And mud -- lots and lots of feces-filled mud.
OK, so that's not exactly fair to India, but it was pretty much our experience for our first two days here. We crossed into India at a typical dirty border town. The actual immigration stuff was extremely easy, luckily. One of our first observations was that India was even more covered in trash than Nepal (or Thailand or Cambodia or Laos). Plastic and sewage chokes every drain and creek, and clogs up everything, creating pools of extremely filthy water. There are cows and buffalo everywhere, so there is always lots and lots of dung to step around, and all of this gets pushed into the water. It was raining quite hard the day we crossed, which made everything a soggy mess, too. We caught a bus down to the closest town that had a train terminal (Goratpur), and were greeted by a muddy town that was even more chaotic and gross than the border. We walked to the train station and entered into an extremely chaotic scene where we couldn't figure out the train system and everyone was staring at us... Not particularly comfortable. The Indian train system is pretty confusing, especially for someone who just arrived... We went to the "tourist office", where a woman (sort of) helped us (but really made us more confused). Sarah took charge and tried to get us tickets for the first train to Lucknow, since we definitely weren't going to be able to get to Agra that day. Long story short, we ended up having to give a commission to the tourist office lady to purchase us a general boarding ticket (meaning we had no seats) to the train that pulled into the station. After waiting around in frustration for a couple hours, this all happened in less than five minutes, and the train was on its way out of the station. We wandered through the overcrowded sleeper car trying to figure out what to do until a kind man took pity on us and squeezed us in with his family. He had to run interference for us a couple times when people came who had more of a claim to our seats, but we managed to have a cramped place to sit for the next 6 hours. The man was nice, but was really insistent on having us take over his leprosy counselling job when he retired.... kinda weird. The only real plus side of the day was the great chai tea and samosas that were served on the train (quite cheap!). We arrived in Lucknow at 11pm and had to wander around in the dodgy train station area looking for a hotel to stay in...
The next day proved to be more of the same, except it was all on buses -- basically 14 hours worth of bus riding at an average speed of 25 - 30 kilometers an hour.... It was a dirty, slow, tiring day. We were just filthy by the time we reached Agra -- once again, really late at night.
The countryside was quite interesting, since the monsoon rains had hit the area quite hard -- all along entire stretches of road and railways the fields were completely inundated and flooded. Often there were a few building or trees sticking out of the water.
Since tourists don't take the buses in the areas we were going through, we got stared at constantly. One particularly memorable moment was when Sarah needed to find a bathroom during a stop on the bus, but she didn't know how long she had before it was leaving again. She was hurrying around in the bus "station", trying to find some facilities, with everyone (mainly men), all staring at her as she jumped around mud puddles and looked in vain.... It's hard not to stick out in a sea of dark skin when you are blond, tall, and a woman.
Oh yes, the urine. Men pee everywhere. I saw more men peeing in the last two days than in our entire trip so far. Entire walls in front of the train station and bus stations are impromptu urinals, and the smell permeates everything around these areas. Not pleasant. On the flip side, there are often no facilities for women at all.... quite bizarre.
Not all was bad, however. There were hints of the India that visitors fall in love with. A boy bought Sarah an ice cream once.... staring people break into a big smile when you smile at them.... people help when they know you are confused.... India might be the most chaotic, messy place either of us have been in a long time, but there is some magic lurking there. Hopefully we find more of it in the days to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment