Delhi - Contradiction City

Consisting of eleven million people (officially, that is; I suspect many, many more) crammed into a sprawling metropolis on the banks of the Yamuna River, Delhi defies words. Any statement that is made about the city immediately contradicts itself. Wealthy? Opulently so, and yet once one leaves the glossy city centre, the air becomes a miasma of overwhelming poverty. Cultured? The city is awash with museums, galleries, bookshops and cinemas, but I doubt that any are frequented by the poor, ragged people who inhabit the slums amidst the three-metre high piles of rubbish at the suburban train stations. Progressive? Definitely, if the number of skyscrapers going up is any indication, but then again, this is a city where the sight of an ox cart in the middle of a busy road barely warrants a second glance.

I like it, though. Once again, the traveller grapevine has a lot to answer for. The conventional wisdom amongst backpackers is that Delhi is worth visiting for as little time as possible - see the main sights, and get on the next train out of the place. I can categorically say that this is not true. The correct approach (for me, at least) was to relax, and consume the city at a slower pace. I've spent just on a week here, and I haven't even seen all the major sights; instead, I have spent my time in bookshops, coffee houses, bars and parks, and I've had an absolute ball.

My camera hasn't had much of a workout, either. I had to get the CCD professionally cleaned after I tried to do so myself - kids, they're not joking when they tell you that touching the CCD is a bad idea - and so I haven't even had the use of it for much of the time here. But I have taken a couple of interesting shots. We'll begin with a couple from the Jama Masjid mosque, which is apparently the largest mosque in the Asia-Pacific region; the courtyard has room for over 25,000 of the faithful. Access is a problem: as with most Islamic buildings, you have to time your visit around prayers, and standing still for more than a few moments tends to attract attention and calls of "Move on! Move on!" That said, the facade is beautiful, and the view from the minaret is absolutely unreal. (I had no serious appreciation of Delhi until I saw it.)









I never actually got inside the famous Red Fort - I ran out of sightseeing time, and decided that the Jama Masjid took priority. But I did spend a fascinating afternoon at the Bahá'í House of Worship, aka the Lotus Temple. The Bahá'í are much, much more welcoming than the Muslims, at least as far as temples go, and sitting in on a Bahá'í prayer service is one of the aural highlights of the trip thus far. The Lotus Temple itself is a fascinating feat of modern architecture, but it is hard to get past the feeling that the Sydney Opera House has been rotated and translated and plonked down in the suburbs of New Delhi.





And, of course, I spent Christmas in Delhi. Predictably, I wound up getting horrendously drunk in a dive bar in Paharganj (the backpacker ghetto) on Christmas Eve, complete with an extremely unsettling Santa. (Santa must be white, of course, so what could the locals do but get the closest thing to a white person they could find?)





And on that note I must conclude - the coffee shop whose wireless I am shameless abusing is closing, and I need to go back to my hotel room and pack for a very long train ride to Amritsar! Unfortunately it's leaving at 4:40am...

Artsy Stuff

A quick interlude from the travel writing for some pure showing-off. I took one of my photos from the Taj (next blog entry down), tonemapped it, processed it hard, and wound up with:





I'm pretty happy with it.

Agra - bah!

It's inarguably the most famous building in India. It swarms with tourists, both Indian and foreign. The entry price is, by Indian standards, extortionate at 750 Rs., and the queues to get in can be horrendous. The standard vista of it constitutes one of the most cliche travel photos in the world. It has inspired countless amounts of poetry, some good (such as Tagore's line about a "teardrop... on the face of eternity"), but much more bad, and after even a couple of hours in Agra, you get sick of seeing the same familiar outline everywhere you look.

And yet, it is still quite possibly the most beautiful building I have ever seen. Ladies and gentlemen, the Taj Mahal.











Now that we've got that out of the way, let's talk about Agra. It's a shame, really, because although the Taj is stunning, the city of Agra (which surrounds it) is, for the most part, fucking horrible. There are a couple of interesting monuments scattered amongst a nasty, dirty industrial sprawl, and the locals (at least those who I dealt with) are generally poor, jaded, and out for the tourist rupee in any possible way. The hotels are dingy, the food is bad, and if it wasn't for the Taj, there would be almost no reason to even get off the train.

I say "almost", because there are some gems. Agra Fort, built by the Mughal emperors some time before the turn of the century, is almost as impressive as the Taj. Huge red sandstone walls surround lush green courtyards, and the architecture of the buildings is sublime. The overall effect is (as with the Taj) distinctly Islamic, and it took a distinct effort of will before I could bring myself to abandon the peace behind the walls and return to the chaos that it Agra's streets.









The day after I visited the Taj, I decided to take a day trip to the abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri, some 40kms out of town and the third on the list of Agra's "must see" sights. I negotiated the traffic to the local bus stand, where I proceeded to wait for a bus. "When will the bus get here?", I asked at midday. "Oh, thirty minutes," replied the disinterested wallah in the information booth. I asked him again an hour later. "Oh," he said, and looked at his watch. "Thirty minutes."





Having decided that the odds of the bus turning up within a reasonable timescale were slim to none, I rounded up three other Westerners who were obviously in the same jam, and went looking for a taxi. After agreeing on 500 Rs. total to get us all there and back, the driver spouted off some rapid Hindi to some passers-by, then said "Same trip, auto-rickshaw, 400!" Considering that the 25 rupees we each stood to save was enough for a lassi, the choice was obvious.

The auto-rickshaw, or tuk-tuk, is a ubiquitous form of transport in India. They're maybe the length of a large motorcycle, with three wheels, a handlebar, a backseat capable of fitting three people if you don't mind a bit of intimacy, and a canvas canopy. They're cheaper than taxis, more expensive than cycle rickshaws (but morally less questionable), and generally a good way to get around a city.

What they're NOT good for, it turns out, is medium- or long-distance highway travel. Spending over an hour crunched into a tiny seat while we tootled along at 35kph, continually being passed by just about every kind of vehicle with wheels (and even some without), choking on dust and smog since my entire upper body was hanging out of the cab, was not a particularly enjoyable experience. When we got to Fatehpur Sikri, my mood only got shabbier, since the touts turned out to be far worse than anything else I've encountered in India (one of them actually grabbed me with two hands, which resulted in him going sprawling in the gutter, and me enjoying a little bit of catharsis).

Once we'd got past the ticket booth though, everything got better. Like Agra Fort, Fatehpur Sikri is an oasis of calm, not to mention a beautiful architectural masterpiece. It was built from scratch by one of the Mughal Emperors as a capital, and a home for the arts, poetry, and all things beautiful. Apparently it worked pretty well for a couple of months, until it became apparent that the nearby water sources were simply insufficient for the city to survive. After trying desperately to rectify the situation, the city was slowly abandoned to the elements. Now, resting quietly on a rise in the Gangetic Plains, it feels less a ghost town than a peaceful place of meditation that was perhaps a little before its time.









Once again, it was hard to leave, especially since the auto ride back was just an unpleasant as it had been the first time. Then it was time for me to leave Agra, on the first train possible. On that note, let me conclude with an image that I feel does a good job of summing up Indian train stations:

Lucknow And Then

Combine three parts Islamic architecture, one part decaying remnants of the British Raj, and two parts of modern cosmopolitanism. Mix with a careful dash of air pollution, some over-the-top traffic chaos, and serve on a flat river plain. Garnish with liberal amounts of old-world gentility and friendliness, and enjoy!

That's the best way I can think of to describe Lucknow, the bustling capital city of Uttar Pradesh. After Varanasi, this city is a delight. It's not particularly touristy, and seems to be avoided by most of the backpacker circuit, but I am definitely glad I gave the place a chance. I've spent a few nights staying in a small homestay near the train tracks, eating delicious home-cooked food and enjoying good company, venturing out every now and again to explore.

Lucknow has a distinguished history. For centuries it was the capital of an Islamic state, and the city is packed to the brim with Muslim architecture, Muslim food, and one of India's strongest Muslim populations (who would have guessed?). The jewel in the crown is the Bara Imambara, a massive tomb for one of the Nawabs, but it seems like everywhere you go you turn up small mosques, imambaras, etc. Just to top it all off, the kebabs in the old city are melt-in-your-mouth delicious.











The other main tourist thing-to-do in Lucknow is the Residency, a crumbling ruin of a garrison that was besieged for 87 horrific days during the Mutiny of 1857. Bizarrely (but perhaps inevitably), the manicured lawns and palm-shaded pathways seem to have become the hot spot for a date: everywhere you go, odds are pretty good that you'll run across a young Indian couple canoodling in a corner.









But the best thing about Lucknow to me is simply the friendliness. Lucknow has a reputation throughout India for it's pehle aap (after you!) gentility, and this is on show throughout the city. Whether it's as overt as the frequent random acts of kindness (such as the gentleman who offered me a lift across town on his motorbike "[b]ecause I like to help visitors enjoy our beautiful city!"), or as simple as the friendly smiles and greetings from almost everyone you walk past in the street, Lucknow presents itself well.











There are other hidden treasures here as well. I was a little staggered to learn that Walter Burley Griffin, the architect best known for designing Canberra, is buried in a small local cemetery. Apparently he succumbed to peritonitis while visiting and died not long after. The cemetery is beautiful, leafy, full of eucalypts (the smell of home!), and small kids flying kites.







Unfortunately, one of the few downsides is the lack of anything resembling a solid internet cafe. Thus, I was unable to get my train e-ticket printed, and missed the red-eye to Agra last night. So now I must haul ass over to the railway station, in the hope that I can find a tourist quota ticket for not too much money. But hey, the worst that happens is that I spend another day or two here. I can live with that.

Varanasi - City of Divine Light (and Touts)

I like Varanasi.

I didn't, at first. Other travellers had told me to expect two things about Varanasi: beautiful scenery, and the most aggressive touts outside Agra and Delhi. Unfortunately, I quickly found myself experiencing the latter, leaving little patience to investigate the former. Within minutes of disembarking my train, I found myself somewhere in Godaulia, trying to explain to an autorickshaw driver that I really did not want to stay in his friend's hotel, and would quite like to go where I asked to go, thank you very much. After he pointed me in the direction of the river, it turned out that I was some four kilometres from where I wanted to be. What followed was a long walk in the middle of the day carrying a heavy backpack, and some serious bad vibes from me.

Which was a pity really, because Varanasi is an incredible city. Packed to the gunwales with tourists, touts, and pilgrims, it swarms with life, spirituality, colour, and death. My hotel is a five minute walk from Manikarnika Ghat, the most important cremation site in Hinduism. Five minutes in the other direction puts me firmly in the Muslim Quarter. Ten minutes walking leaves me at Dasaswamedh Ghat, home to the slightly tacky but still impressive Ganga Aarti ceremony, and after a few more minutes walk I can be in the middle of the Benares University campus.

You get used to the touts, too. There are several approaches to dealing with them, all interesting. Mostly you can ignore them and they'll stop following you after a couple of hundred metres. Alternatively, you can fuck with them - I have had several conversations about the quality of the camel polo players in Timbuktu (the obvious answer to "Hey my friend, what country you from?!"). But the most rewarding is to simply try and get past the hard sell to the human being underneath. After we'd established that I wasn't interested in purchasing silk, no matter what the price, one of the touts and I had a long and fascinating conversation over cups of chai about the economic difficulties involved in doing business in Varanasi, and the necessity of approaching tourists with such insistency.









The architecture and the ghats are stunning. The city feels ancient (which, of course, it is), and the air is one of cultured decay propped up by constant rebuilding. The Ganga (Ganges) is hideously polluted, and the Hindus manage to both revere and abuse it in equal amounts. A boat ride along the river at dawn, although touristy as hell, was still one of the most fascinating things I've done for quite a while.









That said, despite the beauty of the city, photography here is extremely difficult. The air pollution is prohibitive - visibility rarely gets beyond more than a couple of hundred metres, and the glare from the sky is frequently insurmountable. Many fantastic shots simply proved impossible - hundreds of kites flitting above the sunset skyline, for example, or the colours that run riot along the ghats as the pilgrims go down to bathe.

Now, my laptop battery is about to expire, and I must go pack for my trip to Lucknow. Until then!

Annapurna Circuit

And so it was that I found myself in Besi Sahar, staring up at the start of the Annapurna Circuit. I'll try to condense this, but seventeen-odd days of adventure and tomfoolery won't compress too easily.

First off, mountains. It took a couple of days for us to wend our way up the Marsyangdi Khola to the point where I first saw snow-capped peaks. It's worth mentioning that the hills along the way were still stunning, far bigger than anything available in Australia. The general scale of the Himalayas is hard to describe; even the foothills rise so high that the sun sets around about 3:30pm, and the mountains can almost completely fill your field of view. The rivers foam and churn through valleys that are hundreds of metres deep, as trekkers stride over precarious suspension bridges bolted into sheer cliffs.













The most impressive thing is how densely the hills are populated, relatively speaking of course. It was unusual to walk for more than fifteen or twenty minutes without seeing evidence of human civilisation - random Buddhist stupas, Maoist slogans daubed on rock faces, or just another friendly tea-house.













Finally we reached the mountains proper. They begin by hiding at the top of valleys and peeking over the passes, but within a couple of days walking they surround you completely. Being in the midst of such massive natural structures gives one a sense of impermanence, but also security. It was an awe-inspiring feeling to walk out the door every morning and suddenly realise, Hey, I'm in the highest mountain range on Earth.













After trekking up the Marsyangdi for six or seven days, we started to get into the serious altitudes. After spending an extra night in Manang (3600m) to acclimatise, we progressed slowly up the valleys towards the Thorung La. As we walked, the climate turned cold, always falling well below freezing and night and often not much hotter during the day. Mountains were everywhere, and the landscape was cold, dry, and arid - inhospitable and beautiful.













Crossing the Thorung La itself was a challenge, well and truly. At just under 5500m, the air pressure on top of the pass provides very little oxygen, and every step is a struggle. Moving too fast leaves you winded, and your body goes into overdrive to compensate - my resting pulse rate was 124bpm, and my respiration rate not much slower. We left the high camp at 4.30am, and although it was hard to roll out of bed so early, there were things that made it worthwhile; not least the beautiful views of the sun rising to the east of Thorung Peak and the hard-packed snow fields. Finally, around about 7.00am, I stood on top of my own little world.













The trek down from the other side of the pass took us through the Kali Gandaki valley, which is essentially a high-altitude desert. Instead of snow-capped mountains, I was enveloped in wind, dust, and vast river plains. We travelled past the holy temple at Muktinath, through Marpha (apple brandy country!), and onwards towards the thriving town of Jomsom.












We concluded the trek off easily, passing through Kalopani, Tatopani (home of the best hot springs this side of Rotorua), and Ghorapani. I made the traditional early morning pilgrimage to Poon Hill to take in the gorgeous sunrise view of the Annapurna massif, before a solid day trekking downhill towards Birethanti and Naya Pul, from whence a taxi carried me to Pokhara. All in all, I walked something like 200km in seventeen days, with a sum altitude change around about 12000m. Good times.













Up till now, most of the photos I've posted have been landscapes. But the trek was really made by the people I shared it with. I had two fantastic guides in Dawanuri Sherpa and Hari (whose last name I never quite discovered), and met many other fascinating characters, like Salt Lake City Tom, and Andy and Alice, a honeymooning couple from Brisbane. Good times were had.

















And finally, let's not forget the wildlife!









Thus endeth a really stupidly long blog post. As always, all photos are links, and there's many more shots up on my Flickr page - please explore them! Until next time...