Month: April 2017

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Ganga River Cruise

Today is our last full day on the river. We boarded Sukapha on Friday, April 14 after a bit longer than expected in Kolkata due to train delays. Waiting for more than three hours on the train station platform, I realized that the bug that took hold in Khajuraho was not gone. In fact, it had a tight grip on me for most of the cruise until Kay from Wisconsin kindly gave me her Cipro prescription. I’m happy to say that both yesterday and today, I was actually able to eat most of the wonderful dishes that the others have been enjoying all week. The chef is a wizard!

I’ve experienced technical difficulties insofar as blogging is concerned, so I’m woefully behind. We have visited:

The distinct Bengal style of terra cotta temples;

A walk through the brass working village of Matriari;

Ancient mosques, peaceful Moghul-style gardens and a visit to Plassey where a 2-hour battle changed the course of Indian – and world-history;

The highlight by far was the religious ritual we witnessed in Murshidhabad. A right of passage for young men (strictly voluntary), it consists of attaching a hook through the skin and muscle of the lower back, tying a rope to the hook and swinging them around a maypole-like structure until they motion that they wish to stop. We saw three young guys do this; the youngest was 10 (parental permission was required). We saw them both before and after the ordeal and they looked none the worse for wear. No blood either, although I’m pretty sure I shed some…

The group is a good one. Most of the other guests are American with me and a couple from New Zealand for balance? I still don’t see myself doing this on a regular basis, but it’s good to know that the small-group tours are do-able.

Next stop, the tea plantation.

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Rupees for Rocky

Once again, I blame the heat. Or perhaps it’s all the sex tableaux and the good-looking men. In any event, I just had a full body (naked) oil massage from an Indian man who now has my phone number and seems eager to stay in touch. I’m afraid we might be engaged now. And the young guy who helped me find an envelope in town this morning is now professing his undying love on Facebook. Jesus H. Christ, how do I manage to get myself into these situations?

In other news, I am feeling much better but still not 100%. I think it will be a bland diet of rice, dal, soup and fruit for the next little while as anything else seems to aggravate my digestive tract.

My diet may be bland, but this little town is anything but. Take my walk into town this morning to find an ATM and an envelope and stamp. Two of the young men I met before I got sick were suddenly present again, insisting I come for chai or a lassi before, of course, a visit to their shop. The young men who don’t have a shop seem to be selling other things, and they seem confused by the fact that I’m not buying.

A cycle rickshaw stopped for me on the way back to the guest house. The guy looked like he could use the money, so I got in. A little further along, he started shouting at a dog running alongside the road, telling it to go home. The dog ignored him completely, ran to the rickshaw and jumped in, curling up at my feet. The driver explained that he rescued “Rocky” on that same road three years ago and they now live together. He tried to tack 20 rupees onto the fare for food for Rocky but I laughed and said no. He laughed too. Rocky slumbered on.

Last night, Yogi Shailesh and his partner Dr. Nareshnath Yogi invited me to accompany them to a small temple on the outskirts of town. It is the site of the first of three ashrams built in Khajuraho by Shailesh’s guru, Yogi Shwarma. Joining us in the tuktuk were Roy, a young Israeli and his travelling companion, Babaji, a wandering holy man. After checking out the grounds, we sat looking out over wheat fields ready for harvest and meditated. It wasn’t planned (or if it was they didn’t tell me about it); it just happened. Afterwards, the lady from the chai shop arrived with tea and snacks and later, Roy sang a beautiful song in Hebrew as the sun went down.

Moments like this fill me with peace and love that I don’t experience anywhere else on earth.

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Grounded?

My luck was bound to run out sometime. Aside from the eye problem in Goa, I have never experienced illness in India, but I’m now amongst the fallen, into my third day of what I think is sun stroke. Thankfully, the vomiting and fainting was short-lived…nothing like passing out in the lobby of your guest house to ensure a lasting impression! The fever also seems to have eased, leaving diarrhea and headache.

Yogi Shailesh and the staff have been taking care of me, making sure I am hydrated. They kept insisting on plain (not carbonated) lemon water at room temperature. I of course wanted the drink to be as cold as possible, but they were right…I had a phone consultation with a doctor this morning and he prescribed some meds, lemon water and a minimum of four glasses of hot water per day. Yuck!

This turn of events means a change of plan unfortunately. Orccha was next on the itinerary but the accommodation was to be at a homestay with a shared bathroom outside of my room. That just won’t work in my current condition. It also means a 4-hour taxi ride in the wee hours of April 10th to catch my train to Kolkata but it can’t be helped. At least it should be cool….

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Rarest of the rare

My second visit to Bandhavgarh Natlional Park and to Tigergarh, a wildlife resort on the edge of the park and the tiny village of Tala in Madhya Pradesh. I don’t really have words to describe what those three days were like because it’s something you have to experience to understand. But I’ll try.

Gagan and his staff are the consummate hosts. The food is sumptuous, the service impeccable. The lap of luxury in the middle of the forest. As I sat having a late lunch that first day, I was dumbfounded to see Jai walk into the dining room, along with a woman, Damini, who turned out to be his wife. Jai is the man with whom I shared a jeep the last time I was here. He asked (on Facebook) when I’d be here but it never dawned on me that he’d return and I would once again have the benefit of his vast knowledge of wildlife in general and tigers in particular.

i don’t know if it was Jai and Damini’s good luck or my own, but we saw 10 different tigers over five rides as well as a 30-minute viewing of a leopard, one of nature’s most reclusive cats. According to both Jai and Gagan (and they would know), this is unheard of behaviour for a leopard. There are various assumptions as to why it hung around as long as it did, but in the end, I only care that it did.

We saw lone tigers in the early morning sun, we were roadblocked by three older cubs (two years or so) lying in the middle of the road, but the piece de resistance was the tigress – one I saw last time – who is now a mother to three 3-month-olds. We waited four hours for her to make an appearance, and that moment will stay in my mind forever…Mom walking confidently into the sunny clearing with her brood in tow. They drank, swam and played in the water, climbed and fell clumsily out of trees and not once did I see anyone check their phone. (The people, that is, not the tigers.)

Which is why I have no pictures I can share. They are amazing, and they’re all on my camera…

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Khajuraho

Yogi Ashram Guest House was a sight for sore eyes when I reached here last night after the long drive from Tala. The building is an amazing one, formerly a private residence, with an inner courtyard, arched doorways and a resident yogi…Shailesh. If the temps drop 20 degrees, I may try one of his classes.

I set out early this morning on foot for the main group of temples, hoping to avoid the worst of the heat. It wasn’t long before I had acquired an entourage: small children looking for lipstick (?), earrings, Pepsi and money; a tuktuk driver who made me promise to let him transport me back to the hotel; a young man on a motorcycle who did his best but failed to persuade me to hook up with him (in every sense of the word); and finally, some guy posing as a guide near the temple entrance. In other words, the traditional Indian Welcome Wagon.

I passed a huge sign on the way here with the word SEX written in six-foot high letters, and I now think it was a promotional billboard for Khajuraho’s temples. Cuz they’re all about sex…men and women, women and animals, men and animals, exhibitionism, masturbation. It must be the heat…

One young security guard, seeing that I was on my own, volunteered to take pictures of me in front of the main temple, then took me inside to explain in painstaking detail the various sexual acts that were taking place in the carvings. Like I wouldn’t have been able to figure that out for myself. Then he took me to the main Siva shrine and somehow convinced me to pray. Highly unusual I know but there was absolutely no point in launching into my self-righteous opinion about organized religion because he wouldn’t have understood, and I was still digesting all the sex talk…

Sorry…pornographic images unavailable.

On my way to the next temple, I met two women dressed in beautiful saffron-coloured saris who invited me to accompany them to the inner shrine. They were carrying flowers, water and food, and I was privileged to be present as they anointed the shrine, made their offerings and sang the morning prayers. Many others came to take part but I was right inside next to Siva with about seven Indian women in what felt like 50-degree heat. Afterwards, they gave me a flower to offer, placed the red mark on my forehead and gave me food to eat – coconut and bread. Maybe this prayer thing isn’t so bad after all.

Upon leaving the temple grounds, I was guided by some unknown person down a side alley towards the requisite shops where you can buy miniature figures having sex or monkeys masturbating. I settled on a pair of earrings, thinking I could get more use out of them.

The tuktuk driver whom I met earlier was actually waiting for me when i emerged from the shop, so I hopped in with him. He’s coming back to get me tonight at six. I have no idea where I’m going but he’s so earnest I couldn’t disappoint him.

The people (men) here are beautiful. Yogi Shailesh is something out of dream. The shopkeeper who sold me the earrings is a keeper too, as was the guy on the motorcycle with whom I had a short conversation as he drove alongside us on the way back to the guest house. Time for a cold shower…