd during the band's second song. It had nothing to do with beer or blood sugar, as I'd only consumed two drinks and had eaten a steady diet of McDonalds and Subway the previous few days (say what you will about McDonalds, but low blood pressure/sugar is not something associated with it's food). I still maintain it had something to do with lack of red meat, but whatever caused it, it marked the first time I had ever fainted, meaning my world trip had given me yet another first!!
Holi, and the Elephant Festival without any Elephants
In another bit of dumb luck, I managed to be in India during their crazy colour throwing festival of Holi. I have no idea what the significance of the festival is, but I do know you get to throw powdered paint at people, and that is always a good thing. I had decided to head out to Jaipur for Holi, as it was also the location of an elephant festival the day before. CJ had told James and I about this festival, and we all intended to meet up again, but CJ pulled the plug the day before Holi, meaning only James and I were there. Luckily we had plenty of people to choose a third member from, as we were couchsurfing with an awesome guy called Push (short for Pushpendra), who was hosting an international Holi party at his friend's house, which had something like 25 foreigners and about 10 locals, all staying in a house with only two bedrooms and a tiny living room. Here's a photo of the room I slept in with about 18 other people:
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| And our backpacks. It was cosy. |
After waking up smelling of drunk onion farmers, James and I headed into town to check out the elephant festival. There were rumours that the festival had been called off, but when we arrived there were plenty of people milling around, including some guy who had brought a microphone and a few dozen loud speakers. This was a uniquely Indian touch, with most public events accompanied by a middle aged male idiot on a microphone commentating unnecessarily. You could tell he thought he was really elevating the event's professionalism and spectacle, but in reality he just filled the air with noise, and sprinkle the soundwaves with a bizarre combination of 'annoying uncle'-like instructions in an effort to control the crowd, and interesting facts and woeful efforts at humour that more often than not crossed the line of sexism and racism.
Our hopes of elephant based festiveness, however, were quickly dashed, when a film crew came up to James and I and asked if we'd like to give an interview detailing our disappointment at coming to an Elephant Festival that didn't have any Elephants. The interviewer must've realised I was taking the piss when I earnestly told the camera that this was as big of a farce as that time I went to a Ping Pong show and they didn't play one point of table tennis, so he moved on to James for the rest of his interview.
In the end we just watched a few performers play some local music, and dance around, and an extremely bizarre parade of people dressed up in outfits that maybe would've made more sense in the presence of elephants, but in the circumstances just seemed odd.
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| Entertaining, but it needed more elephant. |
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| Shiva, Vishnu, the Monkey God, and the Fat Rasta God. |
We got bored pretty quickly, especially considering we'd been promised Elephant Polo. But luckily this was the day before Holi, and half of our group had already gone out and purchased their dye for the following day, so we just moved the event forward 24 hours, and began a full blown colour fight between ourselves, which quickly erupted to include most of the rest of the crowd. It ended up being more fun than the actual Holi the next day, and we ended up throwing dye at each surrounded by about 50 photographers.
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| Angharad and Rob post pre-Holi |
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| James and I completely forgetting about the absent elephants. |
The funniest thing about the whole event was that the Elephant portion of the Elephant festival was cancelled because PETA complained, and for some unknown reason, India actually listened to them! For those who know anything about Indian social issues, economics, or their notoriously stubborn cricket administrators, India doesn't listen to ANYONE! And yet they listened to PETA? NO ONE listens to PETA! I'll never know why one of the most notoriously stubborn cultures in the world would listen to an organisation ignored by the rest of the world, but I'm guessing it had something to do with middle aged male idiots, and PETA's advertising techniques.
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| "Their argument is extremely persuasive. Screw the elephant festival, send them to them to dog food factory instead." |
We still saw plenty of Elephants while we were in Jaipur, as they were still used to give tourist rides all over town, as well as being chained up in loads of people's back yards. In PETA's defence it is horrendous seeing big beautiful elephants with chains around their ankles, and it's probably for the best that India begins to phase out their use of them as beasts of burden, but I still wish I got to see them play polo, but sadly my chant of 'Let Them Play' wasn't adopted by the crowd at the festival.
After a second night on the Rumions (inexplicably we hadn't bought any mixer), we woke the next day to be greeted by Push and his friends with handfuls of powdered dye which were immediately thrown all over our brand new traditional white clothes.
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| Luckily we managed to get one quick snap before the inevitable colouring. |
After a great morning at his place, we decided we wanted to head into town and see how the locals celebrated. We commanded a local bus, a bus that was clean when we boarded but finished off looking like a gay pride float, and headed into the city. It was here the vibe of the day turned. Holi is definitely a party. People were drinking everywhere (including us), and everyone was pretty loose. One of the traditions of Holi is going up to strangers, wishing them a happy Holi, and then wiping colour from behind their ear to the bottom of their chin, then doing the same from the other ear. Unfortunately some of the Indian guys became emboldened by the occasion, and their hands would continue from the bottom of the girls chins to their breasts. We also had quite a few guys drive past on motorcycles and grab girls on the fly.
The whole scene began to take on a very tense atmosphere, and we eventually decided to grab a bus back to the safety of our accommodation. It was here that an Indian guy reached through the window of our bus and grabbed a hold of one of the breasts of a girl in our group. Unfortunately for this guy, Tits and Crumpets member Rob saw this happen, and he chased the guy at speed from the bus. I'll never forget the sheer terror of the Indian molester as he saw Rob (who was about twice his size) set off while screaming after him the things he would do when he caught him. The Indian guy ran across Jaipur's busiest intersection and almost got cleaned up by a few tuk tuk's, before he was eventually caught by Rob, who floored him with a punch to the stomach before a few local cops came up. Rob was faced with a tense moment as he thought his vigilante justice might get him into some pretty serious trouble, but the cops just began wailing on the guy with their bamboo canes, and Rob came back to the bus without so much as a goodbye from the police.
It was a pretty brutal day having so many pigs molest my couchsurfing friends, but there were plenty of good natured locals who made the day good fun. One of my highlights was when we encountered a couple of kids who were walking around spraying people with water pistols. After trying a couple of times to chase them down and cover them in dye, I assembled a couple of other couchsurfers to corner the kids. It all worked perfectly, and the look on the kids' faces when they saw they'd been cornered was priceless.
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| James and I and some random holding up Push |
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| The pink (orange) walls of Jaipur, a bunch of colourful gringos, and a whole lot of attention from the locals. |
The day did end on a slightly sour note when some Canadian guy accused one of the local guys of ripping him off. Apparently the Canadian guy had given the guy who owned the place about $150 in rupees, and asked him to get it changed into smaller notes. I have no idea what the Canadian guy was thinking, or why he thought he couldn't change it somewhere in town (the notes you get at ATM's are ridiculously large, the equivalent of about a $200 note in Australia when it comes to getting change) but he decided to get the house owner to change it for him. In fairness, he definitely got ripped off, as the guy had a pretty implausible story about 'giving it to a friend to get it changed for him', but you've got to be pretty naive to give that amount of money to someone you've just met. Not all lessons are free in travel, and this particular one cost $150.
But overall it was an amazing stay with Push and my 40 room mates. The day after Holi everyone headed out of town pretty quickly (especially since things had gotten pretty awkward after the break down in Indian-Canadian relations the previous evening). I ended up saying goodbye to Tits and Crumpets as they headed to Mumbai with their new member, James, in tow and we agreed to meet up again in Thailand in a few months time. It was sad to see them go, as, despite only knowing them a few days, they were clearly my kind of crazy, and we had had an awesome few days in Jaipur. Having said that, it was probably a good time to diverge paths, as, thanks to a night of Holi inspired passion, Arianne was now having casual travel buddy 'relations' (sex; relations means sex) with both James and Rob, and I had no interest in joining the equivalent of Fleetwood Mac during the Rumours tour. Well, that, and I didn't want to be tempted, like Angharad now was, by the myriad of terrible Philippino sex worker cliché jokes that could be made. Instead I chose the more spiritually enlightened (and PC high ground) track north to Amritsar.
The Golden Temple, and the World's Weirdest Border Security
Amritsar was a really beautiful city, and I think I was able to relax here more than anywhere else in India. I was staying at the Golden Temple, which is a temple that's golden (who says this blog isn't educational?). It's in the Sikh part of India, right next to the Pakistan border. I have a lot of time for Sikh's, and I really enjoy the way they seem to blend their religious devotion with a bit of decorum and calm.
First of all, they seem to be the most charitable religion in India. I stayed for three nights in the Golden Temple's free rooms, which they offer for anyone visiting the city. It's a quite amazing spectacle, as tens of thousands of people visit the temple every day, and at night you end up walking through a sea of worshippers all sleeping on the floor. They have a special room for foreign visitors, which was essentially a dorm room with a row of beds, complete with a big Sikh man and his sword to guard the door. The temple also has a kitchen which serves free food from breakfast time until the late evening. I'm pretty sure I'll never see as big a pile of garlic as what I saw in their huge production line that produced the meals for the free dining hall. I'll probably also never hear a clatter as loud as the metal plates being washed continually thanks to the endless stream of diners.
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| I've slept in far worse. |
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| Luckily it was the dry season. |
But what I really loved was that the people here seemed to have a greater sense of calm, and while there was definitely the usual Indian queueing system in place, where everyone pushed forward filling every available space before them and breathing down each other's necks, I swear it was a politer crush than I experienced elsewhere in India (although I still snapped at a guy who kept pushing me when lining up for the temple. It's all relative).
Like all Sikh temples I saw, the Golden Temple had a water element incorporated in it's design, and I spent many hours just sitting around relaxing and chatting to other travellers (both Indian and foreign). The temple is spectacular, and as much as I rate the Taj Mahal, and the temple of porn, I think this was my favourite Indian landmark.
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| The hour plus line. |
The other local attraction is the Pakistan border, as Amritsar is just a short Tuk Tuk ride away from Pakistan. The physical border is much like most other borders between countries that have threatened each other with Nukes. It's heavily fortified, but nothing too out of the ordinary, and since I wasn't intending on crossing it, far less intimidating than Israel's borders. But the reason for going to the border is the Pakistani/Indian border closing ceremony.
Even my twisted brain can't come up with an explanation for this spectacle, but I'll do my best to describe it. First of all, thousands of people pile into the stadium which surrounds the Indian side of the border. From there you can see the Pakistani crowd in their own stadium (although they're segregated into male and female sections because how else do you prevent cooties?). Then a preppy looking Indian guy with a popped collar and a microphone comes out and starts shouting out chants to the crowd, who enthusiastically chant back, and then everyone starts cheering, and going absolutely crazy. At some point they put some music on, and a whole bunch of women and children come down and start dancing, and a couple of kids with Indian flags on huge poles ran back and forth through the dancers.
Eventually microphone guy and a few security guards push everyone back to their seats (this takes a while because it's India) and then the real spectacle begins. The border guards, dressed in turbans and clothing that would make golfers go 'Well that's just silly', stand around with their best angry faces on, before sporadically breaking out in spurts of energy where they march back and forth before power marching towards the border. Their marching technique is best described as an out of control goose-step, and it is interspersed with the occasional high kick, where the soldier's straight leg extends to such an angle that their knee brushes their nose. John Cleese would be proud of what happens when the guards get to the border gate, as the Pakistani guards (who I'm guessing were walking in an equally ridiculous manner) and the Indian guards face off and attempt to determine whose hamstring flexibility is superior, by strutting back and forth snapping high kicks off at regular intervals, all to the delirious cheers of the crowds.
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| Nothing says dance party like a border closing. |
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| So angry. |
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| The Pakistani crowd in the background. |
As bizarre as the silly walk-off is, the most perplexing aspect of this spectacle is the crowd reaction. The only people I've seen this deliriously happy are Evangelical Christians speaking in tongues. People were just losing their minds over the border closing, and I was a bit worried I might've been involved in something approaching a Confederate revivalist march in the South of USA. The Pakistani side were equally boisterous, albeit with fewer people, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't a healthy source of revelry.
After my brief stay in Amritsar, I was done with my first trip to India. After a quick bus ride back to Delhi (only 22 hours), and one more night staying with The Captain, I was off to Nepal, leaving India and it's billion or so inhabitants behind. It may sound bizarre considering the way I've talked about the place in these blog posts, but I will definitely return to this crazy country one day, as I had barely seen half of what I wanted to, and in the end I learnt to relax into the culture and really enjoy myself. It's definitely not an easy place to travel around, but you're guaranteed an amazing experience when you travel here, just not necessarily a good one.
But I don't want anyone to get the idea that I didn't enjoy my time here, as it really is an incredible place. I think the best way to sum up India's appeal is the way I had it described to me by an Aussie guy I met during Holi. He was back in India for the third time, and I asked him, why come back to India and not travel somewhere else? His answer was "Because in India, you're guaranteed to see something new every day", and I think that is exactly why I liked it here. It's hard travel and you have to work for your experiences, but you will see the most amazing, dumbfounding, creative, evil, disastorous, colourful, mutated, chaotic, monumental, and idiotic things here, and while not every loves it, it's impossible for India not have an impact on you.
But I don't want anyone to get the idea that I didn't enjoy my time here, as it really is an incredible place. I think the best way to sum up India's appeal is the way I had it described to me by an Aussie guy I met during Holi. He was back in India for the third time, and I asked him, why come back to India and not travel somewhere else? His answer was "Because in India, you're guaranteed to see something new every day", and I think that is exactly why I liked it here. It's hard travel and you have to work for your experiences, but you will see the most amazing, dumbfounding, creative, evil, disastorous, colourful, mutated, chaotic, monumental, and idiotic things here, and while not every loves it, it's impossible for India not have an impact on you.
