DOWN CHANDIGARH'S RABBIT HOLE

Chandigarh was different from the other Indian cities we visited and it wasn’t just the wide, quiet and sometimes tree-lined boulevards,the clean footpaths and streets lined with designer shops coupled with the general absence of noise, cows and trash. Most Indian cities look as if someone had thrown paint at a map and where the paint landed, a building went, a park was placed, a road followed. As a consequence of this, Indian cities are vibrant places but at the same time, they seem to be improvised with fragility and a sense of incompleteness that you don’t associate with cities in the developed world. Chandigarh is different, like a polite version of these cities, without the multitude of people, smells and chaos that test and frequently overwhelm your senses. It’s not a fluke that Chandigarh is the way it is. As Independent India’s first planned city, it serves as the capital of the states of Punjab and Haryana. Its development was headed by Le Corbusier, the Swiss-French modern architect and urban planner, who was interested in providing better living conditions for residents of crowded cities (and India has more than its share of residents living in crowded urban conditions).

Example of Le Corbusier's Chandigarh's legacy, concrete and geometric.

The Indian Punjab capital was a post-Partition response to the influx of refugees spilling over the newly formed border with Pakistan. The refugees were mostly Sikhs and Hindus coming from Pakistan Punjab. Ten to twelve million people were said to have crossed the border between Pakistan and India. Not all of the movement was peaceful, as captured in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance, “every day trains are crossing that new border, carrying nothing but corpses……The trains are stopped at the station and everyone is butchered. On both sides of the border”. It’s a theme also expressed in Salmon Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children “the mass blood-letting in progress on the frontiers of the divided Punjab (where the partitioned nations are washing themselves in one another's blood)” or in Khushwant Singh’s novel, Train to Pakistan, “Muslims said the Hindus had planned and started the killing. According to the Hindus, the Muslims were to blame. The fact is, both sides killed. Both shot and stabbed and speared and clubbed. Both tortured. Both raped”. You can add that while Hindus killed Muslims and Muslims killed Hindus, everyone killed the Sikhs.

Indian gentlemen enjoying the lake front.

With the partition just over a decade old and memories still raw for many, Le Corbusier developed a city of planned living that aimed to house a displaced populace, in a style not seen anywhere else in India. The wide boulevards dissect “super-blocks” or sectors, roughly arranged in a way that Le Corbusier’s concepts of living, working, circulation and the care of body and spirit could be achieved. For body and soul, there’s copious parks and a large lake, Sukhna Lake, that was one of Le Corbusier’s gift to the city. Chandigarh’s modernist architectural style also form part of Le Corbusier’s legacy, characterized by geometric structures made from brick and unhewn stone, a style that’s been described as Pyongyang-meets-Lewis-Carroll (that won’t be the only nod to Lewis Carroll in this story). Nehru, India’s first prime Minister described it as “the biggest example in India of experimental architecture. It hits you on the head and makes you think. You may not like it, but it has made you think, and imbibe new ideas”. I, for one, liked it. This may be due to the fact that after a month of bumpy bus rides and delayed train trips that linked one chaotic, dusty and noisy city to another, Chandigarh felt peaceful, easy going, relaxed. Of course, despite the order we found here, Chandigarh did prove to be the only place in India where I managed to get mugged, proving that there is always chaos in order. It also marked the first time in a month that we had seen a KFC or McDonalds. McDonalds is limited in India in that they don’t use beef so as not to offend Hindus or pork so not to offend Muslims, so the main burger in Indian McDonalds isn’t the Big Mac, it’s the Chicken Maharaja Mac. After a month of a vege diet, we ate at both, with dire consequences for some of our party (let’s just say Dehli Belly has nothing on the Chandigarh Runs).

Mosaic tribal women.

A couple of days after the Chandigarh Runs and the cricket mugging, we went to visit a rock garden. This is no ordinary rock garden, more of a visit to an alternative universe, a down the rabbit-hole experience (there’s another Lewis Carroll reference). Developed through the imagination of one man, Nek Chand, his Rock Garden spreads out over 40 acres, consisting of a fantastic combinations of waterfalls, of sculptures and statues, of tunnels that lead to hidden delights, through waterfalls and valleys. This is a real-life equivalent of Pan’s Labyrinth, brought to life through the workings of one man’s mind, where inexplicable and improbable objects are built. Furthermore, to add to the strangeness of the garden, it’s made entirely from recycled waste.

Not sure what these are.

Nek Chand’s rock garden exists as further allegory of how order can be made from chaos. No material is wasted. Everything from electrical sockets to discarded scrap metal, unwanted pieces of wire, broken glass and glasses, bangles, tiles, ceramic pots and sinks, electrical waste, old toilets and pieces of china are turned into the cartoonish and surreal, an imagined world that at times calls to mind characters from amine movies, at other times Dali-esque or Gaudi inspired sculptures. The garden had its origins during the rush of road construction that accompanied Chandigarh as it expanded. Chand, a road inspector, was amazed by the amount of waste generated by the road-making project, and began collecting waste that he used to create his sculptures, the modest origins of the now sprawling rock garden, recycled into his vision of what the divine kingdom of Sukrani would look like. Chand’s garden is in a forest buffer in a gorge near Sukhna Lake, where he worked on his vision secretly at night, undiscovered and unappreciated for ten years until town planners stumbled upon his work, no doubt perturbed that it was spread out over acres of public land. For a while, it seemed that the garden would go, snuffed out by officious local officers. After all, Chand was effectively squatting but after the very real threat of removal and demolition, some enlightened soul in the territory’s government (no doubt, concerned with public opinion which was heavily on the side of the Rock Garden being preserved), belatedly granted the garden a reprieve as well as conferring on Nek Chand a salary, a title ("Sub-Divisional Engineer, Rock Garden"), and a workforce of 50 labourers so that he could concentrate full-time on expanding the enterprise and reveal the entirety of his vision. This renewed effort has led to a mosaic of creation, of unrepressed expression, a psychedelic journey that can be taken without the need for hallucinogens. This is Wonderland, just not that as imagined by a well to do Englishman.

Spring-loaded.

Normal ways of writing would struggle to capture what the garden is like so forgive me for a temporary lapse into a stream of consciousness: Deformed and demented women in colourful ceramic saris, colourful mosaic tribal people and leering monkeys, armies of workers standing attention above passages that take you from one wonder to the next, inlaid with dazzling fragments of roofing tiles. Extravagant peacocks, animals whose species cannot be determined, men who look part hobbit, part monkey, part man, part bear, some embellished with real human hair. Artificial mangrove roots made from cement intertwine with the roots of bulbous baobab trees. Castles encrusted with glass, geometric structures with cascading waterfalls, mossy retreats accessed by secret tunnels and overlain with arches. A village that that hangs off the side of a hill, complete with houses and temples. Rainbows of electrical wire, umbrellas of broken porcelain, giant swings that can accommodate several people soaring out from huge arches that resemble Roman aqueducts crowned by long-limbed ceramic horses. Real birds take advantage of small nook and crannies as nesting sites, their song adding to the atmosphere, mingling with the cries of bewitched visitors. Small, constricted pathways led to open plazas flanked by pavilions and palaces. Grinning reindeer or antelope with jewelled eyes stare vacantly at the several thousand visitors who come to this wonderland each day.

Army awash with colour

                       Nek Chand himself said he drew inspiration from Le Corbusier, “It is an extension of our modern planning but it wasn't planned as such, in the same way. It was a gift from God, this talent, and when I developed this. I found the items and recycled them to create something new and different”.

He certainly achieved different.

GOING, GOING, GOA

Old colonial houses and churches liberally dot the country-side and towns of Goa, remnants and reminders of the 450 odd years that Portugal ruled over this piece of prime Indian real estate. In contrast to the huge empires carved out in Asia by the French and the British, Portugal established small areas of rules, creating cities or small states that served to facilitate trade with one another and of course, with the motherland. The Portuguese established colonies in China (Macau), Malaysia (Malacca), Sri Lanka and what is now Indonesia (Flores and the Moluccas) as well in the present day state of East Timor, focussing on the successful and lucrative trade of spices and other raw consumables. For many of the major (and minor) European colonial powers, India was a place of interest and Portugal was no different, establishing various colonies over the sub-continent. Many of these colonies were short-lived and soon fell back into Indian or into British hands. Some, like Mumbai, were gifted to Britain as part of a royal dowry. Goa, though, remained in Portuguese hands and was the last of Portugal’s Indian colonies to be relinquished, when it was finally “recovered” by India in a largely bloodless invasion in 1961, 14 years after the rest of British India had achieved independence.  Maybe this accounts for the different vibe that Goa has in comparison to other parts of India that we have visited and it wasn’t just the beach resort vibe that was different. Here, a thriving Christian population co-exists with the Hindi community, long-term foreign residents party with travellers who might be there for only a few nights. Partying co-exists with sightseeing, with Goa’s long colonial history leaving plenty of sights of interest to visit and explore.

The Basilica of Bom Jesus in Old Goa, where the relics of St Francis lie.

The first capital of Portuguese Goa (and of all of Portugal’s eastern colonies) is now a small town called Old Goa but at its peak, old Goa was known as the Rome of the East, a city said to rival Lisbon in its magnificence. After its founding in 1470 until the late 16^th Century, old Goa was a city of over 250,000 people. In the late 17^th Century, a succession of cholera epidemics led to plans to abandon the city that eventually brought about the end to Old Goa, which lay abandoned bar a few buildings that were rebranded and used as military barracks. Interest in its history led to the revival of Old Goa in the 20^th Century but the scars of neglect can be seen still, with some spectacular churches now lying in ruins while others bear marks of plunder caused by material being looted for other building projects.  However, enough of the splendid religious buildings remain to showcase how magnificent the city would have been in its prime. In one of the mega churches lies the body of St Francis, of Jesuit fame, making it perhaps the most revered church in East Asia. Another ranked as the largest church in Asia when it was built (it may still be the largest church in Asia, although some contemporary churches I have visited in Korea have been of a massive size and are probably bigger). Photo-shy nuns dressed in grey bustle around the streets, hustling between the convents and churches, while groups of Indians posed for photos, often wishing to involve us in their photographic escapades (one of the things that takes some time to appreciate when you are in India is that Indians really like to take their photo with random foreigners). People here seemed used to seeing curious foreigners on the prowl; we received few of the trademark stares from Indian men like those that we had experienced in Mumbai.

The Church of our Lady of Immaculate Conception, Panaji.

After the fall of Old Goa, the capital of the colony became Panaji and just as with Old Goa, the legacy of the Portuguese is apparent. The churches are still apparent, like the whitewashed Church of our Lady of the Immaculate Conception that stands on a hill, overlooking the city centre. But here, it’s not so much the churches but the old colonial houses that line the winding small roads and alleyways of the city that are the true guardians of the Portuguese tradition. 

Old colonial streets

The colourful exteriors of these houses, with their cheerfully decorated window shutters and balconies, reminded me of Malacca, another former Portuguese colony that I had visited in Malaysia. As if mirroring the colourful houses, extravagantly coloured birds like kingfishers and parakeets flitted through the gardens, as if in competition with the artificial hues of the houses. From the vantage of a temple pavilion, I enjoyed the antics of fishing eagles, as they soared and caught thermals that let them glide with a minimum of effort. 

One of the fishing eagles that I admired.

On other days, we visited some of the forts that were established on headlands along the coast-line of Goa. From our hotel (a good guesthouse called Bean Me Up attached to a great vegetarian restaurant of the same name), we walked to one fort called Chapora Fort. From here, there were great views to be had looking out into the Arabian Sea and down onto Vagator Beach but the fort itself was run down, consisting of no more than a gate and an outer wall made of volcanic-looking rocks. 

Fort Aguada, by the sea.

We visited another more substantial one another day. Fort Aguada, unlike Fort Chapora, had never been overrun, which highlights the fact that location isn’t just important in real estate. Fort Aguada sits on a hill that overlooks the Arabian Sea and the mouth of the Mandovi River, where you can catch brightly-coloured boats that will take you on dolphin-spotting trips. The fort was once completely cut off from the mainland by a moat formed by the river, but had a regular and constant supply of fresh water, a must if you wish to survive long sieges. A lighthouse was built in the 19^th Century to protect ships that were coming close to shore, another indication of the prime perch the fort enjoys.

The lighthouse at Fort Aguada.

Of course, most people don’t go to Goa to look at architecture or to be tested on history. The beaches here are the drawcard and while the days of the hippie trail have cooled a bit, there’s still plenty of life in this beast. Describing beaches is a difficult thing because not much really happens on tourist beaches that can’t be described by clichés-golden sands, palm trees, Europeans in speedos and ill-fitted bikinis. But these clichés really sum up the beach scene in Goa, at least on Vagator. The problem and maybe the beauty with beaches is that you could be anywhere-it’s just the vendors and what they are selling that changes. On Vagator Beach, (the one that sat below Chapora Fort), vendors tried selling sunglasses and sarongs to pasty looking Europeans who tried to fight then off, while groups of young men played games of cricket, soccer and volleyball on the beach. At the point between Vagator and Little Vagator, a small fleet of wooden outriggers sat idle, nets ready for their next fishing adventure. Cows walked along the beach, looking out of place as the surf rushed up their legs.

Fishing boats at the ready

The beach adjacent to Vagator is Anjuna Beach and every Wednesday it hosts the Anjuna flea market, Goa’s most famous. The market at Anjuna has been described as an anthropologist’s dream and while I wouldn’t necessary go that far (things have retreated back a bit since the heady days of the 1970s), the market is still a good place to lose yourself for an afternoon. Here, people from all over India ply their trade-refugees from Tibet, brightly attired women with elaborate jewellery and facial piercings, men selling drums and elegantly carved stone elephants and Kashmiri carpet sellers mix with guests ranging from bewildered looking foreigners on their first overseas trip to the seasoned Goa heads who once came here for a week in the 1970s and then never left, their children weaned on Goan trance. 

Vendor at a Goan market

Whatever you want to find here, you probably could, (I wish I had tried asking for an elephant foetus or something equally ridiculous, just to see if the vendors would promise me that they could procure it).

Beach scene-somewhat typical of Anjuna.

While Goa has its own special charm that makes it unlike the other parts of India we have visited, it’s still clearly part of India. People still have that peculiar head-nodding whose meaning evades the casual traveller to India. Churches may be a distinctive part of Goa but Hindus are still in the majority and temples can be seen built beside churches. Like elsewhere in India, cows still have free rein to stroll wherever they want, to nuzzle at rubbish heaps and hold up traffic. 

Cow holds up play

A multitude of dogs room the streets, lingering on the side of the road or if they are brave enough, catching forty winks on the street itself, placing more trust in Indian drivers than I would have felt was warranted. You still stumble upon kids playing cricket, in a park, on the beach or on the street., just as you would in other parts of India. But there remains something intangible that makes Goa indescribably different from other parts of India, something in the air (and I’m not talking about the hashish) that gives Goa a unique feel, a good place to spend a few days to relax and recharge your batteries, especially if you have spent a few weeks travelling around the Indian hinterland. To paraphrase the signs you see in Goa, Goa is like a fridge, everybody chills there.

SLUMMIN IT

Mumbai exists in the minds of many as a collection of clichés: men playing cricket under an array of colonial Victorian-era buildings, extravagant Bollywood films and Slumdog Millionaire, a film that feeds directly into another of the more powerful and enduring images of Mumbai, the people who live in the city’s slums. Dharavi is the slum featured in Slumdog Millionaire and is one of India's largest slums, a 0.7 square mile city within a city that over a million people call home. The child actors in Slumdog Millionaire were cast from here and may well still live here.

A million people live in an area the size of a small farm (175 hectares)

Tourists can visit Dharavi as part of a guided tour to see how the other side of India live. We went with a tour group called Reality Tourism, who gives most of its earnings back to the communities that it visits. The tours are led by a local guide, who is sensitive to the needs of the local community. They also have a strict no-photo policy that showed me that this was a company concerned with the emotions of the people whose lives we were imposing ourselves on. My concern before agreeing to go on a slum tour was finding the right tour, hoping to avoid the wrong sort that would be exploitative and tacky, trading off the misery of others and leading to flawed judgements being cast by tourists. Images can easily be used to distort the realities of life in the slum, which misses the point of this tour, which is to showcase the innovation and enterprise inherent in the slum. No cameras means that small groups of people can travel relatively inconspicuously and without imposing too much of the lives of the slum dwellers. Only one person, a young Australian, out of our group of eight decided to take photos. She was unrepentant even when she was caught by our guide, shocked that she should have her rule-breaking pointed out publicly. She seemed to be the type of tourist who would fail to see the value of the work done here, instead focussing on the squalor and poverty of people’s existence here. 

Small-time industries like this are common in Dharavi

Visiting Dharavi was an eye-opener. A slum it maybe but it is different than what I expected- families had small established houses to live in, we only saw one rat and there is a staggering amount of industry (it has been called the heart of Mumbai’s small-scale industries), that caters to many industries from the more traditional pottery, leatherwork and textiles to the recycling that processes recyclable waste from Mumbai and other parts of India. Small-scale activities like this are believed to bring in about 665 million dollars a year. Women made poppadoms and laid them out to dry on cane umbrellas. There were schools and kindergartens, mainly funded by NGOs (the tour group we went with funds a kindergarten and a community centre) and temples, mosques and churches existed almost side by side. There was little sign of the sectarian violence of 20 years ago that led to violent clashes between Muslim and Hindu and the setting up of separate Muslim and Hindu quarters.

Working conditions are tough

Dharavi may have been one of the more humbling places I have been but that didn't mean that the people were humbled by their living conditions. Instead, these people seemed proud of Dharavi. Not once were we asked for money (rupees, chocolate, pen is a familiar mantra known by many travellers to India) by children as you would be on a regular basis when visiting sights. We walked down small alley-ways, catching glimpses of day to day life inside the small rooms that families call home, all the time being careful to avoid the low hanging roofs, open drains and potentially live wires that haphazardly exited out from the houses. Shyer kids peered out of the doorways while the braver ones were seemingly content to wave and say goodbye to the foreigners who intruded in their living quarters. One boy was especially proud of his pet dog, walking it on a shiny, new red leash, others played cricket in confined spaces. The residents of Dharavi are making the most of a pretty limited way of life.

The narrow alleys of the slum

That’s not to gloss over what Dharavi is. It is made up of a collection of people, from all over India, who work long hours for 120 rupees a day, about the price of a big bottle of beer, eking out an existence in conditions that most Westerners would find abhorrent. The men who work in the cottage factories work in conditions that are unpleasant and with materials that are probably toxic. Sanitation and hygiene is a major problem. There is only one toilet for every 1400 people, so many people resort to using creeks that run through the slum as a toilet, with an obvious consequence being the spread of disease as well as contaminating a potential water source in an area that is already suffering from problems with inadequate drinking water supply. Children play on rubbish heaps that double as toilets, taking advantage of one of the relatively few open spaces in the slum.

Where the laundry goes

But this is a tour that didn’t showcase poverty but made a story out of the success of the slum, if that’s not too much of an oxymoron. People in Dharavi are just like the rest of us, just less well-paid, working each day to make enough money to eat and pay the rent (the rent for an average house in Dharavi is said to be about $4 or 200 rupees). Slums are still part of the Mumbai cliché just like Victoria Terminus, the most imposing of the collection of colonial buildings or the men played cricket in whites dirtied from diving around on hard, dusty and uneven playing surfaces. But dig a little deeper and the cliché of slum squalor starts to slip away, replaced by a positiveness and self-belief that seems to drive much of Indian society today.

http://realitytoursandtravel.com/default.html

(All photos are sourced from the Reality tours website)

MOTHER GANGA

Varanasi, one of the oldest continuously occupied cities in India if not the world, has been a city of cultural and religious importance for millennia. Befitting a city of such antiquity, it has acquired several nick-names throughout its long history- the ‘city of temples’, ‘the holy city of India’, ‘the religious capital of India’, ‘the city of lights’ and ‘city of learning’. Varanasi holds a special place in Jain, Buddhist and Hindu religions. For Jains, its esteem was cemented as three of their holy leaders were born here. Buddha gave his first sermon to his disciples in a place close to Varanasi, meaning the Varanasi region is the area where Buddhism was founded. But given the pre-dominance of Hinduism, Varanasi is most famed for its connections to that religion. It remains one of Hinduism’s seven holy cities and an important place of pilgrimage.

Varanasi shares a special relationship with the Ganges.

Varanasi and the Ganges are irretrievably linked. The Ganges is the most sacred river to Hindus who believe that sin can be remitted by simply bathing in the Ganges (a type of fluid cleansing equivalent to Catholic confession). Dying in the city can release a person’s soul from the cycle of transmigrations. Here, as perhaps to the same extent as no-where else on Earth, the river is revered. In fact, the Ganges is worshipped as a goddess called Ganga. Unfortunately, even with its divine status, the well-being of the Ganges is threatened and ranks among the top five most polluted rivers in the world. 200 million litres of untreated sewage a day flow into the Ganges. People use the waters in many aspects of daily life. Women do their laundry here, washing saris which are then left to dry in a colourful arrangement along the banks of the river.

Array of colours drying by the river

Men and women bathe in the holy waters along her course, disregarding bacterial counts many times higher than WHO guidelines (fecal coliform counts downstream of Varanasi are one hundred times that of official Indian limits). They disregard health warnings to pay homage to their ancestors and to the gods by letting Ganga’s water flow over them, pouring contaminated yet holy water over their heads from cupped palms. Attempts to clean it up have been described as a “failure”, a “major failure”, a “colossal failure” and a “widely recognized failure”. FAIL then.

Hard-braving the Ganges

Much like people collect holy water from the Vatican, Hindus will carry water from the Ganges for use in rituals. The British carried large quantities in ships that housed Indian labourers, both for use in rituals and to try and appease those Hindus who felt that they would lose their caste if they traveled across the ocean. Nehru, the first Prime Minister of an independent India, described the Ganges as “The Ganga is the river of India, beloved of her people, round which are intertwined her racial memories, her hopes and fears, her songs of triumph, her victories and her defeats. She has been a symbol of India's age-long culture and civilization, ever-changing, ever-flowing, and yet ever the same Ganga."  

Small boats line the Ganges waiting for fares (preferably from a foreigner so they can charge higher prices)

People come to Varanasi to die and/or to be cremated here. Cremation occurs on the ghats, the series of steps that lead down to a river, with bodies burnt on pyres of wood. As all Hindus wish to be cremated here, large piles of different types of wood used to construct the funeral pyres of the faithful deceased lie in the back-alleys near the ghats. Each type of wood has different values with sandalwood being the most expensive. Families buy what they can afford. If the deceased family was poor and they couldn’t afford to buy wood, the body will not be cremated at all. Some families can only afford either a minimal amount of wood or poor quality wood, which often results in a half burned body. Cremation happens on the ghats with the relative position of the funeral pyre determined by the caste of the deceased. After cremation, the ashes and bones of the deceased are then thrown into the Ganges. Those who might have died far from the Ganges can have their ashes scattered there if their family can afford to get them there. To avoid epidemics that have been spread more quickly from bodies thrown into the Ganges, only ashes and bones are supposed to be scattered in the river. There are exceptions to the rule; the bodies of holy men, pregnant women, lepers, snake-bite victims, suicides, paupers and infants are not cremated but allowed to decompose in the river. Apparently, turtles have been trained to consume dead flesh and not to bother swimmers or bathers.

The piles of wood used for cremations

We somehow navigated our way through and around the maze-like arcades of Varanasi. The Ganges is the dominant presence, the heart of the city as it winds laboriously through the city of more than a million. Mud piles up around the ghats, evidence of the Ganges tendency to flood annually, its function as both a giver and a taker of life. Holy men are more evident here than they were in other cities and bhang, a combination of cannabis, milk, ghee and spices, is a common sight, being prepared on the steps of the ghats, a green paste made in mortar and pestle. Government shops also sell it and they do a brisk trade selling to holy men, locals and interested foreigners.

Trident traveller: Sadhu at rest.

The smell of sweat and cow dung used as fuel merges with the smell of wood. Mongooses dart between the feet of travelers and hide among the accumulated woodpiles. As you get closer to the Ganges, other smells can be detected, the smell of burning wood, the smell of death. Here, along the banks of the Ganges, the earthly remains of the faithful met their end, under the gaze of family members and foreigners. Gathered together in a second-floor window, a spot secured by a donation, supposedly given to poor families to buy wood (although I suspect it is just pocketed by the enterprising entrepreneur), we could look over one of the ghats, one of the most famous and prestigious in Varanasi. A stiff wind blew smoke and ash from burning bodies back into our faces, the wind and fire conspiring to remove the funerary cloth of the deceased, exposing limbs and torsos to all interested parties, glimpses into the last ritual of life.

The Ghats

It’s as macabre as it sounds, a tourist attraction based on the local industry of death. Most tourists are respectful of the requests to not take photos of the funeral pyre. Others blatantly disregard it, taking snapshots of burning bodies, pictures that they can use to tell stories with back home. It would be little worse if they went and touched the bodies and I wonder if any of them had stopped to contemplate this situation in reverse, think about how they would feel if it was their dear mother sitting in a funeral parlour, touched, leered at and talked about by strangers, photos taken to illustrate a story. I would hope that if these tourists had taken a moment to think about it like this that they would have stopped. Unfortunately, India and its accompanying human travesties desensitize and dehumanize the long-term traveller who grow accustomed to the extreme poverty, the desperation and body mutilations commonly seen around India. Given this, I guess this final indignity, the act of recording so sensitive a ceremony for personal gratification, can be explained if not justified.

Boating along the Ganges on the look-out for bodies

At dusk, we took a boat-ride along the Ganges, the light from the pyres standing out in the gloom, as the last of the stored energy potential in the bodies is converted to heat and light. Unlike many travellers, we didn’t see any bodies floating past, just the bloated body of a dog. We stopped midstream, where a puja was being performed by seven Brahmin priests who prayed and made offerings for Shiva, Ganga and world peace on behalf of the pious. They were watched by a multitude of the merely curious, who watched on from a myriad of boats anchored together in the middle of the Ganges. Amid drumming and chants, we released candles that floated like so many spirits back towards the mouth of the Ganges before heading back to our hotel. Life is frantic here and dirty but there is also a spiritual side that is commendable. It’s just a pity that the visitors who deem it acceptable to photograph burning bodies of somebody’s loved one can’t find the spirit to avoid doing such a tasteless act. Just like a glass of Ganges water, this behaviour left a dirty and lingering bad taste in your mouth, behaviour not befitting a city with such a proud history.

SEXY TEMPLES

When you are travelling around India, you are surrounded by people, going about their business (often literally). It’s not until you step back that you notice that most of the people you see walking around are men, a gender bias especially visible in the more rural parts of India, like Rajasthan. Women are there but they are often observers, rather than equal members of society, hidden behind doors and colourful veils. For a land known for the Kama Sutra, public life in many parts of India is distinctly non-sexual, conservative rather than erotic, tedious rather than tantric.

There are still flashes of sex in India- a topless women carrying water down the street in Jhansi, secret smiles shared on a train and the sculptures on the temples of Khajuraho. The town of Khajuraho has made its name on the back of its famous temples that have statues depicting sexual activities and lustful behaviour. The temples serve as a fine example of medieval Hindu and Jain architectural styles with depictions of royalty and deities, plants and animals but no-one comes here for the architecture. The crowds are here to see the famed erotic sculptures that make up about 10% of the total number of sculptures on the temples.

Temple at Khajuraho.

It seems all orientations and fetishes were embraced here, man on woman, woman on woman, man on man and even man on horse are shown in the statues. All of the women have large breasts and broad hips, men are generously endowed. The figures jut out from their sandstone monuments, seductively going about their everyday business, washing their hair, playing games, putting on make-up, farming, making pottery and of course, making love. The temples are sometimes mistakenly called the Kama sutra temples. This is misleading, as the statues do not appear inside any of the temples (who are dedicated to Hindu and Jain gods) nor do they follow the intricate positions seen in that book. Like so many ancient things, the point of the erotic sculptures may never be known.

Man seeking horse

Without the 22 remaining temples (85 were originally built), Khajuraho would be just another small, dusty, unmemorable Indian town. The temples were built by the Chandela dynasty between 950-1050 AD and abandoned by 1300 AD. The temples make the town and give many people a livelihood so the current residents must be thankful for their forebears who tried to upkeep the temples as best as they could. Even with their efforts, the complex was largely overgrown by jungle and date palm trees (who gave the town its name, khajur meaning date in Hindi) until the English started to clear the site in the 19^th Century, a process accelerated after independence in 1947. Now, the site is all manicured lawn, ornamental trees and flowerbeds.

Am I too late for the orgy?

20,000 people call the town home which makes it a nice size to explore, either on foot or by bike. One morning, I came across a group of buffalos wallowing in a mud-pit and later startled a mongoose as it just evaded my bike as it charged across the road. Another morning, I met a guy who took me to visit a school. The children were all very polite, although the school was rudimentary at best, small rooms made from mud walls with little in the way of equipment or teaching materials. The guy who brought me there seemed genuine but there are warnings that donations often go into the hands of teachers and principals, with not much going to the students or to the school. Hopefully, some of my small donation trickled down to the students.

Wallowing

Talking to the locals (or at least the men) was the same as everywhere in India. Half the town seemed to have an uncle who lives in Auckland and the other half had a brother who owned a restaurant where we could get a good deal. Here, instead of the usual postcards and knick-knacks, the touts sold Kama sutra playing cards, key rings with moveable penises, fridge magnets depicting sex acts. There is an air of desperation. The touts are pushy and it’s a little disconcerting to have a penis key-ring pushed into your face, said appendage then performing a robust sexual act. 30 identical souvenir shops fight for your custom, travel agents fight to sell you bus tickets. A “maybe later’ only encourages them to attack you more vehemently on your way past them later, as if ‘maybe later’ was a legal contract that you would look in their shop. Women give you flowers for “free” and then want a donation if you take them. Luckily, our hotel which was run by a nice Jain man had large, lovely gardens where you could go and relax with a book, away from the touts. If you were lucky, you might even see a pair of mongooses playing. That was a rare peaceful place in Khajuraho though. Sex sells and Khajuraho knows how to sell it.