It's been about two weeks since I wrote my last blog, and India's still been as crazy as ever, to the point where the last week has become fondly known as 'near death experience week.' It all started with the craziest monsoon rain I've ever seen, which I've now learnt is far too dangerous to go out in. I wandered out of the hospital, from visiting my friend Marie, looking like the ultimate moron in my emergency poncho and decided that I could deal with the rain because I'm English and was wearing a bin-bag with arm holes. This was one of the stupidest things I've ever done, and I would have actually been better off spending the night in an Indian hospital.Within thirty seconds I was knee deep in filthy black sludge-water, not helped by the fact that it was dark, I was wearing flip-flops in Indian sewer water, and I couldn't quite remember the spot where I'd seen a dead dog a few hours earlier...
All I could do by this point was persevere, so on I waded, losing flip-flops, paddling desperately back to get them as they floated away, and ignoring the groups of locals gathering in doorways, pointing and laughing at my poncho, which was now maniacally flapping in the wind. Progressing at a rate of 400m in ten minutes, I realised I didn't stand a chance and did the most disgusting thing ever - I took off my shoes. Soon, the piles of rubbish, cowpats, and pretty much any other substance you can think of started rising higher up my legs until I had no choice but to just stop, cling to a roadside water-pump and accept that is was Monsoon - 1 0 - Jen. After a while, once he'd made sure all his friends had had a good laugh at my expense, a local man waded in, lifted me out and cycled me home. That was the best 25p I have ever spent.
This was then followed by the best shower I have ever had, even if it was in the pitch black from a power-cut (probably best, considering what I was covered in). There's always the risk in power-cuts that if you put a foot wrong, you're straight down the toilet hole, but that's fairly irrelevant when you're already covered in sewage.
Toilets seem to have become a running theme in India, as both Becky and I have had a stomach infection for the past week. Our Indian family decided it was finally time to call a doctor, which didn't inspire much confidence in me since the last doctor Marie saw in hospital told her that if she did enough sit-ups, it would cure diarrhea. So, expecting our home visit to be an equally amusing waste of time, we were actually prescribed five different tablets and some pineapple syrup (fairly sure this does nothing, but I enjoy it as much as Calpol so I'm going with that) which means we can finally stop fighting for the toilet. I also have a sneaking suspicion the stomach issues weren't helped by the fact that it's impossible to buy in-date food in India, and if you happen to come across something that went off in March, that's a pretty sweet find.
I've also managed to narrowly avoid (I hope) catching rabies this week, since back home in Bath I decided to pay £170 for a course of vaccinations against a tick-borne water disease often carried by wild pigs, but decided against rabies jabs in a city full of stray dogs and monkeys. Good one.
My first monkey incident was probably the most painful one of the two, when I walked up the stairs in the house only to have an open sack of rice pelted at me by a large, smug monkey on the top step. Being the mature, competent traveller that I am, I dealt with the situation by screaming for Sanjay, the house servant to come upstairs with a broom, and ran back downstairs to play Angry Birds in safety (incidentally a game that India's gone mad for, and Angry Birds t-shirts and rucksacks are pretty much as cool as you can get here.)
Angry Birds aside though, monkey attack number two was the scariest, as I was carrying a lotus flower in the famous Golden Temple and a baby monkey, using the facade of being all cute and tiny, lunged at me and scratched all down my arm. While I was in a sweaty flap about my monkey mauling, the locals found it too amusing to help, and the sneaky little thing soon snuck away with the knowledge that he scratched my arm up just to get another leaf for his monkey-bed.
The Golden Temple in general's not really a place that inspired much confidence in me, as it suffered a terrorist attack in 2010, killing eighty people, so an official took all our passport details on entry, telling me quite cheerfully that it was a very efficient way to inform the British Embassy who was now dead, if it happened again
Gruesome but true, dead people have actually become another recurring theme I've noticed in Varanasi; they are everywhere. As Varanasi is India's holy city, many people pilgrimage here from all over India to die, so each day 400 bodies are burnt on the banks of the Ganges. We watched this ceremony from a boat on the river, and then got out to wander amongst the dead, wrapped in silks on burning pyres. (below: wood used for burning the bodies.)
This sounds horrendous, but it was fascinating. At least it was all fun and games until our boat got stuck in the way of a dead body they were trying to wash, and we had to awkwardly reverse.
In fact, my next near death experience happened sitting on the banks of the Ganges, watching the nightly prayer ceremony at the main ghat. I started off sitting far too close to the man haphazardly twirling fire batons around, and then moved aside to safety, only for a cobra to slither down the steps by me. Sneaky.
The irony of all this, however, is that after my run-ins with rabid monkeys, filthy water and cobras, I decided to treat myself to a pedicure. The woman immediately put my foot in a bowl of scalding water and it's been the most painful thing to happen to me all week.
I can't complain though, as I've had an easy week of painting at work (aside from when a monkey stole my paint pot). Becky and I have spent ages painting an animal for each letter of the alphabet, only to go to the lamination shop (where they wore bizarre headbands and no sense of personal space) and have the guy excitedly pick up our zebra and yell 'THIS IS CAT!', and then refusing to stop until everyone nearby agreed that I wrong and this 'was cat.'
This week's also been a good one because I had my 21st out here. Both the family and my friends bought my some gorgeous presents, James sent me a card addressed to 'Tikka Masala Street', and I had a birthday breakfast of apple pie and Immodium.
This was the first (and probably last) birthday where I've had my toes measured (for Indian toe rings) and got on a stranger's moped, who insisted that it would ''be her pleasure and honour.'' Finally, deciding it was too dangerous to walk home in the dark after my last sewage-tainted night-time walk, we hopped in a shared tuk tuk costing 10p each, and somehow managed to fit ten people in a three-seater, much to the sharing Indian family's delight (probably because they got to enjoy half an hour of me hanging out the side, having numerous near misses with oncoming cows, and, of course, another tuk tuk speeding towards me with a dead body strapped to the roof.) Probably should have walked.
After an amazing birthday, this morning, however, was a difficult one. Although the prayer ceremony on the roof was a great start, (photo below) we had to leave the family and the orphan girls at the school, who started crying. I've loved Varanasi, supposedly India's craziest city, and the Little Stars school is something I am going to continue supporting in England, starting by running a half-marathon in March (I'll pester you all for sponsorship soon). That said, i won't miss being told I have hair like straw (the girls' favourite line) or having to use a nit comb in a paranoid manner every day after work (all clear, just in case people start avoiding me in lectures next year.)
Anyway, I'm currently writing this from my bunk on a sleeper train to Delhi, on my way to do a few weeks travelling, and it's time to brave the toilet, so I'll blog again soon.
Oh, and for those who read my last blog, you can sleep easy, because I finally found Gaylord's ice cream. It was everything I had hoped and more.
All I could do by this point was persevere, so on I waded, losing flip-flops, paddling desperately back to get them as they floated away, and ignoring the groups of locals gathering in doorways, pointing and laughing at my poncho, which was now maniacally flapping in the wind. Progressing at a rate of 400m in ten minutes, I realised I didn't stand a chance and did the most disgusting thing ever - I took off my shoes. Soon, the piles of rubbish, cowpats, and pretty much any other substance you can think of started rising higher up my legs until I had no choice but to just stop, cling to a roadside water-pump and accept that is was Monsoon - 1 0 - Jen. After a while, once he'd made sure all his friends had had a good laugh at my expense, a local man waded in, lifted me out and cycled me home. That was the best 25p I have ever spent.
This was then followed by the best shower I have ever had, even if it was in the pitch black from a power-cut (probably best, considering what I was covered in). There's always the risk in power-cuts that if you put a foot wrong, you're straight down the toilet hole, but that's fairly irrelevant when you're already covered in sewage.
Toilets seem to have become a running theme in India, as both Becky and I have had a stomach infection for the past week. Our Indian family decided it was finally time to call a doctor, which didn't inspire much confidence in me since the last doctor Marie saw in hospital told her that if she did enough sit-ups, it would cure diarrhea. So, expecting our home visit to be an equally amusing waste of time, we were actually prescribed five different tablets and some pineapple syrup (fairly sure this does nothing, but I enjoy it as much as Calpol so I'm going with that) which means we can finally stop fighting for the toilet. I also have a sneaking suspicion the stomach issues weren't helped by the fact that it's impossible to buy in-date food in India, and if you happen to come across something that went off in March, that's a pretty sweet find.
I've also managed to narrowly avoid (I hope) catching rabies this week, since back home in Bath I decided to pay £170 for a course of vaccinations against a tick-borne water disease often carried by wild pigs, but decided against rabies jabs in a city full of stray dogs and monkeys. Good one.
My first monkey incident was probably the most painful one of the two, when I walked up the stairs in the house only to have an open sack of rice pelted at me by a large, smug monkey on the top step. Being the mature, competent traveller that I am, I dealt with the situation by screaming for Sanjay, the house servant to come upstairs with a broom, and ran back downstairs to play Angry Birds in safety (incidentally a game that India's gone mad for, and Angry Birds t-shirts and rucksacks are pretty much as cool as you can get here.)
Angry Birds aside though, monkey attack number two was the scariest, as I was carrying a lotus flower in the famous Golden Temple and a baby monkey, using the facade of being all cute and tiny, lunged at me and scratched all down my arm. While I was in a sweaty flap about my monkey mauling, the locals found it too amusing to help, and the sneaky little thing soon snuck away with the knowledge that he scratched my arm up just to get another leaf for his monkey-bed.
The Golden Temple in general's not really a place that inspired much confidence in me, as it suffered a terrorist attack in 2010, killing eighty people, so an official took all our passport details on entry, telling me quite cheerfully that it was a very efficient way to inform the British Embassy who was now dead, if it happened again
Gruesome but true, dead people have actually become another recurring theme I've noticed in Varanasi; they are everywhere. As Varanasi is India's holy city, many people pilgrimage here from all over India to die, so each day 400 bodies are burnt on the banks of the Ganges. We watched this ceremony from a boat on the river, and then got out to wander amongst the dead, wrapped in silks on burning pyres. (below: wood used for burning the bodies.)
This sounds horrendous, but it was fascinating. At least it was all fun and games until our boat got stuck in the way of a dead body they were trying to wash, and we had to awkwardly reverse.
In fact, my next near death experience happened sitting on the banks of the Ganges, watching the nightly prayer ceremony at the main ghat. I started off sitting far too close to the man haphazardly twirling fire batons around, and then moved aside to safety, only for a cobra to slither down the steps by me. Sneaky.
The irony of all this, however, is that after my run-ins with rabid monkeys, filthy water and cobras, I decided to treat myself to a pedicure. The woman immediately put my foot in a bowl of scalding water and it's been the most painful thing to happen to me all week.
I can't complain though, as I've had an easy week of painting at work (aside from when a monkey stole my paint pot). Becky and I have spent ages painting an animal for each letter of the alphabet, only to go to the lamination shop (where they wore bizarre headbands and no sense of personal space) and have the guy excitedly pick up our zebra and yell 'THIS IS CAT!', and then refusing to stop until everyone nearby agreed that I wrong and this 'was cat.'
This week's also been a good one because I had my 21st out here. Both the family and my friends bought my some gorgeous presents, James sent me a card addressed to 'Tikka Masala Street', and I had a birthday breakfast of apple pie and Immodium.
This was the first (and probably last) birthday where I've had my toes measured (for Indian toe rings) and got on a stranger's moped, who insisted that it would ''be her pleasure and honour.'' Finally, deciding it was too dangerous to walk home in the dark after my last sewage-tainted night-time walk, we hopped in a shared tuk tuk costing 10p each, and somehow managed to fit ten people in a three-seater, much to the sharing Indian family's delight (probably because they got to enjoy half an hour of me hanging out the side, having numerous near misses with oncoming cows, and, of course, another tuk tuk speeding towards me with a dead body strapped to the roof.) Probably should have walked.
After an amazing birthday, this morning, however, was a difficult one. Although the prayer ceremony on the roof was a great start, (photo below) we had to leave the family and the orphan girls at the school, who started crying. I've loved Varanasi, supposedly India's craziest city, and the Little Stars school is something I am going to continue supporting in England, starting by running a half-marathon in March (I'll pester you all for sponsorship soon). That said, i won't miss being told I have hair like straw (the girls' favourite line) or having to use a nit comb in a paranoid manner every day after work (all clear, just in case people start avoiding me in lectures next year.)
Anyway, I'm currently writing this from my bunk on a sleeper train to Delhi, on my way to do a few weeks travelling, and it's time to brave the toilet, so I'll blog again soon.
Oh, and for those who read my last blog, you can sleep easy, because I finally found Gaylord's ice cream. It was everything I had hoped and more.
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