Having lived in Rakkar village up in Himachal Pradesh for four months, my concept of India was high mountains and peaceful farmland. Traveling down into other parts of the country shattered that vision. India is far vaster and diverse that I even now can comprehend. On top of that, there are a lot of people in this country. A lot.
The last time I was in Delhi, for less than 24 hours, I was too jet lagged to be overwhelmed. Anya and I traveled down to Delhi to meet up with her sister and two friends. This time, I was plenty alert. The thing about India I am beginning to realize is that it almost always overloads the senses; strong smells, loud noises, flavors from the very spicy to the sickeningly sweet, plenty of strange things to step in the texture of which you'd rather not think about, and so much activity to watch that your brain is almost on overload. That is, until you get used to it, which I'm sure comes after a while.
Anya and I spent our day in Delhi going to the Red Fort and visiting with our friend Sufi, who used to live and work up near McLeod Ganj. The Red Fort was the palace of several Mughal Kings that reigned from Delhi. During the British Raj, the British used it as its military and administrative headquarters. It was also from this place that Nehru gave his famous speech on the midnight of India's independence from Great Britain. Drawn by this kind of history, I asked Anya if we could go there in the morning.
The Red Fort is a vast complex of wide lawns, buildings, and open air audience chambers. Within its walls are also a number of barracks and other buildings of British construction. The private audience chamber was one of the most beautiful parts of it. Carved all out of white marble, it had several delicately carved latticeworks as well as semi precious stones inlaid into the pillars in patterns of flowers and trees.
What struck me most about the fort, however, were the water channels that ran everywhere through it. The channels and ponds were empty when we went, but the amount of water they must have once held was staggering. It must have provided effective cooling for the hot summer months.
With Sufi, Anya and I went to see a pottery exhibit at the Crafts Museum. There were many other exhibits we did not get to see, having arrived late in the afternoon. It is something I would highly recommend to visitors of Delhi.
Anya's sister Danika and her friend Judy arrived in Delhi at around midnight that night. Mindy was less lucky, having gotten caught by a blizzard at her layover, and arrived closer to 6:00 am. Knowing that they would be tired, we planned to depart from Delhi in the early afternoon and arrive in Aghra in time to see the Taj Mahal just before it closed.
One lesson we learned on this trip is that you can't count on things going as planned in India. Our train arrived on time but lazed its way across the countryside. We arrived nearly two hours later than planned. The sun had already set. We hopped in a taxi and said, “Take us to the Taj! Quickly!” They informed us that, unfortunately, the gates had already closed, although there were still people inside. As we were leaving on another train that night, we opted to go to a roof top restaurant to try to catch a glimpse of it that way instead. All we could see in the thickening twilight was a dim silhouette of the Taj Mahal's famous dome and four minerettes. We did, however, run into a familiar face at that restaurant. A Swedish girl we knew who had been volunteering at the Tibetan Settlement Office in McLeod Ganj happened to be staying in that hotel on her way through. It certainly is a small world.
That night we took a night train to Bhopal. Sleeper class in trains consists of bunks three high in two rows. The middle one can flip down to allow the lower bunk to be used as a bench during the day. All five of us were prepared with cotton sleeping bags we had stitched just for that purpose. It is a much cleaner way to sleep, as no sheets are provided, and one can put your valuables at the bottom of the bag and out of reach. Admittedly, it was a cold night and I didn't sleep much. The chai sellers that walked up and down the train cars announcing their wears through the early morning didn't help either.
Bhopal was a very interesting place to visit. Our entire day was spent at the Museum of Man. The Museum complex was acres upon acres of rolling land, centered on the oldest (I think) prehistoric cave paintings in India. There were a whole string of them in the rocks on top of a ridge. Although the signs promised 21 different sites, the path grew too overgrown about half way. Even still, the ones we saw were spectacular paintings of people and animals.
Also in the Museum of Man were numerous replica villages of different regions in India. I believe they had transported and rebuilt all of the houses on their land. There was also an interesting out door exhibit of “primitive gadgets,” including flour grinders and water wheels. The centerpiece of the complex was a sprawling museum building. It briefly discussed the evolution of humans, particularly with regard to India. The rest of the museum was dedicated to discussing and displaying artifacts from various adivasi (tribal) peoples in India. Everything from replica houses, art, tools, and clothing was on display with somewhat idealistic descriptions of their life styles. I was surprised to see the Gaddi people on display there. It hadn't occurred to me that one of the major ethnic groups represented at Jagori Grameen was classified as tribal. My Hindi tutor, for example, is Gaddi. Apparently, in other parts of the country and deeper in the mountains they are less assimilated into main stream society.
There was more to see in the complex than we could manage in only one day. I would willingly go back again to see more of it. That night, we again boarded a night train and headed for Jalgaon. We arrived at around 2 am, but the manager of our hotel waited up for us. After pitching and convincing us to switch into a bigger room, we slept the rest of the night. Although I was a bit perturbed to be upgraded to a more expensive room, the hot shower I had the next morning was beautiful. It was the first shower I had had since the morning I first arrived in Delhi in late August, staying at Abha's house.
Close to Jalgaon are the Ajunta Caves. The caves, carved in the cliffs in a bend of a deep river gorge, were all Buddhist monasteries or worship halls. They date, I believe, from 200 AD to nearly 700 AD. Some were unfinished while most were intricately carved and even painted. Cut straight into the rock wall, some were at least as big as the whole house that my apartment was in. Each of the monasteries had at least one massive seated Buddha statue carved into the rock at the back, and perhaps many more. The worship halls tended to feature huge vaulted ceilings and a dome shaped stupa. In early Buddhism, the Buddha was not represented by a person but by footprints or a stupa. In the later caves, the stupas were more intricate and even had a figure of Buddha carved into them as well.
That night we intended to take yet another night train out (much to the grumblings of our party. Anya and I apologized later.). However, while we made it off the wait list the night before, we didn't in Jalgaon. There were a number of private bus companies up the street our hotel was on, so we booked a sleeper bus to Pune. Upon boarding this bus, we discovered not seats but padded bunks on either side of the aisle about the width of twin beds. Anya and I shared a cozy top bunk. I'm sure we were elbowing each other all night long, but we did get some sleep.
The next morning we arrived in Pune and checked into another hotel. Stories of the rest of our travels will have to wait until my next blog entry.
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