nilonilonilo

There was something I noticed in Nepal, and this seemed to be confirmed when i was in India. Further investigation is necessary to come up with concluding evidence (i heard things are different in the South), but in the meantime, i would like to share my findings with you - they are twofold.

1: Buddhist villages and places of worship are usually much tidier and cleaner than Hindu places; and
2: The holier the Hindu place, the filthier it is.

I like to call this the Holy Shit theory.

After Kolkata i went to Puri, on the East coast. It is not only a popular seaside resort, but also one of the four holiest places in India for Hindus. The Jagannath Mandir temple is a truly magnificent piece of Orissan temple architecture, with it’s deul or main sanctuary tower rising up to over 60 metres in height. (Unfortunately it’s not accessible to non-Hindus, though the library opposite the temple makes a good business with “donations” from tourists who like to visit its viewing platform). However the area immediately surrounding the temple is one big jumble and mess of people, errant cows (and big menacing-looking bulls!) and all of their excrements. Right next to one of the walls was a huge pile of rubbish, yet nobody seemed to care. Apparently there’s no need for sacred places to be clean.

In contrast, the site of the Sun Temple in Konark, 36 km further North on the coast, was impeccably clean - maybe because the temple is no longer a place of worship but a Unesco World Heritage site?The ruins were really impressive, with hundreds and hundreds of statues carved in the walls (and a guide who didn’t hesitate to point out, in a hushed voice, all the erotic details on them). The remaining building looked pretty imposing with its 35 metres of height, so one can only imagine how impressive the main tower once was (more than 70 metres high - unfortunately it collapsed in the 19th century).

I rented a moped to go to Konark. Now, i’d never ridden a moped before, but i figured it wouldn’t be to difficult. The best part is that you have a horn too, so you can weave through traffic and blow it at everyone in front of you! Sweet sonic revenge. I felt perfectly at ease manoeuvring through swarms of pedestrians, bikes, cycle and auto rickshaws on the main bazaar in Puri, as if I’d had been doing it all my life!

For some reason I had always thought that Puri was a small seaside town with a couple of backpacker joints near the beach and then the old temple, but it’s actually quite a big place with more than 150,000 inhabitants. The temple alone is said to employ 6,000 people! The whole area around it is swarming with people (we are in India, after all), and hundreds of shops are strung out along a huge boulevard with the usual traffic frenzy. The western end of the beach has an endless string of hotels and resorts aimed at holidaymakers from Kolkata, sort of making it the Benidorm of West Bengal.

Foreign tourists tend to stay in the guesthouses at the eastern end, near the fishing village. All the boats lined up on the beach sure look picturesque, but it’s less appealing when you realize that the fishermen use the beach as an open toilet. Every couple of meters you’ll find one squatting down, letting it all hang out, and taking a dump. To be honest, the beach is one of the least appealing I’ve ever visited: the sea isn’t exactly turquoise, the sand is dirty, and there are no palm trees swaying in the breeze to provide some much-needed shade. But still, it’s the seaside! It was great to go for a swim (provided you were far enough from the toilet part of the beach) or a boat ride with some fishermen, and to feast on delicious fresh fish and sea food. It felt weird, after eating only ridiculously cheap stuff in Kolkata, to have to pay two euros or more for a meal! But oh what good food it was! At night, i hung out on the beach (no mosquitoes there), and watched the fishermen play a game of cricket under the floodlights, while every now and then big fireworks blasted through the sky at random moments.

It was nice to relax in Puri for a couple of days, taking in the temples, the tropical temperatures and the lovely food. From there, i took the longest train ride of my trip, a less comfortable one too (3AC instead of 2AC - three bunks on top of each other instead of two, and i had the middle one), to Varanasi, a place that would further confirm my Holy Shit theory. I didn’t close an eye on that train, partly because of the cramped bunk, partly because i didn’t want to miss the stop i needed to get off at 5 am, and mostly because i had a massive, massive cold again. At one point i just stood in the toilet for five minutes, just sneezing and blowing my nose. My whole point felt like a throwing mass of mucus, and i sent litres of snot flying in metres of toilet paper. But in the morning i did get to Varanasi alright.

One thing i had particularly been looking forward to, after the horrible roads in Nepal and the jeeps in Sikkim, was travelling by train through India. That moment finally came on the 6th of December, more than seven weeks into the trip. I got to the station in New Jalpaiguri four hours early, but that’s because I was on the waiting list, and thought it would help to be there early. So i just sat down and took in the whole train station atmosphere. The endless announcements, the loooong platforms with rats scurrying between the tracks, the food stalls and chai vendors, begging children too … And hundreds and hundreds of people running around. By five o’clock it was dark, but there was no spectacular sunset, just a orangey glow in the otherwise grey sky. Same thing in the mornings, grey haze all over. I had dinner in the station restaurant with three students from Bhutan, and after a few more snacks finally boarded the train a little after eight. I told the girl in the bunk below me that it was first time ever on a train on India (ha!). She was really helpful and friendly; she let me use her phone to contact my host in Kolkata, showed me the way to the taxi rank, and then took me along in her taxi and dropped me off where i needed to be.

Welcome to Kolkata! Known as the City of Joy, but also as a city with terrible poverty - it was here that Mother Teresa had her mission and assisted the poorest people on the streets. I guess this was going to be the first big “test”, to see how I could cope with all the horrible aspects of India so many people had told me about in Nepal.

Actually, it was great. Of course, Kolkata is a big, congested city, swarming with people (no less than 14 million inhabitants - a population density of 24,000 people per square km!). To say that the metro is crowded for instance, is a serious understatement. The trains were jam-packed, Tokyo rush hour style. While you’re unwillingly dry-humping somebody or grabbing them in the nuts, they’re blowing their nose in your armpit. Yet somehow i always managed to get off at my stop in time. See, you’ve got to use your elbows, the locals do it too, it’s much more fun that way! Traffic above ground is crazy too, obviously. It seems like the horns of cars are always linked to the accelerators, and crossing streets is an activity reminiscent of that 80ies video game Frogger.

Yet, Kolkata never felt draining, aggravating or threatening. It was actually remarkably hassle-free and it felt totally safe. I heard that as far as big cities go, Kolkata is probably one of the nicest, most relaxed in India. Delhi and Mumbai are much more stressful apparently.

Rather than a city of sights, Kolkata is a city of impressions. Where to start? The busy centre, with its colonial era administrative buildings. The High Court, according to my guidebook modelled on the old merchant halls in Ypres, but definitely more Italian looking, if you ask me. The New Market, with tons of Christmas decoration on sale. The posh southern part of the city, not so interesting, but it has the beautiful Park Street Cemetery, with many ornate tombs of the British who died there in the 18th and 19th centuries, often very young. Mother Teresa’s house was not far away. The Hooghli river, a branch of the Ganges, where people bathe themselves on the (seriously dirty) ghats - I saw a Gangetic dolphin swimming around too. The Howrah bridge, allegedly the busiest in the world, a huge mass of steel spanning the river, leading to Howrah station, said to be the largest railway station in Asia. A short ferry ride back to the East bank. The Nakhoda mosque, the Catholic cathedral, the Armenian orthodox church and a large synagogue, all within a stone’s throw of each other, and the Anglican cathedral further south, which makes you wonder how you ended up in Westminster. From there to the pompous Victoria memorial, situated in the Maidan, the gigantic “green lung” of Kolkata, with, of course, plenty of cricket games going on.

What I liked most was the northern part of the city, the authentic “black” Kolkata. The alleys of Kumartuli, where gigantic statues of goddesses are made with straw, mud and clay. The quiet backstreets and lanes, with hardly any traffic, seemingly a few decades back in the past, not a tourist in sight. (Remember, you get extra travellers’ scene indie cred points when you visit places with no other tourists, sleep in the shabbiest ratholes of hostels and eat in the cheapest, grubbiest restaurants without getting sick.) The fruit wholesalers’ market, with the banana auctions. And street food everywhere! Sometimes it looks as if Kolkata is one big open air restaurant. I found myself eating constantly, usually dirt cheap deep-fried stuff. Not so healthy, but oh so yummy. Then on the third day i discovered the holy grail of Kolkata food: mishti doi, a kind of sweetened curd. It was so good, i had five of them in one day! They made me forget about deep-fried street food. At least for a while. To wash it all down, nothing like a cup of chai and biscuits, also from the ubiquitous street stalls.

Kolkata is the only place on the trip where i Couchsurfed. My host Bom, was quite busy, but every spare second he had he would use to share his impressive knowledge of Kolkata, West Bengal and Indian culture and music with me. He pointed out parts of the city that I would otherwise never think of visiting, which was great. Though I nearly killed his friend who shared the living room with during my second night there and snored like a *%#@µ£!!!

I wouldn’t say Kolkata is a must-see city or anything, but I had a pretty good time there, and I’m sure that if you ever plan to visit India, there are probably worse large cities to visit.

Ok, so I’ve been back home for nearly a week now. Even had a blizzard and everything. Been working more than I wanted to, but I guess i need the money now. It’s not bad being here. There’s tons of music to discover again, good concerts in the near future. One of my very best friends moved into my street and now we’re opposite neighbours! That’s pretty cool.

However, the blog needs lots of updating. I’ve been travelling around really fast in India, so had no time for that while I was there. For ten days, my schedule went like this: one night on an overnight train, two nights in a city, one night on the train, two nights in a city, etc. If this is Monday, then it must be Varanasi. I covered more than 2,800 km in 10 days. t was pretty intense, but I managed. It’s probably not the right way to do things, but since India was sort of an afterthought to Nepal, I think this was a great introduction. Three weeks in India is nothing though, it’s such a huge country.

I’ll be posting more about India later, but in the meanwhile, I’ll share with you my favourite conversation in India, held over and over again.

Indian person: “Which country you from sir?”
Me: “Taiwan.”
Indian person: “Ooooh, nice!!”

Am sorting out the pictures too - they will be online in a couple of days probably.

Oh, and I thought the previous post about the hills in the northeast suffered from poor writing, so I’ve edited it a bit and now it’s even longer!

So, in a country with a rectangular flag. India.Though the parts of India i’ve visited in the past week looked quite Nepali. If it weren’t for the kids playing cricket on rooftops, you wouldn’t tell. Kids also play a lot of badminton here, with proper feathered shuttlecocks. Respect.

Getting out of Nepal was fun. I splurged on a flight to the border, and made sure i got a seat on the left hand side. The views were superb, all the mountains one after the other, with the highest peaks of the world in all their glory: Everest, Lhotse, Makalu, Kanchendjunga… It was bliss. Plush too, with free coffee, sweets, and a newspaper!

Within the hour, we touched down in Bhadrapur, in the hot flat plains of southern Nepal. From there to the border, where the difference between the officials on both sides couldn’t be bigger: friendly, warm, welcoming (even though we were leaving) in Nepal, surly and uninterested in India. We got onto a bus (we = me and a Asian Dutch girl who was heading the same way) and stared in amazement at the pushiness of the fare collectors: they were literally dragging passengers onto their buses, nearly coming to blows with their competitors. On our bus, a heated discussion took place between a man and the fare collector, maybe it was about 10 rupees, maybe it was about their mothers, i’ll never know. I noted that horns were used a little more insistingly than in the country we’d just left. But we got to the jeep stand alright and some friendly people showed us the jeep to Darjeeling.

Crammed in the backseats for three hours, it was hard to enjoy the beautiful winding road and the lush green scenery as we climbed and climbed towards Darjeeling.There were some weird signs alongside the road: “Donate blood in the blood bank, not on this road.” Or: “Sex determination is punishable” (on a clinic. OK, when you think about it for a second, it’s not that weird, but it just looks funny.) And everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, slogans advocating the independent state of Ghorkaland. The north of West Bengal is quite different from the south, and people have been claiming an independent state for decades. Things got quite violent in the 80ies, but now there’s no more violence, only the occasional bandh, a general strike that shuts everything down. All along the road, the walls or curbstones are painted in green, white and yellow, the colours of the Ghorkaland flag. Every shop proudly mentions “Ghorkaland” on its storefront. There are even groups of youth (“local police”, somebody told me) walking around in green and yellow tracksuits and carrying sticks. Seems a bit paramilitary to me, and not very healthy … But i probably don’t know enough about the whole situation. Now that there was an agreement for a separate Telangana state in Andra Pradesh, the demands for an independent Ghorkaland will most likely intensify again. But it’s unlikely that it will happen any time soon.

The arrival in Darjeeling was pretty grim: it was dark by then, cold and misty, and the power cut didn’t help. (Just like in Nepal they call it load shedding here, sounds much better than power cut, doesn’t it?) But in the morning things were definitely looking better. There’s some nice colonial architecture in the city, and in the morning, before it gets cloudy, the views of Kanchendjunga, the third-highest mountain in the world, are spectacular. Best of all: there was nice traffic free square in the centre! Yes, that’s right, no cars! Great to just sit down, relax in the autumn sun and watch kids (and some older, obese people) take pony rides. The city is spread out along a ridge at 2150 metres above sea level, and streets are steep. The walk to my hotel left me breathless like a series of steps near Chhomrong. It’s quite a big place, with more than 100,000 people, yet it felt like a sleepy mountain town. After 8 o’clock, everything shuts down, and it was really hard to find breakfast anywhere in the morning before 8. Only the dogs seemed to be active in the evenings. My guesthouse (admittedly, not the poshest one in town) was particularly irritating in this aspect. Impossible to get a cup of tea after 7 …

The tea, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Darjeeling tea is said to be the “champagne of teas”. I visited a tea estate and learned that it only takes two days to transform the picked leaves into the finished product. I also found that the tea bushes are much lower than i thought, they barely come up to knee height. The other thing Darjeeling is famous for, is its narrow gauge railway line with steam trains, dating from 1881. It’s even listed on the Unesco World Heritage List. I decided to ride the train for a short bit, 8 km to Ghoom and back, just to get a taste of it. The train rides right along the edges of houses, on the road, crossing it several times, belching out masses of steam and soot all the while. This “joy ride” was meant to last 2 hours, including stoppage time at a loop in the track and at the railway museum. However, after two hours, we had only reached the halfway point! We broke down four times over 8 km … Now a have been on a few slow trains in my lifetime, but this one was just slow beyond belief. A total waste of time. I should have gone to the zoo instead, i could finally have seen a snow leopard.

After Darjeeling, time to head up to Sikkim, a tiny piece of India wedged in between Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan, that definitely feels more Nepalese than Indian (Nepali is also the main language here.) Got to the jeep stand early, but forgot that Darjeeling is a sleepy mountain town. The “office” for the jeeps to Pelling only opened at 8:30, and it was after 10 before the jeep was finally full and left. But eventually we made it alright. Pelling is basically a series of hotels high on another ridge with spectacular mountain views - except when it’s cloudy, as it was when I was there. So i didn’t see much of the mountains, and will most of all remember Pelling as the place where i had a tv in my room! BBC World! Discovery Channel! Cricket (loads)! Friends! Funny Bollywood movies about mythological characters and the crappiest special effects ever! Marvellous! That, and the fact that there were little clouds coming out of my mouth as i was sitting in bed in the cold room.

Next stop: Kelcheopari lake (spellings vary). If there was one test of my nerves on this trip, it must have been while trying to get there. Everywhere in the hills, you need jeeps to get around (faster and more frequent than the buses, according to the guidebook). But you often have to wait hours for a jeep to materialise, and then some longer before it leaves. I arrived at the jeep stand at 11:15, where they said it would leave at 12:30. Fine, so I had time for some samosas and a cup of chai. By one o’clock, we started to move - to another parking lot, where they loaded on tons of supplies. It was after two o’clock when we finally left, and in the end they crammed 21 people in the jeep. I nearly lost it by then. But hung on. And was really glad i made it to the lake.

To be honest, the lake wasn’t that special, but the surroundings were so quiet and beautiful. There were a couple of Buddhist monasteries in the area, with drums and horns being played enthusiastically. We stayed in a homestay in a tiny village higher up the hill. It was cold and cloudy, and the bed was the least comfortable ever, but the atmosphere was so nice and the food absolutely brilliant. The host was a Buddhist monk who said he had been the cook of the Dalai Lama! I ended up staying there two nights rather than the planned one, walking around a bit, enjoying the quietness, and the evenings by the fire.

I really liked Sikkim. It looked and felt quite Nepalese. Small but beautiful. It was bright, tidy, colourful. People whizz around on Vespas and are friendly and helpful. On one of my hikes, i thought i’d taken a shortcut, but it was actually the wrong way. Some girls saw me, invited me over to their house, gave me some tea, and then pointed me to the right way. Everybody’s relaxed, no hassle. Too bad about the clouds and the cold.

Last stop in the hills of the Northeast (not to be confused with the Northeastern hillstates): Kalimpong. No longer in Sikkim, but back in West Bengal. A whole lot lower than Darjeeling and Pelling, so a lot warmer. Though my hotel was called “Cloud9”. There’s a big colourful market on Saturdays, which is not unlike the marché de l’abattoir in Brussels, also with a huge mix of people: Nepalis, Tibetans, Chinese, Bengalis, … I also visited a couple of Buddhist monasteries, but in general did not do much. I was preparing mentally to go the the “real India”! I would finally take a proper overnight train, to Kolkata, a bustling megalopolis with 14 million inhabitants …