I have been away for almost one month and after a few cluttered days in Kolkata, I am now in one of the most intense and colourful cities anywhere in the world; Varanasi on the Ganges. This is my fifth trip to India and my third time in Varanasi. I first came here circa 1993, and I am now retracing many of the steps I took during that initial life-altering introduction to India (including reading the same hippy-trail books!)
During my first trip to Varanasi, I recall running around in the morning desperately searching for a decent coffee that wasn’t instant Nescafe brown Ganges puke. And, yes, I did the same thing yesterday. There are nice looking espresso machines here, but many of the cafe owners just use them to heat the milk or water and then place a spoon of instant coffee in the concoction (thus I have been getting killer headaches from coffee withdrawal, a uniquely Melbourne problem perhaps).
Some of my greener travel companions have asked how India changed since I was first here some 20 years ago, but I’m not sure. It depends on what century you reference (as I ride to the train on a peddle driven rickshaw, book the train ticket on a shiny new Samsung Tablet, and have an intense conversation with a young Bengali on whether the Queen stole the Star of India diamond, whilst watching thousands of muddy people throw idols of the god of learning and knowledge in the Ganges in a religious fervor).
And the past three nights I have been sitting on the pissy-smelling concrete rooftop of the hotel where I have been staying with a charming young architect from Poland calls Tomesz. We can see the misty Ganges with wooden boats beneath us, chanting and chimes as the soundtrack and the menacing sound of the Varanasi roads as the base . We have been drinking exactly three cans of beer between us which we got from a secretive establishment about 1 kilometer walk away called “chilled beer”. I am sort of glad that the Indian masses (and I mean masses) haven’t discovered alcohol because it must be easier to land a jumbo at Heathrow than control a vehicle on a Varanasi road.
The perspectives gained in India are always hard to communicate. Especially to those from countries such as my own that can never be anything other than Modern.
Today I am on a train to Khajuraho to see some temple porn!
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