when i pulled into the teeming metropolis of amritsar, i got off the bus and got attacked by rickshaw-waalahs all clamoring for my business. stupidly, i didn't look up a hotel beforehand, so i stood there, while the rickshaw drivers swarmed around me, and patiently looked up the name of a cheap hotel in amritsar. actually, since i've been sick, i've had at least one bathroom emergency per day, where i suddenly need to get to a bathroom as quickly as possible, and i could feel this coming on, so i was in a hurry to get there. but the hotel i wanted was full, and i was in agony, ready to burst at any moment, the most uncomfortable feeling in the world, so i told the rickshaw driver to take me anywhere. i've never violated my own rule, that i will never put myself at the mercy of a rickshaw driver, always a bad idea, because they'll take you to wherever they get commission, some overpriced, bug-ridden place, and such was the case, but i was desperate. so we arrived at a hotel where they actually made me stand there and fill out a form and pay, despite me clearly being in distress and needing a toilet immediately. 500 rupees for a room. given, it had its own bathroom and a tv, but the place had a cockroach population that certainly made us humans a minority. but i had access to my own bathroom, plus hollywood movies on tv, so i was happy. i opened the closet where they usually keep the bedding, but an army of cockroaches had already laid claim there, so i just sighed, got out my little summer sleeping and fell asleep. a note about sleeping bags - don't bring one of those huge, heavy, voluminous, cotton things that most people take camping, that must be strapped to the outside of your pack. but do bring one of the little football-sized summer bags you can get now for really cheap. i have a lafuma bag that costs about $60, and i've used it tons of times on this trip. you will definitely use it on the train, where you lay down and sleep but where no bedding is provided (unless you travel first class, which few travelers do), and you will find tons of opportunity to use it if you employ the rock-bottom accomodation options that india has to offer.
the "must-see" stops in india often seem a bit disappointing - visually impressive but so much of the surroundings detract from the granduer of the thing itself - congestion, noise, fever-pitch commercialism. this is the case, somewhat, with the golden temple, but it is still a really amazing thing. it is a sikh temple, a religion based on the teachings of the ten gurus, the first of which is guru nanek and is the most revered. sikhs are the ones here bearing turbans...it must be somewhere specified in their teachings that it is respectful to cover one's head. most people here wear turbans or bandanas, and everyone, including me, is required to wear something over their head before entering the temple. so i pulled out my bandana, left my shoes at the very efficient and busy place that stores people's shoes for free, and walked barefoot into the shallow pool before the gate, which you must walk through, although i have no idea why. the golden temple is in the middle of a pool of water. the pool is walled by a large fortress-like structure. it's probably best that you just look at my pictures instead of me trying to describe it. there's a long line to get into the temple, which i stood in for about an hour. they only let a certain amount of people in at a time, obviously, or the place would be completely overrun. inside there are devout sikhs singing and giving services...then the pilgrims that entered with me all respond to the words of the priest at the same time...i just observe since i know very little about sikhism and certainly don't know their customs. the temple has three levels, and i explore all of them, but it seems very small inside compared to how large it looks outside. it may be that a small amount of the temple is open to visitors. one of the most amazing things is that the temple is actually made of real gold. it's possibly the most opulant place i've ever been to. that said, i couldn't escape the feeling that this was just a building, and overall i failed to be totally thrilled by it.
i left and found a rickshaw driver to take me to the india-pakistan border, where mostly indian tourists gather to watch the ceremonial border closing, which takes place near sunset everyday. indian guards sporting enormous, curled moustaches march and dance for 100 metres from the pakistan border outwards towards the crowd, then back again. the whole ordeal is echoed by the pakistanis on the other side. the indian crowd gets really worked up...there are throngs of them, and a guy on a loudspeaker shouts "HINDUSTAN!", to which the crowd responds with something that sounds like "NUMBER ONE!", though i'm not really sure. i believe "hindustan" is what indians call their own country. actually, there's this pervasive fun-loving feeling at the border. i find it exceedingly odd that something this festive exists between any two countries, but especially between two violent and nuclear-armed rivals like india and pakistan. it was at least just interesting to peer into another country from india. i've talked to several people who have traveled very extensively, maybe more than i ever will, who said that pakistan was their favorite country, with the nicest people and places. i'd definitely like to make it over someday.
when i walked back from the border my rickshaw driver was waiting there for me, and we made the long journey back through the countryside to amritsar. on this trip i was wondering how i was going to find a cheap hotel in amritsar, because i had visited a hotel there called grand, recommended by my guidebook and clean and cheap, but they had changed a lot since 2003 and now their cheapest rooms were 1000 rupees. it was a really nice place, but i was trying to do a shoestring-budget trip, and i had never paid nearly that much. but as i was coming back into the city, i figured, why not? maybe i won't stay in these kind of places every night, but for tonight, i'd treat myself. and i'm pretty glad i did. it was 1000 rupees ($20), but it was clean, spacious, had a bathroom and tv, and a nice courtyard, restaurant, and bar. i met two brothers from england who were traveling india by motorcycle, on something like their 10th visit, and we got along pretty cool. we celebrated my birthday in the bar there, even though it was early i figured i wouldn't have another chance to celebrate it, and even though i couldn't drink more than one beer because my stomach was still giving me problems.
earlier that day, i had gone to get a ticket to haridwar, because i didn't really want to stay very long in amritsar, a TIC - Typical Indian City - large, polluted, crowded, noisy, and dirty. god, getting the train ticket was a process. first i spent an hour finding where to even buy the ticket, during which i had to give a policeman 50 rupees for him to show me to the booking office. then i stood in a line, with perhaps 10 people in front of me. it took about an hour for the line to move through those 10 people. the lines in train stations, i've noticed, move inexplicably, glacierally slow. when i get to the window, i say where i want to go and i hand over the money. given, there's usually one or two catches to doing that, because nothing is simple in india, but still, i don't spend 10 minutes there. i don't understand what the locals do at the window. usually they give the guy some money, then he gives them back some money, then he hands them something, then the person in line hands all of it back, then the process repeats. i'm completely confounded by it. actually, most nicer hotels, maybe even the cheaper ones, will buy a train ticket for you, i've heard, for a fee, but i've never tried this. plus i think i'm getting a bit better about travelling around. anyway, i couldn't get a train ticket for that night, the night after i saw the golden temple and the border, so i got it for the next night. night trains are the best, because you can just sleep through the travel. on trains, in the class i get, second sleeper class, you get your own berth to lie down on. it's nice. second sleeper is the classic shoestring traveler class, i believe. there's a huge price difference between what i believe is called "third tier a/c", where you get meals and clean bedding in an air-conditioned environment, and second sleeper, where they have some fans blowing and you get a berth to lie on, but there's no meals, bedding, or air conditioning. the journey between amritsar and haridwar is pretty long, and takes about 10 hours, but it was only 190 rupees, about $4. besides, it's cool enough now in india, especially here up north, where you don't need a/c.
so i had an extra day in amritsar. i mostly just milled around in the morning, hanging out at the restaurant at the nice hotel i was in, then i tried an upscale restaurant in amritsar called "crystal," which was really nice, though the meal came to about 400 rupees (about $8), far more than i would ever pay normally. in india, it seems like 50 ($1), or less, is a cheap meal and 100 ($2), or little more, is about standard for cheap travelers. 200 ($4) is midrange, and anything beyond that is quite upscale. though it's entirely possible to pay 1000 or 2000 rupees, or more i'm sure, in india, on a meal just for yourself, depending on where you are. the patrons of crystal were mostly well-off indians and, interestingly, a lot of upper class western travelers. when you travel in india, you'll begin to notice that there are several classes of foreigners here, each employing a different traveling style. i would say there are at least three different kinds of travelers here. the first is the backpacker, the budget traveler, who tries to visit everywhere in india on one trip, which is impossible. it's a bit of a shame, since the best of india seems to lie away from the big places, the frequented places, and you have to spend a bit of time in each place to get to know it and the small places that lie around it. it seems like this kind of traveler can spend 6 months here and only here the surface, superficial india. the other is the budget traveler who goes from place to place but spends an appreciable amount of time exploring the area around each destination, or at least spending some time in each major location, so the experience is better appreciated and absorbed. the last class is the upper tier traveler, the wealthy travelers, usually older than the young backpacker crowd. i have nothing against the way they travel, actually i think it's pretty awesome, but they exist in a world apart from us, and i'm often struck by how little i see them. only when stepping into a hotel that costs 2000 or more rupees per night, even $200 dollars or more per night, or a restaurant that constitutes one of the best in town, do you see them. i'm really not trying to say that my way of exploring india is any more authentic, because it's not, i'm just more and more curious about the way these people see india, which is totally different from the way i see it. i feel like i never see them outside, only inside. i'd imagine that if you have enough money, it's probably entirely possible to be shielded from the more unsavory india, the pestilence and the crowds, and private taxis will probably carry you from hotel to restaurant, and guides will probably bear you deftly through the area's attractions. i've met alot of these people, actually...very good people, just experiencing india on a bigger budget.
at night i took a cycle rickshaw, steered by a funny driver, to a bookstore and bought a couple books for when i get bored, and for traveling on buses and trains. i got "the jungle book" by rudyard kipling, an obvious choice, and "the sun also rises," by ernest hemingway. it's funny how different stores are here than in the west. i feel like i really want to describe to you how different it is but i won't be able to. there's no door, just a cramped, open, 10 by 20 foot space where the books, all used and worn, and sitting in unkempt, vertical piles. so you crouch down and look at the title of the bottommost one, then slowly stand up until you've surveyed the entire stack. then you move on.
the cycle rickshaw driver was waiting outside for me, so we went back to the hotel. it's funny - in amritsar there are a couple of hills, and the driver can't pedal you up those, so you both get out and push the whole richshaw up, and then you get back on and sail down the other side of the hill, the wind in your face, at a speed that negates any kind of control, the familiar and casual prospect of death thrillingly near, as on all indian roads. i paid the rickshaw driver 100 rupees, an astronomical sum for a cycle rickshaw, but he made me laugh the entire time and i liked him, plus i feel sortof guilty with the rickshaw drivers. it's often some bearded 60 year old man, pedaling your young, able, mid-twenties body a considerable distance across town.
anyway, when i returned to the hotel i met "deep," an employee of the hotel who is studying hotel management. my experience with people who want to be friends with you in hotels is that they usually just want money, and get it in all sorts of devious ways while pretending to be friends, but deep was really a good guy. we made friends and hung out for the night, visiting a local temple where we crawled through artificial caves and had an orange mark painted on our foreheads by a priest. one of the reasons why i know deep is a genuinely good person is that he refused to let me pay for the rickshaw rides, and i had to fight with him in order for him to allow me to pay for dinner. we went to the golden temple a second time (there's no admission fee), at night, and i saw a totally different version of what i had already seen during the day. not only was the temple strikingly different at night, but it was so nice to be with someone, especially a local, who could appreciate it with me. when i went by myself, i was basically just checking the golden temple off my list of things to see, shrugging, and turning around, but now i was really appreciating it. plus he showed me a couple spots i had missed on my previous visit. we went to a restaurant in amritsar, which i loved because it was one of those spots, like bharat had showed me in delhi, that is clean and where the food is very good, but is obviously visited almost exclusively by locals. i love seeing places with locals. it's almost as though if you don't see a place with a local guide, you don't really see it at all. i think i'm going to employ couchsurfing more, not as a way of staying places for free, but for getting shown around.
afterwards deep dropped me at the train station, and as a testament to how stubbornly confusing and difficult india continues to be, not even deep was completely sure what car i was supposed to get on. we ran from one end of the train to the other, and asked a bunch of different people, and finally settled on a car. i laid down on my berth, got out my sleeping bag, got out my book, and basically just settled in comfortably. but, as i found out after about an hour, i wasn't in the right car. if a local can't figure out correctly what car to be in, and this was a train he had taken many, many times to get to rishikesh (where i was going), then how could i possibly figure it out? soon an indian man was tapping me and gesturing for me to come down off of the berth, and i was thinking "you can't be serious." so i got down, and started looking for the right car. i talked to the conductor, who spoke very little english, and he looked at my ticket and said "last car." so on the next stop, i got off, not knowing when the train was going to start moving again and hoping to god i would reach the last car (indian trains are extremely long) before that happened. i ran to the last car, and just before i got to it, the train started moving, so i jumped on a moving train, and into a very amused crowd of standing indians, with less space between them than most cattle when being transported, in a car that could not have been more clearly the wrong one. but the last car on the train nonetheless. so until the next stop i stood laughing with the indians at this situation, they spoke no english but would occasionally say something in hindi, and everyone would crack up laughing. i just assumed it was good-natured and laughed along. at the next stop i got off and ran around asking where S1 was (that's the designation for my car). luckily i found an indian, ravi, who had also got on the wrong car and was destined for s1, and who spoke pretty good english. he was headed for rishikesh as well. finally i had found my proper berth, and it was about midnight. i settled in and slept until haridwar, my stop, with only one mistake where i got off one stop too early on the advice of another indian traveler on the train. like i said, india is confusing, even for indians. i forget who told me this, an indian definitely, but one of the maxims i've taken away from this experience is: "india is beautiful...but difficult."
i went with ravi and his friend to rishikesh from hardiwar. we took a shared taxi. again, india is difficult. first we piled into an auto rickshaw, and a cycle-rickshaw driver came up behind and, for a reason i still don't understand, slapped the back window with his hand so hard it broke. so we stopped and soon there were about 5 indians passionately engaged in argument with each other. so we found another rickshaw. i never would have believed it, but you can fit 13 people, possibly more, in a rickshaw. i always feel at a loss to describe accurately the things i see in india. you have no idea how crowded 13 people to a rickshaw is. search for a picture of an indian auto-rickshaw online and you might begin to have some idea. in the west, 4 people to a rickshaw would be crowded. it's actually a pretty far drive from hardiwar to rishikesh, so i was pretty uncomfortable, mashed up against the side of the thing. in a rickshaw, there's no respect, or expectation of respect for personal space. people use your legs, arms, shoulders, whatever they can grab, as handholds as they clamber on, trying to fill some void of unused space.
i spent a while walking around, although i was pretty sure i was not in the rishikesh frequented by tourists, since i hadn't seen a single one yet and rishikesh is a very popular destination. rishikesh is right on the ganges river and is reknowned as a new-ager hangout, where ashrams (yoga/meditation retreat centers) abound. i didn't seem to be in any sort of idyllic rishikesh, i was pretty much in a TIC - a Typical Indian City. i was very tired from traveling actually, i haven't reached the point where i sleep soundly, though i do rest comfortably, on a train journey. so i found a cheap guesthouse, just 150 rupees ($3), and fell asleep, then woke up at night, went to a restaurant, and went back to bed.
this morning i was determined to find the tourist rishikesh, usually the nicer part of any place, and i ran into a german who led me right to it. i had already eaten breakfast (just 40 rupees), but we went to a place right on the beach of the ganges and talked for a bit - he ate and i just drank chai. today i am actually hoping to go to missouri, a hill station near here, smaller and more sedate, as well as less commercial, than rishikesh. from there i am hoping to move on to gangotri, the source of the ganges. these places are quite remote so they're a little difficult to get to. the german guy, whose name i didn't get, was actually extremely well traveled in this state, and recommended tiny little villages that don't even exist in my guidebook. so i may visit one of those as well.
this was a big update since it's been a while from my last entry...i'll try to update as much as i can, not too difficult since internet cafes abound in tourist areas. there's probably a bit more to see in rishikesh but since i'll be back after going to the more remote areas, i can see it then. i'm actually sortof anxious to see missourri. i've heared there's a good school there for learning hindi, and i might try to take it up for a few days to get a foothold on the language. often you will try to communicate something simple with someone who knows absolutely no english and will wish you had at least basic hindi skills.
until next time - namaste.
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