5 sunrises in 8 days

I spent about 8 days traveling around the north of India with my cousin Will and four friends. The pictures of our trip are in the post below. What follows is a description of our whirlwind travels.

I flew to Delhi and met Will in the airport there. We then headed into the city in search of a bar where Nimay, Devin and Santi were reported to be. After stopping several times for directions, we found them and then headed to Santi's brother's place in Delhi for the night. Will and I got up early the next morning, found a rickshaw in the rain, and convinced the rickshaw-walla to take us to the train station. We then boarded the 6 am train to Agra.

Will and I tackled Agra and Jaipur in a whirlwind 48 hours. We arrived in Agra around 8 am and made it to the Taj before the crowds. Agra, the town it's in, is a total hell-hole, and the approach to the Taj involves ancient taxis, painfully slow bike-rickshaws that feel abusive, and a walk down a tiny, dirty alley. The juxtaposition of this decrepit town and the majestic Taj made it all the more incredible. It really does live up to the hype.

We left Agra that same afternoon on a train to Jaipur. We shared a first class cabin with a British couple backpacking through Asia. They were not the most enlightened travelers of all time but they provided some entertainment for Will and me. In Jaipur, we found a hotel and got some much needed sleep. Jaipur was really hot and kind of underwhelming, but there were some cool forts and a great temple with a ton of monkeys. We hired a rickshaw to take us around the city and the surrounding area for the entire day (Rs 300, aka $6). The driver insisted on dragging us to textile stores (Jaipur is supposedly famous for its textiles, but so is every city with tourists). We went to two and I bought a beautiful silk duvet cover (sounds pretty feminine in recounting) at one.

That night, we boarded a 1am train to Delhi. When we got there, we took a long rickshaw ride (several bumps almost concussed Will and me. I think we got lost 12 separate times) to Nimay's "aunt's" house, where we had an amazing Indian breakfast and an even better nap. That night, Nimay, Devin, Will and I went to the home of a friend of Devin and Nimay, whose mother runs an NGO in Delhi. Really nice to spend some time in the home of a local.

The next day, Nimay, Devin, Nan, Santi, Will and I flew to Varanasi. Varanasi is the dirtiest place on earth. Will stepped in a massive pile of cowshit, which was probably not the dirtiest experience of the day. Human bodies burning on the banks of the river, human bodies being dumped into the river. Totally overwhelming. One cow (the city is totally dominated by cows), with a broken horn serving as evidence of a history of attacking tourists, didn't like the looks of me and tried to ram me against the stone wall of a house. He missed.

We took sunset and dawn boat-rides along the Ganges. We watched a Hindu ceremony on the banks of the river. We visited one of the holiest Buddhist sites, the place where the Budha first taught the dharma (much cooler in theory. Today it's a field with a giant stupa. Not that cool). We saw the process by which Benares Silk is made (again, every town with tourists is famous for its textiles). And then we got suckered into buying obscene amounts of silk. For dinner, we went to the one restaurant in town with a TV and watched the 5th set of Roddick-Federrer while fighting off Indians trying to watch cricket and praying that the power wouldn't cut out during key points. It did.

The following day, we took the train ride from hell. I'm not sure that I'll be able to fully capture how miserable these 20 hours of our lives were.

We were supposed to have seats in an AC car, but we were on the wait-list (which is supposedly pretty normal, according to Devin and Nan, who had the most experience traveling in India). But our wait-list was the on-line wait-list, aka the wait-list for white people, which doesn't actually mean anything. So, with 5 minutes to spare before our train was scheduled to depart, we found ourselves without any seats. We scrambled and bought seats (for $3) in the lowest class car, which was the only thing available. But we decided to try to go in the AC car as stowaways. The first train we got on turned out to be the wrong one, so we bolted and ran to the right train (think: the opening scene of Darjeeling Limited). There, we hid out near the bathrooms, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible (failing, obviously, since we were the only Americans and we had tons of bags and Nan was wearing a tank-top that every Indian found very interesting). We eventually found a few seats and managed to squeeze six people and our bags into them. But, we were across the aisle from the ticket collector. Effff. We launched into negotiations with him and his cronies. Nimay tried, failed. Nan tried, cried, failed. Santi tried, thought he had succeeded, failed. At one point, we thought we had convinced the ticket collector (who acted so erratically and irrationally that he could have easily been institutionalized or at least heavily medicated if he was living in the U.S.) to let us stay on. But in one of the most painful moment of the trip, he changed his mind without any explanation. Eventually, he decided to kick us off at Patna Junction (sidenote: this is one of the worst written wikipedia articles I've ever read), which seemed like a totally arbitrary decision. Patna is the capital of Bihar, a state known for its petty crime and generally a miserable place to be stranded. Shortly after our sentencing, we were granted something of a reprieve: the train promptly broke down and we were stranded for 3 hours at the station before Patna Junction. Upside: we weren't kicked off. Downside: we weren't moving and the AC wasn't working while the train was broken down. Probably a net negative.

When we got to Patna at 2am, the crazy guy kicked us off just as he'd promised. We then ran down the platform, found a car outside his jurisdiction, and hopped on as the train was moving away( Darjeelign Limited part deaux). We were now in the dreaded Sleeper Class. No AC. Totally decrepit. Amazing smells. Zillions of Indians. Twilight Zone. Our tickets in this class didn't actually correspond to any seats. We tried to find somewhere to sit and failed, so we sat down on our bags on the floor of this nasty car and tried to sleep without getting robbed. At 4:30 am, the Chai-wallas started walking through the aisles (and all over us, sitting there) carrying steaming hot pots of sloshing chai and calling out "Chaiiiiii, coffee, chaiiiii" in a haunting, warbling scream that was not the funnest thing to wake up to. We managed to find beds at that time (some of us more quickly than others) and all got some sleep for a few hours. While we were sleeping, Santi was attacked by a transvestite, who woke Santi up by sticking his hand in Santi's mouth and then tried to demand payment to stop harassing him. A man walked down the aisle of the car selling a 3-foot long electronic Casio keyboard, oblivious to the market he was catering to. Casio pianos were about 250,000th on my list of needs at that point.

We eventually reached our destination around 2:30 pm (6 hours late). The dude sitting next to me, a philosophy student on hour 40 of a 48 hour journey from Delhi to home, told me, "Actually, basically, India is a nation of sufferers. We are sufferers. " This was not as helpful as he intended it.

At the train station, we hired drivers and Jeeps to take us the 3 hours up into the hills to Darjeeling, which was beautiful (We missed the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, which was just as well because 7 more hours on a train would have probably led to serious mental breakdowns) The road climbs from Siliguri (eleavation: 400 ft) to Darjeeling (elevation: 7000 ft) in 90 km. It's steep, windy and gorgeous. The hills are covered with the famous tea bushes and the view extends out to the flood plains of West Bengal and Bangladesh.

Darjeelig would have been really amazing in a different season. The town is poised a few miles from Kanchanjunga, the world's third highest mountain. We saw some very dramatic clouds, but no mountains. Thank monsoon.

During our day there, we explored the tea plantations, visited the zoo (Bengali tigers, red pandas), ate some awesome Nepali food, and feigned expertise at a tea tasting. The next morning, we got up at 3:45 in an attempt to see sunrise over Everest. Saw the Everest of Fog instead. Then, we went back down the hills by Jeep (we had to take a different, longer, route because of political protests blocking the main route. West Bengal is a hotbed of Maoist political parties and terrorist groups. Detour > fighting off communist terrorists.) and flew back to Delhi. Nan and Will went on to Bangkok and Angkor Wat and I flew back to Mumbai.

All in all, a pretty amazing 8 days or so. I'm not sure I'd ever want to travel like that again (and I'd definitely never repeat the train ride) but seeing the Taj, the ghats of Varanasi and the hills of Darjeeling was unforgettable.

If you've made it this far, congratulations and thank you. You've read a truly epic blog post. Now, go do something more useful.