!ncredible !ndia

If I didn't actually dread India at least I was hesitant or reluctant about visiting... (a few days that I would 'get through' ). And now, perhaps India is the country that I would most eagerly come back to. India's culture is more complex than I can possibly understand after just 6 days, and perhaps that would also be true after 6 weeks or 6 months. India is a culture of contrasts in it's beauty and filth, modernity and 5000-year history, and cultural richness in the midst of abject poverty. !ndia is !intense and !ncredible.

!ndia: Shrines, temples, people, smiles, smells, people playing card games sitting on the dirt, people living in tents on the beach, people sleeping on the sidewalks, people begging for food or money, 'touts' aggressively pushing their wares, water you cannot drink, food you cannot eat, the smell of sewage, auto rickshaws careening through traffic, bicycle rickshaws (even more precariously peddling through fast traffic), bargaining merchants, bright colors, stares, ancient stories and mythologies from the Hindu and the Muslems, beautiful women in brightly colored saris, people shouting, deep spirituality,..... and more!

The memorial for Mahatma Ghandi is an inspirational and reverential park space in the middle of Delhi. Delhi, as the capital of India, is surprisingly clean and green and spacious, not unlike Washington, D.C. with it's large governmental and consular buildings, palaces and colonial bungalows, museums, and broad tree-lined avenues.

Agra and the Taj Mahol

A visit to the Agra fort was interesting and afforded the first glimpse down the river of the Taj Mahol.

Question: Is the Taj Mahol such a big deal? Answer: YES it is breath-takingly beautiful, serene, perfectly proportioned, and ethereal, ... and all of this despite the thousands of visitors there. See all those tiny little people along the veranda level? As much as I have studied and

viewed photos of the Taj, it still took my breath away the first moment I viewed it from the grounds.

Varanasi and the Ganges River

Nickolai, a Russian-born Ukranian student and I felt calm and confident in our rickshaw .... before we began the hair-raising, no-apparent-rules-of-the-road ride to the river, with blaring horns everywhere, and white knuckles on my hands, all the while holding on tight!

Every evening the Hindus celebrate Aarti at the main ghats of the river Ganges. Respectful pilgrims and tourists gather, clap to the drums, appreciate the incense, and give thanksgiving for another day.

Wake up call at 4:15 a.m., depart hotel 5:00 a.m., walk 1+/- miles to the river, take boats out into the river to observe sunrise on the holy Ganges River at Varanasi. Mourners for the people who will be burned have their heads shaved by the riverside barbers.

The Ganges is a river of cleansing: Hindu pilgrims and Varanasi locals bathe daily at the ghats of the holy river Ganges. Women are clothed while men strip to brief body wraps. The bathing is accompanied by yoga, prayers and rituals, and prayer candles. Visitors to Varanasi arrive pre-dawn and observe the morning rituals from broad boats, marveling that the ritual bathers dip themselves in what appears to be unclean water! Enterprising Indians sell trinkets and vessels for the Ganges water from their "Ganges Walmart" boats. Meanwhile the dhobi-wallahs wash (white!) clothing by beating the fabric on stones along the muddy banks of the river. The Varanasi experience is moving and awesome, yet somehow incomprehensible.

Daily, more than 300 cremations are performed along the holy Ganges using the eternal flame which is 'owned' by the Raj Dhom (the Dhom is the watchman, who is breaking apart the bones using a bamboo pole and watching for gold, which he may keep). Ashes and unburned bones are pushed into the river.

The Hindus believe that cremation at Varanasi on the Ganges guarantees ascension into heaven, by-passing the eternal cycle of birth and re-birth.