Back to India

We spent a total of 2 1/2 months in India and posted very little while we were there. Part of the reason is that in the weeks prior to India we had been moving very fast, always thinking about our next move. When we got to India, we tried to let the time open up a little. We didn't want to be planning too far ahead or feel beholden to deadlines. Hence, a lack of blogging. Of course, keeping up the blog is a chore that sucks up time and money wherever we are (we still love doing it, though!), and right now (as in 1:02 am our time) we finally happen to have a few hours to do some India photos before our eyes start blurring from staring at the screen for too long.

I'm sure most of you haven't really had a clue as to where we are from day to day over these last 10 1/2 months, so posting about India makes as much since as anything else, even though we left there on October 11th and have since touched foot in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. But for those of you who like a little certainty, we are currently in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. While in Laos, we realized (with the help of our new travel consultant, Ellis Ballard) that the cheapest way to get from Cambodia to The Philippines would be to fly through Kuala Lumpur. According to Ellis, KL is the new BKK when it comes to cheap flights. We decided we might as well see the city so we are staying three nights with Polly, a Servas host, and then one night in the airport before flying to The Philippines on Thursday. Polly has graciously shared with us her spare bed and her wonderfully speedy mac.

So far, Kuala Lumpur is absolutely unlike anywhere else we have been in Asia. It is almost aggressively modern, the streets are clean with wide sidewalks and street signs, the population is diverse ethnically and religiously, and there is a rich variety of delicious foods ("they call Malaysia 'The Palace of Foods,'" said our ridiculously positive taxi driver). Frankly, the city reminds me more of San Francisco and Silicon Valley than it does of other Asian cities we've seen. Plus it sits amidst lovely green hills.

Before I go further, I'll just say that the posts from now on have little to do with linear time. The photos you are about to see were taken sometime between today and August 28th.

Back to India. Another reason why it has been difficult to blog about India is that it is simply a very intense country. We contend that every day in India you will see something that you not only have never seen before, but could not even have imagined possible. It is one of those countries in which you really have to go there to get what we mean. The barrage of sights, smells, and sounds can be super invigorating and also really overwhelming. The landscape changes dramatically from state to state, as does the clothing, the religion, and the language. Sometimes it feels like wonderful surprises await you at every turn, like a stream of yellow-clad Hindu devotees stopping traffic as they carry sacred Ganges river water to their homes, or the Dalai Lama waving at you from the passing car. Yet other times the things you've never seen before are also the things you prayed you would never see, like a family of six sleeping on the meridian of the highway . . . in between countless other families of two to ten. 

For this last reason, India was also our most difficult country for us emotionally. There were always endless things to write down and frustratingly inadequate time and words and emotional stamina to actually write. Perhaps this is another reason why we actually took relatively few photos and posted little. So although we won't delve much here into the complexity of our experience, the next few posts will hopefully give you a sense of some of the incredible that makes India the Incredible India that it is ("Incredible India" is India's big tourism campaign slogan, of which locals often, and endearingly, like to remind you).  Also, we would seriously recommend you read A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry.  We both read it while in India, admittedly compounding the intensity of our time there, and we are still trying to process the truth to which it bears witness.  

Our favorite hole-in-wall breakfast place in the old city of Varanasi.  Lacking just the right standards of cleanliness it takes to make food taste really good.  The old city of Varanasi is an incredible maze of tiny alleyways in which you never know what you will encounter around the next bend.  Will it be a gigantic bull with colored horns, a hoard of children selling bindis, an orange-robed sadu doing puja at his tiny shrine, or simply a wall?  This chef's kitchen is actually in the alleyway, leaving the 6 ft by 6 ft room of a counter and stools to be crowded by his customers.

We met this boy on our first day who I (Tessa) actually remember meeting three years ago when I was last in the city.  Three years ago he was selling postcards.  Now he is a "tour guide."  His first question was "Do you know Goldie Hawn?" and at the time we didn't know that this was code for "I won't give up until I earn commission for the scarves you don't even know you will most certainly buy."  By some miraculous event that Goldie may or may not know she participated in, every single child wandering the streets of the old Varanasi has an "uncle" who is Goldie Hawn's best friend.  Apparently she did buy some scarves here, because this kid did take us to a man named Pappu who had photos of Ms. Hawn in his shop buying scarves as well as a typed (but signed) letter from her expressing her undying commitment to their friendship.

Since Alisa and I can't seem to resist trying on scarves, even ones involved in a scam, and even though we try not to support child workers, we ended up buying a couple.  Honestly, once you've been cornered into the back room of a shop, the effort it takes to make it out of there alive without buying something sometimes does not even feel worth the energy.

The boat crew that took us on a Ganges River cruise.  The boy on the left is also a "tour guide," and he recruited us for the ride.  The thread he wears across his chest denotes that he is a Brahmin, a member of Hinduism's priestly caste group.  Brahmins, who are traditionally entrusted with the duty of knowing and preserving all the sacred rites and rituals, are supposed to wear this thread at all times, changing it in a special ceremony annually.

For Hindus, the Ganges is incredibly sacred.  Hindus believe in samsara, or the cycle of birth and death.  Dying in Varanasi is one way in which Hindus can finally break free of this cycle and achieve moksha, or liberation.  Hence, Indians come from all over the country to die here and have there bodies ritually burned on the banks.  Some people, however, cannot be burned and their bodies are simply wrapped and placed into the river.  These people include children under age 5 and those with leprosy.  A dead body floats in the foreground and a boat presumably carrying some of the thousands of daily pilgrims is in the background.

Into this river, people give their deceased relatives, but in it they also bathe, do their laundry, drink out of thirst, and empty their household trash.  Life goes on, from every angle, all at once.

The Ganges.

One morning we sat watching people perform their morning rituals in the river and we befriended these girls.  They also all have uncles who know Goldie Hawn.  They sell bindies and every day seems to be a school holiday.  We decided to bring them along to breakfast with us because they were fun company.  We had just started eating in the upstairs section of the restaurant when one of the girls accidentally jerked her elbow knocking a glass of water of the table.  We were essentially sitting on a deck, so rather than hitting the floor, the water fell directly onto the head of the lady sitting below us.  Let's just say she was less than thrilled.  Oops :)

This man is hand-painting one of the million hand-painted signs that cover the alley walls.

Unfortunately he's already made a spelling error.  We see the hand-written piece of paper that the man is working off of, and we realize why almost every sign has errors.  How many of you could accurately paint a Hindi sign onto a wall?

We went to a puja at a goddess Durga temple that had live classical music playing all night.  We sat on the roof and watched the throngs of people slowly make their way around the temple and eventually into the holiest of holies just to glimpse an image of the divine and receive a blessing from the priest.  We waited our turn as well, and we can assure you that the stone goddess' glittery purple robes were so stunning that even RuPaul would have been envious.