Boots in the Oven

Varanasi

Varanasi is an intense place to visit. Many of the qualities we found in other parts of India exist here, only magnified.

While other towns have livestock roaming sporadically, the streets of this holy place on the banks of the Ganges are teeming with buffalo, goats, donkeys, cows, and dogs.

A particularly classy goat.

They're in the river, on the the roads and squares, and around the markets and shops.

The country's ubiquitous smog is here too, only it's compounded by the thick, heady woodsmoke of the 24 hour funeral pyres.

They burn around the clock, always blazing, crackling, and consuming and have been going strong for hundreds of years.

Walking near the burning ghats, your eyes begin to sting and water and bits of ash settle on your clothes and skin.

Ritualistic shaving.

You can lose yourself in the press of hundreds of mourners and priests as they mill about, moving through all of the minutia of cremation and grief.

Varanasi is the oldest city in India and one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world and it feels like it. History hangs on it like a shroud.

The most common fuel is still made from cow dung here and the patties are left to dry everywhere.

They cover crumbling walls, the sides of homes, carts, wagons, and shops. Their pungent smell lays down an earthy base note that mingles seamlessly with incense, food, sewage, boat tar, and bubbling cauldrons of fragrant chai.

This place is holy to Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains. Temples are profuse, lining the banks from end to end. Pious men weave brightly through the crowds- blessing, begging, and consoling.

On the roof tops is a second city.

Rachel considers the Ganges.

Day and night they are bustling with children flying kites, women washing laundry, and men holding court with their friends around hookas.

Textures here are rich. Nothing seems thin or new.

Varanasi traffic.

Layers of paint, layers of grime, layers of music, of smells, of colors are all stacked as high as the cords of wood lining the alleyways.

The hallowed waters of the Ganges are central to life in Varanasi. People use the water for bathing, drinking, washing, swimming, fishing, and of course for burial.

From my western perspective it was hard to reconcile the sooty, trash strewn river with what others so clearly saw as an immaculate, self purifying, holy watercourse.

We tried to get a better understanding one evening as we took a boat downstream to watch the nightly Ganga Aarti at Dashashwamedh ghat.

The rhythmic chanting and bells were hypnotic and the impressive fire displays held our attentions.

Making an offering.

Ultimately though, without much background the ceremony was more simple theater than any sort of insightful enlightening.

Most of the old city is located on the west bank, but we did make a special trip across the river to see the Ramnagar Fort. I can fairly confidently say that the walk to get there was more interesting than the final destination.

I particularly liked crossing the pontoon bridge. It's disassembled during monsoon season, but while we were there it was a rickety, jouncy thoroughfare packed with a disturbing amount of traffic.

These punched tin cycle rickshaws are a popular mode of locomotion.

When we finally left Varanasi I wasn't sure what to think. It's a place so alien to my own upbringing and experiences that it was difficult to crack the surface or tap into it in any meaningful way.

I love that Varanasi is out there and I love that we got to visit. It's one of those places that keeps the world from feeling too small.

And as a bonus, here are a couple videos!

The Ganga Aarti

Arriving in Varanasi at night and coming in over the pontoon bridge.

Darjeeling: A cuppa or five, some dumplings, and a toy train

After Mumbai, Darjeeling was somewhat of a shocker.  It's all Tibet-Lite, and high up, and COLD (in December, at least), and everyone eats thick-skinned dumplings and hot noodle soups instead of dal and iddli.

We flew from Mumbai to Bagdogra and then shared a several-hour taxi ride with Punjabis on honeymoon. This was exciting and cool and all, until they bought several bags of snack foods, ate them, and then tossed the trash OUT THE WINDOW. I was aghast, but didn't say anything. Man, do I need to grow a pair.

Traditional dress is beautiful and classy and not something I could pull off.

Those aprons look even better in real life.

Darjeeling is in West Bengal, in a region the inhabitants call Gorkhaland.  There's a bit of a separatist movement, and people are very proud of their Gorkha heritage.

We took a two-hour ride on the narrow gauge railway that heads from New Jaipalguri through Darjeeling to the town of Ghum.  The track is only 2 feet wide! 

The joy ride is the way to go, if it's being offered when you're there; you leave from Darjeeling, head uphill and have a couple of stops, and then are returned to the Darjeeling station.  On the way, you get to see some of the engineering marvels that made this track in difficult terrain possible, like the loop above, which allowed the train to climb higher than a straight track would have.  This was an amazingly tough project when it was undertaken in the late 1800s!

The locomotives still burn coal, and at stops the engineers have to shovel fuel into the boiler and stoke the fires.  It's pretty amazing and definitely something different.

Most of the tourists were domestic.

The train rattles along mere inches from tin shack stores and grand monasteries, crossing a parallel street back and forth.

Views from the window:

Lakefish!

After our train ride, we also, shock of shocks, located and drank some Darjeeling tea!  Nice, lightly astringent, luverly.

We even went and had high tea at a fancy place called Windamere. While the hotel was neat and old and full of bric-a-brac and signed notes from important personages of the 1950s, the tea service itself was pretty sad. Premade sandwiches, store-bought biscuits, and "clotted" "cream" that tasted like Cool Whip that had been stored with onions and allowed to freeze and defrost.

Our hotel, the Dekeling, we liked, though.  (The first picture up top is the view from our window.)  It was a bit idiosyncratic; there were no heaters in the rooms, but we got hot water bottles. Hot water was out for most of our stay (electricity in Darjeeling is unreliable, at best), but you could get a bucket of hot water delivered for a bucket shower.  

We brought a box of chocolates that we'd picked up somewhere, and each day the maid ate exactly two of them.  This was fine, since we didn't want them anyway, but we thought it was especially strange when they finished the box.

The restaurant downstairs was really good, and we got to try a tradiional Tibetan breakfast of tsampa. This is buckwheat flour, served with butter and shavings of cheese.  Mix in just a touch of milk until you get a thick porridge, almost like cookie dough.

We also ate a lot of momos, there and at the slightly better restaurant next door.  Steamed momos, fried momos, so many momos... 

I wanted to try these sausages we spotted air-drying. 

Walking around Darjeeling was not particularly pleasant, the green path that curved around the back of the mountainside notwithstanding. The "Keep Darjeeling Clean" campaign was clearly not making much headway.

There were lots of stray dogs, like in much of India. They often barked for most of the night. I felt terrible.

The tea plantations were much calmer than the town itself. We stopped by Makaibari, one of the first tea estates to go organic.  

Work is worship.

You can get some of their teas under the Tazo or Whole Foods brands in the US, and they are very good; subtle, light, and slightly tannic, with a bit of sweetness. It was fascinating seeing the rooms where the leaves are sorted and withered. We were there in the off-season, unfortunately, so there wasn't much going on but some pruning.

Tea bushes!

And then we rode the rest of the way to New Jaipalguri and hopped on an 18-hour train to Varanasi!  Can you tell this was taken extra-early in the trip!  2nd-class AC all the way, baybee!

This was our first long-distance Indian train, and would have been nicer without the kid vomiting repeatedly into the aisle three feet from my head at 5:30 AM. I know, I'm so spoiled.

I spy with my little eye... MUMBAI!

While we were availing ourselves of Shailesh and Nilima's hospitality and waiting for our Chinese visas to come through so we could plan onward travel, we actually did get out and about a bit.  They live in a part of town called Worli Sea Face, so we walked up and down the waterfront several times (smog is original, not added for effect).

We braved the security lines, relics of the atrocious 26/11/2008 terrorist attacks, to get into the Gateway of India, the Georgian mass built in 1911 right near the Taj hotel.

We also went into the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, where the effects of the terrorist attacks are completely invisible, though we did get patted down on entry.

Mumbai is a great place to shop, and Nilima took us one day to Linking Road.  There are super shops to buy inexpensive Indian outfits and tunics, and I filled my bags.   I am going to live in these clothes during Austin summer 2012.

There are also a couple of museums in town, including the Chhatrapati Shivaji Majaraj Vastu Sangrahalaya, formerly known as the Prince of Wales Museum.  My foreigner brain finds the older name quite a bit easier to remember.

There was a fascinating and informative exhibit on traditional Indian miniature painting, which taught us a LOT about what to look for when we went later in our trip to Rajasthan, where you practically have to wade through drifts of this type of painting to reach the tourist sites.  

There was a special exhibition by an 18th century master named Nainsukh, whose work was spare and beautiful, but no pictures were allowed in that hall.  (A movie was made recently about Nainsukh; we'll have to track it down.)

Mumbai also has a National Gallery of Modern Art, though we found the folks set up outside and some of the nearby ancillary exhibition spaces more to our liking.  In this one, we crunched through leaves and the smell of autumn while admiring precisely rendered faces and lines.

The Hajj Ali mosque has a dramatic setting out in the bay, and drew our eyes each time we passed.

An example of the rules in force when you visit a Jain temple:

3 and 5 are my favorites.

And they're quite serious, too - not mentioned here, but also good to know, is that your bags will be searched to see if you're carrying anything made of leather.  Luckily my wallet is paper...

And we bought train tickets, in a fairly straightforward and not particularly painful manner!  There was a special window for foreigners at the ticket center and everything.  I'm not sure why our visit was the time they chose to bust out the circular saws and welding tools, but the high-pitched mechanical whine sure did add to the inherent fun of waiting in line!

And that was Mumbai!  For all its hugeness, it's a pretty laid back city that we really enjoyed, thanks to our terrific hosts.  Another big thank you to Shailesh and Nilima!

Mumbai: Eatin' the Streets.

While we could have stayed in and eaten Nilima's home cooking for our entire time in Mumbai, it really didn't seem like a guestly thing to do. So with the invaluable aid of our hosts, whenever we weren't stuffing our faces in their condo, we were stuffing our faces on the streets and back alleys of Mumbai.

One night early on, Shailesh warned me to eat light at dinner. "Tonight you should go out for a second dinner with my nephews. I know the best chicken place in the city."

Second dinner. How could I possibly turn that down?

Around midnight, me and the boys pulled up to Ayub's- a little hole in the wall that was surrounded by about 30 cars, all with people eating off the trunks and hoods. I left the ordering to the locals and tried to keep up with a steady stream of some of the most moist and well seasoned poultry I can remember having in a long while.

Out came marinated chicken bits wrapped in flat bread, smokey chicken shish kebab, tender minced chicken balls, and even some grilled potato for good measure, all accompanied with pickled onions and a couple of spicy, fragrant chutneys.

If they would have sold beer, I might have moved in.

Another day, we were treated to one of my all time favorite indian snacks, the vada pav. I've had quite a few in the US, but none that could compete with version we had at Soam, a little restaurant near Shailesh's office.

The silky patties of mashed potato were fried to a lovely level of crunch, setting up a fine textural treat. Once you squish it between the fluffy yeast rolls smeared with cilantro chutney and bright, lemony masala, you're in for a carb happy grin-fest.

And what goes with a potato sandwich? How about lots of fried green banana chips? Nilima walked us by her favorite frier and we stocked up on spicy chips, sweet tomato flavored chips, peppery chips, and a few more that I don't remember because I ate them all.

Occasionally, we even managed to try some vegetables.

I loved this guy's scales he used as he diligently weighed out some fresh green chickpeas (that you may remember from this salad in an earlier post.)

And I was fascinated to learn about shingoda, a lumpy black mess that looked a lot like truffles but turned out to be a starchy relative of the water chestnut (or possibly a lotus root, depending on who you believe.)

After they're boiled and cut open, their bright white interior has a sweet flavor and a dense, creamy texture similar to a roasted chestnut. They made a nice winter time snack.

Another thing I had never seen before was tadgala. These are young palm fruits, similar to immature coconuts. Once you peel back the papery exterior, the whole middle is a soft refreshing jelly perfect for slurping on. I can't say that I've really had anything like it.

It also happened to be sweet lime season, so there was no way we could pass up a few glasses of fresh pressed citrus. This guy's juicer was really more like a meat grinder and it made short work of a half dozen or so limes, leaving us with big frothy cups of refreshment. I added a few dashes of masala to give mine a little kick of salt and spice.

After Mysore, I was skeptical about sullying my palate with what I suspected would be inferior dosas, but this one drew my eye. It wasn't anything like the dosas we had farther south and I couldn't pass it up because the filling seem to make use of copious amounts of raw grated beet.

Wtf? Who fills a pancake with raw beet?

This guy apparently. While the wrapper was a bit soggy and didn't really hold up, the big mishmash of vegetables in middle were definitely worth the 20 rupees. Note to self: beet pancakes.

Mumbai is particularly famous for a type of chaat called bhel puri. Unfortunately, bhel puri stalls are also famous for gastro-intestinally incapacitating unsuspecting tourists. Hm.

When I told our hosts about my little dilemma, Shailesh, in true Shailesh style, thought for a moment and then announced, "I know a guy."

I'm pretty sure he "knows a guy" for just about everything.

Half an hour later, a man shows up at his office with a mobile bhel puri stand. I shit you not. One call and moments later here this guy is with all the fillings, toppings, sauces, crispy bits, and accoutrement necessary. Everything was scrupulously clean of course.

The bhel puri was fantastic. A crunchy blend of puffed rice, sev, onion, tomato, cilantro, chilies, and tamarind chutney. It's hot and sweet, and totally addictive.

And since the guy had made a special trip and all, we decided we might as well try a few more of his offerings.

He quickly whipped up some amazing veg sandwiches with cucumber, potato, onion, tomato, and generous smears of various chutneys.

He followed that up with a plate of batata puri. Batata puri is similar to bhel puri, but it incorporates a lot of smashed potato and he laid it all out on individual little chips disks, kind of like indian nachos. I love him.

As we made our way home, I passed this great street barber. The scene inspired me to get a shave myself the next day. I'm not sure if it was a cultural difference or a translation issue, but during the grooming, the guy managed to get his fingers into my mouth on three separate occasions and then boldly pressed on after running out of shaving cream. It all ended with a very smooth face, but I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere.

Happy Lunar New Year from Beijing (with EXPLOSIONS!)

Stepping out of the chronology on the blog for a moment, we are in Beijing for the Lunar New Year!  What a crazy time of year to be here.  It's freezing cold, but that's OK because everyone is in a festive New Year spirit and our room has heat.  We've been eating lots of Peking duck and wearing all the clothes in our backpacks.

I'd heard that the Chinese are into fireworks for the Lunar New Year, but I was nowhere near being prepared for the reality outside our hotel room last night.  The fireworks started early in the day and built to a crescendo at midnight.  By 1:30 or so they'd quieted down, but the festivities returned at about 5 and have been on and off all day.  

Here's a little taste of what it was like to be in Beijing last night.  Happy Lunar New Year, and may your Year of the Dragon be full of health, wealth, and happiness!

 

More China to come... but first, back to Mumbai!