a journal of sprangle travel
I had spent too much time shopping in the Karol Bargh Market and the other in Paharganj, followed by a final afternoon enjoying rest of the fantastic Delhi Metro system, that I did not get back to the Megha Sheraton, to pick up my bags, until 5:10pm, almost 1/2 hour later than I had been advised.
That put everything at risk. I was to pay the price, literally, in sweat and rupees.
What a shock.
I just used my debit card at a Bank of India ATM in Delhi to withdraw pocket cash.
WARNING – do not casually discard the little printed receipt that the machine spits out at you along with the cash.
It is a scene that Bruegel might have painted in a fever or Dante reserved for one of the innermost circles of Hell.
At Noon I am in Varanasi in an Internet carrel at The Brown Bread Bakery, also known as Olio Restaurant and Ice-Cream Parlor, also known as OM Cyber Cafe, also known as Harashita Sarees and Silk Emporiium, all in a space not much larger than the necessary room in modern home. The welcome is much larger.
The computer I used to check my email contained a ton of spyware but after downloading, installing and running Ad-Aware, the free spyware cleaner from www.lavasoft.com, I found and removed 160 infections. I also showed the owner how to do this daily from now on.
In compensation, instead of the $100 per hour fee I usually charge for computer consultation, my buddy Marshall and I each got a free liter of cold water and free use of the Internet to check our respective mail.
We also had the satifaction of knowing we’d done good.
This was not the deluxe train I’d expected. The carriage was probably 40 or 50 years old. Everything was the same shade of pale green one sees in the below-ground corridors of hospitals and governmental buildings around the world.
The arrival platform at Varanasi was no less tumultuous and disorderly than the departure venue at Delhi the night before . . . utter, absolute, overwhelming chaos.
The free ride in a three-wheeled auto-rickshaw from the Varanasi train station to the Scindhia Hotel was far and away the wildest I’ve ever had in my 73 years of traveling the world. It was a real live version of the roller coaster that many know as “The Mouse.”
The driver was the most aggressive I’ve ever seen, passing on the outside of curves at full speed against oncoming cars, trucks and rickshaws. At some places along the way, the opposing streams of traffic were divided by a low, narrow wall of concrete – which we ignored. At some intersections we crossed over and went against the oncoming stream – and then at the next, if traffic was lighter on “our side,” we went back where we belonged.
Over the course of my days in Varanasi I learned there are other places to stay along the river. Some of them will appear high up and in the background of photos taken during the Dawn on the Ganges below. But, as the photos here and in other posts demonstrate, none have the broad, open-air balconies that give virtually every Scindhia room these awesome vistas. Click on photos to expand them.
For example, look at the range, down and across the Ganges. These are the views directly outside the door to my room.
The hotel layout offers one long, common balcony on each of the five levels. As you can see other guests also think them an excellent vantage point.
The double-ended rowboats are used in the dawn and dusk rowing tours along the ghats. I’ve scheduled that tour for the morning. Strangely, the hotel books the 5:00am tour, but doesn’t offer a wakeup service. I’ll depend on the help of another guest who has an alarm clock (A German, of course; they and the English are the keeprs of apointments.)
At the moment, 9am on my first morning, I’ve had a hot shower, clean, dry clothes and I’m revived. I’m late for breakfast in the common room. But first, a few more photos of this scene from another world . . .
As I was taking my final shots of this first morning, a lovely young woman from the next room appeared on the shared balcony. She was taking her last look before checking out. She’s Mexican, obviously from a privileged family, on a six-month tour of the world. We chatted in Spanish.
Once again, I silently thanked my patient and persistent high-school Latin teachers who told me that someday I would be glad I had studied the key to most European languages. Decades later I found Spanish needed only just a slight adjustment in vocabulary.
Varanasi is widely spoken of as the holiest city of all to the Hindu faithful. Here, the democracy of that faith’s theology – and its contradictions -are evident.
The wide balconies of the Scindhia are the very definition of what American southerners call “a catbird seat,” the perfect spot where one sits just high enough to be un-noticed from below and just enough to the side that you can see faces, not merely the tops of heads. Life on the path and plaza and nearby temples and schools flows as steadily as the river itself.
Directly below to the left, stairs lead down from the heights and continue right on into the river. Next to them is a patch of land that is literally covered in cow dung. When I say literally, I mean literally.
There is an unstructured dung pile that is constantly added to by collecting the dropping of some huge beasts that wander the plaza and nimbly clunk up and down the broad steps. Next to the pile there are rows and rows and rows of carefully shaped and hand-decorated cow-patties, laid out to dry. When dry enough to be sold as fuel, they are as hard as a rock and will burn like a lump of charcoal.
A double decked rowboat – something I have never known to exist – passes up river, powered by one man. A dozen or so men on the upper deck, unshaded from the blistering sun, are happily chanting and and clapping to a complex beat.
On the far shore, a bleak flood plain stretches without shade or mercy for miles in each direction. The group you see in the photo remained there, uncovered to the fire of the day, from late morning until shortly before sundown.
Click on a photo to enlarge.
