In South East Asia, all of the locals say "Same Same, But Different", here the saying is "Everything Is Possible In India" - and its true.
We ended our two week trip with our guide, Balwant, in Agra to see the famous Taj Mahal. It was built in 1631 by Shah Jahan to house the tomb of his second wife who died during childbirth. It took 20 years to complete and over 20,000 people worked on it. It was built in white marble with carved flowers filled with semi-precious stones. It is such a work of prefection that when it was finished some of the workers had their hands and thumbs amputated so it couldn't be replicated.
As we approached the Taj area, we had to jump on a battery operated bus because they recently banned all motor vehicles within a 4km area of the Taj to try to preserve it from polution.
As we approached the entrance, we couldn't actually see the Taj. We paid the $25 entrance fee, went through security and then were in the grounds. We walked through some gardens, then into another dark building with more security, then through a doorway and there it was - the most beautiful building in front of you that you could ever imagine seeing. I guess we had both anticipated it to look just like the millions of photos that we have seen over our life time. There is no way anyone could describe just how beautiful it really is. It does literally take your breath away for a moment when you first see it.
There were tourists absolutely everywhere you looked, but that didn't seem to take away from its beauty. We spent the next couple of hours taking way too many pictures and enjoying the different stages of the sunset all around the grounds.
Once again, we had more pictures taken with locals. At one point, Bow had offered to take a picture of a family with the Taj in the background. Then all of a sudden two locals asked me if they could get a picture with me. They took one and as I looked around there's Bow holding onto the family's baby and they are waving me over to take a picture of both of us with their children. After that, the father wants his own photo taken with us. Although we thought it was quite unique, we realized that we were basically doing the same thing taking pictures of women and men in Rajasthan in their bright coloured clothes.
From Agra we travelled on the overnight train to Varanasi. Varanasi is one of the oldest and holiest cities in India. We had heard so many things about it from friends, other travellers, and our guide book. It's along the sacred Ganges river. It's famous for its locals bathing on the ghats (steps leading to the river), pilgrims coming to wash away their sins, and people bringing their loved ones to cremate before spreading their ashes into the river.
Our first experience with Varanasi was with the rickshaw drivers. We had heard that Varanasi is the number one place in India for hounding and people taking advantage of travellers. The second we got off the train, people were on us to take their rickshaw to a hotel. We decided to walk because the place we wanted to go to looked quite close in our guide. It was so difficult to try to convince rickshaw drivers that we actually wanted to walk. One guy followed us for about 15 minutes after we told him at least 10 times that we didn't need a drive. Then finally I heard Bow say to him in a very serious voice "please leave us alone, we're going to walk". As we walked on, we would look back and he was still following us, but a bit further behind and when we would look, he would stop or duck in somewhere. We giggled to ourselves. We had to ask for directions about five mintues later and then he approached us one last time. At this point he said 20 rupees (60 cents) instead of 40 rupees. Then I heard Bow say "at this point, after telling you so many times that we want to walk, you couldn't pay me to get in your rickshaw". He then said "5 rupees, 2 rupees, free!". We walked on and giggled again to ourselves. We finally arrived at our hotel by foot.
We've spent a few days here. The highlight of our first day was the Indian massage - if you could call such a massage a highlight. We had heard about these massages from Bob and Susanne who we had met in Cambodia. They said that it was more of an experience than relaxation, so we were a bit prepped for what to expect. I was booked in for 2:30pm and Bow was going at 4pm.
I went in first and stripped down to my undies. The woman quickly looked at me and pointed for me to take off my undies, ring and watch. So I did, but then I looked over at the massage table and there wasn't any sort of sheet or towel for privacy as we're so used to when we get a massage. Not only that, but the door was wide open and there were two other women having their feet massaged in the next room who could definitely see part of me when I was on the table. Just as I got on the table, another western woman came in looking for her clothes. I kept saying to myself "it's all about the experience". I lay on my stomach and before I knew it, my entire backside was being slapped and massaged with mass amounts of oil. She had no qualms about oiling every orifice of my body. All the while, the door was still open and her assistant kept coming in and out. Just when I thought she was finished with the oil, she put on another entire coat of Ayurvedic hot oils.
Then it was time to turn over. Before I could even think about how nice it would have been to have had a sheet or towel, I was completely oiled up on my front. I couldn't help but laugh when she was massaging my chest like she was cleaning clothes on a washboard. Then all of a sudden I looked up and I could have sworn that the little black box thingy with a red light on it looked like some kind of camera. Then I had thoughts of me being seen in real time on a web site, www.MyFirstIndianMassage.com and then I really couldn't hold in the laughter.
The massage also included a head and face massage. When I got up to leave, I almost slipped on the floor because my feet were so full of oil. I looked in the mirror as I was leaving and my oiled hair stood totally on end and looked like my girlfriends had just crimped and teased it for a fun night out. The massage was by no means relaxing, but was 100% an experience.
The funniest part of it all was that as I was heading back up to the room to shower the oil away, Bow was sitting waiting for his turn. He asked how it was but I was beside the woman who massaged me so I couldn't give him a true heads up. His experience wasn't as crazy as mine since the man massaging him didn't make him take off everything. We had many laughs talking about it afterwards.
Yesterday we got up at 5:30am to head down to the ghats to take a sunrise boat ride to see the local washing ritual, the pilgrims doing puja, and to get a glimpse of the cremation ceremonies. Bow and I had our own boat with a guide. It seemed a bit intrusive to be watching all of these intimate things - washing, praying, and people mourinng - but that is the western view, the locals don't seem to mind it at all. The river was filled with tourist boats.
The thought of washing, drinking, and brushing your teeth in the same water where people were having their ashes spread and dead bodies sank was inconceiveable to us. This is what we watched. It was so foreign but so fascinating at the same time.
Later on in the afternoon, we took a rickshaw down to the burning ghat where the open cremations took place. We had seen a bit of it from the boat, but we didn't really know much about the whole process and thought that we would like to learn about it since we were here. We weren't too comfortable with the whole idea, but went down anyways. There weren't many tourists around and basically when we got there a local approached us and told us where it was appropriate for us to stand. We met another couple from Australia who we stood with to watch and we exchanged what little information we knew about the process with one another.
It was a large area with around 10 cremation fires going on at the same time. There was wood neatly piled for the families to buy before the cremation. When it was a family's turn to cremate their loved one, they would first dip the wrapped body in the Ganges and then they would be cremated. At the end, their ashes would be spread in the water.
A local approached Bow and I as we were watching and said "cremation is education" and then spent the next 40 minutes explaining the entire process of the ceremony, including how this all came about in Hinduism. It was really interesting to learn all of the details. Not everyone can be cremated. Children under 12, pregnant women, lepers, holy men, and animals aren't able to. Instead their wrapped bodies are tied to cement and are sunk in the bottom of the Ganges. Often the bodies can surface.
Everyone in India wants to come to Varanassi when they die to be spread in the Ganges. It therefore can be quite expensive to get there depending on the cost of flight, train, or car. Some people then can only afford to be cremated at home and then have their ashes spread at some point in Varanassi. The man told us that 100 people are usually cremated at the burning ghat per day. The wood is 150-380 rupee ($5-$13) per kilo and you need 250 kilos to be cremated. It used to be quite common that widows would jump onto the burning fire (after a little opium) when their husbands were being cremated because they were seen as outcasts to society and would never be able to afford such a ceremony. This doesn't happen anymore; however, widows are still seen as unlucky and often come to Varanasi waiting to die. The guy asked us if we could give one of the widows a donation for a proper cremation ceremony because she had no family to pay for her. We gave one of the widows some rupees and then later realized that it would be one of the strangest donations we will ever have to make. Varanasi was a real eye opening experience. There is no doubt that we will never forget this place.
Tonight we take the overnight train back to Delhi. We leave on Tuesday for Sri Lanka for nine days before heading to Nepal to go trekking in the Annapurna region for almost a month.