Khajuharo

Ok, so I now find myself in the awkward position of having all the time in the world to write and a mood like thunder with no inclination whatsoever to say anything remotely positive. (My glass is not half empty, its completely drained and I smashed it too.) If someone would be kind enough to airlift me out of India tonight…I will be waiting, bags packed, International Hotel, Bodhgaya. I don’t care where you take me, as long as its not too hot, its clean, there are no cars, no hooters and I can eat anything else other than toast and strawberry jam, oh plus I will not have to smile, be friendly or make conversation with ANYONE for for at least 2 days.

Yes alas, it is true I have turned into one of those rude travellers that simply walks past and through all the ‘hellos’ with head down, no smiling, no eye contact no chit chat…I have turned into the ice maiden from hell and I fear the wind might change soon and I will be stuck in this mode forever and ever. So I really am begging…. will someone please come rescue me? Because that seems to be what happens in all the movies I have been watching 24/7 for the last 2 days on my 24/hour movie channels. Have you ever noticed how pretty much 90% of movies have ‘love stories’ in them somewhere? And the guy always gets the girl, in some way or another, even if its the wrong girl…..or the wrong guy…and for a 35-year-old single woman, alone in India and sick its enough to send you stir crazy!! It’s true…TV rots your brain…I am living proof!

OK, so I suppose I could edit all of this and save my writing for a better, brighter day, but unfortunately for you all, my blog seems to have turned into my online diary.  For the last 20 odd years I have always documented my life….journalling seems to be the only way of neutralizing the negativism…..and seen as I have desperately been trying to sit down and write for the last 3 days or so…you are just going to have to bear with me or log off.

For those of you that don’t know, or who aren’t fortunate enough to be on my mummy grapevine, yehee I’ve been sick again….so I do have a reasonable excuse for all this daytime TV watching…..
But I think I need to start at the beginning…..

I think my last blog ended off with Aline (lovely French girl, lives in Australia) getting on a train for Khajuharo. Those of you who know me will know that I hate pre-planning my trips, but just this once I decided to prebook my next train from Khajuharo to Varanasi. (two days would be enough…I never seem to spend more than two days anywhere) ironically as luck would have it…..Khajuharo turned out to be one of the loveliest, cleanest, most relaxed cities that I have been in India…one of those places I could have easily spent a week in.
Khajuharo is famous in India for two things, some of the most beautiful temples in the world but more so for the Kama Suta calvings that cover them. (Say no more.) When we arrived at the train station we were picked up by Banti, 23years old who very proudly pointed out, first thing, that Khajuhro was the city of ‘love’ and asked rather cheekily if we were looking for Kama Sutra? …I replied very politely that we were not.
On arriving at the hotel, Aline and I decided (after a little persuasion on my behalf) to share a gorgeous room at a very good price so I was incredibly happy… the best room I had stayed in so far and it overlooked a gorgeous little garden restaurant. ( I was a bit confused as to why she seemed so hesitant to share…I mean honestly…I am a complete stranger but what harm could I do? me?) Never the less we went for breakfast and started chatting to the restaurant owner, a really sweet guy called Shumi. What can I say about Shumi? Let’s see here we have a lovely, kind, charming, single man. He owns 3 restaurants in Khajuharo, a hotel and a sweet shop….and yet the reason he is still single is simply beacuse of his mild obsession with finding a Western women. (I can’t for the life of me figure out why so many Indian men are so interested in getting us, Western girls? They clearly have no idea how difficult we can be!)

After making it very clear that we were not viable candidates….he then decided that I would be his love Guru, renamed Gita and Aline, renamed Amber would be my trusty helper…and together we would teach him the great skills of catching a Western woman. Lessons would commence that night over dinner at his other restaurant. We spent the afternoon, however walking around looking at all the temples. They were without a doubt absolutely incredible. You could spend hours just looking at the stone carvings, all completely different and mid bogglingly intricate. ( Not to mention mildly entertaining if you know anything about Kama Sutra – mum, dad…I know NOTHING!:-)

Dinner that night was with Shumi, and a friend he had brought along and it was honestly amazing.  I know I said I would never take photo’s of food…but I simply had to!!! He had made it himself and clearly put loads of effort into it. (I have to admit it was simply the most incredible thing I have eaten here, so maybe there is something to be said for stepping out of your ‘food’ comfort zone)

Most of the evening was centred around us trying to convince Shumi that he might actually be limiting himself by refusing to even look at Indian women….but all our attempts were futile.

Now let me digress a little to tell you about every teacher’s worse nightmare…

….those tiny little things that attach themselves to your scalp and then lay eggs and have hundreds of babies in your hair….itch like hell and are bloody hard to get rid off. (If you are a teacher we only need to hear the word ‘lice’ and we start itching)
Anyway…after our lovely meal we sat in the garden telling jokes…..them translating theirs…and us not laughing! And us telling them ours and them not laughing…..( mmmmmmmm I guess anyone who has ever heard me try and tell a joke won’t be surprised with that:-)
But never the less…..we were all laughing at the fact that we weren’t laughing…and it was a great evening. 
I did however, after a while, started to feel something in my head. At first, I just convinced myself that it was my lice paranoia playing up….(I had found two flees on me after our little play with Pinkie at the station…so had been mildly paranoid since then ) but it persisted to the point that I thought I was going mad… I could feel things running on my head…after about 5 minutes of scratching madly, I discovered to my horror…two black bugs that looked like mini beetles. And so I made my first acquaintance with what the Hindu people called Gandhi. We very quickly excused ourselves, due to my overbearing need to go and comb my hair. (just in case)
Once upstairs I flicked over my head to start combing, only to see hundreds of Gandhi just keep falling out of my hair and onto the ground in front of me. At this point Aline started screaming: “They are in your hair!!! “(she really didn’t need to point that one out!) …..and was trying to push me out onto the balcony…I started screaming as I tried to push my way back into the room, combing frantically to get them all out. After Alines initial shock she then seemed to be unable to stop her self from laughing (I, needless to say, was at this point still unable to see the funny side) Within the space of 20 seconds our entire room was filled with Gandhi. Horrible, black, evil….light guzzling little Gandhi.
It was at this sad time that I found out my true colours…I ran downstairs to call one of the hotel guys who came up to clear them out. I then, being the big girl that I am, locked myself in the bathroom for the next 30 minutes refusing to come out until they were all gone. Yes, I always thought that faced with adversity I would be rather brave…. puke, blood, and other bodily excretions…I have cleaned them all at school without out so much as a blink….but that night I discovered: I don’t like bugs!!! I hate bugs…flying ones, crawling ones I don’t care, I hate them all. And as far as I am concerned they must all die! It was at that low point that I realised I NEVER want to go bush trekking, or jungle climbing or anything else that will bring me into any close proximity to bugs. My first-hand eyewitness Aline says that there were hundreds of them all over the bed, floor, our bags and while Hindu, “all-creature-loving” hotel man attempted to brush them gently outside, she STOMPED on the little buggers!!! (much to his dismay, much to my delight)
An hour later I was still hunting lost Gandhi to terminate them with my shoe while swearing profusely at them in Hindi when my exasperated but trusty Gandhi slayer, Alline, tried to convince me to go to sleep because she had set a trap for them in the bathroom! (Gandhi flock to the light, but being rather stupid bugs they often fly into the wall and fall to the ground. ( at which point I would be waiting to whack them) ) Alinne had left the light on in the bathroom and filled the floor with water!!! Brilliant! We would drown them all!!

Needless to say, Aline couldn’t stop laughing throughout the entire “fright night” experience, and I caught on towards the end.  (But I do think the entire experience has scarred me for life.) We eventually figured out what had actually happened. 

1. As we entered the room Aline had opened the balcony door. At that exact same moment  I flicked my hair over to brush it.
2. As my hair was in mid-flick these hundreds of horrible creatures flew straight into it…almost like being caught in a net.
3. Just my luck I had been standing right infront of the bedroom wall light…which was where they were aiming for…..Yuk!!

After eventually falling asleep I woke up at 4pm and violently threw up every single inch of my gorgeous dinner. (See what happens when I move out of my food comfort zone! )

The next day was Banti day. Ever thankful that I wasn’t sick again I set out with the hotel driver that I mentioned earlier. He took me on his bike to a smaller outside village. While we were there we went and sat with some villagers and they talked while Banti translated the odd thing or two for me. Two of the girls there couldn’t have been older than 22, had both been both married to alcoholics that used to beat them and that had now left them. Heart-breakingly these beautiful gorgeous women are now unable to remarry, have no jobs, no money and the added bonus of their husbands pimping them out as prostitutes when they need money for drink.

When we got back Banti and I went for chai and I got to hear his life’s story. In love with a girl since primary school, who is a different caste to him. Her father found out that they were dating, beat her with a pole…and arranged for her to be married to someone else. If travelling India is hard….it can’t even touch the surface of how hard it must be for so many people that actually live here…..
(It just makes me incredibly thankful that although I’m still single, at least I have hope, and the right to chose my own path in life, whatever or whoever it may be.)

In the afternoon Banti and Shumi said that they wanted to take me to see the river. ‘Sounds lovely‘ I said as long as we were back by 6 so I could catch up on some blogging. (I was leaving that night to catch a train to Varanasi.)

Lesson Number 1: When Indian boy says he “just wants to take you up the road“…ASK: “How far it is???? “We set off in high spirits….they let me drive the tuk-tuk which was fun and I got to wave at loads of gorgeous Indian children on the way. At one point we stopped for something only to have about 8 little boys all clamouring around us laughing, hands outstretched begging for money, biscuits anything. Shumi had half a packet of biscuits that he threw to one of them. Within seconds one of the other boys had thrown the child on the ground and they were rolling around fighting over 2 biscuits….after a couple of minutes the poor child came back to the car with two hand fulls of crumbs and the biggest tears I have ever seen pouring down his face. The other boy was also crying and obviously complaining that he wouldn’t share. Crumb boy then reluctantly handed over one handful of crumbs.

40 minutes later we were still driving, and then we hit what can only be described as the worst road in India….and this continued for another 40 mins. An hour and a half later we reached the river…which in all fairness was beautiful. It was also very clearly a nice scenic and romantic spot, which set the scene perfectly for the boys carefully thought out proposition. Wouldn’t I please stay for a couple more days. I could stay in Shumi’s hotel, eat at his restaurant and Banti would be my personal chauffeur…all for free. I wouldn’t have to spend a cent…AND they would re-buy my ticket to Varanasi when I wanted to go. As flattered as I was I had to explain that if they were this attached to me after one day…then just IMAGINE how heartbroken they would be after 2 more days…(Lesson 2: When in an awkward position use humour to deflect the issue!) So proposition made and rejected…15 minutes later we set off for the 1.5-hour drive back home. I arrived back after 8.30 pm…just in time to grab my stuff and head off to my next train.

Varanasi

Also known as Kashi (city of life) is one of the holiest places in India and its a particularly auspicious place to die. Hindus believe that dying here liberates them from the cycle of birth and death, making it the heart of the Hindu universe. Lonely Planet says: “Brace yourself. You are about to enter one of the most blindly colourful, unrelentingly chaotic and unapologetic discreet places on earth. Most visitors agree that it’s a magical place but it’s not for the faint-hearted. Varanasi takes no prisoners. But if you are ready for it, this may just turn out to be your favourite stop of all. “

I was READY!!!! I was ready!! I was strong…and definitely NOT one of those weak, faint-hearted people the guide was referring to. I couldn’t wait to get there. Having spoken to loads of other travellers who all loved it I was determined to stay put here for a good couple of days.
After another fantastic overnight train ride, I couldn’t help noticing how clean and refreshed I felt. Wouldn’t even need to shower when I got to my hotel…could just head straight out! Bonus!

And then I got off the train.

The first thing that hits you is the absolute stench. The train tracks are covered with faeces and people are simply sitting squatting on the edge of the track using it as a toilet. People are everywhere. I noticed a guy clock me as I got off the train and then proceeded to follow me rather unnervingly. As we were climbing the stairs we walked passed an old man, and I instantly thought he was lying rather still….as I walked passed I realized he was dead. His one entire hand was already half decomposed, literally just skin left and his eyes open and completely white, flies everywhere. By the time I finally exited the maze of a station I wanted to cry my eyes out. ( mmmm…so very strong) Stalker man then approached me to offer me a lift…obviously he thought following me was a ‘good’ tactic in gaining my trust…???
I phoned my hotel for the pickup service and 10 minutes later we were slap bang in the middle of a massive traffic jam. Cars, Bicycles, Rickshaws, smoke, everyone shouting at everyone, hooters blaring. We arrived at the edge of the old town that is built around the many River Ghats in Varanasi and had to walk the rest of the way, 2km of winding fifthly roads with 18kg on my back. By the time we arrived at what can only be described as one of the filthiest hotels, I have seen so far I was dripping with sweat, and could barely stand. Took one look at my room and decided that there was no way in hell I was going to stay there. After another hour of walking from hotel to guest house with another couple I met along the way…we eventually settled on the 2nd place we had been to.
(It took that long for it to sink in that most accommodation, our price range, is pretty awful in Varanasi. )
The one good thing about our rooms was that as awful as they were (I still have bruises from that rock they call a mattress) we did have beautiful views of the Ganges.

Our hotel was right next to the biggest of 2 Burning Ghats. Basically, people pay thousands of Rupees to be cremated on the Ganges and then their ashes are then put into the water. These cremations are done in public throughout the day…with constant parades of people walking through the streets carrying their dead loved ones to the ghat. A ceremonial ritual is then carried out before they are publicly cremated.

A word about the Holy Ganges; (Lonely planet again)  The many ghats are flocked to daily for swimming, bathing or washing of clothes. In Varanasi there are 32 points were raw sewage from the town flow directly into the river! Water that is safe for people to swim in should have less than 500 faecal coliform bacteria in every litre. On testing water from the Ganges, samples show 1.5 million per litre. The river is so heavily polluted in parts that the water is actually septic! Shocking stuff hey!!

Sitting down to eat some lunch, finally in the hotel…the beautiful views from the rooftop hotel where slightly marred by the smoke from the cremations.
I struggled my way through my meal, feeling mildly nausea’s and decided I needed to go have a shower and asleep.
I must add at this time that over the last couple of weeks my appetite has been waning considerable…..(much to my delight of course.) Was very excited to discover my superhuman ability to survive on 1.5 meals a day and no snacks…add mild diarrhoea, and you have: The worlds best diet ever. (But as is always the case, if it seems too good to be true then it generally is.) Heading out into Varanasi later that evening and the next day…I struggled. I was finally in my exciting city of choice and I absolutely hated it. The winding little streets are like filthy mazes. Everywhere you look are piles of rubbish…..I watched in amazement as people order food from the stalls simply drop the cups and papers on the floor afterwards.( I don’t think I ever saw A dustbin while I was there) The stench of rubbish and smoke just seemed to permeate into every inch of my body, I felt constantly nausea, weak and could no longer even bring myself to eat anything. I tried to explore, I really did, I tried to find the great German bakery mentioned in the guide, I found the sign, the door, but no bakery inside? I went on a 5am boat ride to experience the beauty of the Ghats…I just felt sick. I hung around and watch a cremation ceremony…I just felt sick…..I even tried to get past the burning Ghat and explore the other ghats….but got so absolutely lost I had to turn back in tears. And the whole time: Gayle Gremlin is screaming in my head: “You call yourself a traveller?’ ‘What’s wrong with you women???” “Tough it UP!!!” Eventually after a day and a half of constant  nausea, feeling physically exhausted and emotionally drained I was forced to declare defeat and accept the fact that maybe I was just not going to get the full “Varanasi experience” in the state that I was in! And just maybe I should get out of this hell hole and try to get better! I crawled back to my grotty hotel, spent half a day arguing with my hotel guy who states he sells train tickets but then seems unable to actually do that…..” not possible, not possible” His final suggestion was that I just go to the train station and wait for a bus!! He had no idea what time the bus left…so I could be waiting there the whole day ( Later I found out that the bus left 4am…thank goodness I never took up any of his pearls of wisdom! )

Eventually, I got so frustrated with him that I stormed out to find SOMEONE who could actually help me! (It has never been so hard to get out of a city before!) And low and behold….a couple of streets up I did. Clearly it “is possible” to escape Varanasi…if you find someone that actually knows what they are doing. By the time I got home and crawled into bed (or should I say onto the rock), I was dry gagging from nausea and having eaten nothing the whole day….. and had to admit that I wasn’t super human…and yes just maybe I had been a complete idiot for not dealing with this a couple of weeks earlier when it had started.

Bodhgaya

And so I arrived in Bodhgaya almost 6 days ago….and have pretty much spent the whole time resting and just getting better (and writing this blog in sections) Being the drama queen that I am was totally convinced on day 1 that, yes, I was going to die.  Die of starvation in my room, and like that poor man on Varanasi station, nobody would know who I was or where I had come from…and I’d be buried somewhere in India with only “Tall, White women” written on my tomb. The doctor I saw said I needed to eat rice and bananas but I just couldn’t stomach the stuff……eventually I started ordering toast….and pretty much just ate that for 3 days.

The last 2 days have been so much better…..and I am pleased to report I am even smiling again. My first day here I met a really sweet man called Santos who has pretty much been my hero. He found me almost about to murder a poor Rickshaw guy who had insisted he knew where the health clinic was but then stopped halfway up a hill and asked me to get out because he was clueless.
Santos stopped to ask if everything was ok: I sobbed: “Just you tell him not to say he knows where the doctors is when he doesn’t, Tell him. tell him!!”
Santos: “Ok ma’ I don’t shout a the man because you are sick! (Shame on me!)

Anyway, Santos and his trusty 250 then became my chauffeur for the next couple of days….taking me to the doctors in the mornings and the evenings and driving me to the odd sight when I felt up to it! (another brilliant example of the hospitality westerners are shown here!)

Bodhgaya is another very important spiritual town that attracts Buddhist pilgrims from around the world. It was here 2600 that Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment beneath a bodhi tree and became the Buddha. The entire town is filled with Buddhist temples and Monasteries from around the world, (my plan had been to actually stay in one of them when I got here). There is also THE BIGGEST Buddha statue I have ever seen, 25 meters high!

So all in all its been a great place to rest and I no longer feel like taking the first flight out of here! Have made friends with the sweetest little boy also called Santos who runs up to me every time I leave the hotel. Bless, the child is continually eating and always trying to get me to try his food. (Not going to happen.)

And alas…I thought I would be finished by now….but 5 days of blogging…and noooooooooo there is more!!! You see yet again God heard my desperate plea…and yesterday sent me a gorgeous French man with the most amazing blue/green eyes ever! ( I have a thing for eyes!) We met over breakfast and agreed to have dinner last night! I sat in this mildly expensive Indian restaurant grinning from ear to ear. Closest I think I have had to a date….in ummmmmmm about 3 years…and yes…..doubt-ably not really a date but in sheer delirium, I happily convinced myself it was! Was simply delighted to be having a great conversation, ( can’t much remember what it was about, but it was intellectual, I think I was too busy staring into those incredible eyes ) and eating great food!

And THAT brings me to the end!!!! Well done those of you that got through it all in one sitting…you must love me lots!!!
You have my solemn promise that I will try and blog more frequently, but that being said it’s not always easy.

I am also mildly concerned about Midget…. it been well over a week since here last spamming attempt and I am DEEPLY worried…..so if you see her tell her I love her and to get back to what she does well!

Kate and Angie….thanks for your lovely messages…was going to reply after this …but think I have had enough of writing today. Kate…my return flight to London is for July next year so best you and Harvey sort out a wedding date by then!:-) That’s a direct order from Cupid!

and Mr Sparrow…..are you out there?

Am heading out to Calcutta tonight. Feeling strong, healthy and happy, once again determined to enjoy the India Experience!

Love to you all!

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