We took a bus and arrived in Sarnath at 3am on a foggy street corner. Our companions in the bus kept sleeping, waiting for a temple to open at 6am so they could complete their pooja (pilgrimage). It took us a couple of hours to work out that we had arrived at the right destination. Then we found a guesthouse and slept until afternoon. Sarnath's claim to fame is a deerpark in which the Buddha gave his first teaching. We visited this and headed to Varanasi the next day.
Varanasi is a vast sprawling city and the area in which we stayed comprised of endless labyrinthine alleys and side-streets in the old market. By using commonly known keywords like "main road" and hotels out of lonely planet (which most locals seemed to know), we were able to navigate relatively successfully. Silk-wallahs and craftsmen beset us on all sides as we took the air of Varanasi. We soon stopped doing that though, as the streets were a foot-deep in cow manure. For as many cows on the ground, there were kites in the sky. Both young and old (possibly even more old than young) were honing their skills for the upcoming kite-festival on January the 14th. As we strolled along beside Mother Ganga, we were enjoying watching local kids play a game of cricket, as a corpse crackled and popped on a funeral pyre in the background. As they like to say here, seemingly able to explain any strange and outlandish phenomenon, "This is India."
We celebrated new years at a free party at the hotel we were staying at. They provided the guests with beer, delicious food, traditional Indian dancing and music, and fireworks. The evening was topped off with a huge caramel chocolate cream sponge cake! The rest of the time we seemed to get lost in the various shops (toys, fossils, spices, oils, jewellery, pots, pans, silks, shawls, after-dinner mouth-freshening seeds) and travel arrangements. We were running low on hand-sanitiser (a necessity for travel in India) so we had been looking for something similar in every town and general store we came to, but without success. We heard a local rumour that there existed a certain "Himalaya handwash". Finally in Varanasi, we hit the mother load in an Ayurvedic shop. Our stores were replenished.
A highlight of our time in Varanasi was an early morning boat trip up the Ganges. From the river we could see men washing themselves in freezing water, 3000 times the recommended foecal bacteria content for healthy bathing. Others washed their clothes by beating them against slabs of concrete. People practiced yoga in front of loudspeakers booming yoga instructions while sadhus (holy men) waved their arms around, spreading ribbons of incense smoke, presumably to help heal Mother Ganga. Ghats (crematoriums) warmed up to incinerate the previous days quota of dead and boats full of postcards and other nick-knacks ("floating supermarkets") zipped from tourist-boat to tourist-boat, trying to make their first sale of the day.
To get to Agra, we hired a private car as we were told the trains were being delayed dozens of hours, however, just as our luck had it, the only time we hired a taxi, there were no delays. However we did have a more comfortable ride than the train-goers, despite some severe communication problems with the driver who could not speak a word of English and had never driven to Agra before. He could not read roadsigns in either English or Hindi and had a poor memory for directions, so we were better off navigating for him.
The first day in Agra found us doing the obvious, visiting the Taj Mahal. I (Tamara) had already seen other monuments like Borobudur and Angkor Wat which were spectacular for their scale and historical significance, but the Taj stood out in a separate category altogether. Its glittering white marble, fine inlay work and symmetrical, balanced design gave the impression of a perfect architectural masterpiece. No wonder people come from all over the world to see it. After visiting the Taj Mahal, all other sites seemed paltry in comparison. Nonetheless, we saw them anyway (Agra Fort, Mehtab Bagh gardens, Itimad-Ud-Daulah (another tomb nicknamd Baby Taj) and Chini-ka-Rauza (a riverside tomb).
Situated in the tourist area around the main gates of the Taj, marblecraft salesmen waited for us like hungry jackals, licking their lips at the sight of our white, white skin. We got to see the craftsmen in action, grinding semi-precious stones to the width of finger-nail clippings in order to lay them in white marble. It was very skilled and beautiful work.
In Agra, most rickshaw-wallahs made "a bit on the side" by taking tourists (often unknowingly) to large textiles and marble stores to get a 50 to 100 rupee commission from the store-owner. Tam and I soon cottoned on to this and by negotiating with the driver got an entire days trip free by visiting a couple of shops. We pretended to look interested inside for 5-10 minutes until the owner had taken down the driver's rickshaw number for payment. We also asked if the driver could somehow signal us when his number had been written down, but he thought this was too cagey, even for an Indian.
Even though we were ready to leave Agra, it seemed to train wasn't. Due to delays, mainly because of the risks of driving in heavy fog, our train arrived at the station 8 hours late to pick us up at 4am instead of the scheduled 8pm. We passed the time reading, eating roasted peanuts, drinking chai around a roadside fire with rickshaw drivers and playing cards with other foreigners. As we were very tired by the time our train arrived, we slept well until arriving in Jaipur at 11am.
We were disappointed to find that the Tibetan refugee girl called Nangsa Dylan had been sponsoring was at Bodh Gaya on a pilgrimage to see the Dalai Lama. She was not to return until we had left India, but we had dinner with her mum and her younger brother. We also spent some time hanging out at their sweater stall in the Tibetan Refugee Market, drinking chai and butter tea. Dylan was able to talk to Nangsa on the phone and we left the mother with some presents we bought in Australia. The young boy Sonam loved the glowsticks we brought for him.
We both liked the 'pink city' of Jaipur including the clear skies, hawker-free streets, drycleaners, icecream shops and the interesting history of the Mogul rulers. Amber Fort was much more spectacular than Agra Fort, situated inside a wall stretching for kilometres on the hills overlooking Jaipur. We visited the City Palace, Water Palace on a lake and Wind Palace with many windows - all places where the Maharajah and Maharani used to enjoy. There were a couple of nice lookout points such as Tiger Fort and Monkey Temple which was infested with naughty macaques clambering for peanuts from Dylan's pockets.
