Shanti Shanti. Cycling in India and Nepal

These days we have to get our bicycles and ourselves to Varanasi. First we do some sightseeing in Udaipur. Our dinner at the Queen's restaurant was the best in have ever had in India. Or wherever. In a pretty family atmosphere we can just sit down where the mother and child are just living. The grandma is cooking. The mother sometimes goes to the kitchen to help, sometimes she is sitting with us, explaining how they are cooking. They have 50 (!) different spices. Everything we eat is just delicious. We promise to get the restaurant into the Lonely Planet, although I do not quite know how. But we will try...

In the evening we cycle to the bus station where we wait for the bus but at the time of leaving there is no bus. We are told that these buses do not leave actually at the bus station but on an obscure street 500 meter further. We hurry in that direction, luckily we are in time. The bus goes to Jaipur; at six o'clock in the morning we reach the pink city. We hope to get a train ticket to Varanasi, but the trains are fully booked. So we have to get a bus. We know the way here, so we easily find the (right) bus station. We hope to get a bus ticket to Varanasi, but that also proves not to be possible. It takes a few hours before a bus leaves to Agra. There we will have to find out further.

So at 5 o'clock in the afternoon we reach Agra. We get kicked off the bus in the outskirts of Agra, the trick they use for getting tourists reliable on further local transport. In that way tourists can be dropped at expensive hotels. But they cannot harm us by these tricks. We simply ride with our bicycles into the center of Agra and we find the central bus station as it gets dark. The bus station of Agra is a desolated mess. And they cannot help us. There are no long distance buses running here. There are supposed to be a lot of bus stations in Agra and we have to get one at ten kilometer distance from here. But how to get there? We do not know where. And we cannot rely on the taxi drivers either. They are just into commission rates. One man says he can arrange train tickets. Also not a hundred per cent reliable of course, but what can we do? We come to a ticket office. We will not be able to leave Agra this evening. But tomorrow will be possible if we paynow. We have to trust these men, we have to pay in advance and come back tomorrow morning.

So we have time to visit the Taj Mahal at sunrise. Three years ago we saw the Taj from the riverside in the mid afternoon. This time I want to see the Taj from the 'official' side, where I will be able to see the Taj turning pink as the suns comes up. Willem does not want to go. Of course the Taj is a cliche but what can I say? It simply is a very beautiful structure. And indeed the pink glow over the Taj is something really special. A sight that will stick in my memory.

After a whole day of waiting, our train leaves at ten o'clock in the evening. I fall asleep easily and the next morning we ride into the town of Varanasi...

Varanasi is considered the holiest city by Hindus, situated along the holiest of rivers, the Ganges. Every year millions of people come to Varanasi to bathe spiritually and physically in the waters of the Ganges. Or to burn and throw the ashes of family members who have passed away. There are some wild stories being told about pilgrims drinking the holy river water while the dead bodies are floating by. A highly corrupted atmosphere of people who are only interested in getting as much Rupees as possible out of the tourists. This may all be true but our experience is much quieter. As we reach the ghats, the bathing places, it is still quiet. We easily find boatman where we arrange a tour. We see the pilgrims bathing but there are no dead bodies to be seen. The burning ghats make a clean impression. We are told that the burning continues for many hours, untill there is nothing but ash. That takes a lot of wood and therefore a lot of money. It takes quite some fund raising and organisation to keep the system accessible for the poor people, but they seem to manage. The ovens are burning now for over over 4.000 years without a single pause.

So I cannot be sure that there is never a body that is not burned long enough. The people who work for the ghats tell us about the difficulties of finding enough money to be able to serve the poorer people. They tell about these problems as a kind of fund raising but all in all the burning ghats make a reliable and well organized impression. The burning ghats are downstream from the bathing ghats so that the burning ghats do not provide risks for the bathing people upstream. So far the facts as far as I am able to observe in the short time. The impressions, the views, are stunning. First there is the beautiful sunrise, where the sun is reflected magnificently in the river. The river Ganges has got a long line of ghats with huge temples, an extraordinary sight. As the sun climbs above the horizon, the pilgrims come and get into the river. Men only wear shorts, the women bathe in their best saris. In fact it feels and looks as a beautiful and atmospheric ritual. Some people are actually drinking the water of the Ganges, others do not. It is already busy with swimnming and bathing people in the Ganges as we return to the land. We will have breakfast and after four days we will cycle again, to the north, in the direction of Nepal.

Northern India is flat and green and there are living an awful lot of people. Varanasi itself has got two million inhabitants, one of six (!) cities of the province of Uttar Pradesh with more than a million people. The rivers of the Sutlej, Ganges and Brahmaputra make a broad plain area from Rajasthan in the far west of India to Assam in the far east. Varanasi is in between; only three hundred kilometer northward are the first hill ranges of the Himalayas. Our road out of Varanasi is comparatively quiet for a road in a major city. The road is only two lanes wide and is certainly not the main road between Varanasi and Nepal. After we have left the city of Varanasi behind us, the road is still busy. We cycle through predominantly agricultural areas but there is a long line of villages and small cities along the road, so that we actually rather see houses and people than crops or nature. So in fact there are no natural or cultural highlights and there is not much to be seen. The people are dressed more modern than in Rajasthan. At the same time the atmosphere is less special, more 'normal'. Still I can say that it is good to be here. We have seen a lot of huge palaces, temples and 'strange' things. It feels good now to be cycling, nothing more and nothing less. And it is still nice to have the ordinary contacts with the local people in the tea houses, on the streets. And India is India: there are always little surprises. Positive or negative, this is a special country - even in less interesting areas.

It is hot and humid. At the beginning of October the monsoon usually still lingers on in this region. Today it is not raining, it is even clearer than yesterday. But within a short time there could be a rain shower like we had yesterday afternoon. More than in Rajasthan, I am sweating so much that I am completely wet all of the time. Even as we are cycling slowly on this flat terrain I have to drink all the time. Luckily there are the teahouses, where we can buy new water. And the tea itself is also important. The sugars are good in retaining the liquids. We would have drained completely without the Indian masala tea! The masala tea is sweet, spicy and delicious. It gives energy and it is good for stomach problems and other health problems. According to the Indians at least. We have found out that the more shabby the teahouse, the better the tea. There are no tourist areas, so that there are only local indian tea houses with high quality strong taste chai. The nicest teahouse is run by a Nepali man who used to cycle in his home country. He shows us a very old bicycle. 'This is a bad place', he excuses himself, 'but what can we do?'. He does not have the financial means to make improvements. But according to me this is not a bad place at all. Poor probably, but the people do whatever they can to fight their way out of poverty.

In the morning the cycling stage is quite interesting with small lakes and with more rural areas and less cities than yesterday. In the afternoon we cycle on the main road between Varanasi and the Nepal border and the road is busier. And the road is worse. It is full of gaps and is highly irregular. It is painful to be bumping and stumbling over the 'multi layered' road after sweating heavily the whole day. My bottom, which is already as red as a mandril and as salty as the Dead Sea, is constantly irritating because of the bumping over the road. At the end of the day we finally reach Gorakhpur, a city of around a million inhabitants and the transport hub between the east west road from Kolkatta to Delhi and the north south road from Nepal to Varanasi. Gorakhpur is just a normal Indian town, nothing more and nothing less, no big palaces or temples, it is not a holy city. Today is a festival day for the Hindus and on the main street there are some improvized neon lighted temples. A feast of colour and kitsch. A bit like Christmans in Holland.

Another flat stage. We have good pavement this time but the surroundings are not interesting. We hoped to see the Himalayas in the distance but even as we reach the Nepali border in Sunauli, there are no mountains to be seen. Only twenty kilometer from the Himalayas, the monsoon clouds effectively prevent any view. We are afraid that the mountains have gone. We will have to see tomorrow if they actually exist.

The border is extremely busy but the procedures are being executed efficiently. We are in Nepal now. A big roadblock of trucks can be circumvented by us by cycling next to the road. After four kilometer we reach Siddhartanagar, the border town of Nepal, where we find a hotel.

The weather is again monsoonal. It is already completely cloudy as we get up. We are riding on the twenty kilometer road to Butwal, the last town before the Himalayas. Here the Siddharta Highway will wind up the first hill ranges of the Himalayas to end in Pokhara, on the foot of the real Himalayas. That is where we are heading for. Only ten kilometer before Butwal we are finally distinguish the contour lines of the first hill range. The highest hills are around two thousand meter high, a quite impressive wall of hills as we are below hundred meter now.

When we ride out of Butwal the road starts climbing. One minute later we are completely surrounded by a steep mountain landscape. The valley is dark, green and narrow. Because of the ever darkening monsoonal clouds there is a strange atmosphere in the valley. We want to climb to Tansen, a small mediaevil town on the first hill range. That is a long way up. And it will be a wet day up as it finally starts raining. Raining? The sky is cracking open. The valley is shaking with the rumble of thunder and the rain comes down with drops as big as gravel. This is a serious monsoonal shower which will not be over soon. We wait untill the first storm is over. Then we continue. Sometimes we look for shelter in a teahouse and if the thunder is not too close, we continue. It takes a bit longer to climb up the hill this way but we have got the whole day and because we are still at low elevations, it is not cold. The way up is beautiful still, despite the views are taken away by clouds and rain. A few kilometer before Tansen, after a few hours, the rain suddenly stops and patches of blue sky become visible. The last kilometers up are pleasant and we reach the small town of Tansen. Below us in the valley is a bed of white clouds, surrounded by the hills. This is what the local people call the 'White Lake', an apt name for this gorgeous view. The town itself is also nice and friendly. We climb to the top of the hill range but there are no views, due to the clouds. We will have to wait to see the snowcapped mountains.

We descend through the steep streets of Tansen, back down to the Siddharta Highway. The Siddharta Highway is named after Siddharta Gautama, who was born in nearby Lumbini. The man that was born as a prince gave up his title and luxuries and became known as the Buddha since he reached enlightenment in Bodh Gaya, India. The path to enlightenment involves giving up any self-image or ego and involves the commitment of becoming an instrument or medium for the benefit of whole mankind. Crucial in the way is the realisation that there is actually not a self, there is only a choice for a self. Enlightenment is reached by completely giving up the self, by loosing all ties to worldly goods and personal ambitions. Loosing all ties to these personal aims is not the same as giving them up. Giving up these personal aims can even have contraproductive effect, for example becuase of feeling of jealousy against people who do not give up personal erathly joys. Being enlighted is a state of continued love and happiness and a complete freedom from the world of cause and effect, life and death and all the dualities that we feel all the time.

You will never get anywhere without goals in your life but I am not anywhere close to realizing a state of enlightenment. But we follow the path of Siddharta in name as we find ourselves on the Siddharta Highway to Pokhara. And that road is actually a beautiful one. The weather is splendid today, although we do not have views over the high Himalayas on the first pass. A long and spectacular way down brings us a thousand meter lower at the Kali Gandaki River.

Another ascent brings us in a new valley. There are a lot of Children in Nepal. That is a well known fact - the average age is below twenty - and clearly visible in the villages or along the road. The children are nice, friendly and sometimes they have surprisingly good social skills. I am surprised how good the Nepali people look. Nepal is supposed to be one of the poorest nations in the world but I cannot see any poverty along the Siddharta Road. I do not see fat people and I do not see any undernourished people either. There are beautiful women all around, the men look strong and healthy and so do the kids.

The landscape is also special. Everywhere we see steep rice terraces. In between are wooded areas. There is a nice atmosphere in the villages and the road is not too busy. Everything is good in fact. The best thing however is the contact with the people, especially the kids who are fighting their way to our bicycles and before our cameras with a huge enthusiasm. The Siddharta Highway really has an apt name and is one of the great fun roads of Asia to cycle. We cycle the whole day and reach Pokhara as the evening falls. It is completely dark as we are searching the Dal Lake where most of the hotels are. It is important to be close to the tourist activity because tomorrow we will arrange everything that is needed for the trekking. We want to walk the Annapurna Circuit, one of the most popular trekkings of Asia. It does not take a long time before we are surrounded by the 'real' Himalayas...