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India is not a trip. It is an experience. Everything here is pushing your senses. To say that “I did India” and have in mind a tourist trip where you see the sites and nothing else is impossible. The Indian life enters your skin, your body, in your breath like nowhere else in the world. India is a place like no other on the beaten, or even unbeaten, path. In no other place in the world you live symbiotic, like it or not, with your travel destination. India is wearing you out like no other destination. As I noticed first time in Bangkok 15 years ago you could tell in a crowd who was the guy coming from India after a long stay. They look different, tired, weary, exhausted but in an internal way. In India all the travelers I spoke with said the same thing. This does not mean a bit that they hate it, They are coming every year and stay for quite long hauls, traveling from North to South, coming and going to Sri Lanka, Nepal, etc, but always spending the large part of the time here. They were before and will come again next year but they face the reality that the experience is tougher than in any other parts of the world. A lot of them stay in ashrams for a while taking yoga classes. Here life is different , easier sometimes than the one “on the road” but it has the stricter requirements of the secluded life. Some are forgetting themselves in Goa, Andaman islands, Shimla, Manali, etc. but no matter where they go and stay, they will always be awed and horrified in the same time. For travelers less exposed to the sheer reality, maybe first time here, who started with a long stay plan, time drags along. They know that they will not extend their stay so they take it easy and stay as comfy as possible thinking about the time when they will be back in their own country. Because India is the only country where you are not regretting that the vacation is over and you are looking forward to return to your country where, after a short while, you will start again dreaming to return here, to India.

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The driver was waiting in the station since 7 am but he was not so surprised by the delay. This is India and the time is passing. It was not too much time left so we drove directly to the large mosque in Delhi, Jama Masjid, that I could not see last time because of a festival. After haggling with the guy at the gate about the camera I convinced him to let me in after I paid the Rs 200 for it and entered the mosque, where surprisingly you can shoot anything you like, people being quite friendly. I climbed the minaret that was packed to the point that you could not stand on top, that is anyway tiny but filled with people some of them waiting on the steps to get their turn. From the top you can see a bird eye view over the entire Delhi. Red Fort was closed on Monday and after a very quick look in the Muslim Bazaar I got to India Gate, a photo opportunity for many Indians and up to the Government buildings that are up on the avenue. New Delhi is a far cry from the crowded Old Delhi. With large boulevards guarded by trees it has a very nice an airy atmosphere. The traffic is not congested, there are hawkers and it is a pleasure to drive and walk in the area. Here are the residences of many officials, the embassies, the government buildings, etc. We drove to Conaught Place, a place that last time we were able just to see in the night, that was under major renovation, all the buildings being supposed to be repainted and the result the entire area was a building site. In India noting is done in chunks but everything all at once. So now because they want to revamp the city for the Commonwealth Games the entire city was in construction. In Conaught Place I did some shopping amazed by the great colors and fabrics of the materials brought from an entire subcontinent to be marketed here where the prices are probably higher. Time is always short, so going from shop to shop I was coming very close for my departure time to NYC and we rushed to the airport in a relatively decent traffic. The security in the airports is at least as tight as in the Hindu temples that I visited so after I told them that my luggage stayed with the driver all day they apologized but had to open everything. They did it in a very diligent way, taking their time that I thought I could not do the check-in but eventually everything went thorough and I got in the plane 5 minutes before they closed the doors ready for a 14 h 40 minutes flight to Newark, NJ in which I was able to sleep about 8 of them finally out of the heat, bugs, pressure, touts, smells, dirt, etc.

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India is an experience. Everything here is pushing your senses.

The sunrise was beautiful, somewhere around 6:15 am but I was up earlier to get it when it comes up. In spite of everything it is a pleasure to be on the ghat bin the morning and see the pujas, the offers to the Ganga, the prayers, the candles, the fumigating sticks, and many, many, many flowers. They will become the garbage that clogs everything eaten by the cows latter on but its morning beauty is uplifting. I was trying to get some shots with people praying but it is very hard to know who will do what and I had to move from ghat to ghat just to notice that behind me there were interesting things happening. Finally, when the sun was too high to be nice anymore I left to explore the smaller lanes and alleys towards the Golden Temple. The most famous temple in Varanasi is Vishvanath Temple. The current terrorist situation in India calls for extreme measures so nothing is allowed in the temple except the offers. So I went to the hotel around 10:30 am to pack, free the room, charge a little more the batteries from camera and iPhone and left the entire baggage, except passport and money at the hotel and took the way of the Temple. The temple is hidden in some alley behind the main ghat, together with the mosque built by Auzerghab and its proximity is flagged by the long lines of pilgrims caring offers followed a very heavy presence of police and military that checks you in order to let you enter the compound. They body check you but very seriously, not like in the airports. Two guys, one after the other body checked me and have in mind that there are thousands of pilgrims coming here……I was allowed to get inside the enclosure , the temple being inside beside another barrier of police. Theoretically only the Hindus are allowed inside the temple but being India, and people being nice in general, the foreigners are allowed if they fill up their passport, address in a log. I did the process, I left my sandals and got inside after another body check, the third one. All the beautiful and old stuff cannot be filmed/photographed and this temple is really very interesting. The architecture is kind of generic but is covered in gold and silver and the hordes of pilgrim make a great show. But it is true that if they let people use the cameras would be a complete traffic jam inside with so many pilgrims so they ask you to keep moving. When I got out I was up for a surprise finding out my sandals missing. Somebody “confused” my sandals with their slippers and the first thing I thought was of C who would be the happiest person to find out that my sandals are gone. I suspect that she made some arrangements with the Indian mob to hijack them. They were a relic of the past,  sandals that traveled the entire Asia, and they looked like this, as a result they were banned from the house and spent last winter on the deck. The missing sandals was not a big deal at all, especially at the end of the trip, and being in India not even the fact that I had to walk barefoot on the streets. You have to do it no matter what because in temples and their compounds, that are as clean as the streets, you are forced to do it. Obviously, if you had to walk like this in any other city you may be concerned about the broken glass, nails, rusted metal, lit cigarettes and many other, but in that moment I realized that these kind of things do not exist on the Indian streets and alleys. There is NO industrial garbage because everything is collected and reused, the only things that rusts in the sun are the carcasses of mangled  trucks that cannot be cut into pieces by the nearby locals in order to be reused. But the main problem is to walk barefoot at 12:00 pm when is blistering hot so I had to plan my trip to the hotel in the shade and only the last 100 meters would be in the sun. It was also the option to look for some flip-flops but I could not locate a store. On the way I stopped for a break at the German Bakery, made with tables like in Morocco where people lay down on pillows being full only with foreigners and I got a banana chocolate pancake, my brunch. Varanasi is full of foreigners of all kinds and countries. From the guys lost in India who are living here for long time and are dressed in hippie clothes, to the ones who are migrating between Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangkok, to the more uptight young couples who will never come again -you could tell easily-, to the older couples coming in a trip after they worked all their life in demanding jobs to put the kids out of college. All of them are roaming the ghats and the main streets with red faces heat stroke, wasted and like in a trance, tired of all the aggression that surrounds and with which many are not used. The older they are the more disgusted their faces look…I got very quickly at the hotel, got my sneakers and left right away to explore again the area around the temple. I got in some narrow lanes but all of them communicate, cross and merge coming to main roads. At one point I saw a funerary ceremony going to the burning ghat. The dead is completely covered, like a mummy and covered in shinny orange, the color of the monks. It is carried by 4 fast moving guys and are followed by a whole procession dressed in white, the color of death, that has to move very fast to keep up with the guys in front. They will go to the burning ghat where the dead will be deepened in Ganga after being put in position on the funerary pyre that will burn for about 3 hours. After more walks I went to the Dom’s house, the leader of the untouchables, these being the people that perform the funerary and are allowed to touch the dead. The Brahmins and all the other castes consider this unclean but this stratification comes with advantages and job security. Only some dalits are allowed to do this job, other are allowed to clean the streets, to sweep the compounds, etc. Coming back toward my hotel I stopped to take some shots from the shi-shi roof top restaurant I ate the previous night, “The Dolphin” and latter to buy another CD with Krisha Das. But is hot and I took a stop to eat something, a honey nut, totally dry, cake and get some Internet time. In the afternoon I am leaving to Delhi with Poorva Express that leaves Benares at 18:46pm arriving Delhi tomorrow morning so I would leave at 5:00 pm for the train station. This may be the last posting till I get in New York, where I already have meetings all next week. I think that is still better in India.

I got back at the hotel close to 4:30 pm and found an entire assortments of foreigners in the lobby waiting to leave somewhere. In India you are constantly on the go waiting for all means of transportation. I left at 5:00 pm with a couple from Montreal who was going to Kolkata and got a cyclo and went to the train station. The best resource for travel in Varanasi is the tourist office from the station. Helpful and very articulate in English they are always pointing you in the right direction. Also they give you a free map of the city that is really great. I finally carried my luggage on the platform just to find out that the train, Poorva Express, was 30 minutes delayed. No big deal, I said, but after 30 minutes it became one hour, and after one hour the station master said that it will come right away: “10-20 minutes is here”. And he was right, the train came and with a little more than an hour delay left to Delhi. The carriages definitely saw better times. Relatively clean, they have in AC2, 4 berth separated by curtains from the corridor in which there were two more berth one on top of the other. So the passing corridor was narrow being not so easy to carry your luggage. But it was AC and it worked. I got a berth by the window on the lower side in the corridor and I got myself in the sleeping bag refusing the sheets offered latter by the conductor. This proved a good move, especially when I noticed in the morning the tones of gray the sheets had and to no surprise because when the conductor came back to gather them, he very neatly pack them ready to be reused. Not too many laundry people around and no Ganga….The express was supposed to stop 4 times till Delhi and he did his stops till morning when with the delay he got before I expected an arrival time at around 8:30 am but the moment the sun came up, maybe the heat made it change its mood and it got lazy and slow to the point that it stopped for an hour and everything went downhill from it. It started and stopped continuous in every tiny station that I ended up to know more than I needed about these places, meanwhile train after train passing it and gloriously we entered the New Delhi station at 1:00 pm with 6 hours delay.

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Between life and death, shit and flower petals, exalted devotion and total indifference , Varanasi is opening its eyes on the Ganga. The city is fascinating but the contrasts make it difficult to be understood and accepted. The morning sunrise that bath the ghats in a pink light has something godly in it. You cannot stop watching and the morning boat ride becomes a daily repeated  experience that you don’t want to miss. The sun is blessing you and all around and the city that is the oldest and the most holly city in India, a city with no match, a city older than history. People come here to die but not like in Florida!!! They come here because if they die in a specific perimeter, that covers the entire city, they are blessed and cleansed for a new life. So one of the major business in the city are the two burning ghats, Manikarnike and Harishchandra, that work 24 hours a day, the pyres could be seen from far away with the associated smell of the santal wood. The puja is performed daily and the night aarthi ceremony is beautiful, with flowers and lit candles left to float on the Ganga, an offer to the river that gives life to everybody. Everything is magic….if you see it on my video!!!  But when you walk the small alleys you are assaulted by any kind of imaginable smell, by the dung and shit that paves every street, by the men who are peeing in the street, by the toilets oriented to the street for easier use, by the cows who are all over and you have to be careful not be blessed if their purgation time is near, by the flies who are all over aggregating to the street delicacies that I mention before, by the motor bikes that abound, by an incessant and extremely load noise, by the hordes of people that never stop to come and go, by the mad traffic, by the dead animals that are in garbage, by the piles of garbage that is everywhere and mounts at corners, by the occasional corpses that you are be able to accidentally find (!!!), by the touts who are continuously trying to sell you anything that forces you to act like they do not exists or maybe give them just a slight sign of the hand, by the constant question, the number one in Varansi: “Hallo, boat?” that can change to opium, hash, ganja, coke, massage, water, juice, hair cut, silk, see my shop, money, rupees, boat, boat, boat, boat, boat, boat, boat, boat etc. The begging is prevalent in India. The beggars are a continuous flow that comes to you. Old men and women barely standing, small and older kids or even adult men and women, women with kids all beg for money. The small kids make some gestures that they would like to show their private parts for you to take a picture and pay them. I brushed them away not wanting to know more, too affected by their poverty. If they see you with the camera they ask for photos in order to be paid no matter that in India many are asking for photos just to have their picture taken and knowing that they cannot get it back. But the begging never stops and you, the traveler, are the main target because it is some hope that you will give something.  Most are emaciated, hungry, barely walking, crippled and really in need of help, some were mutilated since they were kids and introduced to this begging business that makes lots of cash for their owners. Modern old slavery. The bottom line is that at he end the day you are wasted and enjoy just to sit and watch the Ganga that flows slowly and lazy, like the Indian life.

I walked again at 5:30 am after a good sleep being bothered only by an army of dogs who were loudly barking and I went on the ghats to be bathed by the morning sun, that I can see from my terrace. I shot for about 2 hours till the sun came up and the light was too bright, lots of prayers at the river and people bathing. The Indians are coming at 6:00 am and bath in the river, ritual followed by regular bath with soap. At one point I got a boat for Rs 50 and cross on the other side of the river where many people were bathing and the view over the city and the ghats in the pink light of the morning was amazing. People were praying and bathing, children were frolicking and just 20 meters in the river a large dead furry animal, I think, was happily floating working in a last moment its karma cleansing for a better rebirth. And of course beside the dead animals, all the ashes and unburnt body parts or even entire corpses are thrown into the river. But Ganga is holy and it has the power to cleanse everything , so people bath, wash their teeth, wash their hair every morning in the river, close to the burning ghats.

I crossed back to the city side and went for my banana crepe breakfast and masala tea and I bumped in Traude who was having her breakfast. We continued where we left it yesterday and went latter to post some post cards with stamps from the post office. Today my plans were to cover all the ghats, in spite of the still 42C, so I left towards the south and saw all the ghats, and started to lose myself in the new side of the city where I saw some great temples. Durga Temple is a really beautiful old temple but unfortunately no pictures were allowed inside the temple. On the way I stopped in a hotel to ask direction and the manager asked to stay for a while and cool off. In general you enter a place and you see several men who are sitting. They told me that in the summer they do not do anything during the day because of the heat. But in the same time you cannot ignore the fact that they could swipe and clean the inside place to look better but nobody apparently cares. I saw a great sign that said: “Restaurant Apsara, we are less dirty”.

I got a cyclo with a driver who did not know even how to count in English  and after having lots of conferences I was able to get to the temples I wanted to see and to the hotel for the quick shower. From the hotel I left towards the North ghats where I had to pick up some stuff from the some guys with whom I did some shopping the previous day. We had an entire discussion about the burning ghats, with the amount of wood that is needed to burn a person, recommended 360kg at Rs 25/kg,  and so for. Coming back I got more pictures and watched kids playing cricket on the ghats. Sometimes a foreigner is invited to try to bat and the result, or the total lack of it, command roars of laughter. At one point I gave in and got a boat, a constant offer, and I crossed again on the other side in front of the burning ghats and shot the entire city in the hours just before dark with another great light on it and the fires of the ghats going in full swing, 12 at a time. Here I had an unexpected surprise. Shooting some kids who were flying kites, the number 1 pass time in traditional India, I came closer that something that looked weird. I did not have my glasses so I came closer to figure out what it was just to find myself in front of a corpse, headless, mutilated and probaly partially burnt. Again this is India. At least in New Jersey they use cement and they do a very “clean job” before the “ablution” in Hudson. I crossed back and I stopped at the aarthi from a different vantage point, other altercation with touts that are like bothering flies and you cannot get rid of them and I got after another shower, a good dinner of Navratan Korma. I was able not to get sick in this trip. I respected the famous Indian dictum: “If you cannot peel it, boil it or fry it forget about it” so I was always careful with food and I did not drink even a drop of alcohol. I found it funny that in Orcha and Khajuraho and here is Varanasi, beside the whole assortments of drugs that were constantly offered by the dealers, they have on their menu … beer. There are some wine and beer stores as I understood but they were not easy to find.  I still am looking for some CDs but these guys are tougher than the ones in Rishikesh and I kind of bought all that I needed but this did not stop me to stay and listened for 30 minutes a selection of great Indian music. My last night in Varanasi.

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At 5:30 am I woke up, or even earlier if I could sleep, because at 6:00 am the boatman came to bring me for a sunrise tour on the Ganges, the most popular trip in Benares. I gave the guy from the hotel Rs 100, that I am sure that was his commission,  and I was supposed to give the boatman another Rs 100 for the tour. The boat ride is splendid, with the sun lighting over the ghats and the entire Benares waking up to life. It takes you for about 2 hours  around the to the center ghats, between the two burning ghats where the dead are cremated round the clock. The boatman told me that everybody is cremated except the swamis, the babies, the pregnant women and the people who dies bitten by cobras, the animal of Lord Shiva, to die like this being considered a blessing. Unfortunately it is a strong restriction to take any kind of pictures around the burning ghats and you have to go far away and zoom in if you really care about it. So I got a scolding latter on when some guy saw me shooting from afar, and no matter that there were no details he explained me that is better not to do it. In front of a number of the ghats there are professional washers who are doing the laundry. The process is by soaping, wetting the clothing in the Ganges and after that hitting the laundry on some stones. When the process is finished all the laundry is dried out by exposing it in the sun on the ghats’ steps and on any existing usable surface. So from here we get our sheets and towels in the hotels, I guess, and that is the reason that their white is having all sorts of tones in it… Walking back to the hotel I met Vasu, an Indian photographer that I chat with in Haridwar. It was an interesting coincidence to bump into each other. After the boat tour I went to see what is going on with my room “upgrade” and apparently nothing was available, but he asked me to still wait and see. I went to have breakfast of a banana pancake at Monalisa, the German Bakery, where I got in a conversation with Traude from Vienna, who quit her job working for the government to find the sense of life outside office work. She was also in shock traveling in India for quite a while. A lot of people decided to come and travel in India after quitting their job at different stages in life. To travel in India is very cheap and you can stay here forever with $20/day or even less if you push it. But the shock is still there….

I did not have the entire day for chatting and I had no clue what is happening with my new room so I made some investigations for other hotels and when returning to the hotel the manager told me that they still don’t have anything, I paid , took my bags and left to Sita Hotel where the “deluxe” room is slightly better but 4 times more expensive…..And it has AC. The problem is that the nice hotels in Varanasi are not on Ganges but in posh green areas, slightly far from the river. But you want to stay on the river and as a result you pay roughly the same price for a way worse room than if you stay close to Radisson and the rest. But the advantage of having a room on the ghats, that I used a lot, is that after a short walk on the ghats in 42C you come to the room and take a shower and at least you feel less muck on you.

Tauder showed me a great map of Varanasi, that is offered for free, a rare thing in India, at the train station so I took a cyclo, got there and talk with a very nice man who was so helpful. Latter I heard that he is mentioned even in Lonely Planet as a great resource. He also pointed me to the Government approved stores with fixed prices in silk, a store that is very close to the rail station. This detour transformed my day in a shopping day, going from one store to another and latter to another one and finishing all the shopping around 5:00 pm, a good thing because it is finished and done.Another good thing was that it kept me indoors for the peak of the heat. On the way I moved with cyclos, a sort of full size three wheeler bike, driven by some wallahs who are making a terrible effort but at least are kept employed. During this shopping spree I crossed in a totally different part of town. Green, quiet and secluded it felt more like an American suburb than a short walk from the madness of Varanasi’s center. I could not believe that something like this exists In Benares. There were only villas and, as I understood, a lot of military were living there. When we returned at one point this quietude is brusquely ended when you literally cross a street and you enter the regular mayhem of the Indian city. But it is like a magic line that you accidentally cross. It is not gradual. I came and dropped everything to the hotel in my palatine  room with a broken mirror and bugs in the sink, deluxe otherwise , and I left to shoot on the ghats, going again towards the burning ghats. At the burning ghats some touts, that Varanasi is full of, asked me if I would like to shoot some pictures. I told them no way and to get lost but they insisted saying that they can get approval from the owner of the ghat, that is BS because they would pocket the money and go. After they figured out that I have to shoot video they said that is free to shoot but how about I donate money for the poor people to have wood to be burned!!! These creeps were shameless and like all these type of creatures they were asking exorbitant amounts starting to make a grid of how much footage can I get for the wood I would buy to burn corpses!!!! Quickly they made a chart like in a post footage house…. When I flatly refused they were insulted and asked me to leave. It is against the spirit of the ceremony to take pictures of such an event in consideration for the families that congregate there.  I went to the puja where I got some better shots and latter had dinner on the roof of one of the nice and more expansive places in Varanasi, Dolphin restaurant, from where you can see the entire city and the Ganga that is slow and lazy like a summer day. When I got at the hotel I notice that I had a sleep partner, a gecko that was running the walls and ceiling looking for insects to eat. And with so many insects around he was a chubby guy.

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It is hot In India. It is the first time when I am now off season and I understand what means this heat. It kills your energy, man and beast, to the point that you don’t want to move. It is so hot that you drink bottle after bottle of water and never see a bathroom in the entire day and you drink more than half a bottle in one sip and you are constantly thirsty, your lips are dry and if you do not drink water for an hour you feel an organic sickness in your body that makes you leave anything you do and run for a bottle of cold water, the best medicine in this climate. And if you cannot get some at that moment you will drink even the warm water left over in your bottle, only water to be. The dogs are sleeping in the middle of the street such a deep sleep that last night in Bodh Gaya, a guy was moving his cyclo was going to run over a sleeping dog. In the last moment he carefully avoided the dog, its back wheel just touching the dog’s tail, but the dog did not move a muscle and continued to sleep. Maybe he was in deep meditation. Or maybe he was dead because I saw several dogs and cats dead in the streets and thrown in the garbage in the middle of the street. It is so hot that you cannot walk, barefoot obviously, in any temple outside, so you can visit only areas that have shade or dirt, because the marble or the stone is incinerating your feet. It does not matter that you got a new T shirt, it will be soaked in no time. It is so hot that you cannot eat during the day. You may feel a little hunger but the only thing you dream of is another bottle of cold water or a Fanta. Somebody said that this is summer temperature, 42-43C, for the month of April but other said that it can be even hotter in May and June that are the summer vacation months for schools. To see dead animals decomposing is quite regular but some American guys were completely shocked to see a dead man in the street in Rishikesh covered in flies and people passing obliviously near the body with not a second view. But this is India where survival is key and people do not see the wholeness from the parts.

We left in the morning at 6:00 am from Bodh Gaya with no looking back. It was very nice but we have to move. Today is my last car day in India, except the ride in Delhi, and I don’t regret a bit. It is hard to cover these long distances without a car if you are here for a short time. We drove on the highway in the early morning and we were able to reach Varanasi with no incidents around 11:00 am but we continued through Varanasi to Sarnath that is just about 10 km away that took us about an hour.

Sarnath is the place where is located the deer park where Lord Buddha had the first sermon, or how it is called the DharmaChakra, the Wheel of Law set in motion. He meditated and had his sermon in this park that used to be full of monasteries around 500AD but meanwhile went in disrepair and it was renovated recently. It contains an archeological area where it used to be a shrine, many monasteries and a huge unfinished stupa built by Emperor Ashoka. Also it exists a new temple on the place where Buddha taught the first sermon and near by a bodhi tree that grew from a sapling from the one in Bodh Gaya. I visited all of these and tried to sit a little under the Bodh tree but, like yesterday in Bodh Gaya, was so hot and unpleasant that I gave up soon. When I returned to the car I stopped at the museum and to a tanka store, where after not too much negotiations I got two Tibetan beautiful tankas from a very educated and pleasant guy.

We left around 3:00 pm sarnath to visit BHU, Benares Hindu University and Birla temple that was inside. It is inside the city but quite far from the center, a green campus with multiple buildings. From there the driver called a mobile number I had from a guest house on the Ganges, Leela, and the owner came to pick me up from a specific point in town. I packed the stuff from the car trunk and gave the luggage to some boys from the hotel who came to help, I tipped the driver, not knowing how much would be the correct and he asked for Rs 2000. It is much or little I have no clue. I got to Leela, walking on an alley that a number of cows called home and the amount of dung was dangerous in the night.  In the hotel I found out a dismal room with balcony to the Ganges but a kind of a prison cell with a fan on the ceiling. I regretted the choice but no other rooms were available and I had to give it a try for one night. The differences in hotel rooms can be night and day for prices 3-10 times higher. Actually when I asked the manager for the room price and he told me that the room is Rs 350 I knew that something is wrong. I left in the city, shooting a little on the ghats in the evening light and getting for the Puja with aarthi, that here happens as usual on the Ganges but it is more sparse than in other places. The music is not so good like in Haridwar but the show is impressive. Puja finished at 8pm and I went for the dinner, the only meal of the day because of the heat. At dinner I met two nice guys from Sweden, Madeline and Simon, who were traveling to India since September with some pauses in Bangkok. After 6 months in India they were still in shock with the country, a reaction you can see in many travelers. As Madeline put it, it was no difference when they came from Stockholm to India and latter when they came from Bangkok. The shock was identical. And I know exactly what she meant, it is  a dual shock and most of the travelers feel this way. As a matter of fact if you enter Monalisa Cafe, full of foreigners and German cookies, you see on their faces the toll the trip is putting on them. I remember in 1994 on Koh Sarn Road in Bangkok, a totally different place than today, you could pick out from a crowd of travelers the ones who came from India after a longer stay…..We had a great conversation with the Swedes but this delayed my schedule and after the nightly phones I was kicked out from the Internet because of late hour and all stores were closing. So I went to the hotel, where to add insult to injury the power was off, and a limited battery power was on, and all I could get from a boy who was sleeping on the floor at the “reception”, in Hindi(!), was ” power off”. I was upset that I could not charge the batteries so I got into the tiny, prison type shower and when I was in the middle of the process the whole power, battery included turned off and I was left to sing in the dark. During my stumbling process to find a towel the power came fully on and it stayed all night, a night when I could not sleep too well because of the heat in my cell in which the small fan on the ceiling did not make a difference.

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Based on the quest I did the day before the road to Bodh Gaya is a good one, a 4 lane road and it takes about 5 hours including the exit from the city. We left at 6 am and on the way out I met Anin, the tuk-tuk driver who will wait for me when I get back. We tried to get to the ghats on the Ganga in the morning but it was no access even if we drove all the way out of the city. But this was good because we came closer to the highway on a short cut route and we were able to join the traffic that was moving well. But at one point the entire traffic stalled and it was not clear at all what happened. As usual you can see lots of accidents, trucks smashed or tipped, trucks parked on the first lane for km that make the road not a highway anymore, or even worse carcasses of trucks that are stored on the highway . I saw too many of these to think that the stalled traffic can be caused by an accident. I took a lot of pictures of these accidents that are disconcerting at least when you move in a car and you can see how the car might look after such an encounter. You don’t stand a chance!  Even when you drive on a four lane road, these truck move OK but some of them are quite erratic and you have to be careful with them. For example, they can veer and cut you off, when you already started to pass them because they decided to pass themselves the vehicle in front. Of course this happens with no signaling from anybody. After they finish the pass, for the first time I see the use of the signals: they signal you to pass them!!!! After a long wait during which some faster cars took one of the lanes on the opposite sense, it turned out that it was nothing like an accident but a whole convoy of trucks that were driving on one of our lanes. The direct result is that some of our traffic moved to drive on the opposite sense, transforming the 4 lane highway in 2 roads of two lanes each!!!! I saw before trucks coming occasionally but not an entire convoy of 10-20 trucks. Soon after that we entered Bihar, an area famous for its mob and bandits. There are two types of them working together: the real professional ones and ….the politicians. The drive went fine with no incident. The driver fixed the car the previous day and it was no more clunking. We arrived around 12 pm in Bodh Gaya, that is 22 km off the main road.

Bodh Gaya is a small village but having a very important place in Buddhism because here, under a Bodhi tree, Buddha attained enlightenment after a long meditation. The temple and the tree are not the original, the original temple built by Ashoka being demolished, rebuilt latter and modified repeatedly and the tree died but another grew from its leaves and currently is a very sumptuous tree on the spot. No matter of all these the place is very pleasant but quite hot when you have to walk barefoot on the marble temple that burns your feet. Beside that famous temple whose architecture was copied in many others in India and SE Asia, the village has a lot to see and is very interesting. Because the place has such an important place in the history of Buddhism, all the countries that are Buddhist settled here one Maha Bodhi teple or monastery in the style of the country/culture. So you walk the village’s alleys and you find full fledge temples or monasteries that are typical for Thailand, Wat Thai Maha Bodhi, a monastery from Bhutan, a Vietnamese Monastery, a Nepalese temple, a Sikhim temple, a Chinese Temple, 2-3 Tibetan temples for each Tibetan Buddhist sect, a Japanese temple with its own Daibutsu, a copy in stone of the famous statue in Kamakura. It is like you are hoping from one country to another in South-SE Asia and you are on the same street. To visit all of them take some time and I feel that I am constantly running out of time and this is because of this daily driving. But I remember from last time in India that this is the norm here if you come on short intervals. Meanwhile I was able to have lunch of Paner, a rare occurrence, and purchased some Tibetan music prayer flags, etc. dinner of crepe of banana and chocolate, a very non-Indian dish and and the daily internet and phone. Talking with some guys who were asking me if I returned by train to Benares I found out that the train does not run because the Maoists just blew up the rail track between Varansi and Bodh Gaya somewhere….It happens everywhere but mainly in the eastern part of India now. Tomorrow we will start the return , Bodh Gaya being the furthest point in the trip, and drive back to Varanasi and stop in Sarnath, the place where Buddha had his first sermon in the deer park.

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Distances don’t mean anything for the Indian road. It is just an approximation for people who want precision on paper. What matter is the knowledge of the road and the word of mouth. I woke up after a great sleep on bird songs, actually it was a cacophony of birds’ songs that I even recorded, and I got in the car to Allahabad at 6:00 am. The road in the morning is empty and it is pleasantly cool. It is a pleasure to cruise this way in the Indian landscape, a timeless one. Villages are waking up, people were going to the temple for Navrati, cows were already roaming. We drove on a perfect road 2-3 hours and I shared my breakfast of daily oranges with the driver thinking that such a long drive day can turn in a shorter one. The official numbers of hours for this length of road is between 9-10 hours to 10-12. Around 10:30 am we had only 75 km left to Allahabad. What is 75km in US. Just a drive to buy bread….But here is India and anything can happen. And it happened the road becoming very bad. But bad means a lot of things. It can be just rough, or very rough or like the one we were driving on that was looking like it was bombed and craters were all over. The driver had to stop the car to figure out how to pass. And it went like this for 10 km driven with 10km/hour. Of course we wanted to get info of what to expect further down. And , optimistic as they are, the guys we asked said that is fine. And it was fine for 4-5 km and became bad again in the same manner. It went like this for about 30 km and even more and at one point it disappeared completely under heavy construction. Here we took by mistake the motorbike track that proved just too narrow 1-2 inches at a specific pass, so the car had to be pushed by volunteers to fit between two mounds of dirt. Meanwhile one car shock got broken and it started to clunck and the driver wanted to fix it in a TATA shop at the entrance of Allahabad, but it was supposed to take too long and I told him that is no need because you can run like this and the only drawback is it may make noise. Been there done that! On the road we saw, as usual in India, a lot of accidents involving trucks, that my driver repeated what I knew: they happen during the night when the drivers drinks, use dope and drive in the same time. Allahabad was not exactly on the way but very close but I wanted to go there and see the Sangam, the confluence between Ganga and Yamuna and, by tradition, the Sarasvati underground and mental river, a very important place for Hinduism and the place that hosted Maha Kumbha Mela from three years ago. We got in the city around 1pm, after 7 hours drive and start driving towards the Sangam just to find there, on the positive side a full fledge celebration for Navrati, the festival that will end tomorrow but on the negative side a dust storm with hot wind that made visibility terrible and made me and camera caked in dust. It was very bad and unpleasant and I could not stop thinking what if this dust storm would have happened in Haridwar when we were already caked in dust in the tents. In any case the whole thing cut a little my desire to go in Allahabad in three years for the Kumbha Mela.

We left quickly after less than an hour and we drove on one of the “very good road”, a four lane road, to Varanasi with no events, just a clunk here and there from the busted shock. We arrived in Varanasi around 5 pm, after about 11 hours if we put the hour spent in Allahabad, and got to Hotel Surya with its beautiful interior courtyard that proved to be very nice but quite far from the ghats. I took a quick shower and got in a tuk-tuk, letting the driver to go and fix the car. The traffic in Varanasi is like taken from a movie. It is so busy and jammed that it is a show in itself. It is different than in Vietnam being very diverse in vehicles, animals and people but on the same magnitude. I got at the Ghats on the Gang and after a walk by the river I stopped for dinner at the shi-shi Lotus Lounge with pillows on the floor overlooking the Ganga and with splurging prices of $3/dish, comparing with the $1-2 that is the norm, for the SOHO type Shahi Paneer. Tomorrow we are driving to Bodh Gaya, returning to Varanasi for the last days of the trip. After dinner I started to scout for a hotel on the ghats that I may use after our return to Varanasi and I settle for Leela, being to late and dark to find others. The better hotels, like the one I stay in, Surya, are far from the city, about 4 km, but I needed to find a hotel on the Ganga for convenience. In the evening, walking to Internet, I did some research in guesthouses but one was full and cheap the other one was expensive and not so sure that it was empty. I have to call tomorrow and see. It was an interesting incident with the tuk-tuk driver. We discussed for a RT price from the hotel to town for Rs 100. He did not want to accept money when I left into the town because he wanted to be sure to get the RT. So I made the arrangements for him to pick me up at 10 pm and I was wondering how he will find me. But when I was walking back to the appointment place, the Mazda Cinema, he was on the street waiting and he got his fare and a little extra because he took a longer road. Another interesting thing I found beside tons of CD stores with lots of good music, it was a German bakery selling chocolate cookies, brownies and espresso. Quite different from Jeere Rice and nan!

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I asked the driver to leave at 6:00 am but we postponed the process till 6:30 am and we drove for a quick visit to the river where people were doing their morning wash. The scene was extremely beautiful in sunrise, the villagers coming to bath in the river with the background of the Royal Chatris, the royal tombs. Beautiful and peaceful scene in the sunrise. I tried to be quick and after several shots we left to visit Laxminarayan temple that I did not have time to visit the previous day. The temple, located on top of a hill, is a perfect site for sunrise and there were two foreigners there enjoying the view. Unfortunately the temple was closed and was supposed to open at 10 am. I could not wait so long so after several photos we hit the road to Khajuraho around 7:15am.The road proved to be very good and empty at the morning hours. This is one of the reason why I prefer to leave early besides getting some more day light. I asked the driver to buy some oranges and bananas and this was the “moving” breakfast of the day, a breakfast that I enjoyed everyday on the road. Everything went great for about 60-90 minutes till we got in Uttar Pradesh and the road disappeared, or it became the famous one lane of disintegrating asphalt that is not wide enough for a truck. But it changed several times from disastrous to dramatic, to OK, to good and in 3 hours exactly we reached Khajuraho. The place is a village that was put on the map by its famous intensly carved temples that have on them some scenes from Kama Sutra, a tribute to Shakti. The driver knew a place to stay and I got a room for Rs 1000, the standard price, at Hotel Suria. The room is OK with AC, hot water and a beautiful garden in the back. I left right after that at 11:30 am to visit the temples that are distributed in three groups, the most important being right in the village and named the Western Group. The security guys did not let me take the tripod inside but they let me for a small fee, Rs 25,  to get my camera. The temples, built around 1000AD are impressive beyond words. They represent the peak of temple building mania in India. The decoration is so elaborate that no tiny piece of their surface is left untouched. Gods, apsaras, demons, armies, animals, elephants, camels and people in erotic scene are sharing the outside and inside of the these temples. The main attraction are the erotic scene from Kama Sutra represented on the walls, a manifestation of Shakti. The temples are known as the “love temples” because of these scenes but these scenes represent only 10% from the entire decoration. Obviously they do not differ drastically and after spending a lot of time at the first 2-3 temples to see all the details and scenes, you start going faster and spend less and less time.  I was able to see the main 5 temples in the complex till about 3:00 pm and went to the hotel to have lunch mainly because it is very hot, 42C I guess. You drink easily many liters of water without going ever to the bathroom a similar thing that we experienced in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings in 1995. After the very good biriani lunch I left with the driver to see the temples from the Eastern and Southern complexes. Less interesting and less decorated are more interesting for their landscape, the outskirts of the village with fields full of water buffaloes, pigs, chickens, etc. There the most interesting complex is the one formed by the Jain Temples. Inside it was an exhibit with Jain photos and some Jain renunciates who were parading naked caring only their small broom in the compound to the surprise of the European visitors who were visiting in hordes. Large tourist groups are a norm here, Khajuraho being a major tour destination, one of the top destination in India. After a last stop at sunset at the single temple of the Southern Group, I finished the visit and after a dinner of eggplants with butter nan on one of the many top floor restaurants I went to the internet. Further I intended to spend some time in the many stores but unfortunately the place is full of touts who are quite annoying. Two of them got around to parade with me at some stores to make they coveted commission. I had a great discussion with an art dealer who was specialized in very old stuff that was interesting but quite expensive. Latter I went and purchased some wedding Ladakh jewelries from a shop on the main road and went to sleep preparing for an early wake up call for the long drive day to Varanasi.

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After the breakfast at the hotel the driver came at 7:00 am to pick me up and showed me a place with lots of huge Jain statues sculpted in the rock. He brought me to a terrace that has 26 huge statues plus  other temples that on Sunday were used as an extension on the Jain temple from the bottom of the hill and people went there for puja. The scene was impressive beyond words. This is India. When you think that you saw everything the surprises pour over you like nowhere else. No guide book talks about these statues, at least as I could tell,  because they are for worship probably. There were way more impressive than the ones I saw the day before. I stayed there more than 2 hours and when I left I visited the Jain temple, filmed inside and was accosted by a big boss who took me in his office, put a garland around my neck and gave me a portrait of one of the Tirtankaras. English was not an option as a language so I knew only that it was a sign of appreciation for my interest. I left him a business card and asked him to check my website and to look for pictures of his statues latter in April. From there I went back to the Fort where I visited again my Sikh friends from the previous night who recognized me and were happy to pose and latter I went to visit two more temples from the fort’s complex that I could not visit yesterday, the last one Telika Mandir being a very tall structure with Dravidian influences rare to be seen in Northern India. After that we hit the road to Orcha, 122 km that is supposed to take 3 hours and it did. The road is in construction and it comes and goes. The pavement changes from the old “lace pavement” one narrow lane that in India can fit 2-3 vehicles, to a modern finished lane wide for two trucks. But because is in construction it constantly changes from one, to two lanes, to no lanes, to dirt. We arrived in Orcha around 2:30pm and went directly to Hotel Ganpati, parked myself and left the driver to be. The village is small and picturesque with an amazing palace complex dated from the 16th century augmented in time by many rulers. It is relatively well preserved, but in the Indian way. There are few countries who can boast such a richness of monument and most of these monuments were left in complete neglect just to be partially saved latter. I went and visited the palace complex, its main two palaces, and many other palaces , the place where they kept the elephants and the camels. It was an entire challenge with the filming part because they did not allow the tripod, neither the video camera without a very steep fee but in end I brought both and I was able to shoot everywhere in the palace compound. Towards the end I spend some time in a tiny white temple from where I could hear the entire day the Navrati readings. On the roof of the palace I met a young couple from Brazil who asked me latter in the conversation to give them a lift the next day to Khajuraho. I told them that I will speak with the driver, and I did, but they did not show up latter to find me and coincidentally I bumped into them in the Golden Temple in Varanasi several days latter. I finished the visit around 5:30 pm and went on top of the tallest structure, Chaturbhuj Temple, a Hindu temple from where you could see the entire village, the eagles’ nests, and the love birds from the domes. I got there grace to a boy who had the key and was very happy to get a tip for such an unusual visit. I spent the sunset there on the roof on top of the village admiring the eagles flying in the sunset coming to feed their small ones. I went directly for dinner of curry with cashews, phone and Internet. But the first Internet try was not good because it was on dial up, so I went into the bazaar full of artifacts and very aggressive touts and to the Rama Temple for the Navrati Puja. The temple was, like all others, under high security so you have to leave everything at its entrance, including all the leather objects you may have on you. Inside the Navrati puja was in full swing, more or less like in other temples, with lots of bells and singing.

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In the morning I said good bye to Emil and Lydia.  My good friends pointed me toward this Kumbha Mela and it was a dream come true to come with them. We had a great time, it was an a great trip and we had a fantastic experience together. So I have to send all my thanks to them for this magic event we were part.

The driver was waiting and I left with the idea to get to a bank and change more money but after 30 minutes ride through Delhi, the bank from a big hotel did not change traveler checks so I gave up. Luckily I was not low on Rs. We started the drive to Gwalior, about 300 km from Delhi. The road is hailed as a “very good road” through Agra and another 100 km further to Gwalior. When you go on an Indian road you have to be very cautious about the statements because implications are multiple. First I heard from various sources that the road to Gwalior may take, 5 hours, 6, hours or 7-8 hours. I discarded the most optimistic and the most pessimistic and I ended up with the 6 hours. But we left at 7:00 am and arrived in Gwalior at 4:30 pm, it is true with a 45 minutes stop in Sikandra. The statement with the “very good road” is correct…. if the road were not have been in India. And this is not because of any technical problems. The road is build well with a large divider in the center, with some sort of barriers at the margins, not like an American highway but technically good. If you have a good road here it slightly helps but this only means that is more space to fill on the road from all directions, so the traffic is moving still slow, maybe a touch better than on the old roads. As I said it is hard to imagine the traffic in India and how these roads are. The traffic is going in all directions on our 2-lane-one-way in spite of the large and famous sign that says: “Please do not drive in the wrong direction”. Absolutely everything imaginable can exist on the road: cars moving in both directions, mopeds, tuk-tuks, ganesh, an older vehicle for people, cows, goats, pigs, dogs that literally sleep on the streets and the drivers are swerving between them to avoid killing them but they do not flinch, stopped trucks in the second lanes that are repaired on the spot with assistance from the side, parked vehicles for km on the first lane, huge loads on minuscule tractors, people, kids playing, occasional cooking, etc. The list remains opened and it will be completed latter with things that our limited western mind cannot imagine. As a result with all this flurry of activity the road is strangled and constantly you have to press the brakes to avoid something. Besides, the Indian people have a tendency to fill up spaces. If you are in the crowd the occasionally empty spaces in front of you will filled little by little till everything becomes a mass that moves and a whole. The result is that the pressure is tremendous in such crowds and I am not surprised about the occasional stampede with many death because when you are in such a crowd, and I was there more than once, you feel very uncomfortable thinking only about this pushing and shoving. Similar, they act similarly in traffic. If it exist a space in a traffic jam I bet anything that it will be filled in no time till everything becomes like a very packed sardine can and the traffic jam becomes even more difficult to solve, nobody being able to move. This is part of the aggressiveness you feel in India. It is not from the people who are in general extremely nice but from the crowds, the traffic, the dry and hot climate, the mosquitoes, ants, animals, beggars, etc. makes it to be  a little more than a simple walk in the woods type of experience. The “very good road” have another issues. The trucks are hogging the second lane no matter if they travel fast, slow or stall. So all the passing are done on the first lane, the low speed lane. If it happen that a car/truck/bus driving on the second lane would make space to be passed on its lane, they will never change lane, and obviously nobody signals here, but they will just make enough space for you to squeeze with one wheel out of the pavement on its second lane and the moment you passed they will get back in position. It is exactly like somebody sitting in a doorway blocking the way and barely moving to let somebody else jump in. The traffic was moving slow and I was dozing in the heat of the car where the AC could not keep track with the 38C outside. I did not sleep long enough in the night and I kept going in short dreams and Agra was not closer. Till one moment when the driver woke me up telling that we reached Sikandra. That activated me and I decided to go for a walk in Akbar’s tomb that I visited 12 years ago. The place is beautiful and I felt that it have been renovated meanwhile. We stopped there for about 45 minutes and left around 1:15 pm to Gwalior. The”very good road” stops in Agra and you drive through the city, a hard experience in India, but it continues the moment you leave the city. Eventually without any other stories we arrived at 4:00 pm in Gwalior and around 4:30 pm at the entrance of its famous fort. I started to do my tour with an inspection of the famous Jain statues sculpted in the fort’ s base rock. They were destroyed by one of the kings but recently some of them have been renovated. Absolutely impressive, they represent Tirtankaras that stand like the famous Buddha from Bamyan destroyed by the Talibans. I continued the tour inside the fort, getting a ticket for the me and one for the camera, something new in India. Also the tripod is not allowed and If I have to use I have to be careful, not that anything is really enforced here. The fort is nice especially in the golden hour of the day. Ruined in most part, has several interesting palaces that were preserved. The main one, Man Singh Palace, has two underground floors used for bath and latter as a dungeon. I spend there all the hours till sunset and after that, meeting a local boy, I went also to visit the Gurudawa Sikh temple. The Sikhs were extremely friendly and happy that I came to visit their temple. They put a bandana on my head and made me walk through water basin to cleanse myself they gave me the green light to shoot anything I like, and I did not to disappoint them. After I shot inside the temple they invited me for prasad, so I ate with them on the floor, see how the women were making chapati and how they were cooking, etc. And they invited me again to visit them the next morning for a better light….. After the visit we drove inside the town and looked for a hotel. I chose Grand Regency that looked great in the lobby and even on the floors with wireless Internet but inside the room the bath, clean thou, was probably last redone when the Brits left…. They changed my room to be able get internet connection on my iPhone inside the room and it helped not to run to an Intenet cafe. But this was latter on when I returned because, now with the hotel booked, I went to the highly recommended sound and light show at the fort that proved a big flop. I don’t like these things but this was nothing special except a long history of the place that had its own merit. The drive into the city is another interesting story. It is not simply driving but just a way of being. First there are no lights to lit the  very crowded streets. So the only thing that you see are the incoming cars’ lights in the dark. At one point you start seeing one light to the left of your car and another set of lights to the right and it looks that cars will move around you on both sides.The funny part is when the cow they tried to avoid just start coming out of the dark right in front of your car. In the city some roads were in construction,pavement was done as we drove on it and the entire traffic somehow was going there also, just where ever it was possible, on the new pavement, on the old one, on the sidewalk or the lack of it. But nobody even flinches. The drivers are experienced and this is the norm. I guess if they would drive on an American Highway they would get asleep…. I returned to the hotel, did my email on the iPhone and got a call from home in the room before going to sleep.

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The morning of the last day in the Himalayas, even at its bottom hills, was dedicated to Rishikesh so I started in the morning with a tuk-tuk ride, or whatever they call it in India and got to Lakshman Jhula, the second pedestrian bridge in the town. The views from the road are astounding. Close to main road there were some interesting Shiva temples, from whose terraces the views were even better. Ganga by itself starts in the Himalayas but its final structure, after it collected its main effluents, is beginning here in Rishikesh.
This part of the city is the place where are located the ashrams. It is way more westernized, all the stores catering mainly for travelers. The town itself is way south and has not resemblance with the meditation atmosphere of its northern sector. I crossed the bridge and visited a temple that stands right on Ganga’s shore that is built with many floors and has inside rooms with statues dedicated to all the main Gods and consorts. Each room has three statues. You have to walk around the perimeter of the building in order to ascend the next floor and this is a ….loooong building.
But the views from the top are astounding, well worth the effort. In the Indian temple you have to walk barefoot, and ideally with no socks. The exit of the temple turned out to be in the other side of the building, so I found myself walking barefoot in a market area surrounded by cows, motorbike and stalls to get to the shoe stall and recuperate my sandals. It was quite of an experience, and the first of the day. Getting down I started to inspect the stores in that area. The two main shopping areas are around this bridge and a larger one around Raj Jhula, the other bridge.
Unfortunately, the stores were closed at that hour so I rushed back to get a tuk-tuk and go back to the hotel to join with my friends and go together in several places. On the way I had another experience, an “Indian incident” when I felt on my foot and sandal something soft, warm and mushy and I realized that I stepped in a huge cow dung. I was at a loss contemplating my options, not being in this situation ever, but amused in the same time by the ridiculous of my puzzlement. After trying to no avail to clean myself on the even dirtier pavement one guy pointed to me the water tap on the street, probably used successfully by many who had such an “unfortunate” incident. I rushed to the hotel where Emil made some surprising arrangement to meet a swami who lived dressed with a loin cloth in the Himalayas for 15 years. Swami Ram Kripalu was accepted as a disciple by his guru under this condition and he did not hesitate to cast away all  his possessions and join his guru in the cave. We took a tuk-tuk and after buying some gifts we started to look for his address. In his small ashram on the shore of the Ganga Swamiji was in a puja that proved to be very interesting. After the puja he received us for a darshan and my friends pointed the connections they had with him through another friend who stayed at his ashram. It was impressive to meet him, mainly by his feats but also for his …long hair that was 1.5 longer than his height. After the darshan we went to eat the prasad offered by the swami at the puja that played as lunch for the day, got a tuk-tuk and with a small stop at the hotel we went to Sivananda Ashram, me first followed by my friends. Unfortunately we came latter than 12pm and all the halls , including the library and the Sivananda’s tomb were closed but Bhajan Hall was open and that one was the one we were looking for being then  most important. There, since the death of Swami Sivananada, it is continuously recited a matra, the place being energetically charged accordingly. I stayed for a while listening to the matra and inspecting the place, decorated with pictures of gods, prophets including Jesus, Mary and swamis. It was already very late and we originally planned to leave at 12pm. In the end after all sorts of delays we finally left at 1:30 pm and we stopped for almost one hour in Kankhal, several kms outside of Rishikesh at a temple dedicated to Daksha Mahadev and the 10 manifestations of the Godess. The three temples were impressive, especially the one for the godess with the wall covered in mirrors. More intereting was a tree that was used as a Shiva temple, surrounded by lingams and nandi bulls, whose branches were covered in the strings sold at the temple to adorn this kinnd of trees. There were three trees in one that symbolizes the three manifestation of the relevated God, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Around the tree were lots of people but the funniest was a swami that started to film us with his cellphone, instead of us filming him… The majority of the swamis, if not all,  carry cellphones and take pictures with them. After a short stop on the Ganga’s canals near the temple we left because it was already 2:30 pm and we had a very long road ahead. But the road proved to be OK, the 7 hours promised between Delhi to Rishikesh were now exact almost to the minute getting in Ashwani beautiful place at 9:30 pm. On the road we stopped in the same beautiful Chetal Grand to eat, surrounded by flowers buckets and the entire road was a debate about hinduism, swamis, sidhis, yoga, meditation without a dull moment, the ideas flowing continuously. The only thing worth mentioning from the road was one man who was doing parikrama on the road’s asphalt in prostrations going to Kumba Mela. A real act of devotion! In Delhi, Ashwani came to meet us and after a quick tea we made the arrangements and the payments for the second part of the trip that I will do solo based on a schedule that was more clear now than when I arrived in India. I asked for the driver to leave at 7:00 am. During this time I was fighting with the Internet that worked so well last time but it was as dead now.

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Photos.
The wake up call was supposed to be early and after a good breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant, we move as quickly as possible on a road that is mostly in ruin to Vashishta Guha, a cave at 23 km from Rishikesh where meditated Swami Vashishta. The road was in continuous repair. The monsoon kills it every year and is a Sisific work that cannot be dome quick enough to keep it in a repaired condition. On this road it is very heavy traffic being the main road to the Himalayan towns, Baderkhnat, Kedarkhnat, Mala, etc. 23 km does not seems a lot but on the Himalayan road it can take forever and it took us about one hour to get to the cave. The caves are named locally gufas. This gufa is located on the Ganga’s shore and is an amazing meditation place. Vashishta lived, as the story goes, 56000 years and he had a whole adventurous and incidental life. How you count the years is up to you. The swami who was at the cave, Swami Shantananda Puri, whom we visited before in order to get a gist about the cave,  pointed out that the energetic properties of the cave are unique in this area, existing only two more caves like this and it helps your meditation practice a lot as you would do 20 years in your apartment. So we went inside and indeed the atmosphere is unique and after meditating in the cave for close to one hour, we came out not enlightened but at least with a calm unmatched till now in the trip in spite of the Kumbha Mela. Right after I went out I was able to ask permission from  the swami for an interview that I hoped to be something like 5 minutes. Swami Shantananda Puri, who is well versed in English, ended up with a 20 minutes presentation of the cave and his life at the cave with his old master who passed away and continued for about 40 more minutes answering questions and telling stories about everybody’s role in life, their enlightenment that is not in scriptures but in you. It is only the fact that you don’t know how to open the eyes to see the God in you. It was an amazing and comforting experience augmented by the excellent English of the Swami and his amazing sense of humor and joyful approach.  His books are downloadable for free from http://www.scribd.com/group/79503    God bless him!

We left the guha around 2:00pm, way latter than originally planned, and we dropped the driver and the car at the hotel, chat with some other travelers, who were horrified that they saw a corpse in the street and people were obliviously passing by, and went to the town to eat in the same restaurant where I had the banana pancakes last night. After lunch we started walk the town main and only street, full of stores catering for foreigners, internet cafes, travel agents, ayurveda stores, jewelery stores and obviously full of ashrams teaching yoga and meditation, a typical backpacker hang out. We took a rest and watched the aarthie again, a real pleasure and now we are hitting for another banana pancake and lime soda. Here we do not eat Indian food. After dark the stores are enchanting, lots of music stores abound of great CDs with Indian, Tibetan and “New Age” music at a fraction of the price as in the West. Book stores full of spiritual books from great masters and clothing stores do a steep business. In this atmosphere the cows are roaming the main street finding their way among Germans and Americans travelers like in  a promenade. They go back and forth the entire evening like walking an Italian Corso.

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Photos.
For the last time in Haridwar I was waken up at 4:00 am by the bajan. It stops in the night, probably around midnight and they start again singing around 4-4:30 am. It is a pleasure to listen to it and every morning I was pleasantly awaken and listen to it. They sing from many tents, each with its own amplification so it is not only one but many bajans making a sort of cacophony but in the morning it sounds great. Obviously if you don’t want to sleep….We packed starting at 6:00 am and at 8:00 am, after a short satsnag with Babagi who gave us prasad we had to say goodbye to everybody from the camp and thank them for their hospitality. We left to Rishikesh, that is on the Ganga up stream, about 23 km from Haridwar. James pointed us to a hotel where he stayed and liked a lot called the Great Ganga, and we went directly to it and we could right away take a shower because we were caked in dust and dirt after 5 days in the tent eating and sleeping on the floor, the dust coming in waves under the tent’s flaps. At 12:00 pm the driver picked us up and droves us along the Ganga, that is even faster and cleaner than in Hardiwar, a wild mountain river, to Neelkamp, a temple dedicated to Shiva. The road to the temple, like the road to Rishikesh is sublime. From here we start going into the Himalaya, these being the first hills at its base. The atmosphere changes radically and the road is driven only in Indian Jeeps, Mahindras, that look like from the old times. At the temple there were as usual lots of pilgrims making offers. Lots of incense, candles and flowers adorning Shiva and Nandi, Shiva’s bull. It was a very long line of Indians coming to worship the God but the temple itself is very small but with a very strongly adorned top in all colors. We left the place around 4:45 pm and we drove down in Rishikesh with the plans to go to the aarthi that was in one of the yoga &  meditation ashrams that make the place well known. Unfortunately, the driver who did not know the place, dropped us to a wrong bridge and we had to walk another 30 minutes to get to the destination. Meanwhile we got lost of each other and I reached the aarthi right when it began. Very beautiful and inspiring. Rishikesh is a yoga place so it is full of ashrams that are catering mainly for westerners. There are so many of them that is disconcerting. The singing at the aarthi was done also by a European girl. Lot of the audience was European, to my surprise coming in contrast with  Kumbha Mela where most of the people were Indians. All these aarthi events are with extensive singing, very nice, and lots of fires that is supposed to burn your bad karma, so people touch the fire and put their hands on their faces for cleansing. After the Internet session the dinner was special, after of so many days of eating on the floor on leaves. An Italian restaurant that was serving everything. We are still in India, but also they served crepes, that they called pancakes. So I ate a delicious banana pancake forgetting for a moment about dal, navratan korma, curry, palak paneer, or rice and enjoy some European decadent food. All Indians were watching cricket on TV that is on all channels, or at least it seems like it, and is the only game played by kids on the street. The evening still lasted longer being all involved later on with E&L in a discussion about yoga, meditation, methods, etc. Still we have to discuss more.

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Photos.
“The word ‘Kumbha’ means a pot. The name originates from a story in the Puranas (ancient spiritual literature). The story is about an ‘Amrit Kumbha’ which means a pot filled with nectar. According to Skanda Purana (one of the 18 puranas) for the purpose of obtaining nectar that grants immortality a joint effort was made by the Gods and the demons to churn the ocean. They used Mandarachal mountain as a pillar and Vasuki serpent as a rope for the churning. In the process of churning  14 very precious objects arose. These objects were equally shared by the Gods and the demons. At last Dhanvantari (the God of medicine) came up with the pot of nectar. Seeing the pot Indra (the king of the Gods) gave a sign to his son Jayant to get hold of the pot and run away with it so that the demons are deprived of it. As Jayant began running away with the pot a fight between the Gods and the demons began.  The fight lasted for 12 days of the Gods which is equivalent to 12 human years. During the course of the fight the nectar spilled over from the pot and fell at four places Allahabad, Haridwar, Nasik and Ujjain. To prevent the nectar from falling in the hands of the demons Lord Vishnu took a beautiful female form Mohini (one who enchants) and by Her charm and grace enticed the demons and handed over the pot  to the Gods.” From an article wrote by Sri Ved Niketan Ashram

Today is a much more relaxed day because we saw most of the stuff but here the action never ends. So after a quick satsang with Babagi we left to see various camps around our base. We saw some Naga Babas, one of them invited us in their tent and we sat with him. The day before E&L were able to see an Aghori camp, the only one apparently at this Kumbha at least as we could tell. After the short tour we went to sit at Pilot Baba’s camp, a very elaborate production that confirms that spirituality is big business everywhere. Coming to the Haridwar we were surprised to see how many posters with Pilot Baba and Akiko were all over and it was confirmed by the fact the their camps is the largest, full of Russians, where Pilot Baba established and built a temple. They also charge a steep Rs 1300/night in their tents. Pilot Baba’s  history is interesting but you always wonder why you move your real spiritual and yoga experience in this commercial way when you never needed the funds.This is disconcerting if you look at the babas industry in India. The number of camps, each with its own sadhu is impressive and all are competing for believers like the sects in USA. The Indians are the core of the business but there are many Europeans to the English speaking swamis like Pilot Baba, Soham Baba, etc, the last getting the niche of global warming, saving the planet, etc. The result is that lots of Europeans are in his retinue, and he was always surrounded by two Germans in black suits and, obviously-because is hard otherwise- white shirts dirty at their collars and ties, looking like security personnel. Beside he had a guy in fatigue with covered face with a machine gun handy. The way he conducted himself was like a manager giving orders and organizing things left and right.

I left my friends to rest in Pilot Baba’s camp and after another quick forays to take more pictures of Naga Babas and other swamis I left to the city where the ghats were definitely not so crowded like yesterday and afforded great views. Again I went for lunch to the same place, mostly with the same type of food and walked the city with no other events in site.

After the Internet I took the cable car, that I was earlier assured, “Indian way”, that it was stopped because of the holiday…. and I got up a hill where is located Masadevi  temple. The temple is not great but commands great views over the city, over the ghats and the dam. Also is surrounded by black face monkeys that turn to be quite aggressive if you don’t mind your business. Coming back from the temple I was in the bazaar to do some shopping but it was not too much, the city being a major destination for Kumbha Mela, the trade is mainly local oriented. I walked latter to the  the puja in Har Ki Pauri temple but I came quite late and the view was definitely not so good like first time. At these events you have to come at least one hour before it starts to get a good view. But the atmosphere was extremely pleasant and walked enchanted back to the camp. When you walk back you have to cross the long Chandevi bridge and all the camps are on the far side of the bridge but right from the beginning you are welcomed by the bajan that penetrate all the noise from the city like a hum. It is great! At the camp the driver came already with the car and slept in one tent and we had a last chat with James and went to sleep because we planned to leave at 8:00 am and everything had to be packed.

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Photos.
Today is one of the the most auspicious days in the entire Kumbha Mela. It is no moon at all and it is a MONDAY. There were two more days like this in the entire 3 months that passed and they are considered as “most auspicious”. Tomorrow, on Tuesday, is another important day but is “rated” only as “auspicious”. We planned the trip to be here on this day and at 2:30 am we walked up together with the entire camp and we started to fast walk to a closer place, only about 30 minutes walk to take a deep in the Ganges. We crossed in dark over some stone erosion barriers and we got to a spot where there were already some other groups. Comparing with all the other nights this night was the warmest, and the temperature was about 12C because you could see your breath in the air. Around 4:00 am we arrived and  everybody undressed and we followed Babagi, who at his eighty-something is better fit and vigorous that all of us put together. We deeped completely, with water over the head, a kind of baptism, and got out but Babagi stayed in the water till all of us were out. But surprisingly it was not cold outside and it was no rush to dry or dress. It was simply pleasant. It is more difficult for the women because they have to go in the water in sari and they have to change after that. We returned to the camp and we noticed, the same as when we left, that the road was full of people on the move. Long lines of people waiting to go to the Ganga and take the bath together with their spiritual leader. The road was full like it were full day. We got back and relax a little. It was only 5:00 am so we had some tea and we assisted when Babagi made his “duna”, his personal fire offer. I was able even to shoot some.

After that I told Lydia that I will go and shoot a little around and started to go around the compound, till I met a guy who pointed me to the places where the Naga Babas are. Going there I realized that everybody was going to the parade in town and I started to run together with a group on Naga Babas. The Nagas are complete renunciates. They do not posses anything, they cover their body in ashes and they live and walk everywhere completely naked. They are highly venerated by the people who touch the ground where they walked. I kind of smeared their steps with my sinned shoes, anchored in the greed of the modern society, running with them and shooting all the time. When we crossed the Ganga I saw that people were already congregated watching all these groups that were supposed to take part in the parade. After several shots I followed Shri Devananda retinue and got on the main drag that was full with floats on tractors representing each baba present and in demand of marketing. I was happily shooting on that street, babas, dressed and naked till they started to move. Here the parade does not happen in a slow pace. People are running so it is quite a show. It took about 1 hour to finish all the floats and after that I watched an amazing exercise in crowd control. To understand what means an Indian crowd you have to have visited once India. No description can match. It is a spiritual dimension that transcended the words. All these events are dangerous because the large amount of people attending. It is happening often to have stampedes and lots of people to be crushed and die, so the amount of police+military police+order people+military+security is so large like I never saw before. And they have ways to deviate people and control the crowds with fencing areas and ropes. I would not want that job and you have to understand that some time are rough.  Usually they are very friendly especially with foreigner but sometime it is nothing to do. But caring my large camera it always helps and they help me pass some “borders” sometime even taking me by the hand and bringing me to the other side. After the parade finished I wanted to come to the Internet , about 300 meters from where I was located, but the amount of effort and waiting was like crossing several real borders with lots of red tape.

After Internet I had my lunch of the same restaurant. Here if you did not get sick in one place you try to stick with the same if you can and it proved successful for three days in a row. The food is exclusively veggie, no type of alcohol being served in Haridwar, a holy city of the Ganges and one of the oldest cities in India. After lunch I went to see what happened at the ghats where was the days when only sadhus bath, so the ghats and the entire temple was closed for sinners. But the people were curious to see the holy men bath and they were peeking under a cover to the chagrin of the policemen who were hushing people from one place just to notice that people were moving back right behind him. This circus lasted for a while and I tried myself the chance and shot some footage under the cover. Meanwhile the sadhus were poring over the bridge, leaving the ghats after the ritual bath on the other bridge, coming and leaving with large banners representing their akaras. I had enough of sneaking under the cover and moved further from the temples, to the river shore further down where it was full of people, no comparison with the previous day. Somebody told me that 4 million people came today to take the ritual bath. All these people were sleeping under the sky, right were I saw them sitting. They came in large parties from their villages, commanded by an elder, having with them only a bag of rice and a small material that they put on the ground to sleep or sit on it. The entire area was covered by them. It was an impressive scene and all were bathing happily in the Ganges, putting offers of candles on the steps of the ghats or sending offers on the river, making it a stream of candles. All this is very beautiful and inspiring in the evening when it looks magnificent. Around 8:00 pm , totally crushed by my backpack that was full with things, included the tripod,  taken by my rushed departure with the Naga Babas,  I started to go to the camp where I found my friends sitting at the sastang with Babagi, who  explained the power of oneness, followed by a quick dinner of leaves on the ground of dal and kir.

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Photos
The jet lag woke us up latter than the previous day. We planned to go in the city all of us and show my friends how to get into the temple. However they have been in Haridwar before and know the place relatively well. We plan to leave at 9 am but something gets delayed and I take a walk for an hour around the camp. The place is fascinating. Filled with tents and compounds you have a feeling of a big trade show. Everybody has banners advertising their trade, with “sales people” that want to show you the offer, and “marketing people” that are conducting the prayers. It is mind boggling. I took lots of video/photos of shadus, naga babas (naked babas), prayers with large audiences, in English or Hindi, in large pavilions, sometime huge like ISKRON that is the Hara Krishna International Organization. Shot kids in poor tents that abound by the river bay living in abject poverty. Poverty is endemic in India. You see here poverty like in no other place and this is so obvious mainly because of the incredible number of people. Once C said that her feeling about India is that of a soccer stadium where the gates just opened after the game and people started to go home. But this flow of people will never end. At around 10 am we leave, all 3 of us including a new addition, James a TV Producer from Smoke and Mirrors in London. Is the world small or what! We walk over the ChandiDevi Bridge and we arrive into the city on the Ganges at the ghats. The ghats were full of people bathing , making offers, all holding on heavy chains anchored by the shore, the river being extremely fast and very dangerous. This is Ganga upriver not the one in the plains, around Varanasi, where is slow and dirty. It is extremely fast, green and very clean. We shoot and take picture all 4 of us and decide to take a deep in the Ganga to deal with our karma and our heat. Around 12pm there are 28C. Emil goes first and after that me and James. We take embarrassing pictures of ourselves not to be published in NY Times. When we leave we are witnessing an amazing scene. A young girl was swept away by the river and she swims frantically to keep afloat but she moves with amazing speed. One guy right in front of us fully dressed jumps in the water and catches her and swims with her to the chains. Meanwhile a fast boat comes with fours guys and helps both of them. This is the most “rapid reaction” I could see both from the guy and the boat. The guy who jumped I am sure that had a moment of illumination when he did that. It was nothing calculated just the gut feeling that she has to help her. God bless him!

We left marked by this event and started to walk to the Har Ki Pauri temple. We got again separated from Emil who went into the bazaar and James and I went on the streets. We took lots of pictures from different vantage points in the city and in the temple, with the ghats full of bathers, to the extent that at 2:00pm James finished his card and his battery. India can be unexpected.We went to lunch going for the already proved Navratan Korma and butter nan, hoping not to get sick. After lunch James helped me to do a recording on a bridge and he went to the camp and I stayed and visited the temples inside the temple compound and taking more pictures. Around 5pm I saw that most of the people were seated on the floor and somebody told me that it will be a puja around 6pm. After kicking myself that I did not get a permit to shoot and get on a platform, I did the best out of the situation where I found myself a place to keep the camera steady and get some good view and shot the entire aarthi, that always ends after sunsets with fires put in various places that make the night absolutely spectacular. It was so much to shoot that you needed two cameras. After the aarthi, people are getting in the water that is now blessed by the puja and put candles and offers with candles that flow on Ganga. Everything is so nice that you are speechless.

One thing is sure. To be here it is such a treat and a joy that cannot be matched by any other travel in our sedate, developed world. You breath this joy through each of your pore like a bliss. Maybe is normal because Nirvana is a local product. I feel like V when he gets a new Lego set.

I left after a while because some guys suggested to me to get a permit and showed me where but after I found the place, there it was a total hysteria with Europeans journalists who did not get their permits and they needed it for the next morning shoot. Here you have the “I have to do this or die” attitude of the US/Europeans meeting ” No problem. Let’s talk tomorrow” attitude of the Indians. So I gave up because my chances were extremely slim and I had some other plans. I went to the camp, a long walk after a full day of shoot with more than 60 minutes on tape, being also puzzled by a small defect in my camera, that luckily I was able to figure out the next morning.

At the camp I found out that we will wake up at 2:30 am and we will go and take a deep in the Ganga so we went to sleep around 9:30pm  and we crashed the moment we touch the pillow.

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Photos.
At 6:30 am we have the tea with milk served somewhere in the camp and after a little while I leave with Emil to shoot in the area. The camps are on a separate side of the city not so close to the center. Babas, sadhus and  gurus abound. They have posters all over the streets. This is a trade show in self realization. It is a place for the gurus to congregate, meet new disciples and students who are looking for teachers are coming here exactly for this. It is a matching process that may take years but it works. Most of the posters is of Pilot Baba and Akiko who is staying as usually in his camp. We shot some footage and took pictures of some picturesque babas. We returned to the camp where the plans for the day were not so clear of what will happen and we leave again to visit a temple on the hill dedicated to Chan Devi, a manifestation of Parvati. To visit the temple you take a cable car up the hill and on top you walk up to the temple that has a similar security details like the one we saw near Delhi but here you can take the camera with you but NO Photos! But you can take tons of photos out where the people are a show in itself. The atmosphere is interesting, similar with other temples in Asia, and after we do the parikrama we take the cable car down avoiding to be attacked by monkeys that are all over. Before arriving at the camp we meet a Hara Krishna group that have in it one Naga Baba, a naked baba. First that we saw. At the camp we missed a yagna, a public offering of fire, but the event will be repeated on Monday when we plan to attend. We eat all of us on leaves that are thrown away after that and we try to stay in the shade because it started to be hot in spite of the cold in the night. At 3pm we leave all of us into the city and we have a surprise that they do not let us to cross the bridge to Har Ki Pauri temple without passport, and latter it was very hard to convince the guy from the internet to use the service with no passport. A lady stopped us for lack of passport and camera permit. I should have taken a journalist visa for India and take a local permit to shoot. But I am not so worry about it so I started to move around the lady who behaved like a …..and somehow I manage to sneak over her on the bridge when she did not look But my friends stayed behind not having the usage to do this kind of things. So they waved me to go and I walked into an absolutely amazing experience, the Har Ki Pauri temple with its ghats where people were taking ablutions in the Ganges. But the compromise I did was to leave my video camera with Sharmaji who came to help us find the place. I started to scout the area to find various ways to get inside and get my friends with me. I returned at the entrance in 10 minutes but I could not find them no matter that I stayed and waited. Latter it turned out that they waited me but they went to get some water in that interval and they returned at the compound being afraid that I got lost in the crowd, a thing that can happen in a festival with 18 million people.

So I walked back to the lady, and when she asked me about the passport I said that I don’t need one and walked by and the gods protected me so she could not say anything… The temple is fascinating and for the first time I faced the rituals and the ablutions. It is a spectacle that it is hard to be described just photographed or recorded. India is by far the best destination for photography and video. If it did not existed should have been invented. The problem here is that you always run in lack of tape, cards and batteries. Any turn of a head brings up a subject. I shoot here about 60 minutes a day of intense subjecting and in Europe about 20 minutes per day. And here you do not know what to skip because you have the feeling that everything is worthwhile to be shot. So I shot the ghats with thousands of people bathing, in spite of the fact that theoretically you cannot shoot but everybody does, till  dark. I made my phone calls and I posted on the Internet to the only Internet Cafe in Haridwar, the place where he could not give me time with no passport.

After the Internet it was already 7:00 pm and I was worried what happened with my friends so I started to go home. The camps are about 30-45 minutes away from the center. It is a large area of compound surrounded by tin foils fences, with tents on dirt. I crossed the bridge and when I was ready to get on our street I was stopped by a car driven by Rajiv with Emil who were looking for me in Haridwar. They were convinced and are still convinced that I was lost. When I got in the camp everybody was so happy to see me like I was coming from dead. They asked me how I got lost and no matter that I explained everybody that I knew exactly where I am and I was busy in town they still did nor believe. Babagi gave me a yellow card to have with me and all the necessary cell phones and told me to be careful and not get lost again and ask police for help….. No comments! So we ate a little and went to sleep in the princely dirt floor tent where I have my sleeping bag caked in dust and dirt, in the music of the kirtan from the adjacent camps.

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But the moment we left the posh gated community were we stayed, where the houses and atmosphere are a very pleasant remnant of a different Delhi that we met some years ago, you are thrown into the snarling traffic of the city and you realize that things are again familiar. The traffic is frantic. The cars are brushing one to each other in a way that shocks you that they do not touch. When they stop at a traffic jam they are like sardines cans, so closed packed that people cannot pass between them. And they still do not touch. The roads outside the city are the same that we encountered 12 years ago. I understood that they improved the roads in Rajasthan but in UP is still a log way to go. The traffic stalls and the 200km to Haridwar that we are supposed to drive in 7 hours becomes a reality in time. Yes, the car has AC that I still refuse to use preffering to drive with the window open and my camera outside to shoot in the traffic. The new Toyota Innova hope to have acceleration problems to move us faster, over the standard 40km/h….On the way we stop to a new temple finished in 2005 and here I face the new India after all the terrorist attacks. The security screening at this temple is probably more strict that at the CIA. There are lots of people that are hired in the process, at least 10 I meet on my way to the temple’s inside and after I deposit everything at the check boxes, no cameras, etc. they turned me around because I still have the wired headphone of my iphone. They accepted to have on me just money and passport. But the temple is worth the visit. They are building and decorating an extremely already ornate temple, where the mandir is surrounded by elephants taken from the legends. The rest is completely decorated with intricate motives, no area being left untouched.

After leaving the temple we hop on the highway, or the way the four lane road is named. There are two senses separated with a heavy boundary that cannot be crossed but somehow if the traffic needs to come on our way it will do it. As a result the 2 one way lane is commonly shared with incoming traffic, and the situation is so normal that the horn pressing is done only to your co directionals in traffic. The incoming traffic is just avoided like flies. After an hour of huge traffic jams we leave the 4 lane road to a 2 lane or better said a generous 1.5 lane road, because we veer into the shoulder, sort of shoulder full with bushes, every time an incoming cars comes our way. And we go like this for some hours with 40km/h and when we get an empty stretch, rarely, it goes to up top 90 km/h….I know it is the Toyota. We stop on one of those magnificent car stops and have lunch in a bucolic atmosphere surrounded by flowers and we keep going to Haridwar. When we are getting close, the city traffic is diverted and we get into the city on a detour road. But not exactly into the city because being Kumbha Mela all traffic is blocked and after numerous calls to the camp manager and some luck we figure out how to get into the city and we arrive at the camp around 7:00 pm after we met Rajiv, the camp manager who came with some business into the city. We freshen up,  get our tent, 5 start tent, because we have even electricity and a tap of water in the back in the mud. But this is no big deal because in the camp you have to walk barefoot so it stays in the spirit. We get introduced to some other people in the camp, Vladimir fro Moscow in search of self realization and Rita from Calgary in search of more travels after a sojourn in South Africa and one in Singapore.

Rajiv makes the arrangements and we go and meet Babagi, a close relation of my friends and they introduce me to him. Her is quite of a presence, is very interested to know if everything is taken care of, wants to give me a hook in Varanasi at a monastery and we plan to come back with some gifts after dinner. The dinner is served on the ground, on plates and cups made out of leaves, large leaves, and is a combination of chapati with delicious curry and some potatoes. Everything here is veggy with no eggs and some specific grains. After dinner we visit Babagi again and go to sleep in the sumptuous apartments with the music blasting from the outside speakers playing  the songs of the kirtan and bajan. It tapper off in the night and we have a great sleep till about 4:00 am because of the jet lag.

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Just 13 hours and 22 minutes is the direct flight from Newark to Delhi on a new Boeing 777 with Continental. The plane was full and surprisingly with westerners, on the road to look for spiritual awakening in India instead of New Jersey. 12 years ago we were the only westerners in the plane and lots of Indians….The Delhi airport changed and got more modern and slick. In front, the fleet of small Ambassador cars is still there but dwarfed by the new Toyotas and Hondas. The whole city changed. The dark roads where 12 years ago we drove in the middle of the night, not knowing where we are, are lit now on their entirety. Highways are crossing it on top. It was such a change that I thought that I never been in Delhi before but in some forgotten outpost. The Bed and Breakfast, The tree of Life,  we stayed in  is more than impressive. New and beautiful is better than in many places I ever stayed in Asia. Check its reviews at http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-d1631073  In the morning, after a sleepless night because I slept in the plane, I met the owner, Ashwani, who also will provide the car for the trip. Here we go, leaving in a minute to Haridawr to Kumbha Mela.

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March 2010

Maha Kumbha Mela in Haridwar

Rishikesh

Gwalior

Orcha

Khajuraho

Allahabad

Bodh Gaya

Sarnath

Varanasi

Delhi

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