Happy new year, feliz año nuevo und an guatn Rutsch

My dear friends and family, I came back to Kolkata today and miss you all!!! New year is best spent with the beloved around... maybe next year ;)

Big hug and all the best to you all for 2011!!!

Kolkata - just one day in the city of contrasts

After an expectedly very fresh train ride I pumped into a Catalan couple at the platform… we decided to take the ferry to the other side of the Hoogly river in order to avoid the huge traffic jams warned from in the guide-book. As we did not find the ferry immediately we started walking, following our nose and a compass ;) I never thought I would actually walk the 3 or 4 km from the station to the famous backpacker street, but chatting and joking around my new friends and I kept walking, believing that we were about to arrive, which we did eventually after maybe one hour with our backs aching and our shoulders asleep ;)
Incredible enough, in this hour we walked together, we established such a natural and trusting connection, that we ended up sharing a room for the night and decided to go to the airport together the next day, as they had a plane heading south and I wanted to fly to Guwahati, Assam at the same time.
Armed with the rather rudimentary map of the "Lonley Planet" we went to conquer this 15 million city with an old tram system, metro, ferry and huge amounts of Embasador-taxis rushing through the boulevard-like streets near the famous "Victoria Memorial", probably the most impressive building remaining from the British colonial times. Of course we underestimated the distances completely and spent walking for a few hours before we decided to catch a taxi -- literally we had to catch one, as they were all occupied -- and find a place to have dinner. Kolkata has it all, a rather developed public transport system vs. the daily traffic jam, huge colonial buildings with promenades vs. small and dark roads full of people, rich people going to shopping malls and eating fast food vs. pour and mutilated people earring their daily survival pegging on the streets. Maria Theresa chose a good place to help the pour and her volunteer-foundation has become huge over the years. According to my information this organization is very respected in India, but many voices criticize the rather antiquated approach to birth control (somewhat like the pope´s) and a rather short term oriented help (giving meals instead of helping the people to learn to sustain themselves).
Kolkata definitely deserves a closer look. Maybe I will have the opportunity after the retreat ;)

Gaya - the ugly duck

Leaving behind Bodagya I left to take the night train form Gaya to Kolkatta …not without living a few adventures on the way. The tuck tuck drove the 13 km to Gaya racing against the sinking sun, as the province Bihar is famous for muggings and robberies on the intercontinental-streets. It was not easy for me to relax on this trip over speed-pumps without suspension, thinking of the crime-stories I was told by several persons and institutions. How ever the tuck tuck reached Gaya right after sunset and dropped me at the railway station.
As my train was scheduled to leave some 4 hours later I had plenty of time to pass, so I went to the only restaurant I could find near the station, feeling a bit sick and nauseas after the ride. To my surprise I found out, that I was only welcome to have a quick dinner, but not to read a book or rest at this place. The waiters of this almost empty restaurant must have had some experiences with tourists who came to pass time. Not too happy about the treatment received I thought I was much cleverer than them and did the following: I went back to avery trashy hostel I had seen before and pretended to be waiting for some travel maid at the "lobby" (you would not recognise it as such), as there was a toilet and a sink. I brushed my teeth, went to the toilet and even changed my clothes to be prepared for the rather cold train-trip. When I was about to leave, satisfied that I had beaten the Indians with their own weapons -- in order to get what they want from you many Indians are ready to tell you the most skilled and imaginative stories -- when a gorilla like guy (maybe the manager or the door-man) appeared in front of my accusing me of having caused a financial loss to this hostel by using the toilet (after having asked for permission). As I had lied before that I was waiting for a friend and think of staying over night at this hostel, I did my best to sustain my story and make this rather aggressive guy calm down. Lots of adrenalin rushed into my veins and I was thinking of dropping my backpack in order to be able to fight back in case it would come that far, when the colleague of the gorilla finally whistled him back and told me to leave in peace.
I admit, that I dissevered a little punishment after having crossed the line trying to play a game who´s rules don´t seem to apply to westerners. How ever, I came to the conclusion that Gaya is not going to become more for travellers that it is now: a place you have to pass through in order to reach Bodgaya, like in the fairy tale of the ugly duck…

Bodgaya - on the tracks of Buddha

Our guidebook and some people I met on the way recommended to visit Bodgaya and dive into the Buddhist and Tibetan culture. By pure coincidence we arrived right at the beginning of a big Buddhist festival called "Karmapa". The streets and of course the main temple with the "Body tree" --- the tree, under which Sidharta reached enlightenment and became Buddha -- were packed with monks and pilgrims. Patricia, Agus and I inhaled the special atmosphere of thousands of believing people praying and listening to the lectures held by big spiritual masters, the so called "Rimpoche". After two days of exploring temples of many different nationalities our journey together has come to an end. Pat and Agus moved on to Kolkatta, while I decided to stay some more days and dedicate my time to Yoga and meditation. I miss their company, but on the other hand now a new part of my trip has started and I am looking forward to other experiences.

Luckily I met an interesting guy at the Tibetan monastery -- he was from Graz, Austria, Buddhist for 25 years and just preparing for a 3 month retreat -- who recommended me an institution where meditation-classes are held twos a day. I would have to write a book trying to explain you what meditation is and what it isn´t, but I can tell you that it is very difficult to slow down the continuous stream of thoughts and manage to consciously live the present moment without the mind interrupting and fading away into the past or future…

It seems that the internal part of my trip has started... ;) From the 23rd of December to the 1st of January I will be on some kind of retreat, so I will disappear from the map during X-mas and Silvester which is kind of an appealing perspective for me as I ultimately tend to feel more stressed by these occasions than I am actually enjoying them ;) Of course I hope that I am one of the few persons feeling like this and that you enjoy X-mas and new year!!! All the best to you, big hug ;)

How many persons fit inside a tuck-tuck

Don´t believe anybody who tries to estimate the correct number of people fitting inside a tuck-tuck calculating the volume and interpolating, the empirical approach is the only valid one here ;)
The answer is 11, including myself. I am wandering how on earth the old cars of my family were only allowed for 9 persons having 3 rows of seats, if you can make fir more people in a tiny tuck tuck. How ever, tuck-tuck-sharing is very ecological (for indian terms), really cheap and very social. After a 5 minute ride closely attached to some initially strange person you end up becoming close friends -- as you are that close already you just skip the formalities -- and favorite photo-object together with some locals hugging you in order to tell everybody that they have this great friend in Spain ….emmmm, Austria, …. …ah yeah, Europe …right. The world is small after all ;)

Varanasi - Tasting the real India

Ok, I admit, this blog is not completely "live" / up to date, it usually runs behind 4 or 5 days, sometimes even more. So when I put the short notice, that all of us were fine after the bomb-blast at Varanasi, the blog said that we ware still at the other end of India ;) After all, things have to happen first, before I can write about them and I am trying to find the right balance between sharing (I hope) interesting and curious incidents and impressions with you and actually being out there, living, going through adventures and learning…

A dear friend of mine described Varanasi in the following way: "Varanasi impregnates you down to the most inner cell of your body". I could not agree more!
Having compared a few hostels we found a more or less decent place inside the labyrinthic and rather trashy old town and explored our path through the tiny and dark ways between the houses. Several times we touched passing by cows as the ways were that narrow -- In India I got a new understanding of space, every square millimetre here is being used by the traffic, passersby and animals -- Of course the locals still rushed through them with their motorbikes showing the pedestrians and what ever living beings crossing their way that they were the chiefs.
Patricia, Agus and I found a very nice and laid back restaurant / terrace with a nice view over the Ganges where we spent many mornings to have breakfast and recharge our energies before loosing ourselves between the crowds at the Ghats. We observed people bathing in the Ganges doing the ritual washings, others making offerings (Pujas), different kinds of monks and priests praying and chanting, and families burning their dead at the "Burning Ghats", spreading theirs ashes into the holy river. I got hypnotized by the naturalism and unalterable serenity (by the noise and frenetic life happening) all these things were happening so closely next to each other. Compared to these practices, the ways things are done in Europe seem very sterile and almost antiseptic.
We were watching a group of young monks celebrating a offering with oil-lamps, torches and candles, doing some kind of synchronized dance, chanting, when we heard the explosion and even felt the expansive wave of the blast. We all had the intuition that this was way to loud and heavy to be a fire-work and when people started coming in our direction -- away from where the blast came from-- we found out what had happened some 200 meters away from us. Two bombs were placed next to the Ghat, were people were watching the periodical evening-ceremony. One bomb went off killing a little girl and injuring 25 persons, the second one was diffused… A pakistani extremist group believed to be responsible for this act of violence. All of a sudden the atmosphere of the city changed completely, the police armed with hitting sticks and the army were present at every corner, closing down parts of the old town. We witnessed some other tourists desperately trying to book tickets to leave town and others panicking. We decide to trust that the worst already had happened and that there was no point in running away from the place we had been enjoying so much.
After a few days things went back to normal little by little and people continued their lives, rituals and ceremonies. We intended to avoid the masses and rented a boat several times in order to see and inhale the atmosphere form some distance. This city has left a strong finger print inside me and when we left we agreed, that we could have stayed there for some more days, weeks or even months.

Agra - How to visit the Taj Mahal allone

Happy to have reached a cheap hostel in Agra with great views safely and looking forward to continue our trips by train we enjoyed a rather foggy / smoggy sunset viewing the shapes of the Taj Mahal. We heard form some other travellers that the french premier minister Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni were in Agra as well and that in the afternoon all tourists had been kicked out of the mausoleum so that the VIPs could enjoy it without being disturbed. There were rumors that they might want to visit it again the next day, so we tried to figure out a plan how to see this monument anyways. As I was told by a girl who had spoken to the guards, that the Taj Mahal would be open in the early morning only and than maybe in the afternoon again, we decided to get up a 5am and be the first persons to buy our tickets at 6:15am. The clever part was, that we split, I waited at the actual entrance while Patricia and Agus waited at the ticket office and like this we managed to enter the mausoleum at 6:40 while behind us the cue was growing and growing by every minute. We actually ran inside, overtook a group of koreans and took our fist shots of the completely empty Taj Mahal. I have to admit that that there might be flowing some japanese blood through our veins, but it was definitely worth the struggle. We entered the tomb of :……………….. and ……………….. alone and felt the peace and atmosphere of this place. a few minutes later this harmonic and beautiful place converted into a noisy hall full of visitors pushing each other and (real/fake) guides trying to sell their services. By then we already had left the tomb and walked around the garden. When the sun came out, I took some more pictures, but by then it was already crowded everywhere.
Luckily this monument is built of marble and very resistant to all the feet walking over it. I am wandering sometimes, how much of the famous monuments would would be left if they lost a tiny bit of mass when ever being photographed ;)
After 2 hours I left to get some more sleep after this very short night, happy that we had accomplished the objective of our visit here. I know, this sounds a bit ambitious… In fact I don´t like visiting famous monuments very much, as they normally are overcrowded. It is a tricky thing not to visit one of the world wonders, being so close. You would have to give explanations to everybody…
How ever I am very grateful we had the chance to feel and enjoy this magical place for some moments alone. I hope you like the pictures...