The Cornered Washing Machine

Bodhgaya is the center of the Buddhist universe. Buddha found enlightment here under a tree. There are temples for every offspring of Buddhism (Chinese Buddhist temple, Indonesian Buddhist temple, Thai Buddist temple … you get the idea … I couldn’t find a Californian temple btw) and a big temple complex around an offspring of an offspring of an offspring of the tree who stood there 2600 years ago when Buddha was there. Except for that Bodhgaya is desert with a couple of tents. It’s hot and dusty all day and fucking freezing all night. You either get enlighted here or run away.

That’s why I enrolled into a Buddhist meditation retreat starting today and running until the 1st of January. So I will spend New Year’s Eve in meditation instead of partying for a change. 😉

Fogel found something really cool, but I thought it would look much more red. 🙁

create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

The trip to Bodhgaya was pretty hard. They upgraded my ticket to 3AC, because there were no seats available so I could sleep but I arrived in Patna at 4.30 in the morning and had to go to Gaya. So I bought a train ticket for 6.15 but the guy told me the wrong platform, so I missed it (the announcements are Hindi only). Next one was at 8.30. A nice Brahmin helped me getting a seat (unreserved wooden seating class) and we talked for a couple of hours. He is manager in a bank and was pretty cool (same age as I am). He collects coins, so I gave him a 10 Euro Cent coin which he refused 2 times before accepting. Unfortunately another guy saw it and starting talking to me after the Brahmin left. He wanted a coin, too. Of course he didn’t get one and it was hard getting rid of him. After that I took a private autorickshaw to Bodhgaya which is like 15km from Gaya. Why are all the places you want to visit here completely off any form of decent transport network?

I left Darjeeling yesterday to go Bodhgaya, the place where Buddha found enlightment. I had to spend the night in Siliguri which is basically one of this towns you have to stop to get a train but has nothing else to offer.
I watched TV most of last night. Today I will take an overnight train to Patna which is the capital of the Bihar province – India’s poorest and most violent.

I check in the Elgin Hotel for my birthday, basically it was one of this – ah fuck it, I don’t want anymore – decisions. But now I really love this place. The hotel must be around for ages, everything looks like in the good old times when the British were still here. Even the valets have funky uniforms.

Plus the people here are different. I’m meeting the elite if India celebrating Christmas (despite not there religion) and a couple of Westerners who also said, what the heck, I can afford it once. There is a couple of American social workers here, who run a school in Indonesia. Or a Briitsh women working in Calcutta, who I meet during tea time. And there is the lovely Miss Veronica Beach (she has a sister named Sandy) who is teaching children here for a year (which I think is pretty impressive).

Darjeeling itself is like this small mountain town with streets always going up and down but never horizontal. It’s fucking cold. But when I look outside the window I can see Mt. Everest. The view is just astounishing.

First Indian train trip. Pretty cool actually. I was in class 3AC wich looks like this. Cosy. There were two teachers and a big family with 5 kids in my coach but it was fine. They all belonged to middle class or higher I guess. They were interested but very polite and didn’t ask to many questions. Ok, it’s one of the higher classes of the train but I had no problems whatsoever.

The second train on the other hand was terrible. It was a narrow gauge 100 years old train who is so small, they call it “toy train”. First class was sold out. Second class was breath taking packed and my stomach was no getting better. For the 3h road trip the train needed 8h. Some kids had a lot of fun by permanently passing the train with their bikes. I was glad when it ended.

So I had a terrible train ride, a bad stomach and that all on my birthday. So I checked in one of the most expensive places here just to have something good today. 😉

I’m leavng Calcutta this evening with a night sleeper train to NJP where I’ll head for the mountain town of Darjeeling (where the tea is coming from). Calcutta got me by the way. I have a stomach sickness now so I pretty much spend today in bed or in the toilette or cursing Indian food. 😉

I’m staying right now at the Paragon Hotel in Sudder Street, which is pretty cool. Ok, it is definitly open since the 60s or so and nothing has changed since but it has a nice terrace and it’s easy to meet people. The crowd is also very cool. About 3/4 are either Taiwanese or Japanese. The rest are Europeans or Americans. You can find a lot of old backpackers here which are pretty cool to talk to. There is the permanently pot smoking 50 something American who looks like my old History teacher including big beard and glasses or the 60+ British women I share the dorm with who is complaining about the unethical establishment at the universities, who won’t accept here phd papers. Or the cool also 60+ Indian writer who disguishes academics for the lack of accepting moral radical, scientific radical or sexual radical theories …

Most of the time I hang out here with David, a 19 year old Swedish guy just coming from Thailand, Frank, a Taiwanese on his way to Bangladesh, and a couple of Americans who spend a year here to teach children.

That’s about my first impression of the foreigners crowd in India.

Calcutta was pretty astonishing for me. I mean, I expected something like a old fashioned city on the brink of getting modern or so. My impression is, that the city is stuck in the 60s. The cars look like these old style British cars from the black and white movies. The cool old buildings have all been build by the British 100 years ago. Nothing else seems to have been build since, everything looks pretty run down. Sometimes it remembered me of one of those nuclear war movies were the survivors life in the ruins of the former civilizations. Pretty harsh I know, but so is my impression. I visited the Indian Museum here with a Swedish guy I met at the hostel and I don’t think they have changed anything in there since 50 years. It is just to far away from any form of modern city that I don’t really have any urge to stay longer.

Going to Calcutta as the starting point of a India trip seems to be pretty unusual. I counted 3 Europeans on the plane. The Calcutta airport basically tells you “Oh my dear friend, do you really not want to go to Delhi first?”, because it looks like from the 60s (probably is) and has nothing. One of the airport police guys tried to convince me to exchange money with his friend around the corner. 3 nice and friendly guys helped me carrying my single small backpack the 100m to the taxi and then asking for a tip each. The taxi driver tried to convince me to go to his friends hotel and wanted a lot of tip. The hotel I picked was full, but I found a one which is alright (but expensive) around the corner. So much for first impressions. 😉 I need sleep …