Planes, Trains, and Auto-Rickshaws

by Laura Pedersen

  Also nearby is the extravagant red sandstone city of Fatehpur Sikri, India’s version of a Colorado ghost town, with eager guides instead of old prospectors. Akbar started construction in 1570, after a Sufi saint foretold the birth of a boy to the as yet sonless emperor, and a little emperor quickly followed (and not long after that, two spares to the heir). This UNESCO World Heritage Site is a distinctive combination of Persian, Indian, and Islamic architecture, although it lasted only fourteen years as the new Mughal royal court. The city was permanently abandoned due to an insufficient water supply. And in keeping with the unsustainability tradition, there still aren’t any decent restaurants or watering holes in the area, so brown-bag it or plan to go elsewhere to eat.

  Located in Sikandra, a suburb just seven miles northwest of Agra, is Akbar’s tomb complex, which is another architectural masterpiece, built with deep red sandstone and white marble so that it aligns with the points on a compass. However, if you’re weary of seeing marble and red sandstone tombs and palaces, you can head to the nearby Agra Bear Rescue Facility. Ten years ago on the road from Agra to Fatehpur Sikri, you would’ve seen dancing bears among the street peddlers and performers. These sloth bears have short hind legs, long nails, and a long, pointy snout to dig up insects, their main source of food. The bears are captured as cubs, which usually means slaughtering the mother bear, and illegally sold to members of the Kalandar tribe, who’ve been making their living off dancing bears for centuries. The new owner puts a painful, thick metal ring through a sensitive part of the nose using a hot poker and yanks out the bear’s canine teeth without anesthetic. Once these operations are completed, the bears are put on very short leashes and forced to perform for the rest of their useful lives. But animal rights activists continued to mount complaints and the practice was finally outlawed in 1972, although this didn’t entirely put a stop to it.

  More recently, the government decided that because people count on the bears for their livelihood, fifty thousand rupees would be given in exchange for turning in your bear and signing an agreement to get out of the dancing sloth bear business altogether—the Indian equivalent of double secret probation. This is enough money for a Kalandar family to start a small business and give their children an education. As a result, more than a thousand bears are off the streets, and only about sixty remain in remote villages that are difficult to reach, since most don’t have roads.

  At the Agra Bear Rescue Facility, which is part of the Soor Sarovar Bird Sanctuary, you can see more than 150 species of resident and migratory birds, the aforementioned sloth bears, snakes, some free-ranging antelope, and one camel keeping his head down, trying to blend in with the antelope. The rescued sloth bears cannot be released into the wild and will live out their days here with plenty of room to relax and play, no longer on the end of a four-foot chain, being forced to perform. Still, muscle memory is a powerful thing, and you can catch a number of them going through their old dance routines, but at least they’re dancing for themselves.

  Now that the dancing bear captors have mostly been put out of business, the sloth bear is under siege by poachers. There’s a large market in China for their internal organs, particularly gall bladders, which are used to make natural medicines. Honestly, those sloth bears must be thinking, If it’s not one thing, it’s another with you people.

  Safaris, Spas, and Shopping

  A good destination after Delhi or Agra is the sandstone city of Jaipur, capital of the desert state Rajasthan. Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur are known as the Golden Triangle and many tour operators put together packages that include these three famous cities. (Not to be confused with the opium-producing area that includes parts of Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand; the Golden Triangle of rapid economic development that encompasses Shanghai and China; or the Golden Triangle garage band, which cites its influences as crawfish and trash cans and has bestowed upon us such underground favorites as “Cold Bones” and “Neon Noose.”) Jaipur is easily accessible from the capital in four to five hours by car, bus, or train, or forty-five minutes by plane. Jaipur is camel country, and if you drive, camels standing by the side of the road are as common a sight as jaywalking cows on the way from Delhi to Agra, pigeons in Central Park, and dog poop on the boulevards of Paris. In 1876, Jaipur painted itself pastel pink (the color of hospitality) to welcome Prince Albert and Queen Elizabeth II, and thus earned the name the Pink City.

  There’s a wonderful mix of monuments, hilltop forts, preserved palaces, lakes, well-tended gardens, and shopping, which ranges from haggling your way through crowded bazaars to being served tea in fancy, air-conditioned shops. The area is known as a mecca for buying jewelry, blue glaze pottery, crisp organdy linens, and camelskin shoes. A visitor can’t help but wonder why the city doesn’t put a few more dollars into sprucing up the attractions while addressing the killer pollution and maddening traffic congestion, like other Indian cities that are attracting foreign investment, rapidly expanding, and providing a rising standard of living. Yet development continues apace—an international convention center and a world-class golf course are currently under construction. If you build it, I guess they’ll come with a nine iron and an oxygen mask.

  On the way to Jaipur, it’s worth stopping at the Neemrana Fort-Palace hotel, just sixty miles southwest of Delhi. Built in 1464, this is one of India’s oldest heritage resorts (modernized palaces) and commands breathtaking views interrupted only by the occasional screech of a peacock. The heritage hotels usually provide a full line of spa facilities and services, including yoga classes and henna painting. (Yoga tourists repeatedly told me that the yoga instruction in India was the best they’d ever had.) While spa workers are friendly and attentive, be warned that your massage therapist will beat the curry out of you unless advised otherwise, even if she looks like someone’s great-grandmother. Make that especially if she looks like someone’s great-grandmother and remembers when the ruling class of English speakers needed to be taken down a peg. Adventurous travelers can enjoy the aerial zipline to soar over the mountains using equipment that operators proudly guarantee was not made in India.

  As one leaves the heart of Delhi and heads out through the suburbs, the roads rapidly fill with cows, pigs, dogs, and monkeys. Having once worked on a farm and thus familiar with the fact that a bovine can easily devour a hundred pounds of feed per day, I couldn’t help but ask, What do all these cows eat? Free-roaming cows consume lots of bananas, since they grow locally and are therefore cheap and plentiful. Who knew? That fourth stomach is apparently for making fruit smoothies. Otherwise, locals give many of the cows wheat, rice, and vegetables in exchange for their milk. Cows are smarter than one might think and return to the place they’re being fed, no matter where they may wander to scavenge during the day. (Water buffalo, on the other hand, are not nearly so bright and must be fetched.) Some temples have food-for-milk relationships with cows that appear to be surviving independently along the roadside. However, when a cow can no longer produce milk, it’s usually abandoned to street life, despite its sacred status. A few people, and in some places the local governments, have set up sanctuaries for old, infirm, and cast-off cows.

  By day, most cows graze along the roadside, but they obviously think median grass tastes best, so they stand with their two front legs on the median and the majority of their bulk jutting out into a busy street, lined up like they’re at a cow lunch counter, and in so doing create a major traffic hazard. Cows have formidable powers of relaxation and can comfortably sprawl in the middle of a highway for hours. Or a cow will stand stock-still in one place in the road for a very long time, as if auditioning to be lawn statuary, thereby lulling drivers into a false sense of security, and then suddenly bust a bovine move. If India were a human body and the highways were arteries taking oxygenated blood away from the heart, then cows are the enormous fat globules blocking the pathways, causing strokes and infarctions and in general killing people before they can say “Holy cow!”

  After the Golden Triangle is
checked off your list, there’s the option of going all Indiana Jones and venturing into the desert. The Thar Desert, also known as the Great Indian Desert, can be toured by camel, horse, or Jeep, which is a terrific way to see the former princely kingdoms of Jaisalmer, Bikaner, Jodhpur, and Pushkar. However, don’t be fooled by the word desert since it’s a lively place where you can see chinkara (gazelles), blackbuck, Bengal fox, wolves, more than 150 varieties of birds, and (surprise!) carpet sellers. The major advantage of traveling by horse is that they’re afraid of snakes (like me), whereas camels appear rather indifferent to king cobras, and Jeeps have no sense of mortal danger whatsoever.

  It’s also possible to head off to one of India’s many jungle resorts for bird-watching and tiger-spotting, either by Jeep or on elephant back. If you have your heart set on seeing a tiger in its natural environment, then the best time to visit is April or May, when the heat drives them out of hiding in search of water. Otherwise, nearby Ranthambore National Park is the second best place for tiger-spotting year-round, with its high density of about three dozen big cats. (Bandhavgarh National Park is considered to be the best and is located in the state of Madhya Pradesh, in central India, an overnight train ride from Delhi or a four-to-five-hour drive northeast from the airport in Jabalpur.) Ranthambore served as the hunting grounds for the maharajas of Jaipur and contains a historic fort built in 994 CE. The park is a favorite of nature lovers and wildlife photographers and is now becoming famous as a wedding destination. For all those workaholics being dragged along, your Blackberrys and iPhones will continue to ring and hum amidst all the magnificent flora and fauna or while you’re enjoying a fine meal at the rooftop restaurant with its mood music and fully stocked bar that includes watermelon mojitos and mango martinis.

  Amer Fort, just outside of Jaipur, is a good spot to take a short ride on a Technicolor elephant, complete with painted toenails. If you’re feeling particularly athletic, sign up for a round of elephant polo. Just make sure that you’re able to wield an eight-foot-long cane pole with a mallet at the end while riding a three-ton pachyderm.

  If you’re truly in search of the unusual, along with a great story for the grandkids, the Indian equivalent to our funhouse must be the dazzling white marble Karni Mata Temple, located northwest of Jaipur in the village of Deshnok. As the story goes, the Hindu goddess Karni Mata beseeched Yama, the god of death, to save the dying son of a storyteller, and when Yama refused, she reincarnated all storytellers as rats. The temple is now home to more than twenty thousand rats, and it’s considered good luck if the rats scamper across your feet. It’s also considered fortunate to eat or drink directly after a rat, from the same spot, but I’d steer clear of that practice, as rats have been known to carry plagues that can kill a hundred million or so people.

  The supreme blessing is to spot a white rat, because worshippers believe they’re the reincarnation of the goddess Karni Mata and her kin. However, white rats are scarce, and every time one appears the tourist paparazzi race toward it with cameras clicking and lights flashing, so the rat quickly flees back into its hole, which may be why they’re scarce in the first place. It’s considered bad luck to scamper across a rat, and if you flatten one, then you might be asked to pay restitution, because dead rats are supposed to be replaced with ones of silver or gold. So tread lightly. By the way, this is a Hindu temple, and so you will be removing your shoes before entering. (But socks are okay.)

  And now a word about Hindu temples in general. You may suddenly think you’re seeing swastikas and wonder if last night’s chicken vindaloo was too spicy or if you overdid it on the plum wine. It turns out that the Nazis co-opted the symbol from Sanskrit, where it’s the character for the sacred meditative om. So don’t be alarmed, unless of course you hear the sound of jackboots goose-stepping and the first few bars of “Die Fahne Hoch.”

  For the extreme sportsperson who is also mechanically minded, there are several auto-rickshaw races that take place around India every year. The Indian Rickshaw Challenge involves traversing the worst roads of the continent while driving and maintaining a pimped-out 1950s three-wheeler. This event is more popularly known as the Amazing Race for the Clinically Insane. Ladies and gentlemen, start your two-stroke engines.

  Shall We Gather at the River?

  If you’re looking to experience ancient mystical India, then the holy city of Varanasi on the banks of the famous Ganges (aka Ganga) River is the place to go. Located five hundred miles southeast of Delhi, there are daily one-hour flights, or the Shiv Ganga Express train leaves every evening at 6:45 pm and arrives at 7:30 am the following morning.

  Varanasi is also known as “the city of temples,” “the religious capital of India,” “the city of lights,” “the city of learning,” and “a holy dump.” In his travelogue Following the Equator, Mark Twain wrote, “Benares [now Varanasi] is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together.” Despite being a sacred place for Hindus and Buddhists, Varanasi’s population is almost one-third Muslim, and there’s a Saint Mary’s Protestant Church and a Roman Catholic infant Jesus shrine just to show that God is indeed everywhere. Or gods, such as the case may be.

  A maze of two thousand temples, narrow alleyways, crumbling palaces, rickety staircases, centuries-old sculptures, flower vendors, long-haired holy men, local potentates, loudspeakers belting out prayers, mendicants cradling begging bowls, sandalwood kiosks, and (surprise!) silk shops, the city is truly unlike any other. It takes time to pick your way through all those who are busy hawking, meditating, sleeping, and walking along the winding, uneven streets, and one wouldn’t exactly blame nonbelievers for demanding an express lane, since, unlike Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians, atheists don’t have all eternity. A large number of cows and dogs have managed to weave their way into the fabric of city life, relieving themselves as they go. This, combined with a lack of public lavatories for humans and the aroma of so many burnt offerings, can make one ask, Who is cooking feet? Because they’re done.

  On the bright side, scheming primates don’t shake down Varanasi tourists, since people leave plenty of food offerings in the many different temples, and the monkeys help these gifts reach the gods by moving them upward in the universe, starting with nearby tree branches and rooftops.

  Guides in Varanasi, following the initial push necessary to secure your business, are helpful and friendly, but just as tours of Istanbul end at a rug shop, all outings here conclude at a textile or glass-bead stall. Shopping tip: a good pashmina scarf should pass through a ring the size that you’d wear on a finger. Your guide will surely inform you that Goldie Hawn has been to Varanasi and ask if you’d like to see a photo of her with a famous guru. This would be the appropriate time to ask if your guide would like to see a YouTube clip of Goldie Hawn on the old sketch comedy show Laugh-In.

  Unlike the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, the Holy Mosque in Mecca, or Saint Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, there isn’t a specific structure to head for in Varanasi. The ghats (stone steps) along the riverbank are the main focal point of Varanasi, as that’s where ritual bathing and cremation takes place. To Hindus, the river itself is a deity in that it is believed to have the power to cure ills, expiate sins, and offer a gateway to the next world. More than fifteen hundred miles in length, the Ganges flows down from the Himalayas in an arc across northern India, from west to east, and then runs into the Bay of Bengal. Myths and legends tell various stories of kings, gods, and goddesses who played a role in the divine waters falling from heaven to earth, and even the most nonbelieving of Indians will most likely concede that the Ganges is sacred. Even that old atheist Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India, wanted a handful of his ashes scattered there. “The Ganga is the river of India, beloved of her people, ’round which are intertwined her racial memories, her hopes and fears, her songs of triumph, her victories and her defeats,” he wrote in his will. “She has been a symbol of India’s age-long
culture and civilization, ever-changing, ever-flowing, and yet ever the same Ganga.”

  The must-get in Varanasi for your blog or Facebook page is to take one of the many inexpensive boats for hire (complete with operator) out on the river at sunrise or sunset, where hundreds of candles and flower garlands are launched as offerings to Ganga, who is thought to be a living goddess in Hinduism, while temple bells chime and prayers are chanted.

  As a result, Varanasi is the perfect town for morning people, and things start rolling at around 3:00 am. So if you’re an insomniac, have jet lag, or just drank too much espresso last night, you can begin sightseeing and souvenir hunting almost immediately. By dawn, the riverbank is chockablock with pilgrims intensely involved in al fresco meditation, salvation seeking, purification, cremation, and a substantial amount of clothes washing.

  At first one assumes that it must be the poor and outcast who are burned outdoors for all to see, with dogs and cows meandering past, and then have their remains dumped into the nearby river. In reality, this sacred ceremony is the dream of every Hindu, since it ensures that all sin is washed away and that they’ll receive enlightenment in the next life. Despite white cloth coverings, it’s possible to make out the various body parts, so unlike saying good-bye at most funerals, watching corpses as they slowly burn is extremely real, or vérité if you happen to be holding a video camera. Apparently some cremations take longer than others, and I witnessed a young man waiting for a friend or relative to finish burning while chatting away on his cell phone. Indeed, life goes on. Same with death. As soon as one body is finished, a new fire is lit, and the next corpse is pulled into place.

  India, in general, and Varanasi, in particular, is famous for being a place where spiritual tourists can catch hold of the meaning of existence. Watching so many bodies being cremated along the riverbank, I was reminded of what novelist Franz Kafka said: “Life has meaning because it ends.” And though most people don’t have control over when they die, for folks living in my heavily Catholic hometown of blizzard-prone Buffalo, this usually means trying to wait until spring so the ground has thawed. Their city having been voted the nation’s friendliest by USA Today, Buffalonians prefer not to be a burden to anyone in life or death.