Well, hello there! It's been a while! I know, I know. We've been back from India for almost a month now and no bloggin', but before you "boo" us off the bloggin' stage, we're going to do some mass blog posting and see if you start to like us again. Hopefully it works.
To bring us up to speed, we arrived, safe and sound, back to our homeland in mid October. We are now on a road trip around the Southwest visiting friends and family. It has rocked our faces off! (that expression is courtesy of Amy's long time BFF, Kate the Great, whom we will see next in Denver!) We've caught up, shared old memories, played with new little ones, had some tasty brews, and even visited the Celestial Seasonings tea factory in Fort Collins. Amy LOVES tea, so this was beyond exciting for her. You know what else is beyond exciting? 4 days until "Breaking Dawn" comes out in the theaters!! Yep, I just posted that. (If you can't tell yet, this is Amy doing to the typing right now). Say what you will friends, but that Twilight crap is addictive. I know you're wondering, so I'll just lay it out there. Team Edward.
Anyway, back on track, our road trip has been awesome and I might post a few photos later. Since this is our blog, we're okay with posting pics of ourselves, but to protect the privacy of our friends and family, no photos will be posted of them. Unless they ask specifically, and we will be happy to! We just made that up after we got back to the States, so sorry if we have offended our India friends by posting pictures of them...
On a bit of a sad note, right before we left India we lost a bag that housed the memory card for our camera. This memory card had all the pictures from the first three-quarters of our trip. After many phone calls, and much searching, we have accepted that it is gone forever. *Sniff* RIP memory card. Thankfully we did the blog posts, so we have those pictures still! The ones we're missing are Varanasi, Delhi, and Dharamsala. Very sad, but oh well. We will always have the memories and we can write about our experiences. Hopefully you'll still find them interesting without the visual stimulation. But not all is lost my friends; we have the pictures from our last two weeks in India, so we will definitely post those!
So. Let's catch up. Where were we? Ah, yes, we left off at Agra, so now we're at - Varanasi. Let's rewind and pretend we're back in India.
We should probably know more about this city than we do, but it's not like we had more than a few weeks to plan the trip. So we went to Varanasi because we heard it was old. Way old. Like 4,000 years old. Rumor has it that it's one of the oldest continuously occupied cities in the entire solar system. It is also a major place where public cremations take place. Yep. It's true. So Rob was pumped to see some of the temples and check out just what a city looks like after being occupied for 4 millenia. Amy was wondering why in the heck we would want to look at a bunch of dead bodies (RIP everyone). Amy has some serious issues with "uninhabited" bodies and looking at them just really gives her the heeby-jeebies. Another exciting note, Varanasi is ranked in the top three of Indian cities with the worst reputation for taking advantage of tourists, along with Agra and New Delhi. But, hey, we survived Agra, and we were going to stay with a friend outside of New Delhi after Varanasi, so we pressed on and took an overnight train to "the city of temples," one of the holiest cities for nearly a billion Hindus.
A quick side note about India trains. Sometimes they are surprisingly cool. We have been taking the "3AC" sleeper cars, which means we had air-conditioned berths with a set of three bunks on either side of the space we occupied, for a total of six people in each little puka. We've met some really interesting people on the trains, including people from Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and China, as well as some very friendly locals. And then sometimes there are some totally rude and annoying bunkmates that turn on all the lights (and leave them on after they leave) and make a ton of noise as they get off at a train stop at 3 in the morning. But whatever. And you get used to the cockroaches.
Our Varanasi hotel was at the southernmost “ghat,” with a beautiful view of that holy river, Mother Ganges. Varanasi is situated on one side of this massive river, and all along the river’s edge are various “ghats,” which are kind of like a cross between an alley and a neighborhood. It’s a neighborhood of alleys, I guess. And they all spit you out onto the waterfront. Technically, the ghat is the part of the neighborhood that leads you down a series of steps to the water’s edge. But that part of the neighborhood was underwater when we visited. In non-monsoon season, we were told, you can walk along a sort of concrete boardwalk all the way up the city. But due to heavy rains for months and months just prior to our visit, the river Ganges was swollen with water, and there were entire stretches of the city underwater (just along the riverside), including most of these steps that go down to the river.
We took a sunrise boat ride up the river to get a good look at the city. We saw a series of ghats for different purposes. Some of them are state ghats, like one for Karnataka state, one for Kerala state, and we saw a few other Indian states represented. Some of them are for specific gods, and these ghats will have temples for their gods. And two of them are “burning ghats.” They don’t call them that because the ghats themselves are on fire. The people are. Yeah. They’re public, open-air crematoriums.
This is where it started to get a little mind-bending for us. We kept on hearing about these cremation grounds at the river side, so we decided to go see one. And what better time to go see this sight than at night, right? So we hopped on a bicycle rickshaw (we felt bad for the driver because he had to haul Rob's fat rear-end up some steep roads) and got dropped at the edge of the neighborhood for the main burning ghat. There were so many people! This is what people must mean when they say that India is "an assault on the senses," because that's exactly how we felt. So many people, noises, colors, and smells completely surrounding you. The streets are incredibly narrow and dark - like a maze. As we went along, people tried to start up conversations with us: “where are you from?”, “do you want to see the burning ghat?”, and “do you want to see the bodies?” We pretended not to understand English and simply didn’t answer the guys that approached us. The night before, we had learned that these guys are all very devious and they will try to veer you off into a direction that you don’t want to go. They tell you you’re going the wrong way, which gets confusing and maddening in the labyrinth of narrow alleyways. So we decided to try to ignore them. And it seemed like it was working, despite one guy pestering us the whole way and acting like a tour guide that we didn’t hire (Indians are very good at inventing jobs for themselves!). So we get to the area where they sell the wood for the funeral pyre, and then he tries to veer us off course. “Don’t go down there! That’s where the families are! Tourists aren’t supposed to go there! It’s for the families!” That made us pause and start doubting ourselves. Amy had her mouth and nose covered with a handkerchief the whole time because it was so hard to breath with all the thick smoke in the air. She just looked at Rob, completely uncomfortable with the whole situation. There we were, standing in the middle of all these families hauling wood and the bodies of their loved ones, wrapped in colorful and decorative cloth, down these pathways toward the burning area, and everyone was just staring at us. We had no clue what to do.
So we moved up to a set of stairs that looked over to the platform where they were conducting the cremations. We were still below the platform, though, so the guy who had been pestering us told us to follow him up to a house where we could look down at the platform for a better view. Against every instinct, we followed him. Up a flight of dark stairs, into a deserted-looking concrete flat with no lights, and then to a corner of a balcony where we could look down at the cremations. We were now standing over the river, about three stories up from the water. There was a line of people sitting in the room, along the wall opposite to the balcony. And they all just looked at us with empty eyes while our self-proclaimed tour guide stood right next to us in the creepy darkness. We suddenly felt extremely vulnerable. After a few seconds of this, with the hair on the back of our necks as stiff as porcupine needles, we decided to move away from the edge in case the guy decided to threaten us in any way. This was the only time we felt in danger in India! As quickly as possible, we booked it back down the stairs and straight out of the burning ghat. Our "tour guide" was grabbing at Rob's arm, demanding a donation of some kind and yelling at us as we flew down the stairs and out of the ghat. We felt lucky to be alive.
As you can imagine, we needed a break after all that craziness. We were totally overwhelmed, freaked out, coughing from all the smoke with our feet covered completely in mysterious brown mud, and we were still trying to deflect all the touts with our kung fu skills. Hee-yah! Thanks to our Lonely Planet guide, we learned about this cool German bakery nearby, called Brown Bread Bakery. We weaved through the maze of streets and finally found this diamond in the rough. It was everything we were hoping for. The tables were more like mattresses on the ground (something you would expect at a hooka lounge or drum circle). This place was focused on helping the poverty stricken people of Varanasi by employing them and selling baked goods and crafts that they had made. It was totally hippie and we loved it. We were there for several hours. And ohmygosh the food was frikkin' amazing. We love you, Brown Bread Bakery.
On another day, we found ourselves at this cool cafe called Open Hand. They also do a lot of work with the community - employing local women and keeping it fair trade. We bought lots of gifts there! Rob also had this amazing coffee drink they called a "Koffisch." It was a cappuccino with a big ol' glob of honey and a healthy dash of masala tea spice in it. Rob totally freaked out over this drink and thinks everyone needs to try it. Just email us if you are interested in more details.
All-in-all, it was a cool experience, but Amy was definitely ready to head out of there! What an absolutely crazy and mind-blowing place. We wish we had the pictures to show you!! If you're curious, google some pictures of Varanasi and you'll get the idea!
To bring us up to speed, we arrived, safe and sound, back to our homeland in mid October. We are now on a road trip around the Southwest visiting friends and family. It has rocked our faces off! (that expression is courtesy of Amy's long time BFF, Kate the Great, whom we will see next in Denver!) We've caught up, shared old memories, played with new little ones, had some tasty brews, and even visited the Celestial Seasonings tea factory in Fort Collins. Amy LOVES tea, so this was beyond exciting for her. You know what else is beyond exciting? 4 days until "Breaking Dawn" comes out in the theaters!! Yep, I just posted that. (If you can't tell yet, this is Amy doing to the typing right now). Say what you will friends, but that Twilight crap is addictive. I know you're wondering, so I'll just lay it out there. Team Edward.
Anyway, back on track, our road trip has been awesome and I might post a few photos later. Since this is our blog, we're okay with posting pics of ourselves, but to protect the privacy of our friends and family, no photos will be posted of them. Unless they ask specifically, and we will be happy to! We just made that up after we got back to the States, so sorry if we have offended our India friends by posting pictures of them...
On a bit of a sad note, right before we left India we lost a bag that housed the memory card for our camera. This memory card had all the pictures from the first three-quarters of our trip. After many phone calls, and much searching, we have accepted that it is gone forever. *Sniff* RIP memory card. Thankfully we did the blog posts, so we have those pictures still! The ones we're missing are Varanasi, Delhi, and Dharamsala. Very sad, but oh well. We will always have the memories and we can write about our experiences. Hopefully you'll still find them interesting without the visual stimulation. But not all is lost my friends; we have the pictures from our last two weeks in India, so we will definitely post those!
So. Let's catch up. Where were we? Ah, yes, we left off at Agra, so now we're at - Varanasi. Let's rewind and pretend we're back in India.
We should probably know more about this city than we do, but it's not like we had more than a few weeks to plan the trip. So we went to Varanasi because we heard it was old. Way old. Like 4,000 years old. Rumor has it that it's one of the oldest continuously occupied cities in the entire solar system. It is also a major place where public cremations take place. Yep. It's true. So Rob was pumped to see some of the temples and check out just what a city looks like after being occupied for 4 millenia. Amy was wondering why in the heck we would want to look at a bunch of dead bodies (RIP everyone). Amy has some serious issues with "uninhabited" bodies and looking at them just really gives her the heeby-jeebies. Another exciting note, Varanasi is ranked in the top three of Indian cities with the worst reputation for taking advantage of tourists, along with Agra and New Delhi. But, hey, we survived Agra, and we were going to stay with a friend outside of New Delhi after Varanasi, so we pressed on and took an overnight train to "the city of temples," one of the holiest cities for nearly a billion Hindus.
A quick side note about India trains. Sometimes they are surprisingly cool. We have been taking the "3AC" sleeper cars, which means we had air-conditioned berths with a set of three bunks on either side of the space we occupied, for a total of six people in each little puka. We've met some really interesting people on the trains, including people from Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and China, as well as some very friendly locals. And then sometimes there are some totally rude and annoying bunkmates that turn on all the lights (and leave them on after they leave) and make a ton of noise as they get off at a train stop at 3 in the morning. But whatever. And you get used to the cockroaches.
Our Varanasi hotel was at the southernmost “ghat,” with a beautiful view of that holy river, Mother Ganges. Varanasi is situated on one side of this massive river, and all along the river’s edge are various “ghats,” which are kind of like a cross between an alley and a neighborhood. It’s a neighborhood of alleys, I guess. And they all spit you out onto the waterfront. Technically, the ghat is the part of the neighborhood that leads you down a series of steps to the water’s edge. But that part of the neighborhood was underwater when we visited. In non-monsoon season, we were told, you can walk along a sort of concrete boardwalk all the way up the city. But due to heavy rains for months and months just prior to our visit, the river Ganges was swollen with water, and there were entire stretches of the city underwater (just along the riverside), including most of these steps that go down to the river.
We took a sunrise boat ride up the river to get a good look at the city. We saw a series of ghats for different purposes. Some of them are state ghats, like one for Karnataka state, one for Kerala state, and we saw a few other Indian states represented. Some of them are for specific gods, and these ghats will have temples for their gods. And two of them are “burning ghats.” They don’t call them that because the ghats themselves are on fire. The people are. Yeah. They’re public, open-air crematoriums.
This is where it started to get a little mind-bending for us. We kept on hearing about these cremation grounds at the river side, so we decided to go see one. And what better time to go see this sight than at night, right? So we hopped on a bicycle rickshaw (we felt bad for the driver because he had to haul Rob's fat rear-end up some steep roads) and got dropped at the edge of the neighborhood for the main burning ghat. There were so many people! This is what people must mean when they say that India is "an assault on the senses," because that's exactly how we felt. So many people, noises, colors, and smells completely surrounding you. The streets are incredibly narrow and dark - like a maze. As we went along, people tried to start up conversations with us: “where are you from?”, “do you want to see the burning ghat?”, and “do you want to see the bodies?” We pretended not to understand English and simply didn’t answer the guys that approached us. The night before, we had learned that these guys are all very devious and they will try to veer you off into a direction that you don’t want to go. They tell you you’re going the wrong way, which gets confusing and maddening in the labyrinth of narrow alleyways. So we decided to try to ignore them. And it seemed like it was working, despite one guy pestering us the whole way and acting like a tour guide that we didn’t hire (Indians are very good at inventing jobs for themselves!). So we get to the area where they sell the wood for the funeral pyre, and then he tries to veer us off course. “Don’t go down there! That’s where the families are! Tourists aren’t supposed to go there! It’s for the families!” That made us pause and start doubting ourselves. Amy had her mouth and nose covered with a handkerchief the whole time because it was so hard to breath with all the thick smoke in the air. She just looked at Rob, completely uncomfortable with the whole situation. There we were, standing in the middle of all these families hauling wood and the bodies of their loved ones, wrapped in colorful and decorative cloth, down these pathways toward the burning area, and everyone was just staring at us. We had no clue what to do.
So we moved up to a set of stairs that looked over to the platform where they were conducting the cremations. We were still below the platform, though, so the guy who had been pestering us told us to follow him up to a house where we could look down at the platform for a better view. Against every instinct, we followed him. Up a flight of dark stairs, into a deserted-looking concrete flat with no lights, and then to a corner of a balcony where we could look down at the cremations. We were now standing over the river, about three stories up from the water. There was a line of people sitting in the room, along the wall opposite to the balcony. And they all just looked at us with empty eyes while our self-proclaimed tour guide stood right next to us in the creepy darkness. We suddenly felt extremely vulnerable. After a few seconds of this, with the hair on the back of our necks as stiff as porcupine needles, we decided to move away from the edge in case the guy decided to threaten us in any way. This was the only time we felt in danger in India! As quickly as possible, we booked it back down the stairs and straight out of the burning ghat. Our "tour guide" was grabbing at Rob's arm, demanding a donation of some kind and yelling at us as we flew down the stairs and out of the ghat. We felt lucky to be alive.
As you can imagine, we needed a break after all that craziness. We were totally overwhelmed, freaked out, coughing from all the smoke with our feet covered completely in mysterious brown mud, and we were still trying to deflect all the touts with our kung fu skills. Hee-yah! Thanks to our Lonely Planet guide, we learned about this cool German bakery nearby, called Brown Bread Bakery. We weaved through the maze of streets and finally found this diamond in the rough. It was everything we were hoping for. The tables were more like mattresses on the ground (something you would expect at a hooka lounge or drum circle). This place was focused on helping the poverty stricken people of Varanasi by employing them and selling baked goods and crafts that they had made. It was totally hippie and we loved it. We were there for several hours. And ohmygosh the food was frikkin' amazing. We love you, Brown Bread Bakery.
On another day, we found ourselves at this cool cafe called Open Hand. They also do a lot of work with the community - employing local women and keeping it fair trade. We bought lots of gifts there! Rob also had this amazing coffee drink they called a "Koffisch." It was a cappuccino with a big ol' glob of honey and a healthy dash of masala tea spice in it. Rob totally freaked out over this drink and thinks everyone needs to try it. Just email us if you are interested in more details.
All-in-all, it was a cool experience, but Amy was definitely ready to head out of there! What an absolutely crazy and mind-blowing place. We wish we had the pictures to show you!! If you're curious, google some pictures of Varanasi and you'll get the idea!
