BootsnAll Travel Network



Horrible and Fantastic

This seems to be the phrase coming out of my mouth when people ask me how India was for me.  Let’s say I saw some really amazing sights and I saw the worst sights of my life.  I was happy to leave – maybe a week too late since the seasonal heat caught up to us in some very hot areas between Calcutta, Bodhgaya and Varanasi.  But I also look forward to returning someday to see southern and central sections of the country as well as many of the parks full of wildlife.  And I would really like to be there during warmer months for Kashmir.  I can’t really tell you that I like or understand anything about Indian society.  I am more perplexed by it all than I was when I arrived.  I would feel really bad about this after spending five weeks there, but the following quote from Paul Bowles at least makes me believe I am not the only one with this problem: “Now, after traveling some eight thousand miles around the country, I know approximately as little as I did on my first arrival.  However, I’ve seen a lot of people and places, and at least I have a somewhat more detailed and precise idea of my ignorance than I did in the beginning.”

The worst of India is the filth almost all of the country is mired in.  Indians toss everything anywhere they please including garbage, excrement, spit, urine and I can only wonder what they are doing with chemical and other industrial waste.  I know from their news that while we were there it was announced that 150 people were suffering from exposure to uranium and the government claimed it to be a global issue while they distanced themselves from the matter.  I think Cairo was still the worst air-polluted place I have visited, but the scale of India’s air mess can only be eclipsed by China.  Scale – I think this is what stunned me the most with all of India’s problems and some of its greatness.  The scale of everything is mind-boggling.

I am at a loss to explain why India is so environmentally disgusting.  Why would anyone shit on a sidewalk?  Why do they piss on whatever wall is nearby?  Frankly, I do not ever want to see someone squatting in public again.  Of all the great images of India that are in my mind, I am sorry to report that this is way more burned in than those.  And the juxtaposition of something great and something so disgusting is what really throws me.  For instance, they have the main ghat in Varanasi on their holiest and mightily polluted Ganges River.  And just upstream from that is what I call Shits Ghat.  I didn’t get Shits Ghat until I passed the main ghat for the second time and witnessed people stooping below a wall for their morning ritual – one a bit less holy than what was going on a few meters away at the main ghat.  Pull back the focus a bit and I realized that the stone steps were not streaked from time, but rather this has been used as a public toilet for centuries.  Who in their right mind would have a holy place involving bathing in water meters downstream from a public toilet flowing into the same holy entity?  You explain that to me and I send you a hundred dollars.

I’ll write more about Varansi, but suffice to say it was the filthiest place I have seen since Fez, Morocco.  Both are similar with their crazy little alleys and garbage flowing everywhere.  The stench will never leave me.  But Varansi was a wonder compared to Bodhgaya.  Bodhgaya was the place where Buddha became enlightened under the Bodhi tree.  Visiting the tree and the surrounding temple grounds was a highlight of the trip.  Unfortunately, I took a walk around the corner into the little village where basically no tourist is to be found and I discovered the grossest place in India – just on the other side of the wall surrounding one of Buddhism’s most revered sights.  Here they were selling disgusting goodies covered with more flies than I could ever have imagined before.  I think the Buddhists were very smart to build such a tall and solid wall around their holy place.  One can blame poverty for these messes, but how come I never see such things in Africa like I saw every single day in India?  No, this is beyond poverty and ignorance.  It is cultural.  I am dumbfounded by it. 

Thankfully, the Big Purge (monsoon) is coming soon to India.  Yearly, it comes for 2-4 months and I suspect it washes away much of the filth.  Where it goes?  I don’t know, but I certainly do not want to go there.  There is a strange brown substance growing on the walls and sidewalks of much of India.  I thought it was a mold or something similar.  I kept thinking it was a bit strange especially in such a dry climate, but I did not get it.  Until we were in Howrah Station in Calcutta and we saw this concrete pedestal with what appeared to be a rectangular flower pot on top.  It was overflowing with the brown substance.  Our friend for the day, Neeleem. told us that it was a spittoon.  It suddenly became clear.  All of the tobacco products for chewing that we had seen during the trip were being spit at such a common rate that the waste was visible everywhere.



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