5/15/12
I went to the train station in Agra just to find out that my
train was running about 45 minutes late.
I went outside to wait, having no desire to wait on the platform that
reeked of urine. Many eyes followed me
out, and I spotted three people speaking English. I sat with them, happy to share the
attention. The two women were from
Spain, so we spoke a little Spanish, and the guy was an American man from
Florida. As it turned out, he was on my
train. After chatting with the Spanish
women, we went to our platform just to find that the train had ended up coming
early, without warning we somehow missed it.
After speaking to a number of station employees, we figured out that
there was another train leaving from another Agra station, so we shared a tuc
tuc there. The station master said the
train left from platform number 5.
Fabian (the American guy) and I got on the train. We were an hour into the ride when the same
station master came aboard and said we got on the train at platform number
4—not 5. We were heading to Mumbai. We paid him and got off at the next
station. There we got back on another
train heading towards Agra, but were only able to book General Class
tickets. I struggle to find the words to
explain this next train trip. Crowded does
not begin to explain how many people were crammed into our car. There were literally hundreds of people
stacked on top of one another, sleeping with seemingly disconnected joints,
leaning on strangers. I saw a small
hole, where I managed to fit my backpack vertically, giving myself a seat. Two people were leaning on my legs, another
on my back, and the woman at my elbow kept smiling at me as she continuously
dozed off, her head resting on my shoulder or elbow. Fabian was not so lucky and did not get a
seat—instead he spent the next hour and a half standing with his heavy
backpack, pressed between other men who had been unlucky enough not to have a
seat. Maybe it was the late hour, or the
fact that we had somehow made zero headway in our attempt to get to Varanasi,
but I laughed to the point of tears several times during this trip. How was this suddenly my life?
Back in Agra, we had a few hours to wait. Neither Fabian nor I wanted to risk missing
yet another train, so we sat by the platform, brushing out teeth and spitting
it into the track or a trashcan. We
downed several cups of chai as the sun came up.
The next train met us with more bad luck—still no availability for
anything but general class tickets, but we snuck onto the slightly nicer car,
still without AC and without bunks. I
spent most of the six hour ride with a child on my lap (though not the same
child the whole time), alternately resting my head on Fabian’s shoulder, or the
shoulder of the man to my right who provided a slightly elevated cranial
platform. I also went through an entire
toilet paper roll blowing my nose—I’m pretty sure I’m allergic to India. After a train swap in Lucknow, we managed to
get onto a 3AC car, though they only had one bunk left, which Fabian and I had
to share. Even sharing that cramped
space, I’ve never had such a great couple of hours of sleep in my life. We arrived in Varanasi at around 8pm, having
travelled for 22 hours when the whole trip should have taken twelve. Upon our arrival, we searched and searched
for some allergy medicine for me, but to no avail, and after getting into a tuc
tuc, a street child hit me twice when I refused to give her any money. Our tuc tuc broke down on the way to the
hotel, and we ended up having to walk for twenty minutes up a bunch of stairs
with our heavy bags. I slept like a baby
that night.
Varanasi was…I don’t know.
Maybe my least favorite place?
The hotel I was in was beautiful, and had a great wrap-around porch that
was caged in to keep out the monkeys. It
looked out on the Ganges, and gave a phenomenal view of all of the many daily
activities that revolve around that filthy, holy river. The problem was that there were just people
trying to aggressively and unabashedly rip you off literally everywhere you turned. It was disconcerting for such a holy
place. I took a lovely boat ride down
the river with Fabian though, with a wiry old man rowing us past people
bathing, swimming, burning bodies, and washing clothes. I had imagined the cremation place to be bigger,
but it was truly an incredible sight to see.
There were stacks and stacks of wood for the pyres—some costing more
than others. It is considered to be
excellent luck to die in Varanasi, as Hindus believe that dying there means
being liberated from the reincarnation process.
I was asked during lunch if I wanted my charts read, and how
much I knew about my chakra. Very
little, I admitted, and agreed to let the student read my charts for free. (How can you turn down a free reading?) I was told several things—but most
importantly that my lower back probably hurts because of my blocked second to
last chakra, that I’m emotionally closed off thanks to the blockage of my
fourth (of seven) chakra, and that I was an Asian boy in my previous life. So, there’s that.
