23 August, 2004

Here comes another (un)abridged version the sights, sounds and smells of my time here in Browntown. This week’s installment offers an array of descriptions intended to tantalize you like never before. So hop in, buckle up and please keep all hands and feet inside…you shut up. So I have to start my giving incredible props to Faizal for the amazing package he shipped here from the good old You Ess of Ay. I arrived at the study center last Tuesday to two UPS fellows leaving a package behind. I mentioned to my friend that someone was getting hooked up and when I walked in they told me it was me. I couldn’t believe what I saw. Before me was a box that was literally the size of a very large microwave oven. It literally weighed fifty pounds and if my stature wasn’t so incredibly massive, I would have had a hard time lifting it. It was amazing. I had no idea what was inside. As the sweat dripped off my forehead (it’s hot here), my South-Asian eyes widened at the sight of pasta, cookies, sauce, blank cd’s, dvd’s, toilet paper, cereal and a wide assortment of snacks. It was truly amazing. No one could believe how big the box was. I was told to marry Faizal instantly by many people here and my reply was that the most I was willing to do is hold his hand when he comes here in December, because here it’s cool if dudes hold hands. So that was truly amazing. Along with the incredible package I received the previous week from Deepna, I’m all set for at least another few hours over here. So that was astounding. After being on a high from receiving my packages and weight-loss, I was off to New Delhi. There we went to an incredible music store, Rikhi Ram, where the best musicians in India and around the world come to get instruments. They had pictures of the likes of the Beatles and other greats all around the store. While there we were informed of a free concert going on that evening locally. We decided to check it out and were treated to some of the most amazing live music I’ve ever experienced. It turned out to be a free performance by Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, a world renown musician who creates his own instruments. He has won a Grammy, his music has been featured in Hollywood movies, and his latest instrument has 35 strings. He was just in the states recently performing with Eric Clapton for a charity. It turned out to be incredible and he sat on stage performing along with the fastest and most talented Tabla player I’ve ever heard (and I’ve heard maybe 3), a Tanpura player, and his pupil (she literally just sat there). It was all put on for free at this public auditorium and we are definitely planning on going to more concerts in the near future. So that was the second nice surprise of the day. The third nice surprise was we ended up getting treated to dinner by our friend’s parents who had come to India to visit. There were about twenty of us that all went out to dinner at a really nice Chinese restaurant. Then we had Baskin Robbins afterwards and after a refreshing open air rickshaw ride home, our night was complete. I actually had to make special arrangements the next day to bring Faizal’s package home. It was well worth the effort because since then I have enjoyed many a snack because of said package. So this happened along with school and then four friends and I decided to travel a little this past weekend. We decided to leave Thursday morning and of course Wednesday night and Thursday morning I had a fever. I don’t know where it came from (India), but it hit me pretty good and I wasn’t feeling too hot (yes I was, and cold), but decided to go on the trip in any case. So Thursday about noon we left to the train station. We ended up getting caught in a massive amount of traffic and barely made our train. I was pretty much passed out with my feverous condition for the duration of the ride. The train was nothing special, but we did have assigned seats which was nice. I would later learn just how nice that was. So we took the six hour ride to Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh, where the famous Gwalior Fort is located. Since we arrived at around nine that evening, we decided to stay the night in a local hotel. We found a very, very modest hotel to stay at. It cost less than four American dollars and it was pretty bad. There were bugs on the sheets, the bathroom was a dump (pun intended) and I struggled to sleep that night again battling the fever. Waking up at six in the morning after about two hours of sleep Friday morning is not what I would describe as ideal. We had a small breakfast on the way to the fort where we were greeted by mice in the restaurant. I wasn’t really feeling it, so I ordered some chow mein, which ended up being horrible. Then it was off to the fort. Gwalior Fort is 100m above the town and is 3km long. It had incredible views and was spectacular. We were taken on a guided tour where we were taken to rooms in which people used to be hung in. It was very eerie, but incredible. There was also a stench that was something else. Because these buildings are so old, dark and dank, bats tend to adopt them as their homes. Well, bat poopy and peepee (pardon my language) do not smell that great, or to put it another way, smell horrible. So that odor was imbedded in my senses and other than marketing a cologne based on it, I prefer not to think about it. While on our tour it began to rain, hard. It was actually quite fun to be exploring a fort that was over 1000 years old in the rain. We ran around the fort and similar to my feelings about Bob Barker, I was amazed at its beauty and age. After the fort we had some lunch and then it was off to the train station. We took a train from Gwalior to Jhansi, which was the closest stop to our destination. So this is where it got ugly on the train. We purchased our tickets at the station. When you purchase tickets at the station at the last minute, you cannot get reserved seats. We did not know this, but quickly figured it out. Just getting on the train you have to push your way through a mad crowd trying to get both off and on the train. Once you’re on (you only have a few minutes to get on because the train only stops briefly), you have to find your way to your allocated area. Well, we got on in the nice part of the train and had to walk through about ten to fifteen cars to get to our meager area. This involved intimately rubbing up against hundreds of sweaty and stubborn Indian folks. People simply refuse to move out of the way. They look you in the eye and stand in your way. Well, push came to shove and you have to start pushing and shoving your way through. We had one girl in our group, so we had to keep her sandwiched between us to keep the groping to a minimum. It was one of the most disgusting and disturbing situations I’ve ever been in. Everything smells, every car is severely overcrowded, it was just a mess. You feel your feet stepping on people’s hands and feet, but there is nothing you can do because you have to get to one of the cars they designate to you. It was a most unfortunate situation and the poverty on the trains is really bad. When we got to where we were supposed to be, it had been about half an hour to forty-five minutes. The ride was only another hour or so, so we crammed ourselves into little compartments and kept watch of each other and our stuff. Getting off the train was also horrible and you had to do fight to get yourself off the train before it quickly began moving. We made it to Orchha that evening and found a place to stay in a really nice cottage. We had dinner and while at dinner I simply kept my head down because I wasn’t feeling very good. There was also a large bug problem because we were near a lake. Unlike the night before this place was quite lovely and featured a shower. We each took showers and it felt fantastic to get the sweat of thousands off your body. Anywhere you go in India, you come back smelling like everyone you come across because you will inevitably come into to severe physical contact with them. The girl in our group got groped when we got off the train and there was nothing we could do because there was a sea of hands and bodies everywhere. It’s interesting in India because on trains and busses, men are supposed to give up their seats for women, and most do, but there is also a large amount of staring and groping. I guess it’s just another part of India’s opposite extremes working simultaneously. So we fell asleep fairly clean in our cottage and that night of sleep helped me recover well. I thought I was in the clear, but I ended up having a case of the runs too. It’s also difficult in India because you don’t really know and have no way of finding out what it is that made you sick. Waking up Saturday morning I felt a lot better, but now I was really stinky for some reason. I realized that our Dobe (washerman) has not been doing a very good job with our clothes and now all of my clothes smell and many have bled. It wouldn’t be so bad, but it turns out that the smell actually transfers to your skin if you spend a large amount of time in your clothes. So that sucked. Saturday morning my breakfast consisted of toast with butter and water. We had arranged for a taxi to take us from Orchha to Khajuraho, our next destination. The ride was actually really nice and Madhya Pradesh was beautiful. It was so green and full of life. There were waterbuffallo everywhere and we even saw and elephant on the way. Some parts of the ride were so exotic that it looked like the amazon (the website, not nature). After about three or four hours we arrived at Khajuraho and had some lunch. Khajuraho featured some of the most aggressive vendors we’d come across. The reason we had gone there was to see the temples. The temples in the village of Khajuraho feature the most amazing temple art in the world. The temples are over a thousand years old and the work is spectacular. I really think that along with Jay-Z, they should be considered the 8th wonder of the world. They were amazing and it again started to rain there, but only added to our experience of exploring the majestic temples completely soaked. As we were about to leave, some local villagers began to talk to us about their village and invited us to come see it. We obliged them and were taken to a village like nothing we’d seen before. This was an actual village where the caste system was still in place. Each caste of the village was separated with its own temple, its own well, its own everything. We walked around the village and then were invited to go into the school. When we walked in the school, which was literally two tiny rooms in a tiny building with no windows, the kids all rose to greet us and one student came up to us and began reading to us in English. The teachers were there on voluntary basis and it was pretty amazing. We ended up donating a little bit of money and were happy to hear that in school all the kids learned together regardless of what caste they belonged to. After our experience in the village, we drove the four hours back to Orchha in the dark. That night we slept in a palace that a king used to rule in. It was an amazing experience to be staying where so much history had happened. I woke up a few times in the middle of the night to take care of business, but rest was had by all. Sunday morning we woke up and explored the palace we stayed in. It was again raining, but this was to our delight as it cooled the temperature. We then packed up our stuff and again took a rickshaw back to the dreaded train station. At the station we again had to fight our way to our section and were stuck sitting on the floor and on edges of our seats. There were crotches, rear ends and feet in our faces the whole time. It was not an enjoyable ride, but at least it was only a couple of hours. Back at Gwaliar we waited for our train to arrive. We had been waiting awhile and then it finally showed up. We got on the train and noticed people were in our seats. We decided not to throw a fit and just sat somewhere else. Well, then the people whose seats we were in showed up and gave us the boot. So we went back to our assigned seats and asked the people to move. They told us they had the same seats on their tickets. We compared tickets and they pointed out that our tickets were for the day before. I guess what had happened was the travel agent booked our return tickets for the wrong day. So we quickly had to jump off the train when it had started to move. We didn’t know what we were going to do. We talked to information and they were no help. We had to go with the back up plan and buy unreserved tickets for the 6 hour ride back to Delhi. This was not what we wanted because at this point we had had bad enough experiences in this section and just wanted to get home. We were tired, dirty, frustrated and I had the runs. We were left with no other choice and purchased our sweaty tickets. We asked someone when it was leaving and they told us right now. We grabbed our stuff and started running. We ended up having to jump off the ledge and run across the tracks to catch our train. That wasn’t the end of it. We had to get on in the middle assigned area because the train was leaving, so it was again going to be back to swimming through brown people. We decided to chance it by sitting in other people’s seats. We were quickly booted when said people arrived. We moved to the next car and a family with two kids offered us seats next to them. They were very kind and we sat down. We were spent at this point. The next problem was to come when the ticket supervisor walks through the cars to check tickets. We decided to pretend we were asleep when he walked by. This sounded like a great plan, but the problem is a huge wasp flew into the train and went behind my seat when the supervisor came by. I decided it was worth the risk and closed my eyes. He luckily passed by without issue and we were home free. The family that offered us the seats was incredibly nice and knew we weren’t supposed to be there. In return I offered him my Nutties (the tastiest chocolate I’ve had here). He declined, but we both knew he wanted some. I ended up reading my Shakespeare play on the train on the way home and listening to my ipod the whole time. It was a very interesting and trying experience, but everything worked out. We arrived in Delhi at around half past midnight and got home around one or so that night. I was probably as dirty if not dirtier than I’ve ever been in my life and I badly wanted a shower, but I was too exhausted and tired, so I passed out at about 2am last night. So that has been what has been happening. Friday we are off to see the Taj Mahal and to go to Rajasthan for a few days. I want the bulk of my time to be traveling. School isn’t that great so far, one professor rambles on aimlessly and says “in so far as” all the time, while another belittles people who ask questions to the point at which it is unlikely many questions will be posed to him. My Hindi class is small and great so I will spend a lot of time working on my fluency. For those of you who made it this far in your reading, I thank you. Until next time, over and out.