Day 26 to 29: Varanasi, Darjeeling and filthy water

Made it

Phew. Sitting comfortably with a good 15 minutes to spare as well. 5.55am departure? No worries.

Not sure I’m sitting in the right seat though. Ah well, never mind – sure the conductor can point me in the right direction. Might even get a whole berth to myself. Feet up, iPod on, get through the rest of Shantaram

And ooh, look at this! We’re moving. We’re leaving early. That’s unheard of! Especially in this country.

Why you’d never get this in England, no way. Like if a train in New Street left 13 minutes before it was scheduled to, why it would be… you know…

Actually it probably wouldn’t be a good thing. Especially if people were like, you know, expecting it to leave at that… time…

Come to think of it… why is it leaving early?

Excuse me, is this the 5667  Kahmakya Express to NJP.

I SAID IS THIS THE 5667 KAHMAKYA EXPRESS TO-

Ah

I don’t know whether you’ve ever jumped off a moving train before. The trick is (in my vast experience): prepare yourself to run. Fast. Don’t land with your feet straight. This will lead you to ‘fall over’.  Act as if you’re about to leap onto a moving treadmill. Like at your local gym, lets say.

Sounds easy enough eh?

Now try it with 20 kilos hanging on your back, 5 on your front, an increasingly unnecessary, awkwardly shaped musical instrument in your left hand, and the obligatory bottle of water in your right.

My own fault really. The realm of the Indian Railway station is not one I like to dwell in, so when I see my trains been allocated a platform, and knowing the eons they tend to wait around, I naturally assumed the train on Platform 5 was… well suffice to say, I would have been well on my way to the arse end of nowhere before I’d have realized my mistake.

Luckily the guy in front of me when I sat down on the wrong train immediately endeared himself to me – a rare thing at the start of an Indian train journey. The norm is a thousand staring, probing dark brown eyes, leaving you several shades of intimidated.

But with his happy smile, and little wiggle of his head, it inspired something in me;  ‘He seems a nice man, lets just make sure I’m on the right train’.

And when his smile grew even wider, and his wiggle became a rather off putting jovial shake of the head, action needed to be taken.

This was the start of my journey to Darjeeling, India’s most famous hill station, perched on the side of the sprawling Himalayas. It’s to be my final adventure in this country, after my first full month of travel. In fact I write this from my hotel room where my door opens up to the most amazing view.

But before the splendor – and cold – of Darjeeling, I was leaving a city that had enthralled and disturbed me in equal measure.

The claustrophobic, dirty, smelly, insistent…

…mighty, magnificent, enriching Varanasi

Spread across the northern shore of the Ganga (the Ganges to you and me, meaning Mother God), its like a ladleful of Marmite on stale mouldy bread. The level of pollution in the water is quite staggering – carrying 1.5 million types of faecal bacteria (drinkable water should have 500) – as the open sewers spew out their contents into the water and waiting bathers.

The city challenges you at every corner. And within the labyrinth of narrow streets, and stairwells to nowhere and everywhere, there’s plenty of corners. And plenty of challenges.

But then again I love a challenge, and I love Marmite.

You see in Hinduism, Varanasi is one the of the holiest places to be laid to rest, to seek refuge in Mother Gods arms on your way to rebirth. Which means funeral pyres for the dead, friends and family, are burnt on ‘ghats’ by the water’s edge . (Ghats are essentially entries into river, platforms beset by steps that submerge into the water)

One of these burning ghats was within seconds of my hostel, the narrow pathway leading to it piled high with wood. To see your loved one cremated and offered to the ganga, the only cost to you is the wood. But its expensive to poor, devout Indian families. 10,000 rupees – around £150 – will get you enough wood to burn for 3 hours, enough to burn a body to ash. However, some families don’t have enough, so they club together whatever they can, and hope for the best. Whatever’s left of the pyre is then either taken or offered to the Ganga.

It doesn’t stop there. Children under 10, pregnant women, holy men, lepers – these people are not allowed to have pyres once death becomes them – their spirits deemed too pure to burn. So they are tied to rock and stone, and dropped at the deepest part of the Ganga to face the current, the litter, the sewage to await their reincarnation.

We were told that sometimes the rope that secures the wrapped corpse underwater gets rotten and splits, leaving the bodies of the ‘pure’ to float up and rest at the shore. I never truly believed it till I saw it myself.

But other than the graphic imagery of bodies burning in open daylight, fully exposed to mourner, local and tourist alike – after the initial shock, there’s nothing disturbing about it.

In fact, beneath the amplified tourist hassle that Varanasi seems to have cultivated (moreso than anywhere else in India) and its animal shit ridden streets, you know, without any shadow of a doubt, that you are in a holy place. Spiritually there’s nothing that I have seen that has come close. It leaves an indelible mark on you and rather than shy away from its fascination with death, it makes you think stronger about those you lost.

At night – when river side ceremonies offer their thanks to Mother God – thousands of floating candles, are laid on the water, left to run the gauntlet of the Ganga current, like stars in a clear night sky, each holding a prayer, a wish, a message to someone who has moved on. Like the man himself, my floating candle to Dutch fought its way bravely across the water, ducking and weaving its way through boats and bathers, alight right until the moment it left my sight, but not my heart.

I couldn’t have spent more than the time I did there, but I feel privileged and thankful for the time I did.

It certainly taught me a lot.

It taught me how to play the classic Indian drum: the Tabla (albeit badly).

It taught me to row a Ganga boat down the river.

It even taught me to trust in people a little more – I was duped into ‘a massage’ by some local Indian men, whose sweaty and rather whiffy hands and fingers made mincemeat out of my head, shoulders, back, chest, feet, thigh, inner thigh… (‘Err…. Where do you think you’re going?’) and I lay there the whole time fuming at my gullibility and what it was going to cost me. It cost me 2 quid in the end, and I’ve never walked away from a massage feeling so relaxed.

And while watching the Villa Blues derby at the roof top restaurant of Hotel Shanti, with the Ganges behind me, it taught me that my experience in India compares quite conveniently to being a Blues fan. Sometimes you’re filled with frustration, anger, enduring long periods of dour nothingness, waiting for the next moment to cheer about something.

But when it comes, the joy and elation you feel is palpable, organically unhinged, happiness unrivalled.

And if Zigic had put more head to ball, or if Jerome had learnt how to pass a ball, that game would have been the perfect swansong to Varanasi – a place that disgusted me some of the time (especially when locals drink the water – un-fucking-believable)…

…but enchanted me most of the time.

But that time came to an end, and my restlessness shows no sign of abating. So as Alex Govan once sang, ‘Keep Right On Till The End of the Road’. Where that’ll be, remains to be seen.

Oh and one more thing.

SOTV