On the road

My previous plan had been to travel from Agra to Jaipur, then Pushkar, Udaipur, Jodhpur, and Jaisalmer, hitting all the tourist destinations in Rajasthan. But I wasn’t too thrilled about just seeing all this beautiful stuff. I saw Varanasi, I saw forts and monuments in Delhi. I saw the Taj Mahal and the Agra fort, respectively perhaps the most beautiful building in the world and the former capital of the Mughal Empire. This is some of the best that India has to offer but I have no context for it’s significance and most of it doesn’t interest me.

So when I met Viktor from Sweden, about my age, at my guesthouse in Agra, I was very interested to hear what he had to say about the 10 day vipassana meditation course he did. I got a little interested in this type of Buddhist meditation when I was living in Salem, though I never got around to actually sitting down to meditate for more than a few times. Viktor seemed down to earth, I trusted his recommendation I didn’t just want to keep seeing stuff, so I signed up for a course in Jodhpur starting on March 14. He was pleased that he convinced me and he gave me his email address so I could tell him about my experience.

I had two days to get my ass to Jodhpur so I spent a night at a couchsurfer’s bachelor pad with five Polish kids and a German woman outside of Jaipur. The guys who owned the house cooked really good food and arranged a bus ticket to Jodhpur for me. The bus left at 11:30 pm so I met one of the guys from the house, put my stuff on the bus, and gave him 600 rupees to buy me the ticket. I waited and waited and finally the bus engine started but I didn’t have a ticket. I pleaded with the bus driver to wait two minutes and ran around aimlessly looking for this guy. All of my stuff was still on the bus though so I was pretty nervous that the bus would leave with all of my possessions. Two guys were trying to help me and though I trusted this guy not to run off with my money, I had to tell them that I didn’t have his phone number and I didn’t know where he was buying the tickets. FINALLY a different guy showed up with a tiny receipt sized piece of paper that was my ticket. Sleeping on a bus is not much fun but I got to Jodhpur so I was happy.

After seeing the fort in Jodhpur (my favorite so far) I hired an auto rickshaw to take me to this meditation center. The driver looked like he was 16. The place was quite a ways out of town and I think this kid though I was taking him out to the desert to kill him. After asking directions several times we finally found the center but all the signs were in Hindi and no one there spoke English so I had to rely on my driver to translate. I knew he wanted to get rid of me so I just had to pray that it was right place. They did give me a room with a bathroom no questions asked but it wasn’t until I saw white people speaking English that I could breathe a little easier knowing that the course wouldn’t all be in Hindi.

It was a ten day meditation course. There were 11 of us. The rules were no talking for nine days, no killing, no lying, no stealing, no sexual activity and no intoxicants. We meditated from 4:30 am until 6:30, ate breakfast, rested, meditated from 8 until 11, ate, rested, meditated from 1 until 5, ate, rested, meditated from 6 until 7, then attended discourse where we watched recordings of the man who started this organization talk about meditation and the Buddha (this was my favorite part of the day), after which we meditated from 8:30 to 9 and went to bed. It came out to about 10 hours of meditation per day.

This course fulfilled three important purposes for me. First, I got a chance to stop traveling. No one wanted anything from me and the people around me were self-selected so I trusted them. I was doing something that I actually wanted to be doing. Second, I learned how to meditate and I got some outside motivation to do it. It was intense but it was a really interesting experience. Also, when my mind wandered I thought about all sorts of useful and totally irrelevant things. I had nothing but my own mind to entertain myself (no reading or writing materials allowed) and I kind of got to see the inner workings of my brain. Third, I got to learn about the Buddha (not Buddhism), something I’m been interested in for a little while. The man on the discourse recordings was highly intelligent and well-spoken and told stories and gave simple metaphors to help us better understand him , though after 9 days of hearing his voice 99% of the time, he got a little tiring. I could say a lot more, but I’ll keep it to this.

I would recommend anyone who has 10 days free (say, after school or between jobs) consider doing this. It’s donation based so you can give as much or as little as you want. There’s a center in Onalaska halfway between Seattle and Portland. The website is called dhamma.org.

On the last day a Norwegian and an English woman and I got a ride to the city from a nice man who sat next to me during meditation. I got pretty close with these two women (the only other foreigners) for only talking with them about 12 hours and we all gave hugs when we parted ways. I caught a bus to Jaisalmer and am currently staying at a really nice hotel inside the Jaisalmer fort for less than $4 per night. I went on an overnight camel safari and found out that riding camels is a cool thing to do but in practice it’s pretty uncomfortable. I went with four nice Korean people. It was a lazy day.

We rode for about an hour and a half, then hung out for 4 or 5 hours under a tree, eating lunch and relaxing. We got back on the camels and rode a little further to our campsite. We ate dinner and slept under the stars on simple mattresses, but at that point I started getting sick and it continued unrelenting through the night. The one night I didn’t have a toilet I had to get up perhaps 6 times to dig a whole in the sand and squat down. I had a fever, I was dizzy, dehydrated and I ran out of toilet paper, so it was a long night. I spent all yesterday recovering in my room, drinking water and watching Ken Burns’ Baseball. The people at the hotel are really nice to me and keep checking in on me. I feel much better this morning.

Tonight I catch an overnight bus to Japiur, then a flight to Nepal. I stay in Kathmandu for 2 nights, then head to Pokhara. I’ll write more then. 

Tomorrow I leave for Agra to see the Taj Mahal. I will be there two nights, then on to Jaipur. My friend Bhaswati was a great host, making me food, introducing me to her really smart friends (they're all doing their masters of Indian economic development), tour guiding, etc. It's been four great days and I could stay longer. I've only met her now three times but we click very well, like old friends. The worst part of traveling alone is not having anyone to trust but I trust her implicitly so I can relax a little. I'm not so sure I like traveling alone. Maybe I'll like it more next week. 

Jump from the nest

Well, I’m writing from the train heading to Delhi. I spent one Long Day in Varanasi and saw much of what it has to offer. First let me back up though.

The last two days at Parijat were magical. On Saturday, the last day of school, classes 6, 8, 9, and 10 each gave me gamusas and gifts (class 7 gave me theirs a few days earlier). I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. My favorite gift came, as I was hoping, from my favorite class 9. It was a small, simple, solid brass goblet. Each class had collected money amongst themselves to buy these and Aimoni told me it was the first time they had ever done this for a volunteer. I didn’t know what to say. Some of the gifts I wanted to keep but could not take with me, so I shipped a package home. The ones I didn’t want, though given no less sincerely, I took with me and gave to the nice family that ran the guesthouse where I stayed in Varanasi.

When the final afternoon prayers had finished, I gave final hi-fives to all the kids as they left school and distributed the last of the pictures. Hard to believe that even if I come back, I will never see most of those kids again. That evening Sankar organized a ceremony with the hostel students. Sankar said good things about me, Swarnamika and Bijyunti read Assamese poems and several other students sang songs. Rasan spent most of his time disrupting the event. The hostel students presented me with a big beautiful journal, a pen, and a shoulder bag like everyone wears. Aimoni gave me a Parijat-made Karbi gamusa, bright orange with green embroidery. Then we cranked up the stereo and danced to Assamese music and Gangnam Style. I was the chosen partner of Bibha and she wouldn’t let me take her off my shoulders, which was fine with me. When dancing was done Paul and the hostel students served us chicken and I went to be happy though uncomfortably full.

The next day I ate my final breakfast and drank my last cup of coffee at Parijat. I chatted with the new volunteers from Germany – they seem like great people and I would have liked to work with them. They will take over teaching computers. When it was time to go, I gave everybody a hug. Reboti, the weaver who hardly looked at me for the first 6 weeks but with whom I had gotten very close without a common language. Dulumoni and Bibha, mother and daughter, crying together. Despite being two years younger than I, Dulumoni is the older sister I’m always searching for and her daughter is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Sankar, my roommate and best friend at Parijat. Aimoni, the best thing that ever happened to Uttam. And all the wonderful girls and boys in the hostel. I miss you guys. You’re making traveling hard because now I have two families to miss. Uttam and his brother Prasanta put me on the train, said their goodbyes and I pulled away.

The train ride to Varanasi was 28 hours. I spent most of my time watching movies or sleeping. I met some nice people who helped me arrange an affordable taxi, which (unsurprisingly) took me to the wrong end of town where I met a man names Lakshmi who got me an affordable room and showed me where to eat and get good lassi. He offered to show me around the next day and since I didn’t know much about Varanasi and I only had one day to explore, I agreed. I understood it was a business arrangement – he made commission off getting me a room and he expected payment for showing me good stuff. But the room was fine and I wanted to see Varanasi.

Next morning I woke up at 5:30 and he arranged a boat to show us the ghats along the Ganges. It was beautiful to see these giant colorful buildings towering over the stone steps in golden sunlight. It is THE thing to do in Varanasi but of course people do it for a reason. We ate breakfast and agreed to meet back around 10 to see some of the city. At that point he asked for 200 rupees so he could recharge his phone. I balked but didn’t want to argue and I figured it would come out of the tip at the end. I rested. At ten we walked to the University which was clear and cool and not too crowded. We went to the museum and walked around a big temple. We went to a silk shop where he was irritated that I didn’t want to buy anything (thus no commission) although I told him before I went that I already had too much stuff. We agreed to meet back in a few hours so I went and wrote in my journal, read my book and people watched at Assi ghat. In my whole time in Guwahati I only saw one foreigner walking the streets, so the foreigners were fascinating to me. At this point I didn’t want to spend much more time with Lakshmi but he was taking me to see a show on the ghats which I wanted to see, so I met him at 6 and walked through the ghats full of naked babas and smoke of every flavor. The show had lots of fire and Hinduism that I could not relate to but it was a spectacle and I’m glad I went. On the way back we walked through the tiny alleyways of Varanasi that I never would have seen without someone to show me.

When we got back it was time to leave. Lakshmi wanted 500 rupees (in addition to the 200 earlier). I was going to give him 200-300, so 400 seemed like a compromise. This is where being a Westerner in India gets tricky. I fully understand the value of dollar but the rupee I am only just learning. Would I have paid more than $14 (700 rupees) for such a tour at home? Of course. Is $2 (the difference between 600 and 700 rupees) enough to worry about? No. Does it make me a true American if I can afford it but don’t want to pay? I don’t know. But I wouldn’t pay him what I would at home, maybe $50, almost four times more than he asked. That leads to other problems.

I had this conversation with Tets, our Japanese friend that came to visit a few weeks ago. He has traveled the world for several years now and he seemed wise to me. His advice was to just be fair and don’t be arrogant. Of course everything in India is negotiable, we didn’t agree on a price beforehand, 600 seemed fair to me given what I do know about the value of the rupee, and I didn’t want to be the American who pays whatever is asked because I feel guilty and I don’t want an argument. So when we were in the taxi going to the train station I gave him 400.

WOOOF he was pissed. Once he figured that I wouldn’t give him what he wanted, he told me that he would f--- other people because of me, he would f--- somebody’s mother because of me, to f--- off myself. He didn’t have much leverage – how couldn’t refuse me services – so he told the driver in Hindi to charge me double. I paid 150 instead of the 200 he wanted and walked into the train station. It’s tough to know what to do. It’s pretty unlikely that I ripped off someone who does this for a living. I just wonder why he was SO angry…I think either he’s just crazy or he desperately needed the money for ganja. Will I worry about the 100 rupees next time? Maybe not. I dunno. I DID learn that I don’t want to pay another guide in India. Needless to say it was a good day and I’m glad to be out of Varanasi.  

One day later, I’m now relaxing in Bhaswati’s fourth story studio apartment in Delhi having enjoyed morning chai and breakfast. It’s good to see a friendly face.