Amritsar for tourists- the closing of the Indian- Pakistan border

Every day a wonderful spectacle takes place viewed by Indian and Pakistani patriots and tourists alike. Two gates, one on the India side and one on the Pakistan side and grandstands on both sides packed with the audience. A cheerleader works the crowds and women run the flags. Added to our side, was the release of fishermen, deported back to India.

The soldiers are the real performers in this drama. Running with kicks worthy of ballet dancers, pairs take their turn to parade in front of their cheering audience. The two flags come down in unison, the gates are closed. Our last note from colourful India. Heading for home now!

Amritsar for Pilgrims

If you take off your shoes, cover your head and wash your feet you can visit Sri Harmandir Sahib - the abode of God (the golden temple) along with some 100 000 others per day. A pool surrounds the temple and pilgrims wash in its waters (ladies behind a discrete screen).We queued for over an hour to be able to enter the temple and it was worth the wait.  Pilgrims can partake of a free meal cook by volunteers in an enormous kitchen. Such logistics are mind-boggling.

Amritsar 1

Hands in the decoration point down to earth to remind owners to be humble

We took our last Indian train to return from Amritsar at 5pm yesterday. 6 hours of non-stop eating. It was a fast chair seat train so first we had a welcoming drink, then a bottle of water, then afternoon tea of snacks and tea, then tomato soup and roll and finally a curry dinner. Those waiters deserve their tips. Go to India just for the train journeys!
And if you want to learn about India, join a heritage walking tour. We visited a lane once called 'crawling lane'. A colonial woman had been assaulted there so therein after the Indians who went down it had to crawl on hands and knees; how about that for power? And of course the dreadful Jallianwala Bagh massacre cannot be forgotten.

  

Italian tiles decorate some of the old houses

Trees cannot be cut down so they go through buildings

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The BIG city of Kolkata

Our train was supposed to leave Gaya at 11:30pm.  We shared the waiting room with a wedding party and numerous other floor-sleeping travellers. Lots of children!  I tried to blot out the noise with music on my phone but the crowd won  out. Alas, our train was going to arrive at 1:15am and after a hurried cross to  the other platform, we  found our carriage with a minute to spare, made our beds and made every attempt to sleep at 1:30am.  We are still intrepid but it may be time to go up-market...

So, we are now in Kolkata with people using the stand pipes to wash away the sleepiness: life on the street. Even  across from the High Court of Calcutta, people were taking their morning wash from the gushing pipes and stands were cooking all sorts of breakfast food whilst lawyers walked to court in their pressed white trousers or black suits though we did not find out who was higher. I guessed the white trouser brigade as they looked more pompous!

As befitting the old capital of India, Kolkata has a layer of the British raj. The Victoria monument is enormous (and shabby) with statues of Victoria and King George and Robert Clive. Many of the old buildings reflect the  commercial activities of the East India Company. There are churches associated with such people as Warren Hastings and a memorial to the Black hole of Calcutta. This city brings back a lot of school history but I know I was told the British biased version!


We were given the task of looking up Octavius Steel tea company, started by the ancestors of a walking companion of Francis in Toowoomba. Next to the old GPO was the instructions and there it was. Now the company has changed hands and the history of the company is fading fast.

People sleeping on street near our hotel

Flower market- garlands of marigold

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Peace and calm in Bodh Gaya

Outside of Varanasi is Sarnath where Buddha 'preached' to his first disciples but Bodh Gaya is the pinnacle of the holies for Buddhists as it is the place where Buddha achieved enlightenment. Alas, the bodhi tree is not the original one he sat under (some say it was the jealous wife of King Ashoka who poisoned it) but an off-Spring grown from a branch of the original tree which was taken to Sri Lanka.
After noisy and chaotic Varanasi, Bodh Gaya is peaceful and almost without horn- blowing. Buddhists gather to sit in mediation or to chant: they do not push or jostle you.
Japan, China, Thailand Bhutan etc have built their own temples in their own style but the main temple is the one next to the bodhi tree.

Somehow we manage to personalise our trips to places. This time we visited a school for orphaned girls who belong to the lowest of the lower castes in Bihar.  We know of this school through Jayshree and our friends in Toowoomba who donate money to this school via Jayshree. Even though it was Sunday, the whole school greeted us and Francis spoke to the girls in Hindi (with a little help from the teachers, Heena and one very bright pupil) about the importance of educating women! But the amazing event that took place was the girls' demonstration of their skills in karate. Fierce determination was in their eyes and we could only think that this discipline will see them through the tough life that lies ahead for them.

The ghats

The wholesale flower market is dependent on the religious ceremonies 

Life lives side by side with death on the ghats. Clothes are washed and dried in the steps, people use them as their baths, newly wedded couples come in their wedding clothes for blessings from 'holy mother Ganges ' and then there are the cremations. The low cast men (Dalits) make the bamboo stretchers, they prepare the wood (weighed according to how much is needed), they light the fires and collect the ashes.  Religion dominates every aspect of Varanasi and cows lead a charmed life.

Vegetarians rule here

Varanasi

 NOTHING, NOTHING can prepare you for Varanasi: streets with no pavements so you share the road with bicycles, rickshaws, cars, motorbikes, dogs, goats, cows of every shape and size. The air is filled with dust,  car and cycle horns of every pitch and  there were brass bands which played off key as if you needed more noise and chaos. Add to the mix temperatures in the mid-thirties and that is this 'holy' city for pilgrims and priests and tourists. The Ganges at dawn (6am) was lapping our boat and launching a small candle onto the water seemed appropriate if a little kitch. We had to buy it as the boy selling them was in a homemade boat made of a few polystyrene boxes somehow stuck together. How enterprising is that?

 Sunrise is so peaceful -The sound of oars and the clothes being beaten clean(!) on the shore

We went down to the main ghat for the sunset 'arti' (Hindu prayers) along with thousands of others. Somehow, the scene was best described as a 'spectacle'; a 'light and sound' show. A few Sanskrit prayers would have sufficed. This Varanasi, however...

Lucknow to Varanasi

The train to Varanasi had come from the west of Lucknow and was travelling on for a further 24 hours to Kolkata. You have to admire Indian travellers: we sat next to a family with young children who had to be washed, fed, entertained for days on a few bunk beds.  Actually, I think the work gets left to the mothers! I would love to see the stats for these train journeys; how many meals are served, how much tea and coffee is ordered, how many chefs, how many waiters. How do they know to bring new sheets for us? There must have been an equal number of people living in Varanasi station as were on that train...

Varanasi on the Ganges 

Cows have an especially good life in Varanasi. They loved our banana skins.

A walk around Lucknow

We were the only two people who turned up for the guided walk around old Lucknow. Apart from the mosque and the city gate, and the Bara Imambara, real life goes on in the chowk (market) and the living quarters off the main lane. A maze, which we could never  have negotiated on our own, took us to see the original kebab 'restaurant', the kulcha (bread) makers, the house where Gandhi stayed, the stencil cloth printer ( for chikan cloth embroidery)  the boys who pan the drains for gold coming from the jewellers. We stopped for tea and to taste the kulcha. No welfare state here; everyone is trying to earn a living.

These are unani medicines in the treatment centre. I could smell fennel and cumin but the rest were ??

Lucknow

Our two days travel break in Delhi was mainly spent playing sardines on the metro: a new meaning to 'personal space'. Of course on one train we got the special seats. Francis got 'old' and I got 'disabled'. Then we pensioners got separated from our young ladies. Jayshree quickly held up one finger before we sped away. I understood.

Today we flew to Lucknow with many workers returning from Oman. Their suitcases/ boxes were wrapped in cloth, sealed with masking tape, tied up with rope and then wrapped in that cling film for good measure. Made our small padlock lock a 'walkover' for a potential thief...

Lucknow is a small city of about 3million. They all seems to be on the road when our cycle rickshaw was taking us back to our hotel. There is great dilemma about taking a cycle rickshaw. Should one very thin man be pulling two large tourists? Should we bypass him for motorised transport and deny him a living? Should we go for the non-polluting form of transport? Should we suffer the jolts to our backs? Anyway, he had no idea where our hotel was, cycled double the distance, and we gave double the asking price!  Duty done.
We went to the residency where cannons shelled the British army and their families in the siege of Lucknow. The grandure was there but the remains have been preserved with walls pot-marked with bullet and cannon holes.  I understand there are a couple of versions as to the beginnings of the mutiny. Were both the Hindu and Muslim soldiers asked to bite the bullets greased with a mixture of beef and pork fat? The uprising was stirring before this incident.

Chasing tigers

The sign, as you return to the Bhandavgarh national park exit,  says " sorry if you did not see us, but we saw you!". Bhandavgarh is the best organised of the tiger parks. Only 50 jeeps in total are allowed  into sections of the park. Each tiger needs its own territory so 65 tigers occupy a lot of territory and it is somewhat like looking for a needle in a haystack. Tourists can only enter 20% of the park. Forest guards ride elephants through the forest.

Safari 1( 6am - 11 am): we saw paw tracks
Safari 2 (2:30pm to 6 pm): we saw the long grass in the distance in which a tiger was relaxing. Two forest workers cycled in (we were not allowed any nearer) on push bikes, chatted and took some photos and then went home. Alas, we had to leave the park as the fine for the guides and drivers, if late out, is to lose their jobs for a week or two.
Safari 3 (another early morning start): we saw where she had sat down on the roadside.  An elephant honked, a tiger roared and then we saw her walking in the long grass. She was so clear and huge and amazing. No photos but such memories of those stripes moving so fast.

Despite only one sighting, a safari, in itself, is interesting. Rising before sunrise, we rugged up in blankets to check in with the parks' authority and collect our guide. The gates opened at 6:40 and then it was 'all systems go'.  Guides are like well-informed trackers. They look for signs of tigers on the roads as tigers like to walk the roads- it being soft on the pads! Being solitary, we went from one territory to another with the guide knowing the occupant's life history. They have stories of all the others sightings which is not much consolation! What safaris lack in tigers are made up in bird life: twitchers heaven is India.