Seasons on the Move

Amritsar – November 16 

I awoke to the sound of Fab vomiting in the toilet. At first, I thought it was due to the whisky or the pull she took, by herself, off the absinthe bottle when Harry had his back turned. After the vomiting continued throug the morning, afternoon and into the evening, I realized we had a different problem on our hands. Food poisoning. Thank you Golden Temple!

Fortunate for us, there was a hospital next door to the hotel. While Fab laid in bed with a fever and a bucket beside her, I ran over to see if we could get some help. The first doctor I spoke to was a total prick who wouldn’t come to the hotel to see her. I took my problem to Harry and, being the gentleman he is, he paid a visit to the hospital and tore a strip off of them. Within minutes, Fab had a doctor bedside injecting a needle into her ass. She also received a fistful of medication which she promptly swallowed. By the end of the hour, she was sitting up in bed and munching on dry toast. By the end of the night, she was feeling better and looking forward to our visit to the Pakistani border the following day.  

Amritsar – November 15 

After checking in late the night before, we all headed down to the Golden Temple, the center of the Sikh universe, in the afternoon. We checked our shoes at the front entrance, covered our heads and then headed inside.

The Golden Temple sits in the center of small lake surrounded by a marble promenade. We walked clockwise around the temple whilst watching it glimmer in the sun. Sikhs bathed in the water and posed for photographs with family members. The entire complex had a serence temperment to it that both Fab and I found relaxing, especially after the train ride from Rishikesh. Inside the temple, people tossed rupees and flowers and a small group chanted and played music. We lingered for a while, taking in the sights and sounds of a religion completely foreign to us. For me, it was interesting to see the place of worship for the Sikhs, a community that I had come to know growing up in Canada. Come to think of it, most of the Indians I went to school with as a child we Sikhs.

Afterwards, we went and had a free meal in the Temple’s mess hall. The food was decent and the feeling of welcome and acceptance was much appreciated. Fab and I even drank the water they offered us, something we figured we would later regret.

Not wanting to chance it, we bought our onward train tickets outside the temple to ensure we had a seat to McLeod Ganj. As it turned out, the train was local so we couldn’t make a reservation, something that would have been nice to know before standing in line for an hour.

After leaving the temple complex, Fab and Jen did some shoe shopping. Mike and I toyed with the idea of also buying shoes, but ultimately decided against it once we heard the opening price from the man running the store. When the price starts too high, there is no use in even attempting to bargain.

Back at the hotel, after an over-priced dinner, all four of us sat around swilling beer and talking about the day. It was a good one. By the time we had finished our drinks, the owner of the hotel had come out of his attached ground level apartment to see what all the ruckus was about. Jen and I apologized for the noise (Fab and Mike had both gone to the washroom), but Harry, the owner, didn’t seem to mind. Instead, he invited us inside to have a nightcap. When Fab and Mike came down, Jen was already inside trying to be cordial.

Harry, a British loyalist with a penchant for golf and whisky, sat us down on his couch and poured us “three finger” drinks. Having already downed a bunch of beer, all of us were buzzed by the time we put our lips to our glasses. We spent the next couple of hours chatting and laughing about our experiences in India and questioning him about the situation in Pakistan and the Sikh religion. By the end of the night, we had finished off a bottle of Blender’s Pride and Harry had began pumping Simon and Garfunkel from his living room hi-fi. The next day was going to hurt.

Rishikesh to Amritsar – November 14

More of the same: screeching, bratty kids slamming fold-up dinner trays against the back of my seat, foul smells penetrating the train car, seats facing backwards, stale food served by snotty porters, a two hour delay and no leg room. All of it wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t have to last for eight hours. I think I need to start traveling in a country where things aren’t so damn far apart.

Rishikesh – November 13 

We booked our train tickets to Amritsar at the train station in the morning and then set out to find Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s  ashram. MMY, the founder of transcendental meditation, gained popularity in the late sixties / seventies when Western celebrities (The Beatles, Beach Boys, Donovan, Andy Kaufman etc.) began patronizing his ashram. He even graced the cover of Time Magazine in 1975. Over time, he was accused of mistreating female ashramites and consequently fell out of favour in the west, another victim of fading hippie ideals. The ashram was abandoned in 1997. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, now ninety years old, currently lives in Holland.

We tried in vain to arrange a tour of the complex, but the phone number provided in our guide book was out of service. Too bad, we were all looking forward to hearing about the history of the ashram, in particular the time that the Beatles spent there.

The ashram itself is a little bit out of town, but the direction was clearly marked along the way. The front entrance was gated and a self appointed gate keeper made us pay a small sum to enter the grounds. Not a big deal considering we were the only people there at the time.

Inside, the ashram was overgrown with weeds, vines and spider webs. There were meditation cells that looked like something out of the Ewok village, large hotel like structures and more modest houses. I was surprised by how vast the ashram was considering the sizes of the other functioning ashrams in Rishikesh.

We wandered around for a couple of hours, trying to guess which house belonged to the Maharishi and where the Beatles might have slept during their two month stay.  We took a bunch of photographs so that we could match up the locations at a later date.

The place had an eerie feel which was enhanced by its abandoned condition and the presence of langur monkeys who had taken up residency in the buildings after the Maharishi’s departure. When the sun began to set, we decided it was time to leave. The monkeys were starting to follow us.  

Rishikesh – November 10-12

Lazy days indeed. Fab and Jen read their books and sipped tea while Mike and I hashed out an idea for a feature film screenplay entitled “The Queen’s English” about two English con men running booze to the American border during the prohibition era. We dazzled each other with our brillance and twisted our brains into knots trying to unravel the plot line.

The nights were spent watching bootlegged movies on Mike’s labtop and eating junk food. Apparently the Indians like to stockpile their fireworks because the explosions didn’t stop after Diwali ended. Some of the fireworks were so loud that it sounded like bombs were going off. At one point, even the windows to our hotel room rattled.

Rishikesh – November 9

Diwali day: one of the biggest holidays in India and an excuse for every Indian to put on a fireworks show. We took a vickram, a bigger version of the rickshaw, down to Lakshman Jula to check out the festivities. We were expecting processions, partying in the streets and a carnival like atmosphere. When we arrived in town, we found out that Diwali is a holiday spent largely amongst family members, at least that was the way it seemed in Rishikesh.  

The streets were deserted. The only proof of life came from the bright explosions in the sky that spread over the entire valley. Unlike the organized fireworks displays I was accustomed to, the Diwali display came consistently in waves of random intervals. Seemingly everyone was in on the action. We stopped to watch the spectacle by a suspension footbridge that crossed the river and saw a little kid, no more that five years old, holding a roman candle in his hand while his father held a flame to the fuse. His sister, a little older, lobbed cherry bombs down into the water. We figured it was only a matter of time before something burned down.

Back at the hotel, after the hotel next door put on a show, our man humiliated his neighbors when he ignited a box the size of a trunk (on the hotel roof mind you) that kept fiery orange explosions going for an uninterupted ten minutes. We sat on the balcony opposite, our mouths gaping at both the showmanship and stupidity of our hotel owner. 

Across the valley, the show continued for a solid four hours. Even after Fab and I laid our heads down to sleep at around 2am, we could hear the loud booms and bangs ring out through the darkness.     

Rishikesh – November 8

Rishikesh is a blend of new-age space heads, backpacking hashish smokers and middle aged yuppies/hippies, a group that could have possibly been labeled as yippies except for the fact that that name has already been taken and that the people we encountered in no way resembled the likes of Abbie Hoffman or Jerry Rubin.

The city itself sits in a verdant valley, surrounded by green mountains with the Ganges cutting the town into two. Along the river, large rocks with Hindi inscriptions painted on them intermingle with sandy patches of beach. Perhaps the reason for the town’s sustained drawing power is that the Beatles spent time here in the late sixties at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram where they reportedly wrote the bulk of the White Album.

All four of us wandered down into the town to check it out in the early afternoon. We sat on the beach beside the Ganges, snapped some photos and smoked a couple of spliffs. Before reaching the beach, while sitting on bench overlooking the river, a snake charmer gave us a private show. The cobra in his basket swayed from side to side to the drone of the music. I am not sure what instrument it was he was playing but it was somewhere between an oboe and a didgeridoo. Like the serpent, all of us were equally hypnotized until a couple of jerks on a motorcycle parked right in front of us, blocking our view and scaring the snake.

Rishikesh – November 7

Fab and I got up late. Jen, being an early riser, was already finishing some tea when we crawled out of our room. Mike stayed in bed for as long as he could. All four of us spent the day doing pretty much nothing at all except recuperating from the day before. India has a way of doing that do people, whipping their asses into total submission.

Our hotel was in a great spot. From the upstairs balcony, you could see the river and surrounding mountains. The hotel had a nice garden setting, perfect for sipping coffee and reading books. The food from the restaurant was good and the staff was friendly. It looked like we were going to stay for a while.

 Bharatpur to Rishikesh via Delhi – November 6 

All four of us piled into a two person rickshaw in the early morning to the Bharatpur bus station. We sped through dust ( a staple air pollutant of the city) and smoke from burning garbage (also a staple) to make it on time. As soon as we hopped out of the rickshaw, we got on the bus and pulled out of the station.

As per usual on government buses, we were the only non-Indians aboard. Throughout the ride, we swatted flies and mosquitoes and tried not to let the staring bother us. The man in front of me, who had bought a bottle of whisky from a vendor outside the bus window, turned around in his seat and yammered on to me in Hindi. From what I could tell, he was telling me about peanuts because he kept offering me some that he had inside of a folded up newspaper. As the hours went by, the man became more and more drunk and soon was talking to himself and spitting tobacco juice out the side window. I pretended to fall asleep so he would leave me alone. 

When we pulled into Delhi, we became ensnarled in traffic. A thick brown haze blanketed the city. Fab and I both agreed, Delhi had Beijing beat when it came to air pollutants. I am not sure how anybody could live in such an environment. My eyes watered and my sinuses burned. I tried the old bandana across the face trick, but it didn’t work.

The bus station was out of control. People, rickshaws, taxis and cows made it difficult to move about. We haggled with a rickshaw driver and then crammed, once again, into a two person vehicle. Mike sat on Jen’s lap, Fab sat on mine and all the backpacks sat on top of all of us. The rickshaw weaved through the congested traffic while we all hung on for dear life. Kids on the side of the road pelted the side of the vehicle with stones and pieces of fruit. What a lovely city.

At the train station, we waited for our train by the side of the tracks and watched rats the size of cats clamour over the rails. Disfigured beggars asked for pocket change and the overwhelming smell of urine filled our nostrils. We were starving by this point so we bought some samosas to hold us over until we got to Rishikesh. All things considered, the samosas hit the spot.

By the time we boarded the train, I was having serious allergy issues from the pollution. I ran out of tissues after about a half hour and had to resort to using wet-wipes to blow my nose. Later, a group of military officers came into our compartment and started questioning people and searching bags. Automatic weapons hung off of their shoulders. All four of us just sat and stared, hoping that it was nothing serious. By looks on the officers’ faces, something was wrong. Luckily, the whole situation arose because a man, not able to find space for his luggage in his compartment, came into ours to store his bags.

We rolled into Haridwar, where we needed to catch a bus up to Rishikesh, after dark.  None of us were in the mood to deal with rickshaw drivers and touts. We pushed past the crowd outside the train station. When we stepped onto the road, a bus stopped beside us and a man stuck his head out the window and yelled, “Rishikesh! Rishikesh! Rishikesh!” We promptly hopped on board and were soon on our way. On our way out of town, we got our first look at the mighty Ganges.

In Rishikesh, we haggled, yet again, with a rickshaw driver to take us up to High Bank, a backpackers enclave nestled up on the side of a hill overlooking the Ganges. The rickshaw driver tried to follow us to the hotel to score commission, but after explaning to the hotel owner that the driver played no part in us coming to his place, the owner scolded him and he soon disappeared.

Finally we had arrived. We checked into our respective rooms, Mike and Jen upstairs, Fab and I on the ground level, and realized that Rishikesh was a hell of alot colder than we had expected. It didn’t matter much though, the day behind us had punished us to the point of total mental and physical exhaustion.

Bharatpur – November 5

Jen and I took a bicycle rickshaw, possibly the slowest mode of transportation in India, out to the train station to try and secure tickets to Rishikesh for the next day. Our driver had a stringy beard and wore an orange turban. He peddled his ass off through dusty Bharatpur past pools of still, filthy water and the usual assortment of livestock.

The lineup at the terminal spilled out in all directions. Jen butted in line and within minutes we were standing in front of the window. The problem we had was that we didn’t know if seats were available on any trains originating out of Bharatpur since Diwali, a massive festival of lights, began on November 9th. Sure enough, no seats. We tried to explain to the ticket seller that we needed to get north and that we didn’t care how. Unfortunately, the man did not speak much English and was apparently deaf in one ear. To make matters worse, he couldn’t seem to grasp what we were trying to do. We were redirected to the ‘enquiry’ office from where we were redirected again to a small office situated beside the tracks.

Inside the office, three men sat around drinking chai. One man yelled at someone over the phone while the other two men smoked cigarettes and looked us up and down. We explained to them what we wanted to do and they gave us some options. Feeling confident, Jen and I went back to the window (Jen butted again) only to be turned away again. It didn’t help that the crush of people behind us were getting impatient with our queries.

After a brief pitstop to get Jen’s watch fixed at a road side watch shop, we returned to the hotel to inform Mike and Fab about our failed mission. Diwali was wreaking havoc on our travel plans. We needed to get out of Bharatpur, we just weren’t exactly sure how to do it.

In the end, Mike and I went back to the train station to purchase tickets for a train originating in Delhi. We were going to have to bus to Delhi in the morning then catch a train north to Haridwar in the early afternoon. It was going to be a long, long day.