We sort of had to rush through the last segment of our Indian journey. To speed it up we substituted some epic overland transportation with domestic flights. As the world battled with the aftermath of the attacks on America, we got a taste of what air travelling might be like in the future. Plagued by terrorism for years, India has extremely strict airport security checks. We were thoroughly frisked and our luggage was searched and scrutinized four times. Confiscating potential weapons, they removed not only the obvious Swiss Army knives, but also lighters, tweezers, luggage chains, and�toothpicks. They turned all our books upside down and even Jonas� oranges were taken away because �they could be bombs�. When you open our backpacks, the hundreds of syringes and industrial doses of insulin give the idea that we are on a very profitable business trip to the Golden Triangle, so we became experts at giving spur-of-the-moment lectures on traveling with diabetes.
First we went to Agra for the compulsory Indian visit to the Taj Mahal with a side trip to the perfectly preserved Mughal palaces in Fatehpur Sikri. We stayed at Lauries Hotel, where nothing had changed since Guillaume�s last visit in 1986. The swimming pool was still covered in algae and all the wallahs received orders from the same old woman. In India there is a wallah (man) for any imaginable task. For example, if you want to book a ticket you will have to deal with the reservation-wallah, the ticket issuer-wallah, the get-the-pen-wallah and the cashier-wallah. At this hotel we met our first soft drink-wallah, whose only job was to say "Soft drink?" every time we passed him.
In Agra, Guillaume took his final exam in Indian Bureaucracy. With regular intervals, we shove old guidebooks and souvenirs in cardboard boxes and ship them home. (Mom, thank you for dealing with the Portuguese bureaucracy on the other end.) In India, we learned that all parcels must be covered in muslin cloth (by the post office tailor-wallah) and the seams sealed with wax. As the customs officer refused to come back after lunch, Guillaume decided to take matters into his own hands, literally. Amongst hundreds of people, patiently waiting to fill in redundant forms in duplicates and triplicates, he planted himself on the floor underneath the customs officer�s desk. Once installed with parcel, needle and thread, he hooked up their electrical frying pan and heated up some wax, temporarily graced with the authority of using the official Agra General Post Office stamp.
In Varanasi (Benares) we found total pandemonium on the ghats of the holy Ganges. Life, death, blessings, haircuts, baths, the baking of make-believe food for the gods, insects, vendors, sadhus, beggars, and burning corpses - it all became a little too much. We didn�t stay long.
Once again we fled the plains for the cool of the mountains. To get to the Mecca of tea-drinkers, the colonial hill station of Darjeeling we caught the famous toy train. Guillaume on a toy train is like a kid in�well, a toy factory. Jonas was a little less amused since the 80 km-ride takes nine hours and we had to do it twice! To make time pass, Jonas delighted himself with his favorite hobby in India: hanging out the window, smiling and waving to all the people we passed. The response was so enthusiastic that we joked about Jonas� potential as a candidate for the local government of West Bengal. Then again, maybe they just thought he was Ricky Martin again.
In Darjeeling we didn�t drink as much tea as you would expect since we are both devout coffee drinkers. To see the views of Kanchenjunga, the world�s third highest mountain, we got up at 05:30. The view is only available between 05.30 and 05:35, before the monsoon clouds wrap themselves around all of Darjeeling. The monkeys that have occupied the Kali Shrine on Observatory Hill were great fun. The pilgrims didn�t seem equally amused with the fact that the monkeys use the multi-colored prayer flags as trapezes in a spontaneous circus performance. |
