Plains Sailing 1

I just woke up and realised that I’m going backwards.

It’s 1pm.

Earlier, when I fell asleep on this train, we were heading in the direction my sleeper bench is facing.

And now we’re racing through the fields in what appears to be the completely opposite direction.

It takes a bit of time to reorient yourself when that happens. As I slept, my destination city of Gorakhpur, way way east, across the vast plains of northern India, somehow jumped over the train and settled somewhere else, a long long way behind me.

My midnight train from Ajmer finally departed at 3.30am, three and a half hours later than scheduled. Luckily, towards the end of the wait, I met Yoni and Jul, beautiful young Israeli travellers who are in India for the first time, and whose 3 month visa stint is almost up.

So they’re getting out, like me.

As soon as Yoni told me his name, I said, “you know what that name means don’t you?” He said that he knows exactly what it means in Sanskrit. We had a laugh. Yoni means vulva in that ancient language, a language which is the main source of present day Hindi.

But the more important thing, which has nothing to do with language, is that Vulvaman has a guitar.

So there we were, on the train departure platform (which, of course changed throughout our long wait), in the middle of the night, jamming away on a guitar and shakers, with a crowd of starers following our every move, all of them completely expressionless as they watched.

Only in India.

Staring, of course, is allowed here. Everyone does it. It’s one of the things that foreigners find quite disconcerting at first. But you get used to it.

Right now, for example, 2 men are intently watching me from their seats, without any sense that it’s not polite in any way to do so. Because it’s not impolite here. The thing is, it must be sooooo boring watching me typing away like this. But I guess they’re not used to seeing whiteys, so they’re probably checking out every small tiny little detail about me, what I’m doing, what I’m wearing, and what things I’ve got with me.

Indian trains are so great. This is a real Indian train, unlike the incredibly unusually empty one I had last time, on my way to Udaipur. But, by the same token, this train still happens to be a long way from how full Indian trains can sometimes get, particularly at holiday or festival time.

It’s so good to see some green again. I’ve been in the dry dusty plains and deserts of Rajasthan for a month or so, and have now moved on to the more moist and fertile pastures of Uttar Pradesh.

It’s poorer here.

And as I head further east, it’s becoming more so.

Deep, But Shallowing Pockets

So, I’m just wondering whether you've ever thought about how I’m managing to afford to travel around to all these millions of places for such a long time? From my posts you’ve probably gathered that I’m travelling pretty frugally, and I’m trying to stretch my shekels and my trip for as long as possible.

But it’s definitely adding up.

I have pretty much no income at the moment, and every day I’m spending money, albeit way less than I'd spend if I was in the West.

But, luckily for me, I’ve been dealt a very sweet card by Lakshmi, that generous Goddess of Wealth.

It’s a bit of a story.

I used to work giving music classes at an addiction rehab place. For contractual privacy reasons, I can’t say too much about it. It was ridiculously expensive to go there as a client, so it was really only available for the very rich.

Some of the clients stayed there longer than others, and, as it turned out, some developed relationships with me outside of their rehab program, so I could continue to teach and hang out with them, with the blessings of the organisation.

A couple of years ago, when I was no longer working there, and at a time which happened to coincide with me contemplating a long travel adventure, I received a letter in the mail from a lawyer, advising me that one of those rehab clients that I’d worked with had died. At quite a young age. I was really sad about it, as we were friends, even though I hadn’t seen or been in contact with that person for awhile.

Then the letter went on to state that the person had left me a teeny proportion of their estate in their will.

Wow. What a gesture. What an amazing, completely unexpected and beautiful gift!

The person and I had formed an amazing connection, centred around music, and around the discussion and experience of Eastern philosophical ideas and spiritual teachings.

A teeny proportion of that person’s fortune has been enough to allow me to put some money away for my kids, and left me with a small chunk to fund a major part of this trip.

Of course over the years I’d been saving too, to fund both of those financial goals. I really wanted to make sure I could travel without having to think too much about working. At least for awhile.

So here I am, slowly going through the money, but feeling incredibly fortunate and blessed to have the means to do this trip in the way I’ve always wanted. Of course, I’m conscious of giving back, I always feel good about giving extra to the people here, which, in a practical sense, means so much more to the relatively poor here than it does to me.

I mean, any sort of travel helps the local people, in the sense that I’m always buying from their shops, and they’re getting cash out of me. I’m not interested in bargaining down to the local price, even though I generally know what that price is, and know it’s often below what they’re asking me for.

And then there’s just giving extra, because it feels good for me, and it obviously helps them.

As for my future plans, well, eventually I’ll have to work again. I have enough cash to get me to Europe, if I still travel in my typical scrapin-the-bottom-of-the-barrel type of way.

Then I’ll need to find some more cash.

Losing Track

I’ve just come back from S5, sleeper carriage 5, to visit Yoni and Jul, and am now lazing back on my bench in S8. Those guys are both aged 21, and, I tell ya, I wish I’d been as cool as them when I was their age. We’ve just been chatting about travel, and about all sorts of other things. Just basically killing time.

Jul’s dying of boredom, and I’m not surprised. Our train is a whopping 9 hours late so far. Instead of arriving at Gorakhpur at 10pm tonight, we’re now scheduled to get there at 7am tomorrow morning. Another night on the train. But who really knows what time we’ll actually arrive.

That’s India for you.

It’s about midnight now, but I’m not that sleepy because I’ve been sleeping half the day, and I’ve had too many chais.

Ajmer Railway Station. The closest station to Pushkar

Ceiling paintings

Plastic bottle recycling machine. Good isn’t it.

Filtered drinking water. I actually use my own manual hiking squeeze filter for drinking water, which I’ve been doing all trip. Sometimes I’ll fill up my bottle from these machines, and give the water an extra filter.

More absent editing

My neighbour

One of the great things about India is that so many things aren’t controlled, compared to the West. For example, if you’re on a train you can just go between the carriages, open the carriage entrance doorway, and then stand or sit there, and watch the world go by. It’s beautiful being there, in the strong breeze, watching another world go by, through towns and villages, fields and forests, watching people living a life that’s so utterly different from my own.

Hangin out

My sleeper bench was the first in the carriage, right next to the toilets. The stench was putrid, right from the start, and got worse as the interminable journey continued.

The offending throne.

Royalty is really on-the-nose sometimes.

The weird thing is, I’m getting used to the smell of toilet. You just do here. There’s often open piss walls in towns and cities in India. Men at the front, backs facing the street, and women around the back. You walk past them many times a day. You may find this hard to believe, but I’ve smelt it so often now that when I’m on the street I don’t really think about it anymore.

It’s amazing what you get used to, and how quickly that happens.

So being next to the toilets wasn’t really an issue for me at all, luckily.

Lookin’ down the aisle. The carriage got messier and dirtier as the trip wore on.

We finally got to Gorakhpur, the closest city to the Nepalese border that’s train-accessible, at 9.30am, which made us a total of 11 and a half hours late. We were on the train for 30 whole hours, and it’d been 42 hours since I left my guest house in Pushkar.

That’s nearly 2 whole days and nights, just so you know.

Then we had a 4 hour bus ride to the border. Luckily, we were at the front of the bus, and jammed away for most of the journey.

The border crossing itself was convoluted and tedious. It’s the first border crossing I’ve ever been to where the actual border is pretty much impossible to decipher. It’s just a town, with one long street passing through the middle of it. As you proceed down the street, there’s a building tucked away on the left, which happens to be the Indian Immigration Office, and you need to get your passport stamped in there, as having exited India.

Even though you haven’t.

Luckily Yoni saw the office, I would’ve walked straight past it, looking for a border-border.

Then we took cycle rickshaws to complete the process - a few hundred metres further through town to Indian Customs, where the official didn’t even glance at our backpacks on the rickshaw, let alone check them.

This would be a lucrative smuggling border. No checks whatsoever.

Then we carried on another few hundred meters to the Nepalese immigration post.

Rickshaw wallah

Our Visa On Arrival was only payable in brand new crispy US dollars, which I had trouble getting on the Indian side, but eventually did. Luckily I had a few extra smaller crispy notes, as some of Jul’s notes weren’t accepted at the border, and neither were Inna’s, another Israeli woman we met there.

Dollar sign

Thai monks at the border, giving blessing cards to devoted pilgrims, who were on their way to Lumbini in Nepal, which happens to be the birthplace of the Buddha, and not far from the border.

Anyway, eventually we made it into Nepal! Another country!

Bye bye India, I love you.

And I’ll be back.

For the geographs, this is a map of the first part of my India journey. I’ll be back here in a few weeks probably.

Pretty random path

After eating, we took a shared taxi to Lumbini, because the Nepalese border town of Belariya was really just a dusty truck highway, and not a very nice place to stay. It was the first taxi I've been in for as long as I can remember.

We eventually found a cheap guesthouse in Lumbini and wandered over to the park, to visit Buddha’s birthplace. It was beautiful there at dusk, with wide walkways through lovely gardens, and a big lake with a super peaceful vibe.

Well, peaceful except for the occasional frisky monkeys.

There were contemporary Buddha statues and various shrines in there. We didn’t visit the small temple which marks Buddha’s actual birthplace, as they were trying to slug us 700 Nepalese rupes to get in ($8 Oz). Paying so much (relatively) to go to a temple goes against the grain a bit. A place like that really should be free.

All over Asia, but particularly in India and Nepal, foreigners are sometimes charged up to 100 times more than locals to visit certain sites. I don’t mind that in a way, but not for an active temple.

Go to Part 2

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