Choose another map, showing:

• Ganges
• India (east)
• India
• Asia
• Eurasia
• Eurasia, Africa & Pacific
• The World

Other entries in Kolkata

finishing India... final impressions

Ok, what a terrible moment... I have just to talk about India and I don't know by where to start... let's see

In this moment I'm back in Kolkata, and came back just to say goodby to this country that is publicized, by the National Tourism Agency, as "Incredible India". It can't be said any other more exact description about this country, in fact there is no possible unique description of it... travelling in this country is actually like travelling in different countries, exploring different cultures, landscapes, peoples, languages, customs, foods, etc. It's no wonder this country is called a subcontinent, going from the north is found the most amazing mountain range in the world (the Himalayas) to the  incredible landscapes with beaches in the centre and south which are no other that just extraordinary, a big desert in the northwest, sunsets and sunrises like there are no other or any more romantic, hill stations filled up of the best tea in the world, unbearable heat which is later appeased by 3 continuos months of drastic rains... this country has everything, for every single kind of person. Someone told me that you will always obtain what you're looking for here, as this country offers absolutely everything: from the cheapest accomodation for poor travellers like myself, spending sometimes something like u$d 1 a day in accomodation in beautiful places like Hampi, to the hiper selective Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai with its cheapest room at u$d 600; from the trekking in the incredible range of the himalayas in Sikkim to the paradisiac beaches in Goa; from meditation and healthy living of the Yoga Capital of the World in Rishikesh to the McDonald's and more western way of life of Mumbai; from watching the spiritism present in the air to watching a Bollywood film; from the ever-poors of Kolkata to the new richs of Bangalore... this country has, absolutely, everything!

I have travelled here for 4 months and it is not enough... in fact, whichever the time that anyone comes here, it will always be insufficient... there will always be incredible places to go, new emotions to feel, sensations unique just to this exceptional part of the world. I'm just 1 day away of departing to Thailand, and even though my next destination is also amazing, the idea of leaving here gives me a sadness which is countered just by knowing that I will come back!!! - as do the majority of the travellers who come here... I have been to roughly 40 cities and there are at least 10 where I haven't been, which compels me to spend at least 2 or 3 months more here in any other moment... It is incredible listening to backpackers, learning how much time they will spend here and saying, maybe: only 1 month! Like, from the beginning it is known that the time is not enough (even when, in my country, a month is a huge amount of time as we are granted just 2 weeks of holidays a year), and the expression in the face denotes the happiness of being here mixed with the uncertainty of where to go! The problem of deciding where to go, is that one is implicitly deciding where not to go... so if you have one month, go to Rajasthan, but then you'll miss Sikkim, or Goa, or the south... problems like these arouse in so many small conversations all over anywhere travelling here and with people from everywhere, mostly Europe, US, Canada, Japan, Korea and Australia... Unluckily to me, practically noone from Latin America


Before anything, some numbers as to try to understand the monstruosity of this country:

- It is the seventh country in the world in size while my own, the beautiful Argentina, is eighth; but while there are only 37 millions of my beloved countrymen, there are more than 1 billion indians!!!! roughly the same size, but 30 times more people... Estimatedly, 350 to 400 million people are under the poverty line, with one third of the population living with less than u$d 1 daily. At the current growth population rates, India is expected to be the most populated country in the world by 2030, surpassing China. And is nowadays becoming an economical superpower too, gaining everyday new markets making use of cheap educated workers, who are hired to replace the most expensive american or european counterparts. India is currently a software superpower, employing hundreds of thousands of people for western companies such as IBM or Microsoft. The closing of factories in the USA and their moving to India was so common that there is even a verb to represent it: to "Bangalore" a factory - close it and open it again in Bangalore, paying lower wages! Other common markets are the call-centers and the production of medicinal drugs. Apart from these improvings, blackouts (power shortages) are common, lasting even hours, and the improvings in the economy don't reach the great mass of the village poor-class people. They remain poor as always, while new generations of computer boys earn salaries tens of times bigger to the average salary which allow them to travel abroad.

- The Hinduism is the main religion here, with 82 % of the population... however there are also 12 % of Muslims (which, due to the huge amount of people, represent more than 120 million muslims in a non-mainly muslim country!) and is the homeland for Sikhs, with 1.5 millions... this land is also the birthland for Buddhism and Jainism, and many other religions are also found, as Christians, Jewish, Parsees. They live together in relative calm, with serious incidences every now and then produced by extremists or comunal tensions.

- The population, based on the Hinduism, is based on a system of castes, basically divided into four, in the following order concerning importance: Brahmin (priests and teachers), Kshatriya (warriors), Vaishya (merchants) and Shudra (labourers). Finally the Dalits is the last one in the scale, not even considered a caste and often called the Untouchables (for who Gandhi strived all his life to incorporate them into the system as they would be continually segregated), whose jobs are normally sweepers and latrine cleaners - to tackle possible social unrest, the government keeps a number of state jobs reserved for this under-caste people. Then the castes are divided into thousands of sub-castes, mainly indicating the profession of the person.
The belonging to the castes is purely determined by one's karma, i.e. how well one behaved in their prior lives - as they also believe in rebirth: the body dies but the soul is reborn into another being, which might have a different caste to the last one. Having a good karma increases the chances of being born into a superior caste. This idea of the caste inflicts the idea that one's position in the current life might be a prize or a punishment for what one might have done in prior lives, implicitly avoiding blaming the political power in place for one's probabilities of successing in life - blame your caste! blame your prior lives! blame yourself!

- There are 18 official languages in the country. Depending on the state they might speak their own language, being the English the language to unify the whole country. The main indian language is the Hindi (spoken in the capital, Delhi), but others are Tamil, Malealam, Bengali, Nepali, Tibetan, Marathi, Urdu... efforts were made to erradicate the English after the independence, but they collided at the fact that the languages are divided into two main groups of languages (Indo-Aryan and Dravidian) which are so different that, to make Hindi the official country in the whole country, the south should begin to learn it being it so different to their current languages. So they keep on using the English.

- The country is a nuclear power, and is in a never-ending war with its neighbour Pakistan over the region of Kachemir, which dates back to the time of the partition - before the English left the country (15 August 1947), India was conformed by the current India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The latter was initially part of Pakistan, called East Pakistan, and obtained the independence with a civil war that happened in 1971. The division of India was aimed at having a Muslim country, and every princely state was given the option of deciding to which country to belong, India or Pakistan. Kachemir was one of these states and, by long time after the independence, it hadn't yet decided to which country to belong, as its majority was Muslim but its ruler was Hindu. So the two newborn countries went to war, which has continued for the last 60 years, with violence increasing and decreasing now and then. Currently they are set in peace talks aimed at finally solving the territorial dispute.


Discussions arise all the time concerning what is lived in this country. The conversations comprise in many cases the idea of the spirituality that can be sensed floating in the air... in my opinion, it is not possible to truly describe India to who is interested to listen, the only real practical thing that can be said is: "you have to go there". This can be expressed with any country in the world, but I guess that none in greater account than this one. The spirituality, energy, devotion, is breathed, sensed, felt, by at least some of the following experiences, sensations that I have been able to perceive:

- watching the people having a bath in the sacred waters of the lake in Pushkar, town which is said to have positive energies and it does actually have them as, being it psicological, everyone there injects the energy from them to make it a positive-energy place... and because the locals think that by bathing in the sacred waters (which, to our western consideration, might be stagnated filthy water) they will be healed of their illnesses and diseases, they will surely improve as, again, these healing powers reside in the mind and by truly believing in something it will come true; I saw there a girl with a terrible deformating illness in her face taking a deep immersion there, and her belief is possibly greater to any application of medicine or modern science... and the people filling up the ghats (the steps which end up in the lake) and making pujas (offerings to the gods and petitions in exchange in a religious ceremony, throwing flowers and being protected by the smoke produced by the fire, with differences regarding the religions as either the Hindus and the Buddhists perform it)

- contemplating the people bathing in the sacred waters of the Ganges river. This river is sacred in India and it is the place where to spread the ashes of the dead upon leaving earthly life. The ashes are spread then on this river, unless the dead person was one of the following: a Sadhu (a special practitioner of yoga), a child, a pregnant woman, bitten by a cobra, or leprous. In any of these case, they are considered as already purified for some reason, and they are not burn to ashes but their bodies are directly dumped into the river, and they can be seen floating away until labourers rescue them at the end of the river. In these sacred waters, were the ashes are spread and the corpses float away, the people bath, clean their teeth, dump garbage, pee, and it is full of factories which discharge their residuals onto it. One thing to take into account, which is not least: the maximum amount of particles of faecal bacterias per ml in water to be fit to bath in is 500 p / ml... in the Ganges this raises up to 1500000!!!!
Also, by dying in Varanasi one attains moksha, the liberation from the cycle of birth and death. So there are buildings where people await to die... Of course it is not possible to enter these buildings and, in all moment, discretion is requested to tourists concerning respect and taking photos to the funeral pyres, where the corpses are turned into ashes, with different kinds of wood depending on the economical conditions of the family of the dead. After the burnings, at the end of the afternoon, a mega-puja is celebrated, with hundreds or thousands attending them.

- the belief of the people; I find it difficult to try to understand this by watching the panorama with western eyes. Having a discussion on Pushkar (place more than appropiate to have this kind of discussions, as the energy there just steers you in this direction) a backpacker, who had come to India looking for something in life, he wouldn't know what really, told me that the difference between this society and ours (the western countries) is that, whereas we try to understand everything, and by doing so we discuss, then criticize, then propose alternatives, then modify the reality to finally accept it, here they directly accept things the way they are given. No wonder in this country still the first method for getting married is not by finding love - it is by a marriage contract, i.e. a contract drawn by the families of the spouses-to-be, actually marrying not just the persons but the entire families. This is changing, but mainly in the main cities, and just 25 % of the population lives in them. A good friend of mine, of indian origins, and whose parents got married with the contract and would seek the same for their sons, explained to me that the system works because they do eventually fall in love... i.e. whereas we fall in love and then we get married, they first get married and then they fall in love, and this, they will eventually do it. Again, this idea, to my understanding, seems difficult to share because we don't accept things directly, and we try to understand things, and that's maybe why it is likely to have the impression, arguably false, than in the indian society the population is, even with a really tougher life than ours, even happier. That might be easy to explain: with no expectations, just by accepting what is given, they just experience life as it was given... this is a very simple sketch in lieu of the real reasons, but many times the solution to the most difficult of the problems is based on the simplest of the explanations
I find this strong belief not just in the Hinduism, but in every single religion in here. The muslims devote daily prayings to Allah, huge cathedrals are erected in the south to hold the Christian faith, the Golden Temple in Amritsar is just so sacred to the Sikhs that it cost former president Indira Gandhi's life for assaulting it. And in the case of the Hinduism, the fact that they do truly believe in their given Gods (Shiva, Hanuman - the monkey God, Krishna, Ganesh - the elephant God and the one Apu has in his store in the Simpsons, and all the others) seems amazing... cartoon-type gods play a significal role in their daily life, being the recipients of prayings to boost sales in one's commerce, for love, for health or for whatever reason. And when I say cartoon-type gods it couldn't be more accurate: actually their histories are told on cartoons!!!! (which reminds me of the vitreaux of the christian church, as they are drawings to teach the illiterate about the religion, in times when most of the people couldn't read or write).
Likewise with the cows: they wander anywhere, making any street their own, forcing drivers to swerve in order to avoid them, shitting anywhere, eating the wastes that the indians dump on the street, advancing in opposite direction to the cars, carrying the all-time-flying-around mosquitos with them, and being offered hailings by people! Many other animals also storm different cities, more than anything the monkeys, they are just everywhere, jumping from roof to roof trying to snatch whatever was left unattended for few seconds... like my papaya, I just left it in the room some time and when I came back it was not there, but the monkey was, and looking at me, like defying me

- the Karni Mata Temple, near Bikaner. Rats are venerated there! People buy sugars outside the temple to offer to the rats, which populate the temple, and because it is a temple one must be bare-feet, with the rats going past your feets now and then...


During these last 4 months, even though there are still so many places where I haven't been and I would really love to (Manali, Rishikesh, Leh, Goa, Gokarna, Khajurao, Dharamsala, Amritsar, etc) I have been lucky or unlucky to live the following heart-filling or stomach-pain experiences:

- Enjoy the delicious indian cuisine: Thali (my everyday food, basically rice with Dal Fry and vegetables, often accompanied by Papad or Chapati, the supplement of bread), Biryani (or Briyani or Biriyani, depending on the state), Momo, Thukpa, Taifo, Malai Kofta, Palak Panner, Chai (Black Tea with milk and huge loads of sugar), Naan, Parotha, Curd, Roti, Gobi Manchurian, Aloo Palak, Chowmin (the chinese food is the speciality, along with the tibetan, in the north, Sikkim, which shares borders with China, Nepal and Bhutan), sugar cane juice, milkshakes and mango shakes and all the variety of seasonal fruits, Samoza, a tasty bread omelette in the street.

- Experience 4 months of constant stomach problems provided by the doubtful hygiene of the people when preparing any of the delicious indian specialities. Dhiarrea was constant, going to the toilet produced a soft brownish matter compared to the usual thick black one. Luckily I ported Cipro always with me (and I have to admit that my body got used to India, as in the last time I barely had any problem).

- Surrendering to the indian trust and be deceived by such causing the theft of one of my small bags. Share the humbleness of many of them, and their charm too. But being overwherlmingly annoyed in the greatly touristic places as Varanasi or Kolkata with offerings of charas or marijuana, even to the point of them following you and having to be rude by ousting them with a powerful "Chelo, Chelo" - Go away. Also being perplexed at their dirt, not with themselves as they do take baths even when the conditions are incredible adverse (as the street-dwellers who take their baths from streams of water coming from the street pipe system, soaping themselves in the intimacy of hundreds of people passing by next to them), but how they just dump everything, be it bottles of plastic, packets of cigarrets or bidis, plastic bags, whatever, in the street, in the mountains, in the river, in the everywhere. Incredible landscapes ruined by seeing the mound of dirt accumulated where only Nature should be present... rivers with plenty of rubbish floating in them, and the locals inviting one to dump our garbage anywhere. Garbage Bin is a definition that is lacking in the majority of their dictionaries. They have no garbage recollection system: they will just gather it all together and burn it in garbage funeral pyres.

In the big poor cities, as Kolkata, it is possible to see loads of poverty, people living on the street, working in the street in improvised stalls created by a plastic mat suspending of ropes, etc. Given these conditions, in many other countries (for instance in central or south america) one would think twice before entering these places with our digital camera in the hand. There is no problem here. Even they might be really poor, they don't snatch or try to steal your bag. They are mainly honest people, maybe trying to cheat the tourists to obtain some extra rupees out of a sugar cane juice or with the fare of the autorickshaw, but it is understandable. If we had to endure what they endure every day, I think we would certainly do worse things, be more dishonest. It is easy to be honest when one always has money to buy what is needed or wanted... but when we don't even have a home where to sleep, that's another story, and until living it we cannot judge the others.

In the north, poor section of India, cities like Kolkata or Varanasi, or Rajasthan, the locals might be really annoying sometimes for scratching those extra ruppes, continually hassling one, and we will just hate everyone of them thinking they are all the same, and be completely upset. But the great majority are friendly people who just approach many times to have a little conversation or to say hello or to know the country of procedence and they are just happy with that. Or if they have an european friend, they will just make us know it as soon as possible.
In the south, in Kerala, one of the richest states, the behaviour is different but the same in the deep bottom. There's no hassling (unless it is a tourist city like Varkala) but the intention is again to say hello or to know our country, so they will just ask that and leave away. They are more educated, and they even actively develop culture, which states that they don't have the need to just get worried about the daily food. Dance and music and theather are common expressions here, hosting music festivals and theather representations. University books are found to buy in bookstores, and the practice of Ayurveda (medicine based of natural herbs) is spread everywhere. Looking up one just sees green as every neighbour has a coconut tree in their house, and pure orange juice stalls are everywhere, letting us enjoy a good mango juice for 10 or 15 Rs.

It seems that what is private for us is public for them. They just peer into our conversations, listening to them and not hiding that they are listening to them, even laughing with us or making remarks... or approaching to see our photos when we produce our camera. I even remember eating a dessert in a restaurant, sitting there in the table opposite to a local guy I didn't know (as you share the table with anyone), and this guy first poins to my dessert, I didn't get what he meant, so then he actually pushed his hand forward and then grabbed, with the tips of his fingers, a hair which was clinging from there, from my dessert, as to protect me from eating it

- Talk to the locals, while sipping a chai, trying to decipher their funny spoken english. But always the same conversation: which place you belong to? (they have so many strange ways to simply ask 'where are you from?') what's your name? what's your age? are you married? why not? you travel alone? you have girlfriend? why she is not with you? what do you do? you only travel? why?

- Explore Incredible and Magnificent Forts, Temples and Palaces which only seemed to exist in long-ago stories until discovering them by possing the eyes on them: contemplating and admirating the greatness and splendour of the undoubtedly most beautiful mausoleum ever constructed by men, the Taj Mahal; the wondrous Johdpur's Meherangarh Fort; golden Jaisalmer Fort - which, from the distance, seems to be a beach sand-castle; Bundi's storybook bat-inhabited Palace; Udaipur's all-white Palaces, and its Hotel resting in the middle of the lake giving perfect place to James Bond's proesses; rat-crowded Karni Mata Temple; beautifully-decorated and peaceful Monasteries in buddhist Sikkim - where Nepali and Tibetan-origin people intertwin their lives with the native Indians; Gasping at the magnificent marble-made Victoria Memorial in Kolkata; Height-settled Hindu and Jain temples of Junagadh which are only accesible after ascending exhausting 7000 steps; explore the huge buddhist rock-carved caves in Ellora; Explore the incredible remains of the Vijayanagar ruins in Hampi; be stunned by the magnificence of the Sri Meenakshi Temple of Madurai; and many many more which are just so great, that a picture is needed to describe them (as a picture says more than 1000 words)

- Wander through the sometimes peaceful, sometimes polluted hill stations of Kodaikanal, Ooty and Darjeeling, enjoying delightful teas imported long time ago from China by the British to break the chinese monopolic trade

- Enjoy some of the indian culture, as the word-less art form of Khatakali, the Rajasthani dance, the music festivals of south indian music in Kerala, listening constantly to indian music and mantras (as they are continually played in shops to give them good spirits) and watching bollywood films, which, in a way, we could call it a kind of art

- Immerse myself into the wildlife sactuaries, as Mudumalai, home of wildlife animals, where they can keep developing their lives without the interference of men. It is full of them in country, where many animals can be spotted: elephants, tigers, deers, bears, crocodiles, etc

- Assist to wedding ceremonies... the marriage ring is not placed in the hand's finger, but in the feet's toes!!!

- Be completely overwhelmed by the stunning and incredible landscapes that this country has to offer: the Himalayan range on a trekking on the Sikkim, offering views of the 3rd highest mountain in the world, the Khanchendzonga; the backwaters in the immensely green state of Kerala, pieces of land surrounded by channels of water which many times don't surpass just a few meters wide and the people establish their houses there, with boats acting as buses and floating houses wandering effortlessly under a star-crowded night; the beautiful cliff finishing on the beach on Varkala, allowing access to waves which are the delight to any swimmer; the big huge immense stones spreaded anywhere in Hampi, surrounding the beautiful ruins of the ancient civilisation; the sand-castle of Jaisalmer, and the colourful rajasthani cities: sandgold Jaisalmer, white Udaipur, blue Jhodpur and pink Jaipur; the sun rising over the junction of two oceans at Kanjakumari, or setting over the mountain view seen from the hill-top temple in Pushkar, with monkeys posing for your photo

- The stupefaction of watching the way in which many indians make their lives, surviving, more than anything in monstruos cities as Delhi, Mumbai or Kalkuta (greatly know for the task done by Mother Theresa to help the poors there). And the overpopulation, how they strive to get a place in the train or the bus, everyone huddling together making small spaces of air a treasure - stepping into the train or alighting from it can be a battle! when the train approaches, on the platform, people begin to chant their war song... and even before it stops, they will try to jump into it pushing through the crowds, using the elbows as the weapons to beat the enemy; and on the way to the railway station, suddenly people appear from anywhere, crowding the pavements and the streets, slowing down traffic, all heading in the same direction... masses and masses of people, like big organised marathons; if you were able to purchase a Sleeper place in the train is ok, as you will have a bed for you, but if not, and only you managed to get the General Class, then...

- Travelling in time in the state of Rajasthan, contemplating how a city must have been 200 years ago... and taking part of a Camel Safari in Jaisalmer, sleeping in sand dunes provided by the desert

- Watching the most incredible Bollywood films... finding in the same film adventure, dance, action and fights as a very fake copy of Matrix, love without kissing, characters with super powers and even aliens!!! This film industry produces more films than Hollywood, with roughly 800 a year... that's more than 2 a day!!! Also we are able to work as extras in Bollywood, having the advantage of being "whitey", as they don't want locals for the background characters... the same happens with the advertisements: incredibly, many of them just show in them 1.80 m high white beautiful tanned people, not very resemblant to the real India... and for working in Bollywood, we were paid at least 500 Rupees, u$d 12.5, much more money than what the average "real" indian earns a month

- Appreciate the first symptoms of the monsoon, a heavy ceaseless rain which doesn't stop for 3 months, raining everyday all the day drowning big cities under the height of its water... the big problem is with the street dwellers, they have all their belongins just floating and being drifted away by these big masses of water... in Kolkata, in just one day and night in which it didn't stop raining, the following morning the water was reaching the knees in certain streets... I don't want to imagine what it will if it just doesn't stop raining for 3 months!!!! The height of water surpasses the meter and people can just manage to wander through with boats!

- Being enclosed into a healthy prison called Sivananda Ashram, where we would have 2 meals a day (no breakfast), getting up at 6 am and going to bed at 10.30 pm (the lights go out and is not possible to do anything!), meditate, receive lectures of yoga, chanting mantras (songs devoted to the gods, which by being invoked bring inner peace), and practicing for 4 hs a day The 5 Points of Yoga:    
 1.  Proper Exercise  
 2.  Proper Breathing
 3.  Proper Relaxation  
 4.  Proper Diet  
 5.  Positive Thinking and Meditation

This Ashram was located in Kerala and was located near a beautiful lake surrounded by mountainery scenery which made it special for finding the needed peace and relax for the practice of the yoga. India is one of the best places in the world to practice yoga, owning even the self-called Yoga Capital of the World: Rishikesh.

- After the ashram more than anything, but really since the start of this tripo, the transformation in me was great! Even though I come from the country with the best meat of the world, I don't miss it... is it that I'm eating meat here? No at all, but the vegeterian food is soooo go, a vegeterian paradise, that with my daily thali I'm more than happy... since those 10 days of healthy living in the ashram that I eat the rice with my hands - only with the right hand, as the left one is left for the improper act of scratching one's ass to free it from the leftovers after going to the squat toilet... and because of this same reason, it is ill-considered to shake hands with the left one, it's considered improper, only the right is accepted. Here the toilet paper is an extravagancy reserved for foreigners and posh indians, and its cost is really high: u$s 0.75 for un roll!!! more expensive than in Argentina!!!
I practically don't drink any more coffee - bring me a chai (but let me add the sugar!) and I'll be happy. I don't drink any more coke or pepsi or any soda, just water - and I have discovered that the water is incredibly tasty! we never pay attention to it, as we always have water. We don't appreciate what is good, what we really need, until we don't have it anymore. But let me tell you, bearing the more than 40 degrees of certain areas in India, the water is so delightful that makes you understand that that's the real thing, and not what all those stupid campaigns for selling highly expensive sugared-water drinks want to make us believe. The same with the food: even though I haven't eaten in McDonalds for several years now, I don't get the idea of having such a shitty food, so expensive and not nutritive at all, when a simple tasty thali is perfect for keeping our body working... I have lost several kilos and gained a quite light and healthy state of body and soul.


And many many other things that come to my mind but not even the whole of Internet has space enough to store my feelings... I'm really greeted to this country for having showed me a reality so different to mine that it can only make you improve, by understanding, respecting, acknowledging, listening and observing. The richness gained here is unique, it is an experience that is always positive, whichever the outcome (in fact, travelling is the best school in life); and I know I will come back... I'm already longing to it

Add to del.icio.us Add to reddit