North India Part V: Varanasi

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.... Continued from North India Part IV: Allahabad and Lucknow)

 

I reached Varanasi at 6 am in the morning and checked in at Shree Ganesha Palace, a large haveli converted to a hotel. It was a calm, clean oasis in the midst of the chaos of the city.

 

It's difficult to describe what I feel about Kashi. I don't think anyone can sit on the fence about this place. If you are a believer, it's the gateway to heaven. If not, you might be driven away by it's pollution. Being an atheist the place has no religious significance for me, but that it does for a billion people plays on my mind. The place is unique and evocative. The morning rays lighting the steep ghats and the umbrellas providing respite from the afternoon heat, the mighty Ganga flowing majestically eastward and the devotees washing away their sins, the revered cows walking about and the sadhus contorting their supple bodies, the chaos at Kashi Vishwanath temple and the playful monkeys in its compound, the glory of the morning Aarti and the chanting of sacred hymns. Above all else, equally appealing to people of all faiths, is the fabulous street food probably as good as any in the country. But there is also the filth - it won't be an overstatement to say that the holiest city of India is also it's dirtiest. Sadhus and commoners relieving themselves on the ghat is a common site. There are dustbins around but no one seems to try to look for them. People don't tire of mentioning that nectar flows in the Ganga while releasing the worst effluents in enormous quantities. Some of the ghats are an absolute eyesore. It's a polarizing place like no other I have seen, and if the mess is cleaned up, it can be an attractive place like no other.

 

 

For breakfast, I headed to Ram Bhandar in Thateri bazaar to have it's famous kachori, and did the place live up to it's expectations! There were two varieties of them, stuffed round and crispy flat, both served with aloo bhaji. I tried one of each and they were a cut above any kachori I've ever had. I also tried some jalebis, which were so much better than the best of them back in Bombay.

 

After taking care of my hunger, I headed to the Kashi Vishwanath temple. I had already left my camera and phone in the hotel room - here I was asked to deposit even a pen I was carrying. There was a queue of about 45 minutes to reach the inner sanctum of the temple, and during the wait, I had the pleasure of standing right under a monkey as he took a leak. I just may be the only person in the world who has been pissed on by both a monkey and believe it or not, a lion. Having a somewhat wet t-shirt wasn’t my biggest concern while in line - some of the corridors of the temple were so dirty I wanted to turn back and leave. One woman aggressively berated a couple of men for jumping a few spaces in the queue. I was irritated at both parties: the men for obvious reasons and at her for choosing to use profane language at a sacred place.

 

 

 

For a trip to Varanasi to be complete from the religious perspective, one is expected to visit both the Kashi Vishwanath temple and the Kaal Bhairon temple nearby. I skipped the latter, and headed to the Dasaswamedh ghat, overflowing with priests, ascetics, devotees, vendors, boatmen and cows. I hopped on to a boat headed to the opposite bank.  During the 10 minute ride, the boatman was moaning about how politicians have been promising for decades to clean up the Ganga, but no action has been taken. At the opposite bank, he asked all passengers to leave their footwear in the boat, presumably to ensure they didn’t return using a different boat. When I decided to keep mine on and remarked that there was a lot of garbage on the sand bank, he remarked that the garbage was in my mind and the place was absolutely clean! To make the irony starker, I noticed a sadhu taking a crap in the distance as I got off the boat.

 

 

All the activity at Varanasi is only along one bank: the opposite bank has a huge expanse of sand submerged during the monsoons, and some sparsely populated villages beyond the high water mark. Some of the passengers took a holy dip in the Ganga waters, while the rest of us strolled around for a while. I was hungry by the time I returned back to the business side of the river, and of all things on offer, decided to have some dosas. It was a real surprise to realize how much the locals loved South Indian food: every block in the city had a vendor selling dosas, vadas and idlis. And stalls peddling momos were ubiquitous too.

 

In the late afternoon, I took a cycle rickshaw to Kriti Gallery, well known for its support of local artists. The trip was fruitless as there were no exhibitions going on. I proceeded on to Sant Ravidas ghat, one of the far flung ghats, where the Ganga Mahotsav, a 3 day classical dance and music fest was going on. The front section were for VIPs and those holding passes, but white-skinned people could also enter that area. I requested the ushers for front access, stating that I had come from Mumbai and that there was too much chatter at the back to enjoy the music, and with some hesitation they obliged. Rakesh Chaurasiya gave a nice flute performance, but his rendition was clashing with an aarti performed by a group of devotees on the adjoining riverbank. The stage was abuzz with moths and mosquitoes, leading him to remark that he had his evening snack during the performance itself. Next up was a Bharatnatyam performance by Sushila Mehta, which was good, followed by an Odissi dance by another artist that was quite boring. Thereafter Kavita Seth mesmerized everyone for an hour, starting with a couple of her sufi compositions, followed by the film numbers she sang in "Rajneeti" and "Wake Up Sid" and ending with a medley of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's classics.

 

There was a Marathi Lavani dance to follow, but it was getting late and I wanted to catch some sleep before waking up at 5 am the next morning to head to Assi Ghat for it's Subah-E-Benaras program. It started with an enchanting Aarti and a shehnai performance followed. There was to be a yoga session later as well, but after the fiasco in Pushkar, I did not wait for it and decided to walk towards Dasaswamedh ghat, and take some snaps along the way.

 

 

I wanted to click the sadhus and priests. One priest was busy chanting verses and I clicked him with some graffiti in the background. I tried to snap a sadhu who seemed to be lost in contemplation, but he objected the moment I pointed the camera at him. The next sadhu I saw, I first took his blessings and made a dakshina of 10 rupees. He gave a few nice poses. As I thanked him, he requested me to send my friends his way too, indicating that it would be beneficial for everyone. At the next ghat, a couple of sadhus, naked except the tiniest of langots, were hanging out with a gang of hippies atop a water tank. One of them was performing yoga, while the other one was having a smoke with the gang.

 

 

En route, a short detour took me to the birthplace of Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, where a statue of hers riding her horse and brandishing a sword has been erected in her memory. Varanasi is also of religious importance to Jains, and is considered the birthplace of a few tirthankaras. I visited a temple at the site considered to be the birthplace of Suparsvanath, the seventh of the 24th tirthankaras.

 

One of the ghats I passed was the Harishchandra ghat, where dead bodies were being cremated. Clothes were being washed and laid out to dry at one of the other ghats. I am not sure I could wear anything that was washed in those waters.

 

 

 

After strolling about and taking many pictures, I had a breakfast of medu vada and headed to the hotel to take a nap. I checked out around noon, left my bags in the cloak room and took a cycle rickshaw to Sarnath, the place where the Buddha is supposed to have preached his first sermon. Sarnath was an oasis of peace compared to the chaos of Varanasi and its surroundings.  Its public washrooms were the cleanest I had seen in the past ten days. The 100+ feet Dhameka stupa, an Ashokan pillar and a museum housing the lion capital of the pillar were the highlights. In the surroundings were modern Buddhist temples built in Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, Burmese and Thai styles, and a Jain temple at the birthplace of the 11th tirthankara, Shreyansnath.

 

On the ride back to Varanasi, the rickshaw driver started talking about some trivia - for instance, Varanasi got its name as it is situation between the small Varuna and Assi rivers flowing into the Ganga. Thereafter he mentioned that Varanasi was famous for two things: one, the paan and two, the silk. A lightbulb went off in my head then. When we had set off from the hotel, the rick driver had mentioned that he will also show me Mughal Town on the way back. I had presumed it was a place with some old monuments, but now realized that it was probably the area with silk factories. He then proceeded to mention the benefits of shopping for silk directly from the factories. I insisted that I was getting late, which I indeed was, and did not want to see any workshops. He was miffed at me, and started complaining about how little I was paying him for taking up his entire afternoon. I put my foot down and asked him to take me straight back to the departure point, whence he started pedaling like a lunatic. I paid him a little more than agreed before, but still less than what he asked for and made it clear that I did not appreciate being taken around for these shopping trips.

 

 

In the evening I went back to the Mahotsav venue. The Governor of Uttar Pradesh was the chief guest that evening. An enthralling sitar performance by Niladri Kumar kickstarted the evening and was followed by a captivating rendition of folk singing by Malini Awasthi. I so wanted to hang around till late and enjoy Parveen Sultana's classical singing, but it was time to head to the station for my return journey back home.

 

I boarded the Patna Rajdhani heading to Delhi from Mughalsarai Junction, some 20 km away from Varanasi. There was no habitation around the station it seemed to exist only because the Varanasi station couldn’t support the high traffic of trains in the area.

 

The scheduled arrival time at New Delhi station was 7:40 am, and I had a connecting flight to Mumbai at 11:35 am. Being well aware of the tardiness of Indian Railways, I had chosen the Rajdhani and kept a margin of error of 2 hours. I tracked the train's  timeliness over the few days I was on the road, and it wasn’t more than 1.5 hours late on any of these days. But as luck would have it, it ambled into New Delhi station at 10:10 am, 2.5 hours late. Taking the airport express metro was no longer an option - the ride to Aerocity and the transfer to Terminal 1C would take about an hour. The only option was to take a cab, and push the driver to rush as fast as he could. I was in a cab at 10:20 and promised the guy an extra 100 bucks if he got me to the airport in 25 mins. I had been complaining about rash drivers throughout my trip, but I really needed one then. Instead, I got a slowpoke. But I made it to the airport in 25 minutes, as the Guru Nanak Jayanti holiday meant Delhi roads were uncharacteristically empty. I rushed to the check-in counter and was told the flight was closed. I entreated that I had already checked-in and only needed to drop my bag, and my request was granted. It was exactly 45 minutes to departure time! A few more minutes late, and I’d have to cough up 18k for a last-minute one way ticket to Mumbai, three times what I had paid for my return ticket booked well in advance!

 

A few days before the trip started, I had begin to wonder whether it was a silly undertaking. One friend mentioned Pushkar was overflowing with camel shit and another spoke about Varanasi’s unbearable filth. I wondered if I should have gone abroad to an exotic location, or gone diving or trekking. Perhaps I should have stayed home and read some good books. But thankfully, I went ahead with it, and stuck to it even as the start of the trip was below par. Travel tends to be most rewarding when one has few expectations. In hindsight, I wouldn’t swap this trip with any other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

North India Part IV: Allahabad and Lucknow

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.... Continued from North India Part III: Pushkar Fair)

 

 

Upon reaching Allahabad, I checked in to the hotel and immediately headed out to make the most of the few hours I had in the city, though there wasn't much to see. My first stop of the day was Anand Bhavan, the Nehru family home, now converted to a museum exhibiting the family's possessions.  En route, I took a 5 minute pit stop at Company park, where Chandrashekhar Azad was killed. A small statue is erected in one corner of this sprawling garden, and I paid my respects.

 

 

The displays at Anand Bhawan were designed to show a room each for Motilal, Swarup Rani, Jawahar and Indira, as well as a guest room often used by Gandhiji on his visits and a meeting room used for Congress working committee gatherings. Many of the personal rooms had separate study rooms, each with a huge collection of books. Notwithstanding controversies surrounding Jawahar, it struck me how well to do the family was even before independence yet he chose to dedicate itself to the nation's cause and braved suffering.

 

 

As the sun dipped to the horizon, I reached the Triveni Sangam, the confluence of Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati. There was no habitation for a huge area adjacent to the confluence, presumably because the area was kept clear for the kumbh mela. The area was unfortunately but expectedly quite dirty, even as slogans to save the Ganga were plastered all along the approach roads. A lot of visitors, presumably a mix of tourists and pilgrims, were taking boat rides along the Yamuna towards the Ganga, and taking dips in the water at the confluence point. I loitered around for a bit, trying to see if I could click a good picture, but to be honest, the place was ugly from an aesthetic viewpoint.

 

From the Sangam, I took a rickshaw to the Allahabad High Court. It's a beautiful building in itself, but history buffs remember it as the court that overturned Indira's election, ultimately leading the dark moment of the declaration of emergency. The building was open and there seemed to be no guards around, so I took my camera out. Just as I was about to depress the shutter, I heard a whistle from a dark corner and a hassled guard ran to me, rebuked me and checked my ID. I don't know what purpose does prevention of explicit photo taking serve in this modern era of satellite surveillance, especially since it was so easy to take one without being noticed if I wanted to.

 

From the high court, I walked a couple of blocks to the All Saints Cathedral, a beautiful neo-Gothic building that unfortunately could be viewed from inside only on Sundays. Disappointed, I headed to Loknath lane in the Chowk area, armed with a list of best street food joints in town. At Hari Ram and sons, I had a samosa and  kachori. At 14 bucks apiece, these were prices that a Haldiram charges in Mumbai. When I asked for some chutney, I got a condescending look and was told they didn't need any accompaniments. One local who was picking up a parcel figured I was out of town and told me with pride that this was the Allahabad way of eating samosas. With or without the chutney, I wasn't impressed with the fare on offer. Across the road was the famous Raja Ram rabri wale. He sold only one product: rabri. Again, I wasn't too impressed. I went back to the hotel, had an apple and went to bed early.

 

The next morning, I woke up at 3:30 am, did half an hour of pilates and boarded a train for Lucknow at 6 am. The scheduled 4 hour journey became a 6 hour one, including a 45 minute wait hardly a mile before Lucknow station. I was scheduled to take a train that night to Varanasi, so I left the luggage in the cloak room, secured with the locks I had bought in Amritsar.

 

It was close to 48 hours now that I last had a good meal, and I headed to Shree Lassi wala in the chowk area to enjoy some chole bhature and sweet lassi topped with cream. Both items were delicious. A short walk away was Raja Thandai wale. There was only one flavor of thandai, and the only choice the customer had was if they wanted bhaang added. I was tempted to go for that option, but was warned I shouldn't unless I had the option of heading straight home and sleeping till next morning. With or without the bhang, the kesar lassi was delicious.

 

Thereafter I walked to the nearby Bara Imambara, a mosque and mausoleum complex built by one of the Nawabs in the 18th century. It was an impressive complex with its highlight being the bhool-bhulaiya, an intricate network of staircases and corridors over three storeys where even the smartest tend to lose their way. It was compulsory for couples to enter with a guide, less they find a quiet corner for their romantic pursuits.

 

A short walk away from the Bara Imambara was its smaller cousin, the Chhota Imambara, whose highlight were its ornate archways with intricate carvings. In the same compound was the Shahi Hamam. It was such an ordinary building that I couldn't imagine how it justified an entrance fee. A block away was a picture gallery, filled with portraits of the Nawabs across the 17th and 18th centuries. The feature of all the portraits was that the subject's eyes and shoes seemed to point at the viewer at whichever angle he or she stood. This seems to me to be a standard feature of Indian portraits made in that period - I recall visiting galleries in Junagadh, Mysore and Hyderabad as a teenager, and portraits therein had similar characteristics.

 

 

My last sightseeing stop of the day was the British Residency, setup by the Nawab in mid-19th century. It is a collection of exposed brick buildings set in the classical style among a sprawling park called Qaiserbagh. There is an average museum too, which requires one to deposit phones and cameras in a clock room, as if people would be scrambling all over each other to take snaps of the Mona Lisas and the Starry Nights they have on display.

 

 

I was hungry again after all the walking and it was the right time to head to the Royal cafe in Hazratganj and have it's famous basket chat. As the name suggests, it was a potpourri of chat - chana, aloo tikki, puri, bhalla, all put into an edible crunchy basket with all the chutneys and dahi poured over in generous portions. The chef preparing it was a Marathi Manoos from Pune, and he told me Lucknow didn't have much to offer except good food, and Mumbai was a real fun city.

 

Hazratganj itself was an attractive area, with it's main boulevard lit with decorative streetlamps and lined with shops and restaurants. A side lane called Rajpath was the hub of Lucknowi Chikan work, and I picked up a couple of dress material sets for Jyoti.

 

Feeling full from the basket chat, I decided to cover the 4 km distance to the station on foot, traversing through the bylanes of the city. Halfway through, in the neighborhood of Aminabad, was Prakash Kulfi, recommended by all and sundry. The only choice you had was to decide whether you wanted a half or a full plate of the kesar pista falooda kulfi. There was a sugar free option too. The kulfi was good, but the overall experience mixed. In fact, at many of the street food joints I visited during the trip, the proprietor or manager just sat back in his comfortable seat and the staff delivered what was asked for with a whiff of arrogance. With the kind of reputations these places had garnered, they could afford to do that. Any questions about what was on offer was met with stern or bored looks.

 

Right across the street from the railway station were vendors selling baati chokha - I tried some, for the first time in my life, and loved it. After a good day of sightseeing and delicious food, it was time to wait for another delayed train.

 

A slight aside on Indian Railways, and be forewarned, a pessimistic one. If the railways are the arteries of this country, then it's in for a heart attack. It seems even "super fast" category trains run late all the time. Platforms are clogged with people whose trains are one, two, five hours late. Displays show expected time of departure is nine pm when the clock has already struck ten. When you do board a train, the coaches are dirty and washrooms even worse. It struck me that besides wasting everyone's time and national resources, the tardiness of the railways tends to seep into people. I think if the railway sorts itself out, it would have a huge snowballing effect on the psyche of the people in terms of expecting and delivering tight timelines.

 

 

... To be continued (North India part V: Varanasi)

 

North India Part III: Pushkar Fair

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.... Continued from North India Part II: Delhi

 

I took a local bus from Ajmer station to Pushkar. A bunch of passengers were waiting in one bus when another bus' driver announced he would be leaving first, and all of us had to move. As I took my seat in the other bus, one guy waved my wallet, looking for it's owner - I had it in my lap in the previous bus while looking at some papers I had put inside, and had taken off without pocketing it.

 

I was staying at Kanhaiya Haveli, situated just a couple of blocks away from Pushkar lake. Post check-in, I went for a run on the road heading back towards Ajmer, and then had a delicious Rajasthani kachori for breakfast as a reward.

 

I headed to the fair area a little past noon. Various events, such as concerts and competitions were slated to be conducted in a mela ground about the size of a football field. The town was on one side of the ground, a line of Ferris wheels on it's adjacent side, while the other two were flanked by an encampment of horses and camels, their traders and trainers, and handicraft and food vendors as far as the eye could see. Events were held in the mela ground everyday up to noon and thereafter in the evening. When I reached there, horsemen were strutting about, tourists were taking camel-cart and camelback rides, and in one corner, a madari was guiding his troupe of macaques to impress spectators. One member of a street-artist troupe was bending a metal rod using her neck.

 

 

 

A group of photography students asked another girl on her team, probably 7-8 years old, to pose for them. 4-5 of them went click-click for a few minutes, asked her to smile as per their whims, and finally gave her a ten-rupee note amongst all of them. Not only was the compensation appalling, they treated her like an object that could change expression as they wished.  These guys, with their equipment worth lacs, were poor advertisements for both humanity and the photography community. I bet they will never be good at portraits.

 

Thereafter I walked around the horse stables for a while. One trainer I spoke to explained to me that no race horses traded here. All those on show would mainly be used for wedding parties. He was from nearby Sikar and spent most of the year traveling around Punjab, Rajasthan, MP and Gujarat, training horses as a freelancer. He had a couple of broken teeth to show for his efforts. When I asked him if he was married, he said men in his community tied the knot late, his idea of “late” being 21.

 

 

Further away from the horse stables, the camels and their owners were camped. I walked in the area for a bit and then headed back to the hotel for an afternoon nap. En route, I crossed a few shops selling the Malpua that Pushkar is famous for, but I resisted the temptation. A block away from the sweet shops were the vendors offering different types of rolls. I picked one at random and had a falafel roll with paneer and garlic cream cheese. It was quite delicious - the horde of Israeli tourists that flock Pushkar had ensured Mediterranean food had been brought up to speed in this small Indian town.

 

After the nap I headed to the nearby Varaha ghat for the Maha-Aarti. Photography was otherwise forbidden at the ghats, presumably because women would be bathing during the day. But there were no restrictions during the Aarti, and I got some nice pictures of the birds at the lake. There was supposed to be a folk performance at the mela ground at 6:30 pm, but I couldn't spot it or find someone who knew anything about it. At 7:30, there was a concert by Astitva, a band I hadn't heard about. Their music was ok, but kept me engaged for a few songs given the fun atmosphere around. For dinner I headed to the only dhaba around the ground that seemed to be running full, and had bajra roti with sev tamatar subzi. The food was delicious but heavy and spicy. I couldn't finish even one roti. I felt sleepy after the sumptuous meal and headed back to the hotel for a good night's sleep, but stopped on the way at a local boutique to buy a couple of tops for Jyoti.

 

 

 

I woke up early the next morning, picked up my yoga mat in addition to the camera bag and headed to the mela ground. A 6:30 am yoga session was part of the itinerary. The ground was filled instead with 8-10 balloons almost about to take off and give their occupants a birds' eye view of the town, lake and camps. When the balloons flew off, I spotted a saintly looking man and some infrastructure boys on stage. When I approached him, he mistook me for someone else he was expecting. The excitement I saw on his face suggested that I was going to be his only student that morning, a situation I did not relish. I told him I'll come back in a bit once the crowd builds, and sneaked away.

 

At 10 am, there was a satoli competition between local boys and male foreign tourists. I had played it at times as a kid, but didn't remember the rules in details. The tourists picked up the rules fast and it was a close game that the locals eventually won. A langri tang competition for the women was slated, but never happened, presumably because not enough female tourists signed up. The satoli was followed by a camel decoration competition, whereby each participant paraded his bedecked camel for a minute. The last event of the morning was the camel dance competition. Each participant had five minutes to make his camel perform fancy moves. Most performers used the charpoy as a prop, and some used two, one stacked on top of another. During the competition and later, I got good pictures of the local men, elegantly turbaned and engrossed in the dance, with some twirling their moustaches.

 

 

 

For lunch I went to same dhaba where I had the dinner the previous night and had a spicy, oily, yummy malai kofta with some tandoor rotis. During the latter half of the afternoon, I picked a quiet spot in the seating area, took a nap, worked on this blog, and clicked some pictures of horses running about. An unknown band from Mumbai were setting up their equipment on stage and announced they would be singing Kabir's dohas during their evening performance. I was disappointed at having to leave by then.

 

I hopped aboard a Jeep to reach Ajmer to catch the connecting train to Allahabad. One of my co-passengers was the Rajasthan sales head of the equine division of Cipla's animal medicine unit, and was at the fair on business. I was surprised his perks didn't include a private taxi back to Ajmer. The other guy was a drunk middle aged farmer, pestering us for drugs and being a pain. For a moment I wished I had taken a taxi myself and avoided this irritating fellow, but realized that would have been against the whole idea of interacting with the locals, and there was bound to be the odd unpleasant experience.

 

I took a 9:30 pm train from Ajmer which reached Jaipur at 11:30 pm, where I changed to a different one that reached Allahabad at 3 pm the next day. The travel from Pushkar to Allahabad was the low point of the entire trip, not due to the long journey, but because I had to endure one dinner, breakfast and lunch each on Indian Railways.

 

 

... To be continued (North India part IV: Allahabad and Lucknow)

North India Part II: Delhi

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.. Continued from North India part I: Amritsar

 

The train to Delhi got stuck at Muzzafarnagar due to a electric failure and arrived at Nizamuddin station three hours late, at 11 am. I was staying at Stops Hostel, close to Chandni chowk. I did yoga for half an hour and headed for lunch to Kake di Hatti, one of the street joints in the top 10 list I picked off a web article. I ordered a shahi paneer with two rotis. The paneer was extremely soft and the red gravy tasty without being overwhelmed with garam masala. It was a great start to the Delhi culinary experience.

 

 

 

From the nearby New Delhi metro station, I took a metro headed to Gurgaon and got off at the Qutab Minar station. A shared rickshaw ride, wherein I was one of the two passengers in the front seat, brought me to the archaeological site.  The place far outweighed my expectations.  The tower is a lot more imposing as well as ornate face to face than one sees in pictures. There are many other interesting monuments in the complex, including a mosque and Allauddin Khilji's tomb. The architecture is a eclectic blend of Hindu and Persian styles. To top it all, the audio guide was excellent, based on a make believe conversation between a local girl from adjoining Mehrauli village and the various Sultans and Vazirs involved in building the complex over a couple of hundred years.

 

My next stop for the day was the Red Fort. By the time I reached, general admission was closed, so I bought a ticket for the sound and light show. While the individual buildings were closed to visitors, I could make out from their exterior that I wasn't missing much. The show too was a disappointment and I left a quarter of the way through. The red fort is best seen just from the outside for it's impressive ramparts.

 

Outside, Chandni Chowk was dazzling across the street. I paid a visit to the Sisganj Gurudwara, a small but impressive building with intricate lattices and an ornate ceiling, before embarking on my food tour of chandni chowk. First up was dahi bhalla at Nataraj. The place was very crowded and the fare on offer quite delicious, but can’t say they were the best dahi bhallas I’ve had. Next stop was Babu Ram Devi Dayal Paranthe Wale in Paranthe Wali Galli. The subzis that accompanied the crispy parathas were average, but both the mixed and gobi parathas I ordered lived up to their reputation of being one of the best in Delhi. Next I headed to Jung Bahadur Kachori Wala which was a disappointment. I am not used to having kachori with Aloo masala, nevertheless the dish was too salty and too spicy. I bought a plate of gulab jamuns at one crowded joint, ate one and gave one to a beggar outside a nearby temple – truth be told, more out of concern for my belly than the recipient's hunger.

 

To end the day, I took a cycle rickshaw back to the hostel. If cycling a loaded wagon around a dynamic obstacle course were an Olympic sport, India would win gold, silver and  bronze. I don't know what was more scary: sitting in one of these or walking on a road full of these. The near misses were amazingly close. I swapped places with the rickshaw driver for a bit. While powering it wasn't as issue, maneuvering the rickety contraption was impossible. I realized that their penchant to drive fast was more about saving energy rather than time - once you slowed it down, it took a lot of effort to get going again.

 

En route to the hotel, I stopped at the highly recommended Kuremal Mohanlal Kulfi Wale. To confuse matters, there were three adjacent shops with slightly different names, all with the photograph of the same Kuremalji, and all of them bereft of a single customer. I picked one at random and the kulfi was quite nice. Overall, most of the food I had during the evening was good, but the parathas were peerless.

 

I was hoping to catch a crowd at the hostel bar and have a beer, but there was only a couple having a quiet time together so I went to bed early. The next morning, I lost sleep at 4:30 am and after aimlessly surfing the web for an hour, went for a run on the ring road as well as the bylanes of Daryaganj. The hostel breakfast included a nice banana and chocolate pancake, and I chatted for a bit with the other guys in the kitchen. One of them was an Indian tax officer in the North East circle who had chosen to stay in the hostel rather than Government accommodation in order to interact with people outside his circle.

 

My goal for the day was to use only public transport to reach the sites I wanted to see. The first stop of the day was Humayun's tomb, commissioned by his wife. Made in red sandstone, it was a precursor to the Taj. It was impressive in itself, but no match to Shahjahan's masterpiece, and hardly anyone remembers the name of Humayun's wife - I forgot it a week within hearing of it.  On the upside, the crowds were light and one could enjoy the place peacefully and take people-free pictures.

 

I then continued to Lodi Gardens, worth a visit for the grounds itself, with some impressive monuments including the tomb of Sikander Lodi thrown in. It's really surprising that a city with the kind of greenery that Delhi has is widely considered the most polluted in the world.

 

From Lodi gardens I took a bus that I thought was headed to Bangla Sahib Gurudwara, but I was mistaken. I got off two stops later which was incidentally the one for Khan Market. I asked zomato for the top rated place in the complex, and as per it's advice, headed to The Big Chill. I ordered an aubergine and pepper panini with feta cheese. It was the best sandwich I've had in a long time. I was beginning to see why Delhiites living in Mumbai miss the food back home. I liked Khan market a lot - a mix of modern boutiques and old-style stores mixed with good places to eat in a traditional marketplace. A welcome change from the cookie cutter malls mushrooming all over the country.

 

After the meal, I took the correct bus to the Gurudwara. I got some beautiful pictures of it's reflection in the lake in the late afternoon sun. The next stop of the evening was Akshardham Temple, the largest Hindu Temple in North India. I was irritated at having to leave my camera in the cloak room due to security reasons. I understand that the fear of terrorist attacks is very real - after all the Akshardham temple at Gandhinagar was infiltrated 15 years earlier. However I fail to grapple how the Golden Temple allows cameras all the way in the inner sanctum while Akshardham bars them even in the grounds. Overall I wasn't too pleased with the aesthetics of the temple and the aggressive lighting, but the carved marble ceilings were brilliant. I also didn't like the fact that Prasad was only given to those devotees who had given a donation.

 

From Akshardham I took a bus to Rajghat. Google maps was my navigator for the day. Public transportation in Delhi has come a long way since the day of the dreaded Red line buses, the likes of which I have never used but heard stories from friends. As far as Gandhi is concerned, I neither hero-worship nor vilify him. I think that the inner workings of his mind, despite his prolific writing, might never be understood. He was a complicated but pivotal man. I visited the religious places earlier for cultural and architectural interest - ironically the visit to the resting place of this secular leader had a devotional tinge to it.

 

It was time for dinner as I exited Rajghat, and I walked past the hostel back to Kake di Hatti where I had lunch the previous day. I ordered a half dal makhani, half palak paneer and naan. The proprietor told me that he had a counter at the ITC Mumbai street food festival the previous year. I think his dal makhani was as good as the one at ITC, if not better.

 

Post dinner I walked to the nearby Jama Masjid. It closed just as I reached there and couldn't walk around in the grounds, but the walk through the markets did evoke the senses even though I was preoccupied in dodging the cycle rickshaws. When I returned to the hostel to pick up luggage, a party was on at the bar and I regretted having to leave. At the reception, a supposedly important journalist who was upset about some aspect of the stay was mentioning to the owners that he could destroy the hostel's reputation.  Once he left, I paid my compliments to them and discussed our views on solo and offbeat travel.

 

Delhi station seemed to have got a makeover in the past couple of days since my mental assault on it. The platform was clean and the public announcement mess had been cleaned up. This time I had approached it from the main gate, and thus was welcomed by a clear electronic display showing the time and platform of my train to Ajmer. The icing on the cake was that the train arrived on time.  

 

... To be continued (North India part III: Pushkar)

 

North India Part I: Amritsar

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I had set aside 4 days of my 2 week mandatory vacation for a family trip to Goa, but I had to travel solo for the other 10 days as Jyoti didn't have any leave left. For a change, I wanted to travel within India and explore culturally important destinations I had never been to. I had been thinking of visiting the Pushkar camel fair for a while and since my leave coincided with the festival dates, it was the first destination I zeroed upon.

 

On further research, I found out that there was a Ganga Mahotsav in Varanasi during that time. It's not a name young Indians usually have on their travel wishlist. Moreover, being an atheist, I had no religious motivation to visit. However, during my trip to Morocco earlier in the year, I had come across a couple of Frenchmen who spoke very highly of it – one of them had spent six months in an orphanage there, and another one had dispersed his father’s ashes in the Ganga’s holy waters. I think their high praise of it had lingered on in my mind and I added Varanasi to the list.  

 

 

Thereafter I added Delhi - I had visited a few times but never got a chance to explore it's historical treasures. It would also serve as a base to the other destinations. Lucknow came next - I was always fascinated by it's heritage, especially after reading William Dalrymple exposition of its erstwhile high culture in "The Age of Kali". Sitting between Lucknow and Varanasi, Allahabad fit in nicely into the plan.

 

Finally I squeezed in Amritsar as well as I wanted to visit the Golden Temple. It was a fast paced itinerary - out of the 10 nights on the road, I'd be spending 6 of them on different trains criss-crossing the Indo-Gangetic Plain.

 

I flew in to Mumbai from my family trip to Goa on Sunday, Nov 15 and flew out to Delhi that afternoon to catch an overnight train to Amritsar. What I expected to be a smooth flight-to-train transfer ended up being an eventful ordeal.

 

 

 

I had heard about the new Airport Express Metro and thus expected to zoom through to the city center. But the Metro ran only from the international terminal, and I had to take a rickety shuttle bus to the Aerocity station to connect to it.

 

It charged a disproportionate 30 bucks, and was packed till there was not even any standing room. The airport express was upto international standards, but there was no artwork either on the train or the stations, and I couldn't find a dustbin on the platform to deposit trash. Apparently it wasn't doing good business and fares had recently been slashed by 50 percent. Fare from the upmarket T3 terminal to New Delhi railway station was INR 60 - at less than a dollar, this was the cheapest airport express train in the world, and yet it seemed to have no takers. That’s a lot of money down a drain!

 

My train was from old Delhi station, and I had planned to connect to it from the New Delhi station using the regular metro, but it was too crowded. It was a sad state of affairs with a huge posse of policemen herding the crowds towards the platforms. It seemed inhuman to me. I thought about the madness in Mumbai locals, but it involved no police intervention. I got a feeling that this whole trip was a bad idea.

 

Forgoing the metro, I took a cab. The race for the most rickety cabs in the world are between two Indian cities: Delhi and Kolkata. Between the utilitarian Maruti Omnni and regal but near extinct Ambassador. The ride was brutal – the cabbie kept yelling at other drivers, drove on the wrong side of the road, nearly ran over pedestrians multiple times, ignored signals and jumped over potholes, and made a pit-stop at a liquor store. He made the Mumbai cabbies seem like angels.

 

 

 

Things got worse when I realized upon reaching Old Delhi station that my train was four hours late. If you had to choose a station not to be stuck at for four hours, Old Delhi would take the top spot without a challenger. It was filthy as hell, the electronic displays were non-existent or plain wrong, and the announcements consistently interchanged the source and destination of the trains passing through. Once again, policemen had to manage crowds scrambling to board unreserved coaches. I just felt like taking a flight back home.

 

After some loitering about I managed to find a seat where I could read for the 4 hours I had to kill. Seated next to me was a middle aged Sardar and his ailing father who could barely walk without support. I chatted with him for a bit and he was surprised as to why I was traveling alone. When the next train arrived, he picked up his two suitcases, braced his father and took off to board the unreserved coach packed to the rafters. It struck me that just that morning, my traveling party to Goa had deemed one Toyota Innova insufficient for 4 adults and 2 infants and had taken two of them instead for our airport transfer.

 

I chatted for about a half hour to a 17 year old Jat from a village near Amritsar. I could barely understand his Punjabi, but it's the English words he used which were key to the conversation. He walked me through his picture collection on his iPhone 4.

His commentary essentially went like this - this is my friend who owns the 6s, this friend owns Harley Fatbob (till then I knew nothing about Harley models) , this friend moved to Melbourne and is a trucker , the guy with the rifle here also owns a 6s he got from cousin in Canada. His family business was a store selling all kinds of fake Guccis and Pradas and LVs and Jack and Jones. The word "craze " kept popping up in the conversation. Oddly enough, his picture collection featured no girls, except the odd suggestive pic he had downloaded.

 

When the train finally arrived, it showed the wrong train number, the wrong source and the wrong destination. Nevertheless I was happy to get a berth to lie down on and get some sleep. The train chugged into Amritsar at 11 am. I was slated to take a train back to Delhi the same night, and thus went to the cloak room to deposit my luggage. They wouldn't accept unlocked bags so I had to go and purchase locks. A crow deposited his precious waste on one of my bags in the meanwhile, necessitating a messy cleanup procedure.

 

 

 

I short rickshaw ride from the station took me to the Golden Temple area. I first visited the Jalianwala Bagh memorial. Talking about my feelings about the massacre would be a lengthy digression. All I will say here is it was a sombre moment to see the martyrs' well and the bullet marks made on the walls.

 

There is little one can add to what is well known about the Golden Temple as well. Though I am an atheist, I hold Sikhism in the highest esteem. Gurudwara doors are open for all faiths, it's the same queue for rich or poor, there is barely any pushing and shoving, and there is food on offer to the hungry, no questions about his faith asked. I walked around for a bit and then had the langar for the first time in my life. It was quite a sight to see hundreds of devotees working to feed tens of thousands, and the din of dishes being washed filled the air.

 

After the temple visit, I took a rick to see the Wagah border ceremony. The last kilometer to the border had to be covered on foot, and there were a couple of stringent security checks. Cameras were ok but chargers and power banks were not allowed. I was late to the party and couldn't get into the podium, but my height helped me look over the crowd in front of me and catch glimpses of the fanfare. Patriotic songs were played before the ceremony, and women danced to the tune of "Chak de India". Shouts of "Vande Mataram" went up at frequent intervals. I wasn't feeling too well during the day and had to retreat from the crowd ten minutes into the actual ceremony performed by soldiers on both sides of the border. Talking about the India-Pak issue would be a huge digression, suffice to say I had mixed feelings about the whole affair and wasn't really disappointed to be missing the rest of the ceremony.

 

On the ride back to Amritsar, I was subject to a half-hour lecture by the rick driver about how to take it easy, keep my cool and talk to elders. In a nutshell, this is what transpired :he was driving on the wrong side of the road on the highway, I insisted he switch back to the right side, he claimed I had lost my mind and I asked him to stop and got off till a couple of truck drivers intervened and better sense prevailed. Coincident with his lecture was suicidal driving, flying over speed breakers, almost mowing down children and constant abusing of others' poor driving. His advice about me needing to cool down definitely worked - ten minutes into the lecture, I figured the only way to survive the rest of the ride was to laugh at the irony of the situation.

 

 

 

Back in Amritsar, I visited the Golden Temple once again to behold it's beauty at night. I was running short of time during the earlier visit and hadn’t been able visit the inner sanctum due to the long queues. The lines in the evening had shortened considerably, to about 45 minutes - and I was glad I went in. The gilded ornate decor of the interior was breathtaking.

 

Before boarding the train back to Delhi, I had chole-kulche at a Vaishno dhaba opposite the railway station, recommended by one of the local shopkeepers. I won’t be exaggerating if I say the kulcha was the biggest and best I've ever had - the right balance between softness and crispiness, and just the right amount of stuffing. I paid a measly 30 bucks for the meal – just the kulcha seemed to have butter worth more than that! A friend I met a week before the trip had told me that Amritsar food had disappointed him, and I had almost decided just to grab a sandwich. Fortunately I asked the shopkeeper for a suggestion and took it. As I started to walk off after paying, the young man who had just taken my seat called out for me, waving my phone in his hand ! While I am due a change from my old 4S, losing my phone while on the road would have been disastrous. A day that started poorly ended on a high note!

 

... To be continued (North India Part II :Delhi)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prague

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Prague is a city best enjoyed with your significant other, but when offered a chance by my employer to attend a conference of Indian bond dealers there, I said yes right away.

Flying Turkish airlines and changing flights at Istanbul, I reached the hotel in Prague (a Hilton business hotel not too far from the old town center) around 3 pm in the afternoon. The conference managers had organized an orientation tour of the city that evening, but I decided to explore myself at my pace, on my own whims.

I set out for the Old Town Square, but lost my way and hit Wenceslas square instead, a wide boulevard culminating in the statue of Saint Wenceslas and the national museum at one end, and lined with office buildings, hotels, retail stores and strip clubs. The area sported a typical festive summer atmosphere. The crowd was a mix of locals and tourists, and a concert setup was in the works.

From Wenceslas square, I passed through narrow cobblestoned streets lined with cafés and boutiques to reach the Old Town Square. On one side of it was the pretty Tyn church and the opposite side, the Tower Hall with its astronomical clock. Both the church and hall were closed for the day, but I could go up the bell tower to get a panoramic view of the city.

 

From the town square, I headed north to the Jewish quarter, where a few old synagogues stood among high end retail stores. At one of the synagogues I bumped into the orientation tour group and joined it for a bit. The tour then headed back to the town square, whereby a couple of friends and I split from the group and enjoyed some Skaroramen beers at one of the cafés at the square.

Later that evening a river cruise was organized for the conference attendees. While some river / bay cruises, such as the ones in New York, Istanbul and Sydney, give you a different view of the city that cannot be had from being on land, a majority of cruises the world over are tourist traps with bad buffets. This one belonged to the latter category, though it was fun having a few drinks with colleagues in the industry.

After the cruise, I took an overnight bus to Budapest for a really short trip and was back the next night at 1am. (see my blog Budapest and Bratislava .. In a day!) The day after that was the actual conference. I attended the morning session and then headed out to the explore the Castle district.

Located on the other side of the Vltava, the Prague castle is the foremost attraction in the city. I bought a ticket that covered the four main attractions in the complex. I first headed to St Vitus Cathedral, a Gothic masterpiece considered the best building in Prague. The tall vaulted ceiling and large stained glass works were very impressive. Across the Cathedral were the Basilica and the Royal Palace and while they have historical significance, aesthetically they were uninteresting. The fourth entry on the ticket was the Golden Lane, lined with houses of commoners - Tarot card readers, goldsmiths, cavalrymen - across the past few centuries. Some houses are now converted to shops while yet others have exhibits related to their occupants. The slight drizzle that was on since the morning had by now turned into a downpour and I was getting soaked, having forgotten to carry any rainwear.

I had to buy a separate ticket to visit the bell tower of St Vitus Cathedral, which gave a nice view of the city including the old town square on the other side of the river. As I exited the castle area from the other side, I noticed a tavern, went in and took the only table available.  I ordered the homemade dark beer, and then had a look at the menu - to realize that this place had been open since 1350 and Mozart had been a guest at some point of time. A British couple from Liverpool joined me at the table and informed me that this was the oldest tavern in town and they had put in some effort to find it. Lucky me to have randomly bumped into it ! Their Liverpool accent was really tough to follow, but I managed to have a bit of a conversation about football and work and travel. With the refill of the beer, I also ordered for some baked Camembert cheese, which turned out to be quite delicious. True to it's medieval origins, the tavern had no wifi, the waiters banged the beer glass on the wooden table rather than serve it on a coaster gently. When I visited the washroom situated in the basement, I noticed that the ceiling was covered with human skulls!  The cost of enjoying two pints of homemade beer and fine cheese at this 600 year old tavern was less than having an average cocktail in an average bar in Mumbai.

The rain had stopped when I left the tavern. I walked through Mala Strana (lesser quarter) , where ethnic Germans lived in the Middle Ages. I thought of going into the well regarded St Nicholas Church, but I felt I had seen enough churches in the last couple of days and decided to save a few Korunas instead.

I crossed over the pretty Karluv Most (Charles Bridge) to the other side of town and roamed about for a bit, looking for places where I could spend the late evening - after attending the conference Gala dinner. I spotted a Jazz club and a couple of black light theaters. Just within a few blocks, there seemed to be half a dozen churches playing organ concerts. One could spend a week in this city visiting museums during the day and enjoying good music in the evenings.

Walking around, I ended up in Wenceslas square again and picked up a stylish leather backpack for my wife. I then took the metro back to the hotel, changed into smart casuals and boarded the bus headed to Zofin Palace, the venue for the gala dinner. It was a beautiful neo-Renaissance style building on a small island on the Vltava, connected to the mainland by a small footbridge. The food was average, but a Violin duo playing some classics including Pachelbel's canon was the highlight of the evening's entertainment. Chatting with friends and colleagues, I stuck around at Zofin till the event wound up around midnight, and by then it was too late to find any jazz or theatre.

I had a couple of hours in the morning to explore the town before heading to the airport, but the constant drizzle dampened my spirit and I just loafed around the hotel, having a long breakfast and chatting with friends.

I had barely scratched the surface of this beautiful city in the two half days I had to explore it. I will go back for more as soon as I can!