March 26th, 2010 began early as the plane crossed Greenland and the sun rose. The remaining 8 hours of the 14 hour plane ride from Newark to Delhi were sleepless, trapped between two overweight Americans in a middle seat. Stretching my legs as we taxied to the gate, it was too dark to see anything but the heat was obvious. 115 degrees, the stewardess said over the loudspeaker as she announced flight connections and reprimanded those who had gotten up to stretch their legs. We were herded out, up the tunnel, and into a mercifully air conditioned airport, built for the fast approching Commonwealth Games in October (You'll appreciate the irony of this later). Meeting up with the rest of the class, I waited for my luggage, last off the plane. Striking up a conversation with a woman beside me, I quickly discovered that she was Ecuadorian, here for an Indian wedding of one of her friends. She mentioned her son, who she had left behind, adding "but I'm a good mother", as if justification was needed for her week long hiatus. We exited the airport, passing soldiers with stone faces and machine guns, and were blasted by a wave of heat at the door. As we gasped for breath on the curb, dry air hanging around us, the bus pulled up, squealing its brakes as it stopped.
The next morning I was up around 5, tired but unable to sleep because of the 9 1/2 hour time difference. Throwing on some clothes, I left the shelter and cold air of the hotel, and down onto the dusty roads of Delhi. Despite numerous accounts from friends and in books, the poverty of these streets cannot be under emphacised. Within five blocks I had passed more than a hundred half naked bodies, asleep on the side of the road as the flies buzzed around their bodies. Not ten kilometers away was an airport, new and air conditioned, for the world to see, but here was a different India, emaciated, stripped of their dignity and forced to live on the rupees of the pilgrims and the guilt of the tourists.
The next day, we boarded trains early at a station (unfortunately no Slumdog Millionaire dancing) filled with a hum of activity. Moto taxis clustered outside, competing for business or simply lounging, while no one moved with any purpose. Inside showed no improvement, as women dressed in multicolor saris sat on suitcases and boxes, and men massed around the ticket windows, elbowing for position in the amorphous queue. Arriving in Hardiwar, we were picked up and then dropped off, a trash filled dead end which appeared to have little significance. "Over there" the guide pointed, directing us with broken english to across the river, which was lined by thousands of pilgrims, taking their daily dip in the holy Ganga river. Considered the holy mother of India, the Ganges stretches from high in the Himalayas down through the plains before spilling out into the Bay of Bengal. Along its path it provides water for millions of farmers, and cleanses the sins of all who believe. Its position as the holy river of India has not stopped it from also becoming dangerously over polluted, filled with sewage, trash, and the charred corpses of those cremated along its banks. Putting these thoughts out of my mind, I stripped off my clothes, and submerged my body. The current lifted me up, as I clung to the chains which line the banks, and, if nothing else, the river provided a blissful respite from the sweltering heat.
Back in the cars, we headed for Rishikesh, the city made famous by the Beatles song of the same name. Along the way we passed people, walking alongside the road, as well as cows, sacred and allowed to roam free. We passed fifty meter high statues of Hindi gods, Shiva and Hanuman the Monkey. In Rishikesh, I spent a day at the Divine Life ashram, the same one to which the Beatles had gone, seeking enlightenment. If nothing else, there is a feeling of peace there, as worshippers chant "hare krishna hare krishna hare hare krishna krishna" over and over again, their monotones blending into a harmony that can only be describe as ethreal. Later, at a yoga ceremony on the banks of the Ganga, I watched as a boy, no older than Phillip, chant along with the elders, recieving a bowl of fire which he then set afloat on the river.
Now I am in Mussourie, having survived a drive up into the foothills of the Himalayas along roads with signs warning "drink whiskey, driving risky". At the Woodstock School, an international boarding school, we are starting our creative writing class.
Thats all for now
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