Enter India

I last left off as we were preparing to go on the 10 day Annapurna base camp trek in Nepal. The trek was absolutely incredible, but there isn't much to write about it in a summarizing blog post. Words really can't describe what it is like to reach Annapurna Base Camp at 4100 m, standing in a bowl, surrounded 360 degrees by the tallest mountains in the world, mountains that looked as if they were so close and so attainable, but really have only been reached by few people in history. It was amazing, and it got really, really cold at night.
So that's about it for the trek. We did fire our guide 4 days in because he was a mean drunk who we figured out one hour into the trek we really didn't need. After the 9 day trek, we returned with 2 Israelis, whom we met after firing our guide, to Pokhara, which is simply, the greatest city in the world.
Pokhara is small and very touristy. Because of the Maoist government, all the bars close at 11 (except for some that consider themselves "underground" which close at 1130). Most of the restaurants are pretty much the same, and the guesthouses are nothing special. However, after returning from a long and pretty grueling trek, with my metabolism racing faster than lighting, there is nothing better than relaxing and eating in such a chill town. And that is what we did. I can't say that we did nothing all day; we woke up early every morning and went to the German bakery, then went for massive bowls of Meusli loaded with luscious fruit and yogurt, went and played several games of pool, then went to one of the many Israeli eateries to get schnitzel, went and walked around, then went to Cafe Shenkin (named after a street in Tel Aviv) for sandwiches, went and read, then went for dinner at the Pokhara Steakhouse (massive beef tenderloins in a Hindu country, pretty impressive), and finally, after a long day, went to sleep. Ahhh, Pokhara. After several days of that, and as our metabolism started to slow down to our adjustment from walking 9 miles of stairs a day to the Pokhara lifestyle, we decided to head for India. We took an 8 hour bus ride through the beautiful Nepali landscape, saying goodbye to the mountains which had been our home for the last 2 weeks, and arrived to the smell and dirt and noise and shit of the Indian border. After being slapped with a 40 dollar visa penalty because we overstayed our time in Nepal (which was all worth it), we crossed into the madness. Compared to all the countries we have traveled through, this border was virtually non existent. There was a sign above us that read "Welcome To India" which could have easily been missed, and absolutely no security. However, it would be impossible to not be able to distinguish exactly where the border was. The moment I stepped out of Nepal, it was like entering a different world. The ground was covered with unidentifiable plastic items, cow shit, and beggars rolling in shit. The sun was no longer visible, and the air was heavy with smog. The chaotic noise ripped through my unadjusted ears. Shopkeepers and street salesmen repeated "What do you want?" over and over again. Everywhere, it smelled like urine. We scrambled to find a bus to take us the additional 2 hours to Gorakhpur, where we would catch our train in the morning. We found the bus, and climbed on top to strap our backpacks on before loading. We entered a relatively small bus, with less leg room than even the Cambodian buses. It was ok, we thought, as the bus sat 32 and there were only about 30 people on the bus. We found our seats next to a Dutch couple, the only other white people on the bus. We settled in and got quasi-comfortable, hot and sticky, yet relieved and excited for the evening breeze to fly through the moving bus, expecting that we would probably be leaving in the next few minutes because the bus was almost full. However, in India, expectations rarely meet reality. We waited another half an hour, until we fitted, no exaggeration, 70 people on the bus. For the entire duration of the bus, I had either a fat old woman straddling my leg, her dress stuck on a different chair, a man's groin impressed on my ear, or another man kneeling on the ground, fighting my sized 13 feet for a place to rest. My arms didn't fit at my sides, so I had no choice but to stretch them around the shoulders of the 2 Indians on either side of me, which they probably thought was normal. I was severely uncomfortable, yet, the entire ride (except for the 6 elbows to the face I received from the ticket collector), Sam and I laughed and smiled. The only element of the bus ride which failed to surpass my expectations of madness was the smell. For a bus full of people who wipe their asses with their hands, rarely shower, eat a curry filled diet, and are just naturally smelly, it wasn't so bad.
We arrived to Gorakhpur later in the evening, which was, if possible, more mad. We went to the train station to try to buy tickets for the next morning, and could not walk through without stepping on a body or the mat or bag of a body. People were pissing on the walls outside. The lines were unorganized, signs were non descriptive, English speaking attendants were non existent, and we were the only tourists there. After much work, we got our tickets for the next morning, and retreated back to the grossest hotel we have stayed in so far during the trip. The hotel, which had an eerie resemblance to the hostel in Eli Roth's horror film and to the mental institution in The Shining, did have TV's in the room. So before going to sleep, we watched a little bit of the news, which is when we began to learn about the events occurring in Mumbai. We didn't learn much, there was no volume and all we saw were "Shootings at Hotel," so we went to sleep unalarmed. However, 3 hours later, we were wakened by aggressive , violent, and non-persisting knocks down the hall. I was tired after a full day of traveling, and fell right back to sleep. Several seconds later though, I woke again; the knocking was approaching closer and closer to our door. Finally, it arrived. Sam and I both shot up, and looked at each other. Surprisingly, I wasn't at all scared, more just wondering what I was supposed to do. We stared at the closed latch at the top of the door, when suddenly the door burst open, and a middle aged Indian man in slacks and a button down peered in at us. I waved, and he charmingly said "OK, goodnight," and moved on to the next door. What the fuck, I thought. Wondering what was up, I walked out to the hallway and saw a policeman and several other men, and I decided that whatever was going on, the guy who was just knocking on my door was probably on my side. Unable to fall back to sleep immediately (for obvious reasons) we turned on the TV, and learned about everything happening in Mumbai. Turns out, the men were just searching the hotel to make sure there were not terrorists, which makes zero sense at all because there are absolutely no tourists in Gorakhpur, and absolutely nothing worth of attacking.
So the next morning we woke up early, and took a 6 hour train ride to Varanasi. We rode sleeper class (the 2nd lowest), and met many, interesting people. Someone could probably write an entire book on "People You Meet on an Indian Train," so for the sake of time and my meusli which should be arriving soon, I'm not going to describe all the interesting characters I met.
And then there's Varanasi, which like the rest of the places we've been in India for the last 3 days, is also madness. We arrived at our Lonely Planet recommended hostel after searching through labrynthed alleys for ten minutes. We spent the day and night chilling out and playing pool, running into some different Israelis we met in Nepal who happen to have gone to high school with one of my Israeli cousins.
The next day, we descended down from the lovely rooftop bar to the burning ghats, the element which makes Varanasi one of the holiest Hindu city in the world. Sitting right on the Ghanges river, we watched as body after body was ceremoniously carried to the fire, unwrapped from the gold and colorful plastic and cloth, and placed into the raging flames. The heat was unbearable, and the smoke smelled like oil. Beggars and touts were ubiquitous, bullshitting about scams and other nonsense. At one point, a dog jumped in a dying fire and pulled out a big piece of meat, tearing it apart several feet from us. A cow walked down some stairs, causing everyone to jump out of the way in a frenzy, with one man losing his shoe in the process. The cow then let loose several gallons of urine onto the shoe, without reaction by the crowd, and several seconds later the shoe was gone. Men with only rags wrapped around their waists shoveled the ashes in the river, as other men waded in the river pulling boats. Other people bathed and drank several meters down the motionless stream. I was speechless as I watched what I perceived was a scene bursting with life. We sat there for an hour without speaking, absorbing and learning, listening and watching.
We walked around for a while, and then ascended back to the rooftop bar for good food, music, pool, and company. Later on, we went back out for sunset and a religious ceremony at one of the main ghats, and then returned back to the hotel.
We're off to Agra tonight, and tomorrow we'll be sitting in front of the Taj Mahal sipping Chai.
One quick side note: If you've at all noticed at any times a fixation on functions relating to the bathroom in previous blog posts, it's with good reason. After a month of dealing with that shit (literally), I finally went to the doctor in Pokhara and was diagnosed with ghiardia and dysentry, which I probably got from drinking bad water. I'm not sure if I'm better now, but it really hasn't impacted my life that much.
And also, I'm not sure by reading this what you may think my feelings thus far about India are, so I want to make it absolutely clear: it's really crazy, but I really like it :)