Woo.. what a wedding.

Alright, well, I'm not exactly sure how long the vows took, but they seemed to last about an hour or two. I was sort of walking in and out for most of it, along with about one or two hundred other people. I think my uncle was exaggerating at 400, unless that's how many are arriving for the eating reception foofraw thing, which would not surprise me. It was sort of almost informal, actually.. people sat down to watch the vows, and then wandered upstairs to eat, and then stood around and smoked, walked back in to watch the vows.. I don't think anybody actually stayed for the entire thing, except maybe immediate family, and even they floated upstairs for a quick bite come the middle.

Speaking of informal, woo.. my uncle (the one whose daughter was getting married) told us to get sarvanis, which is a special sort of four-piece suit with long kurta, loose pants that come up to your bellybutton, coat and long dupatta scarf, all of silk, so we did. And also leather chappals, which are sort of a nice looking sandal, only Ryan decided that he shouldn't mess about and went for the black red and gold ones that curled up at the toes into a point, and he says he's going to use them for house shoes when he comes back. So suffice it to say we were pretty decked out... and then we arrived there and my suspicions that we were totally overdressed came true, because everyone else was just wearing kurtas and pants, or sometimes even just shirts and pants. Well, the guys, anyways. The women were of course splendid, because if they weren't, well, the world would stop existing if Bengali women were not splendidly dressed. So we were sort of the snazziest there, I guess.

Everyone was shouting, but that's not really anything special because that's how Bengali people talk. I think it helps if you think of them as Italian.. they love shouting, eating good food and all sorts of art stuff. You can never really tell if it's an argument or a conversation or a fight.

The vows... now they were something. Essentially the bride, Dola, had an amazingly painted and jewelleried face, hands and feet, and also a magnificent suit, and had to hold a sort of cylinder thing which I can't describe, and the groom, that's Goldie, had a very tall but magnificent hat and a worried expression, and had to hold a sort of spoon, and the priest did a lot of the talking, and at one point they lit a fire in a tray of sand right in front of them, despite it being a hot night with no fans because that would blow around the jillions of insects that were attracted to the light and flew in through the windows which were open because it was a hot night, etc. So they lit the fire, and then they put a lot of holy water and oils in it, which made it start smoking and carrying on, and everyone had to squint, and Goldie, who was sitting right in front of the fire, looked like he wanted to cry, but they carried on for half an hour for the fire and the room got kind of dim through the smoke, then I went to eat.

Then they had to do several things like roll a stone over paan leaves with their feet, and throw some grains into the fire and also a banana, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what any of it symbolised. Probably fertility, I imagine. I think most wedding rites could be condensed to "Alright, here you go, this is you and this is you, you're married, I hope you have a good time and a couple of babies", but everybody wants to add their own flair.

Also note that for the duration of this trip, I've become "Basu Roy", because that's what Indian people seem to hear my name as. It's a good Bengali name, although Basu is usually a last name I gather.

Weekly Indian Feature: Stray Dogs

Stray dogs are everywhere. And I mean, with the same frequency that you'd see garbage cans in Canada, only since they don't have garbage cans in India they settle for stray dogs, which actually do the same job, sort of. I don't know how they survive. Sometimes people put out old rice for them, but I guess generally they eat garbage. I always feel like petting them, only they always turn out to have some skin disease or are more interested in humping, fighting or playing with one another, so it's really all immaterial. Canadian streets are going to feel very empty.

-Basu

So we arrived in Delhi, only to find out that...

That Delhi was actually a lot nicer than Kolkata. It partly owes this to being the capital, so the government works harder at making it nicer. There's not as much diesel, since all the auto-rickshaws and taxis are running on Compressed Natural Gas, burning a lot greener and cheaper. There's also a lot more parks, so I guess that's good. The first night, we stayed in a place called Majnu Ka Tilla, a Tibetan refugee colony. They keep it pretty clean, and the hotel we stayed in was phenomenally so, for a pretty good price too (7.50 for a double room, if you want to talk dollars.) After that, we ended up moving to Sanskriti Kendra, which I really can't fit into my idea of Indian cities. It's a park, with avenues leading through it to houses and gardens and orchards, with craftsmen's workshops everywhere. Woodcarvers, painters, sculptors.. basically a lot of artists. In the middle is a meeting hall, and off to the side is a museum, and apartments for people who stay there. Everything's so green, and it's right smack in the middle of Delhi and you can barely hear the horns. It's an anomaly.

We went there for a retreat, although it wasn't so much relaxing as interesting. A bunch of activists went there to talk about things like activism and education and India, and I stayed there for half of it and walked around whittling (I whittled a spoon that sort of looks like a not-spoon) and whistling outside for half of it, and came round at mealtimes to be stuffed, because that's how they feed you in India. Anyways,

After the retreat was done we ambled around Delhi for a couple of days, stayed in a couple of bad hotels, visited a huge mosque and a slightly smaller Sikh gurdvara and then jumped on board the train for Kolkata, which I can't really pass over because it's a doozie. Woo.

26 hours of, let's see, beggars with awful, terrible burns all over their bodies, with their chins fused to their necks, either accident or because someone wanted to increase their profitability, just standing there and looking at you, not bothering to even ask, beggars with arms bent the wrong way, beggars busking by hitting their staff on your bed for percussion and singing at you, beggars telling other beggars who gave money, so they know who to hit again.

26 hours of hawkers, and I mean hawkers, walking up and down the train yelling out their wares, despite the fact that you're two feet from them. How they yell! Everyone's got their own hook.. IdLI.. IdLI.. Chai-COFFee.. Chai-COFFee.. Chat Patta! Chat Patta! Pani jol water bottel! And of course the two main food groups, VEG AND NONVEG! It all runs into one after a while.

26 hours of being sick, taking a "veg cutlet" for breakfast and regretting it. I tell you, an Indian train toilet is the worst possible place to be sick, especially if the train's moving. You finish throwing up, and then you remember where you are, and see the ground whipping past through the bottom of the toilet, and it just makes you throw up again. The best I can say is that they give you a bar to hold on to, and the disinfectant they use shuts down your nose with eucalyptus.

It was wonderful to arrive in Kolkata, clutching two small plants in plastic bags from Delhi. We aim to travel all over India with them, or maybe not.

I'm planning to include, with every post, a little feature that India has that might help you understand what it's like. Today's feature is:

Spitting and nose-clearing: This happens all the time. Spit, spit spit. If you're lucky it's just spit. If you're not, it's yellowy muck. If you're really into this sort of thing, you can see someone spit red, which is not blood but paan, which is a thing they chew that stains your lips and teeth red. They don't really seem to feel embarrassed about it unless you stare right at them, although they probably just think "I wonder what he's staring at me for" more than anything.
Snorrrkht, khaaaak! Patu.

The nose clearing is a rarer occurrence, but every so often you'll get to see someone sticking their finger in one side of their nose, and blowing out a long string of muck. It's quite normal. I saw one guy do it while walking.

Here's hoping I'll see you guys sooner rather than later,

Bashu

P.S. I've been having dreams about being at home. Not especially spectacular woop, here's a dinosaur dreams, just dreams about lolling around at home, watching some deer in the back yard.

So I guess we're luckier than most India-goers, because we stayed in a Rajah's house.

It was pretty story-book like. He's the Rajah of Kalakankar, a small village on the Ganges, and owns half the town. However, he doesn't really live there so much as actually he lives in Seattle, leaving Kalakankar to get by on its own. He's got a huge house on the banks of the river, with ten people jumbling around keeping it whole, and he let us stay there on account of how our mom knows him, and we're in India and he's not in India, on account of being in Seattle. So, for three days we bumbled around, being served three wonderful Indian meals a day by the staff, and reading books and walking around, and taking a riverboat ride, and walking through the village, orchards and farms.

Funny thing is, another person who stayed there was Svetlana Stalin, who is in fact Joseph Stalin's daughter. She came here to put the ashes of her Indian husband in the river, in the sixties. She also built a hospital in his memory, and it's still standing there in Kalakankar today, unused and abandoned. We went to look at it. It's a strange experience. You should try it some time.

Anyways, after that we took off for Delhi. This trip has been nice because to get anywhere that's anywhere in India, you need to take a train, which I haven't ever done much of before. Indian trains are a special experience, because they actually work well.

I'll tell you what happened in Delhi soon as I can find more time for Internet. See ya!

-Bashu

Olright so you know what's hilarious?

Dachshunds!

Hot dogs!

You know what's hilariouser?

Dachshunds crossed with other breeds!

I never knew it before but you gotta see it to believe it. Apparently there's a dachshund in this town that's got a lot of kids waddling around with heads too big for their bodies. We've seen about five so far.

Okay, getting down to brass tacks, we're in Dhulikel, a town an hour's bus ride from Kathmandu. The hotel we're staying at is really wonderful, with an amazing view of the Himalayas. Our mom got us up at sunrise today to see the light hit the mountains- if you listen close it actually makes a sound.

Yesterday, me, Zaman and Ryan ate an enormous breakfast (who doesn't have a weak spot for buffets?) walked about half a kilometer out of town to climb a hill with a hackysack and some biscuits and mango juice. We weren't really sure how to get to the top, so we just sort of scrambled, only it was a big hill so we sort of scrambled in slow motion, through farms and forest to the top where, although there's no-one living, there's still (of course) trash on the ground, some of which we took back. Like Zaman said, you can really see how Tolkien got his inspiration for Lord of the Rings- you can only say the landscape is epic.

Ryan took out his MP3 player, which I should mention he's hooked up to some speakers and kept in his backpack and which, although it only half-works, has been a great source of comfort and sanity throughout this trip, and put on the Beatles. Zaman says now if anyone asks him if he's ever hacked on top of a mountain in Nepal while listening to the Beatles (the quintessential hippie experience), he can say yes he has, so you should probably ask him when he gets back home or else he'll be disappointed. Then Dream Weaver came on and they started fighting about it, so there goes the British Columbian dream.

Anyways, I have to say I didn't really know how much I missed Sean Connery until I saw Dr. No again. Cable is a blessing.

-Bashu

Woke up this morning and had a sudden attack of laziness lasting into the afternoon. I honestly think that I ever went travelling by myself, I'd never get anything done with nobody to wake me up and get me moving in any particular direction. Eventually they did, and we took a tight (All our taxi rides have been tight with four people in the back seat) taxi ride to the Hindu temple of Pashupatinath.

Pashupatinath Temple is built with the river going through it, with an outer temple that anybody can walk around and an inner temple for Hindus only. Our mother was let in, and she said it was beautiful inside.

The outer temple had a series of long steps going down to the river, with platforms on one side of the river, with fires burning on some of them. These were cremation pyres, although nothing was visibly burning except wood and ash. A guy came up to me and Ryan as we were sitting there and struck up a conversation, which in Kathmandu inevitably turns into a sales pitch, and this one ended with offering to take us around the temple and tell us about it. We accepted, and after telling us some things, most of which we already knew, he took us to the sadhu's homes.

The sadhu babas are men who have renounced all that life can offer them by way of pleasure, except cannabis, which they smoke once each day in devotion to their lord Shiva. They're both respected and pitied by Indians. Most of them have knee-length dreadlocked hair, having never cut it, and have painted faces which really make them look, well, terrifying.

However like everyone else they're not perfect and as soon as we walked into the courtyard, several sprung to life offering to do yoga and pose for pictures for some money. One took the initiative, spread out his mat, sat down and put his foot behind his head. He held out a hand as if to say "Alright? See this?". His expression was really strange- I can't describe it, besides something like expectant, bored and put-upon. Not one you would think to see on the face of a holy man. Our guide tried to explain it by telling us "Well, even yogababas and sadhu babas need money to live, eh?", although how they'd survived before this wasn't touched on.

Across the courtyard from the sadhus was an energetic soccer game being carried on by the kids living in the apartments next to them- maybe the family of caretakers of the temple. Across from that were some teenagers staring out at it all from behind barred windows and locked doors. Our guide, I should mention at this point his name was Progress, no I don't know why, told us these were priests-in-training. "They must be kept apart from the world, or they will be playing, running, they will not be priests". Apparently they could go out any time they wanted by another door, although you'd doubt it to see their faces. But if you were shocked every time you saw something shocking, you wouldn't survive India for long.

Zaman's annoyed because I keep saying "in India!" although we're in Nepal. There's not a lot of difference besides dress, people, temperature, mountains, and more tourists, so you can see how I get confused.

When we made our way back to the river steps, there was a body wrapped completely in orange, the colour of God, on the opposite side, waiting to be burned. As we set our prayer lamps alight in the river, I felt strangely unsettled, but I was soon reassured by the the sight of a boy downstream going through the floating offering-plates for coins.

-Bashu

I have a scrap of black plastic that I'm going to take back with me to Canada as a trophy. It marks my triumph over a monkey.

We went to the Swayambha Mandir today, popularly known as the "Monkey Temple", because there's a bunch of monkeys all over it. Whatever you've heard about monkeys it's best to forget until you're actually close to one. Walking up you don't notice them until about halfway up the 365 stairs, and then they're by the side of the stairways and in the bushes besides. They're pretty much the best animals to just sit and watch.

I noticed two sitting on a step and scratching each other's backs, and decided to toss a couple of flower petals at them, I don't know why. I guess they're used to people throwing pretty bad things at them because they both scrambled backwards and stared at me. One of them couldn't let this insult go by, jumped back up and bared his teeth, getting ready to jump. I was panicking for a second that I'd have to have a punch-up with a monkey on the temple steps, then remembered "Hey, wait, this guy is actually pretty titchy" and just, I don't know, did that gesture that humans and monkeys both do when they want to fight, sort of throwing the shoulders forward. The monkey all but backflipped back into the bushes and retired to stare at me. I guess a lot of fights are resolved like that. That's not how I got the black plastic, though.

We made it up to the temple and walked around. It seems like it's half a temple, half a small town up there - there's accomodations for the monks, plus places for tourists to stay, plus restaurants and houses for the people working there, etc. The centerpiece is a huge dome stupa (look it up) with the eyes of Buddha painted on the top staring out over all of Kathmandu, which you can see from the viewpoint there. Besides that there's small stalls and shops, and an old monastery, and tons of smaller stupas, and crawling over it all are brown-furred monkeys. There are several types of monkey:

Grasshoppers: Little monkeys about the length of your forearm with wrinkly faces, hanging off their parents or getting whacked around by the bigger monkeys. No matter how much you want to give them a date or some seeds, they'll always lose out to:

Vicious Little Swearwords: These are guys who know what they want, which is whatever you're giving them and more, if you please. If you hold out a handful of grains they'll pick some out like they're going to take them peacefully, then smack your hand so that you drop them all over. If you flip or jump back, they'll immediately flip and jump back and start snarling at you. Come to think of it, a lot of the monkeys fall into this category. They'll start fights with anybody, including:

Old Farts: These are more wrinkly-faced, whiter-haired monkeys, who generally watch everything and don't crawl about as much. They're either protecting the smaller monkeys or picking things out of each other's fur. Old Farts are also often:

Bears: These guys are big and furry. That's all. Nobody messes with them and you generally try to not attract their attention. The shopkeepers and monks try to drive away the monkeys when they scrabble through garbage or climb over Buddha, but somehow you can't imagine them trying it with the bears.

--

Now, the black piece of plastic. We were having a time of it with some terrible dates that I had bought in Gangtok and never eaten. I was worried at first about the monkeys choking on the pits, but I stopped worrying after the first monkey popped the whole dealie into his month, chewed for a while, then spat out a smooth pit about three feet away. It's really neat holding it out to the monkey and having him take it from you with a warm little hand, although the VLSes can make you feel sort of wary of teeth and nails.

After a while I ran out of dates, and a guy gave me a handful of corn that you could either scatter on the ground for them to pick up one at a time, or hold out in your hand and have them grab as many as they could swallow. We figured that we wanted to stay up there a little longer (it's incredibly peaceful) and bought ten rupees worth of seeds from a vendor. We poured them into a black plastic bag (here it comes) and walked off to the railing to hand some to the monkeys.

Kian, since he paid for it, decided to hold the bag and we were all happily sprinkling and giving seeds, when out of the corner of my eye I noticed an Old Fart sidling closer to Kian. Just as he reached out a hand for the bag I yelled "Kian!" and waved a foot at him(the monkey, not the brother). Kian spins around just in time to see the guy jumping away (they can really jump), and in a motion that makes perfect sense, holds the bag away from him while shaking a fist at the monkey. Holding the bag, in fact, behind him. Where the VLS sitting there on the rail is only too happy to do the job that the Old Fart has fumbled. Kian, I guess, feels a tug on the bag too late and pulls away from him, scattering the seeds onto the ground all over.

Well, it's not any skin off my back, and we were going to give it all to the monkeys anyhow, but I still feel sort of cheated, and as we walk away I can't help but notice that the VLS still has most of the bag and is going through it, looking for seeds. In fact he's got his back to me, and so... I grab the bag, and he shrieks like a dog who's had someone step on his tail, and does the exact same thing as Kian, leaving me with a shred of black plastic which I will cherish forever, because I stole it from a monkey. It's the thought that counts.

Anyways, whatever you think about monkeys, let me tell you - they're nothing so much as just simpler human beings. They want to do the exact same things, they're just not so subtle about it all. I love them.

-Bashu

A note on riding cars, jeeps and buses in the mountains:

Don't ever do it. It sounds romantick and rustick and all sorts of other interestingk things, but it's a bloody nightmare. They take the approach of "living cargo" here. First off, going from Rumtek to Gangtok was a bit amusing to all of us, because there were fourteen people onboard the one jeep, not counting the three kids and one guy hanging off the back (literally just holding one with his hands and feet), because they didn't count as people and thus everything was perfectly legal if uncomfortable. Later on, when we got up at 4 am in the craphole Kakarbitta inn to take a (count 'em) fourteen hour bus ride through the mountains over a road that was long stretches of pothole with occasional bits of road, I appreciated the irony.

It didn't keep us all from swearing like sailors at every turn that threw all my internal organs into one side of my ribcage, though.

Anyways, we arrived in Katmandu, took the first hotel the taxi guy showed us to, and dropped our bags. We decided that we'd earnt a nice meal, so we went out to this Thai restaurant where everybody ordered chicken and noodles and all that but I decided to put my foot down (but gently) and order "Fettuchini Carbonera". Was worth it. Kathmandu is also a shopper's dream. Tailors, embroiderers, jewellers, wood-carvers, whatever handicrafts you want, bookstores, everything. None of them are very modern, but they're all good value. I think I'll pick up some rings and bracelets for you undeserving picklesmugglers.

Also, there's hippies everywhere! It almost feels like Victoria.

-Bashu