A passage to India

India, land of a great old civilization.
A country also, still much under the influence of the colonial period. A country in which religion claims a prominent position in daily life, whether it's hindus or muslims. Land of extremes: dire poverty next to filthy wealth, hand in hand with a magnificent cultural heritage. Not like an old monument, but as the focuspoint of social life.

A country in which its inhabitants are reluctant to let go of the old views and values in exchange for modern western life on the road to the 21st. century.

Highlights:
Mosque Jami Mashid
Red Fortress

Quick Tips:

My tip for the holiday: "You don't have to get sick if you take the proper precautions.
Take your shots, take your malaria pills. It, however does not guarrantee you won't get ill. Don't drink tap water, drink from sealed bottles.

Best Way To Get Around:

Rickshaw, by all means.

The hotel was a tad run down according to western standards. On the other hands, it was top a class hotel compared to Indian standards.
The pool is nice to cool yourself from the heat.

Barely had we left our hotel when a little boy asked us if we needed a rickshaw. Why, yes of course. What other possibility was there in this huge, strange city? He lead us to some stubby, unsavoury looking man. He smiled at us to show he was trustworthy, revealing two rows of bloody red teeth. "It's a good price. Trust me. 300 rupee for the whole day.
I take you to Red Fort and Jami Masjid (a mosque) and also to Khasba, if you want." Every couple of seconds he spat on the ground. Apparently he was having a chew.
According to western standards it was a bargain indeed, but according to the wage-averages in India he was making loads of money this day. What we had to learn was to think in rupees as in dollars, and a reasonable price for a ride into town would have been 20 rupees.
Traffic in Delhi cannot easily be described. Like in England traffic keeps left, but that was about the only traffic regulation I could distinguish. Smog hovers over the city in such enormous concentrations that traffic at night appears to be moving through thick fog. I'm not sure about what will prove to be more hazardous to people, smoking or living in Delhi. First of all, there was the omnipresent flavour of the city. All kinds of smells I wasn't used to struggled to make their introduction to my unaccustomed olfactory system.

Traffic itself seemed to be one big chaos. Without minding any fellow traffickers cars, rickshaws, mopeds, trucks, bicycles, pedestrians, an occasional bus, and taxi cabs swarmed amongst one another. Even animals like cows, and waterbuffalos were claiming their place amongst the traffic. Apparently there was one main rule to be obeyed: the largest participants were having the most rights, pushing their way through the crawling mass of moving objects. The only exception are the rickshaw-drivers: they are the often cursed traffickers, recklessly ignoring any signal, or size of fellow trafficker.

If we had thought Delhi was a dirty city, Jaipur proved us very wrong. Looking around the city we noticed that only a rather small part of the city was connected to some basic sewerage. The rest of the city's sewerage consisted of nothing more than a gutter in which the people's excrements floated in a greyish kind of water. It was a bit of a shock to me to witness Jaipur's inhabitants doing their needs squatting over the gutter and a couple meters ahead a woman carefully taking water from it. Scrawny little pigs were sharing their meals with dogs and holy cows from various garbage heaps that flank the streets, packed with people.

Next to the entrances of the houses lay patches of camel dung drying in the sun later to be used as fuel for home-cooking.

Women don't dominate this colour locale, but if they are outside at all, they immediately strike the eye: compared to the men (the western tourists easily included) they are a graciously walking feast of colours.

In Jaipur we stayed in hotel Bissau, a former palace of one of the Maharadjas (rumour went that this man still lived in the palace and tried to make some money on the wealthy tourist).

Photographs of 19th century Prince of Wales, Edward, showed that the great of this earth had preceded us in staying in this palace. As far as our damp, dark tiny room was concerned I knew that this romanticism had long since passed. Jaipur is also called the Pink City, because the walls of the inner city were painted pink to enlighten the visit of this very same prince.

Agra is the city of the Taj Mahal, and an obligation for any tourist visiting India.

The gates of the Taj Mahal open at six a.m. This means that hordes of tourists swarm inside to witness what in all the travel guides is the oh-so-recommended famous sunrise: the light is oh-so-beautiful on the white marble of this mausoleum (the same guides are jubilant about the sunset as well). If only that one cloud....

The Taj is magnificent indeed. When walking towards it I was approached by a man who pointed me the best spots for taking photographs (for a fee of course, that is). Sjah Jahan was struck with grief when his wife Mumtaz Mahal died in 1631. So he had the Taj Mahal built as a memorial grave for his deceased wife. It took 20.000 laborers 22 years to complete it. Their son Aurangzeb had his father put next to Mumtaz when Sjah Jahan died himself. Not that his son was a kind man: he locked up his father in the red Fortress of Agra, leaving Shah Jahan to watch the grave of his beloved wife from a distance, till his death before he showed this kindness.

Varanasi is the most holy Hindu city of India and many old people, if they can afford it, go to that city to die and be cremated at the banks of the Gangha (Ganges). Varanasi is therefore also reputed as a place of pilgrimage where people come to pray, meditate and have a purifying bath in the Ganges.

The old people that come to die often have dismissed all their earthly belongings and lead a marginal existence until the moment arrives. As Hindu philosophy tells: "Hey, they came to die anyway."

We stayed in Hotel Pallavi, a Muslim restaurant, so no beer.
"There is a solution," the waiter whispered.
"There is?"
"Yes, sahib, you must order a special tea."
That special tea turned out to be beer served in a teapot and you were obliged to drink it from a cup. That sacrifice was easily made of course. As a matter fact, large parts of India are prohibitioned these days. It made us feel like mean old gangsters from Chicago in the twenties.

Andre and I decided the next afternoon to go the banks of the Ganges and see how much is true of all these stories. We took a stroll dismissing the rickshaw riders that offered us their services. At the banks we ran into some of our friends from Limburg and together we went to the burning ghats. (Where the dead are being cremated). Strange, one moment we were walking down a narrow alley stacked with silk vendors and the next we knew we were standing at the edge of the main burning ghat of Varanasi.

An Indian man guided us into a temple to take us for a better view from the roof. Inside the temple we ran into a funeral service, so our Indian told us. A Brahman was leading the service. Funny thing was nobody appeared to be grieving very much. They laughed and clapped hands, suddenly changing into wails of despair. Our guide told us that dying at the banks of the Ganges is a happy occasion. Cremation here means that the cycle of reincarnation was broken and the soul of the expired would go to heaven? Nirvana? (Here I didn't understand my guide too well). Strange, here I was talking with an Indian about the rituals of cremation and less than forty feet away untouchables were cremating the dead. (My guide told me that seven categories are saved from the necessity of cremation: sadhous, pregnant women, children under twelve, lepers, people died of snake bite, pox victims, and animals). They are wrapped in cloth and thrown in the Ganges. Women are wrapped in red and men in white. The oldest son has to fast and shave his head in order to purify himself, for he has to light the stake. After the cremation the fire has to be extinguished with five jars of water from the Ganges. The ashes and what's left of the dead is dumped in the Ganges. To prove that one man's meat is another man's poison, is the fact I saw a so-called corpse sifter right underneath the spot where the ashes is thrown in the water, in search for rings and the like.

Our next destination was Khajuraho, a little village in Madhya Pradesh. But first we had to travel through, what our guide called, bar county. This meant that every couple of miles the bus driver had to stop to pay a little toll and have the passenger list checked. Rumour went that the roads were that bad that the police wanted to have knowledge of the whereabouts of the travellers on the road, so if a vehicle wouldn't show up at the next barrier something must have gone wrong. Certainly a much cheaper way than a thorough road construction job, for the roads are bad, I can tell you.
Illustrative may be the average speed the bus made: 20 - 30 miles an hour.

The next day we got up early-- good sleeping during this holiday meant getting up at eight. Getting up early meant four o'clock in the morning.

The program for the day was visiting the temples of Khajuraho. We rented bikes for the day. Traffic in this village was that sparse that us Dutchies, all of us used to biking (on a population of 15 million Holland has got 15 million bikes, hey that's almost the same amount) were glad to use our stiffened legs for a change.

The temples of Khajuraho, constructed in the period 950 - 1050 are worth a visit for their statues and carvings.

The entire body of each temple is covered with the most magnificent carvings. As our guide explained illustrating all aspects of life as it is from earthly at the outside to the spiritual inside of the temple, which is a shrine for some Hindu deity.

How surprised I was to notice a Buddha inside such a Hindu temple.

Earthly, means the most detailed erotic carvings, picturing all kinds of positions from the Kama Sutra.
The philosophy in the past behind this kind of lucid attitude towards sexuality was as practical as simple: most Hindu marriages were arranged and very often predestined and planned according to astrology.
"Love will grow with the years."
Since sexuality would be inevitable, people considered that one might as well make it as pleasant as possible. For both spouses, that is.