Holiness
Assi Ghat, shortly before dawn. This might be my favorite photograph of the whole year. The colors really did look like that.
Out of all of the holy places in a very holy country, Varanasi may well be the holiest. Varanasi lies on the Ganges River southeast of Delhi. The Ganges River is considered to be holy by the Hindu faith, so devout pilgrims make their way to Varanasi to immerse themselves in the waters. They bathe, dip, swim, pray, splash, launder, and wash in the river. Some even die there. Hindus believe that dying in Varanasi liberates the soul from the endless birth/death cycles they’d otherwise be subjected to if they died elsewhere. Cremations occur at the burning ghats on the side of the river, and bodies are carried down to the Ganges to their final resting place. The thing is, thanks to the mix of garbage, sludge, sewage, and creamated bodies that enter its waters, the Ganges is actually septic. Some uneducated people don’t know. Other people know and don’t care.
As you could imagine, Varanasi was a whole new level of intensity for us. To be surrounded by so much faith and so many private moments that are lived out loud in public was fascinating and overwhelming. The septic waters may not be scientifically capable of creating new life, and people may be dying all around, but Varanasi is one of the most alive places I’ve ever been.
Even though Varanasi is a holy place, above all else it is an actual city. This school bus rickshaw made us smile.
We typically took the auto-rickshaws and passed up the ones that are pulled by bicycle because it just seemed so uncomfortable to force another human to pull our weight around by his own.. This guy looked so crestfallen when we first refused the ride that we reconsidered and decided we should give him an opportunity to earn a living too. Although the slow ride made us miss the beginning of the night ceremony at the Dasaswamedh Ghat, riding on the cycle rickshaw gave us a totally different perspective than the noisy, exhaust spewing auto-rickshaws.
Candle selling in Varanasi appeared to be a big business.
All around, Hindu pilgrims make their offering to the Ganges.
Dasaswamedh Ghat, around 7:30 p.m.
This man looked very solitary despite all of the fervor behind him.
Varanasi is one of those places where you struggle over whether you should really be there, paying to observe real life, but in the end you participate like everyone else and try to make yourself feel better by saying, well at least I'm just observing, not intruding. We paid this man to row a boat down the Ganges at dawn like so many other tourists. The rowing is hard work and he was quick to let us know it, playing on our heartstrings with tales of his children in broken English to ensure a tip. Travel. It's complicated.
Sunrise on the Ganges. The light created is one of the most incredible things I've seen in my whole life. It makes the brown waters luminescent.
It also makes the ghats on the side of the river glow.
Lighting candles to offer to the Ganges.
Everyone is doing their own thing in close proximity as if the others aren't there. Bathing, laundry, praying, sitting.
Happy New Year! (and 9-month update)
Interrupting your regularly scheduled India posts to wish everyone Happy New Year from Laos. We rang in the new year with new friends from Germany and some Beer Lao, which we can confirm is Asia’s tastiest and cheapest brew.
The new year also marks 9 months on the road for us. All of a sudden, we feel like our trip is coming to an end. Our plan is to return home around April, 12 months after we left, but we just can’t bear buying a return ticket home yet. 3 months sounds so much shorter than 4 months, and more likely than not we will be spending the bulk of that time in Southeast Asia. Our original plan was to be here for 11 weeks. We’ve already been here for 5 weeks, and still have lots to see. At this point in our trip, we lack the motivation to move around a ton (especially because moving around in SE Asia often requires long windy bus rides or slow boats down the river). We’re currently in Luang Prabang, Laos. We plan to head south into southern Laos and Cambodia, then make our way north through Vietnam. We’ll fly from Hanoi back to Bangkok, and then will head south, stat, to the Thai beaches. From there, we’ll just have to see how much time and money we have left. Because we are over budget due to spending an extra month in Europe and the expensiveness of Japan, we realized a while back that Australia is just not in the cards for us on this trip. I’m not ready to admit that we probably will be cutting New Zealand too. I’m still holding out hope that money will drop down from the sky.
At this point in our trip, we used to the constant packing and repacking, wearing the same clothes OVER and OVER again, and the perpetual motion. We’re still enjoying ourselves, but I must admit we were checking Craiglist for apartments the other day. It is strange – I am so ready to come home in some ways, but there is still so much more to see…plus there’s that whole pesky working thing that we’ll be needing to do at some point. I’m very grateful we had the opportunity to travel for a year straight, but I’ve decided that it is not my preferred way to travel. I think the ideal travel situation would be a couple of months at home, a couple of months on the road. If only someone would pay me to do this…any takers?
Hope you are enjoying your first day of the year. We’re off to see what I hear is a gorgeous waterfall, so I think it is going to be a good day. And also, hopefully, a good year. I’m not making any resolutions other than to enjoy and appreciate the rest of our trip, and to find a job I don’t hate this year. What are your resolutions? If you’ve been wanting to travel, make it happen in some way, shape or form this year.
And with that, wishing you…
Taking Pictures of People Taking Pictures
Look closely; we didn't even realize what we captured in the shot until after we took it.
Probably one of the best parts of visiting the Taj Mahal, maybe even better than viewing the building itself, was watching the many sideshows circling round the Taj. Every day, visitors from around the world and India itself stream in and out of the Taj Mahal, all posing for a multitude of pictures with themselves and their favorite building.
We spent a good hour or two people watching and taking pictures of people taking pictures. Western tourists seemed to prefer the solitary poses, while the massive group shots with you and 30 of your closest friends were the fortay of the Indian tourists.
We watched two giggly Japanese girls pay a local to follow them around and snap photo after photo of them flashing peace signs, while not far away a group of at least thirty Indian women streamed by with a rainbow collection of saris to contrast with the Taj’s creaminess. People even wanted to take photos of ME.
Hope they cropped the dorky shoe covers out of their photo. What do people do with these pictures? Am I on a blog somewhere?
I’m not sure exactly how many of the tourists pretend to pinch the Taj Mahal between their fingers, but it seemed like it was the rare person who could stifle the impulse.
We may have refrained from engaging in that particular optical illusion, but I did succumb to the need to sit in a Princess Diana pose.
Hands down, our favorite sideshow was watching the more athletic and persistent tourists who entertained us (and a gawking crowd of Indians) by repeatedly trying out their best yoga pose or going for the money jump shot. Hope they captured it, because we did.
The Taj Mahal of Agra
I’m not sure why we bothered to visit the Taj Mahal, really. Considering we used to live in a building so similar. Or at least that’s what our old landlord told us. Before we were married, we rented a 2-story duplex in Etna. On the phone when I was setting up an appointment to view the duplex, the landlord told me, You’ll definitely recognize the building. It is the big one on left side of the street. It is so grand that some people call it the Taj Mahal of Etna.
I definitely see the resemblance. Don’t you?
The Taj Mahal of Agra, on the other hand, is really a spectacular building. It gleams, especially in the early morning light in the couple of hours after sunrise. I’m a sucker for symmetry. It’s what I fell in love with on our first house (not the rental) and it’s what I fell in love with on the Taj. I knew the Taj Mahal would be beautiful from afar; I didn’t realize that it would also be so beautiful up close. Its elegance astounded me.
The true test of how amazing the Taj Mahal was its ability to lull us out of our cranky moods. The night before we visited, we went to bed at a decent hour because we planned to get up at sunrise. India had other plans for us. There was some sort of festival going on – always a festival – that involved tinny, haunting music blasting out of a loudspeaker. A loudspeaker that was directly outside our room. A loudspeaker that, true to its name, was so loud that we could still hear it even when we played music through our noise-isolating headphones. The only way to drown it out was to play the most raucous rock’n’roll we had on top volume. Periodically the festival music would die down. Once we realized, we’d turn off our Ipods and settle in for some sleep, finally. Then, chanting would begin, followed by music even louder than before. This special brand of torture didn’t end until 3:30 in the morning – two hours before sunrise. It is a good thing the Taj Mahal of Agra didn’t look a thing like the Taj Mahal of Etna.
Merry Christmas, Thai style!
This is the first Christmas we’ve been away from home, which means it is also the first Christmas we’ve spent in a warm place. Forecast for Chiang Mai for Christmas Day: 86 and sunny. Forecast for Pittsburgh: 29 and snow showers.
Christmas is the one day where we’d rather be in the cold. This year, there’s no Christmas cookies; no decorating the tree; no family get-togethers; no 24 hours of The Christmas Story; and no presents for Fabulous on Christmas morning. Every year, I start the holiday season off by playing my favorite Christmas album, A Very Special Christmas. It is missing from our ITunes collection and I can’t find it on the internet. It’s just not the holidays without the Pointer Sisters pointing out, Whoa! Here we go! Another year gone by!
Yet, this holiday season has not been as different as we would have guessed. We saw Christmas decorations before Halloween. We went Christmas shopping and heard the same Christmas tunes, over and over. We saw lots of twinkling lights and there’s been Christmas trees in the lobbies of most of the places we’ve stayed in December. Santa even knew where to find us, even though we don’t have a chimney and didn’t put cookies and milk out for him and carrots out for Rudolph. Courtesy of Santa, we’re staying in some fancier digs tonight and tomorrow and may even treat ourselves to dinner at a real restaurant that isn’t on the side of the road. We plan to finally watch Bad Santa while lounging on our giant bed with multiple pillows (what luxury!) We even got to watch our first Steelers game of the season today – for the win, nonetheless. Thanks, Santa!
Santa climbing up MBK Center in Bangkok
Santa the Roaming Gnome roaming through the streets of Chiang Mai
New fancy digs...
...which we better not get used to because after we leave, we'll be spending 2 days crossing into Laos by boat. I hear it is BYOC (bring your own cushion).
Turns out that even though Thailand is 95% Buddhist, there are signs of Christmas everywhere. Even more so than the occasional Christians or the abundance of ex-pats, I’m guessing that Christmas is popular here because Thais love any type of celebration. Yep, Christmas in Thailand isn’t half bad, even though our thoughts will be in Pittsburgh. We wish everyone, wherever you are in the world, a very Merry Christmas. FedEx has your presents, so you’ll have to just enjoy scenes from the holidays in Thailand instead:
Thais posing in the middle of a giant snow globe in Bangkok; why, I don't know. I don't ask. I just capture.
Christmas tree in a Bangkok mall
Chatuchak Weekend Market, Bangkok, where you could get a neon sign wishing folks Merry Christmas or with a man peeing. Your pick.
Chiang Mai ladies wish you a Merry Christmas.
Homemade ornaments at the Sunday Market in Chiang Mai
Presents. More specifically, presents, on a barge, on oil drums, randomly in the middle of the canal in Chiang Mai. Only in Southeast Asia.
Couldn't do the annual Christmas Eve photo in front of Sean's parents' tree, so one taken in the mirror of the lobby of where we stayed for the past three nights on the way out the door will have to do.