DISCLAIMER -
It is possible that this blog may come across as slightly less upbeat, and slightly more self-pitying than some of my other entries. This is because I am feeling slightly less upbeat and more self-pitying than I was when I wrote those other entries, because for the last 4 days, I have spent the majority of my time in bed, or in my bathroom (and I use this word loosely) contending with the mother of all stomach bugs. I have not eaten in days (at least nothing that I have successfully retained in my system) and feel incredibly weak and woozy right now, along with a full body ache that will not budge, a head ache that makes me wince each time I move my head, stomach cramps that would fell an ox and the unfortunate situation where my entire digestive system is trying to escape into the toilet. Again, this word I use loosely, meaning hole in the floor, in a dark room with no electricity, but, thank god, a working tap. I have no idea what has caused this episode, but I can tell you that at this point I am well and truly fed up with it, and am feeling that maybe I did something very bad in a previous life and am being karmically retributed...who knows?!
The only, but quite significant up side to this, is that I had decided to extend my stay in Varanasi seeing as I liked it so much. If I hadn't, on Tuesday night I would have been on a train to Chitrakut, and I cannot even imagine how horrendous that journey would have been. Of course, as it stands I haven't seen any more of Varanasi, and am gutted that I have missed out on some pretty famous temples here, but at least I have been somewhere with my own room and attached bathroom, free to wallow in peace. To be fair to me, I actually think I have remained remarkably positive throughout this trauma (and trust me, it has been traumatic); I have only cried twice in 5 days of feeling unwell, and those who have experienced me during an illness will testify that this is a lot lower than my usual average. I have also been focusing on the positives, the almost guaranteed weight loss for one, and money that I have saved by not eating/leaving my room for 4 days for another. Of course, I would trade these in a second for the sweet sweet feeling of a healthy stomach, especially considering the fact that today is the day that I have to leave my (relatively) comfortable guest house and get on a 12 hour train to Agra. Before which, I have to somehow get to the station, which involves a 20 minute walk to where the rickshaws are (these quaint narrow streets in Old Town Varanasi are very pretty but not overly practical) carrying who knows how many kilos of ineptly packed luggage, on a completely empty stomach, in about 33 degrees sunshine. Could be interesting. My plan (if you can call it that) is to dose myself up on glucose tablets and plough on through, at least once I'm at the station I can relax a little. I just really really hope that I am feeling better by the time I reach Agra; if I have to miss out on the Taj then I think I might scream! - if I have the energy that is. I'm doing all I can though and am armed with immodium, electrolyte powders, glucose tablets, copious amounts of water and flat coke. This last tastes very strongly of nostalgia and reminds me of the days when I was off primary school sick and would go into Granny Next-Door's house. Unfortunately, there is no one here to whisk the coke for me, to wrap me in a blanket in front of the fire and Neighbours, or to give me highly inappropriate glasses of wine or sherry with my lunch, and, although Granny Not-Next-Door has a sort of ironic ring to it, Granny-In-Another-Continent sounds too depressing for words, so I won't even contemplate it!
But anyway, enough whining (for a few paragraphs at least). Before this illness struck me down I was having the most amazing time in Varanasi and had come from some more amazing times in Bodhgaya. I guess I should start there; chronology always seems to be a good structure to fall back on when documenting what I've been up to, otherwise I feel I'll miss things out!
So, Bodhgaya. Before I begin I guess I should make it plain that I completely failed my one mission in Bodhgaya - to become enlightened. Turns out it took Buddha such a long time for a reason, and on this trip I have neither the patience nor the time to sit in a cave for 6 years, starving myself, and anyway, in the end it turned out that the 'middle way' was the way to go, and I reckon I'm more cut out for that!
As I said, I stayed in a beautiful Tibetan Monastery called Karma, where they had an amazing, huge and intricately painted prayer wheel - wish I could have understood what it said on it! I had only been there for about 10 minutes and was about to have a shower and go to sleep for a few hours (I arrived at 6am), when this incredibly enthusiastic Buddhist guy turned up and started effervescing all about how much he loves foreigners and making them happy, and how he frequently takes people who stay at his monastery (which I was) on tours of the surrounding areas. He seemed harmless enough and there was no way I was going to pay for an official tour, so I agreed that if he gave me 20 minutes to shower, then I would go see Bodhgaya with him. I'm glad I did. He took me to follow in the footsteps of Lord Siddharta's journey to Enlightenment, although our journey was much more accelerated! We started in a cave in a mountain, about 40 minutes out of Bodhgaya. This was where Siddharta spent 6 years fasting and craving Enlightenment, but it kept eluding him due to the distractions of local monkeys. The cave was a really special place...so tiny and with a golden statue of Buddha where he had sat. Felt incredible to be sitting in the same cave as he had for so long...not often you can say you are in the same place as somebody as influential as Buddha! We then went to the tree where he sat unsuccessfully, to the ruins of the palace where the Princess who gave him rice milk and revealed to him the secret of the middle way lived, to a small village temple he visited and eventually to the Mayabodhi Temple and the the world famous bodhi tree, where he eventually achieved Enlightenment. It's not the same tree, but has grown from a cutting of a tree in Sri Lanka, which is said to have grown from a cutting of the original tree; so technically it's a clone and I guess it's then a matter of personal judgement and scientific ethics if you would say whether it's the same or not!
I really enjoyed the journey and learnt a lot of Buddhist history (sorry, I don't have the energy for a history lesson right now), and was also glad to see some of the countryside around Bodhgaya, which was so beautiful. After being in the cave temple we climbed to the top of the mountain it was in, and although I'm pretty sure this led to a bit of sunstroke on my part, the views from the top were incredible. There were paddy fields as far as the eye could see, and the occasional temple jutting out of the landscape and it was so quiet. I hadn't realised just how noisy Kolkata had been until I was sat there in utter silence, although I have to say, there is a certain beauty to Kolkata's noise too. My favourite bit of the journey though, and my favourite bit of Bodhgaya was the Mayabodhi Temple and tree. It was a beautiful building, but it wasn't just that. I think it was the atmosphere, created by so many Buddhist pilgrims, of all ages and backgrounds, coming to sit and worship, or maybe just contemplate this tree. I went back there in the evening and there were so many people sat chanting mantras together in white robes and sarees, and it was a wonderful place to sit and soak up your surrounding; so peaceful!
My second day in Bodhgaya started with 6am meditation downstairs in my temple, although I didn't meditate, just spent an hour trying not prevent myself from being bitten without disturbing anyone else meditating! I really enjoyed it though, and found the mantras they chanted and occasional music the played pretty enchanting. The rest of my day was spent wandering round temples, until 5pm when I went to what I understood to be a meditation organised especially for tourists. Due to five requests to have my picture taken, I was a little late arriving, and so by the time I arrived everyone was in full swing, and as far as I could tell, I was the only novice there! Several times the Japanese master had to come over to tell me what to do and I felt like such a numpty! After the session though, I got chatting to two American guys, who explained that although the session is open to everyone, it is dominated by tourists who are living in Bodhgaya on special meditation courses, and so clearly have a big advantage over me! I ended up going for dinner with these guys and they told me all about what they are doing (basically paying $20,000 for four months residential meditation lessons) which was interesting, but not something you'd catch me doing in a hurry...not unless I become a millionaire anyway!
So that was the end of my time on Bodhgaya, and all that remained was to catch my bus to Varanasi; a bus I was assured would take 3/4 hours and would be easier than a train. Well I beg to differ. 9 hours in a tin can, wih no AC, squashed into 2 seats with three people, frequently stopping for an hour at a time in the midday sun to cram in yet more passengers, driving through the most abject rural poverty I have ever seen, with no opportunity to go the toilet for risk of losing my precious seat. As I hope you can imagine...it was hell. At one point we stopped in one place for over an hour at 12pm and I honestly thought i was going to faint - my breathing became pretty laboured and I was seeing spots in front of my eyes - but luckily a boy came up to the window offering to get drinks for people and he brought me a blissfully cold Thumbs Up - an Indian coke. Thank goodness he did or else I think I'd have ended up in an Indian hospital!
When I got to my guest house in Varanasi everything became infinitely better. In face, I am going to write a little bit straight from my journal so you can get a sense of the wonder I was feeling when I wrote it (and that's what this blog is all about right?...)
"Am having a magical experience right now; I'm sitting completely alone on the terrace of Vishnu Rest House overlooking the Ganges. It's 6.30pm and everyone is congregating at a ghat nearby for a puja ceremony. For the last twenty minutes I have sat and watched countless boats go past - some motorised, some not - and in between them are scores of floating candles, being pulled along by the current. Every now and then a cluster of about 20 float by and I can watch as they gradually disperse, and eventually float along independently. The moon is glowing, I'm drinking chai, and I cannot believe how lucky I am right now, this very second. This is so beyond anything I had imagined and so overwhelming, it's the actual flippin' Ganges for goodness sake!"
I'm glad to say that the rest of the time I have been here the river has not lost its effect on me...it really is an amazing place to be, either to walk alongside, or go in a boat along, or just sit on my terrace and look at. In fact I find it so mesmerising I wanted to stay and do those things another few days, but clearly some cosmic force is against that happening. Safe to say, at some point in the future I will return to Varanasi and do it properly, temples and all, it just wasn't meant to be this time. I have so much more to say about my time here pre-illness, but I think I am going to make the most of my last 20 minutes before check out time to have a quick lie down and use the 'toilet'...who knows how long it will take me to get to the train station!
Lots of love, as always...please send me well wishes!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
It is possible that this blog may come across as slightly less upbeat, and slightly more self-pitying than some of my other entries. This is because I am feeling slightly less upbeat and more self-pitying than I was when I wrote those other entries, because for the last 4 days, I have spent the majority of my time in bed, or in my bathroom (and I use this word loosely) contending with the mother of all stomach bugs. I have not eaten in days (at least nothing that I have successfully retained in my system) and feel incredibly weak and woozy right now, along with a full body ache that will not budge, a head ache that makes me wince each time I move my head, stomach cramps that would fell an ox and the unfortunate situation where my entire digestive system is trying to escape into the toilet. Again, this word I use loosely, meaning hole in the floor, in a dark room with no electricity, but, thank god, a working tap. I have no idea what has caused this episode, but I can tell you that at this point I am well and truly fed up with it, and am feeling that maybe I did something very bad in a previous life and am being karmically retributed...who knows?!
The only, but quite significant up side to this, is that I had decided to extend my stay in Varanasi seeing as I liked it so much. If I hadn't, on Tuesday night I would have been on a train to Chitrakut, and I cannot even imagine how horrendous that journey would have been. Of course, as it stands I haven't seen any more of Varanasi, and am gutted that I have missed out on some pretty famous temples here, but at least I have been somewhere with my own room and attached bathroom, free to wallow in peace. To be fair to me, I actually think I have remained remarkably positive throughout this trauma (and trust me, it has been traumatic); I have only cried twice in 5 days of feeling unwell, and those who have experienced me during an illness will testify that this is a lot lower than my usual average. I have also been focusing on the positives, the almost guaranteed weight loss for one, and money that I have saved by not eating/leaving my room for 4 days for another. Of course, I would trade these in a second for the sweet sweet feeling of a healthy stomach, especially considering the fact that today is the day that I have to leave my (relatively) comfortable guest house and get on a 12 hour train to Agra. Before which, I have to somehow get to the station, which involves a 20 minute walk to where the rickshaws are (these quaint narrow streets in Old Town Varanasi are very pretty but not overly practical) carrying who knows how many kilos of ineptly packed luggage, on a completely empty stomach, in about 33 degrees sunshine. Could be interesting. My plan (if you can call it that) is to dose myself up on glucose tablets and plough on through, at least once I'm at the station I can relax a little. I just really really hope that I am feeling better by the time I reach Agra; if I have to miss out on the Taj then I think I might scream! - if I have the energy that is. I'm doing all I can though and am armed with immodium, electrolyte powders, glucose tablets, copious amounts of water and flat coke. This last tastes very strongly of nostalgia and reminds me of the days when I was off primary school sick and would go into Granny Next-Door's house. Unfortunately, there is no one here to whisk the coke for me, to wrap me in a blanket in front of the fire and Neighbours, or to give me highly inappropriate glasses of wine or sherry with my lunch, and, although Granny Not-Next-Door has a sort of ironic ring to it, Granny-In-Another-Continent sounds too depressing for words, so I won't even contemplate it!
But anyway, enough whining (for a few paragraphs at least). Before this illness struck me down I was having the most amazing time in Varanasi and had come from some more amazing times in Bodhgaya. I guess I should start there; chronology always seems to be a good structure to fall back on when documenting what I've been up to, otherwise I feel I'll miss things out!
So, Bodhgaya. Before I begin I guess I should make it plain that I completely failed my one mission in Bodhgaya - to become enlightened. Turns out it took Buddha such a long time for a reason, and on this trip I have neither the patience nor the time to sit in a cave for 6 years, starving myself, and anyway, in the end it turned out that the 'middle way' was the way to go, and I reckon I'm more cut out for that!
As I said, I stayed in a beautiful Tibetan Monastery called Karma, where they had an amazing, huge and intricately painted prayer wheel - wish I could have understood what it said on it! I had only been there for about 10 minutes and was about to have a shower and go to sleep for a few hours (I arrived at 6am), when this incredibly enthusiastic Buddhist guy turned up and started effervescing all about how much he loves foreigners and making them happy, and how he frequently takes people who stay at his monastery (which I was) on tours of the surrounding areas. He seemed harmless enough and there was no way I was going to pay for an official tour, so I agreed that if he gave me 20 minutes to shower, then I would go see Bodhgaya with him. I'm glad I did. He took me to follow in the footsteps of Lord Siddharta's journey to Enlightenment, although our journey was much more accelerated! We started in a cave in a mountain, about 40 minutes out of Bodhgaya. This was where Siddharta spent 6 years fasting and craving Enlightenment, but it kept eluding him due to the distractions of local monkeys. The cave was a really special place...so tiny and with a golden statue of Buddha where he had sat. Felt incredible to be sitting in the same cave as he had for so long...not often you can say you are in the same place as somebody as influential as Buddha! We then went to the tree where he sat unsuccessfully, to the ruins of the palace where the Princess who gave him rice milk and revealed to him the secret of the middle way lived, to a small village temple he visited and eventually to the Mayabodhi Temple and the the world famous bodhi tree, where he eventually achieved Enlightenment. It's not the same tree, but has grown from a cutting of a tree in Sri Lanka, which is said to have grown from a cutting of the original tree; so technically it's a clone and I guess it's then a matter of personal judgement and scientific ethics if you would say whether it's the same or not!
I really enjoyed the journey and learnt a lot of Buddhist history (sorry, I don't have the energy for a history lesson right now), and was also glad to see some of the countryside around Bodhgaya, which was so beautiful. After being in the cave temple we climbed to the top of the mountain it was in, and although I'm pretty sure this led to a bit of sunstroke on my part, the views from the top were incredible. There were paddy fields as far as the eye could see, and the occasional temple jutting out of the landscape and it was so quiet. I hadn't realised just how noisy Kolkata had been until I was sat there in utter silence, although I have to say, there is a certain beauty to Kolkata's noise too. My favourite bit of the journey though, and my favourite bit of Bodhgaya was the Mayabodhi Temple and tree. It was a beautiful building, but it wasn't just that. I think it was the atmosphere, created by so many Buddhist pilgrims, of all ages and backgrounds, coming to sit and worship, or maybe just contemplate this tree. I went back there in the evening and there were so many people sat chanting mantras together in white robes and sarees, and it was a wonderful place to sit and soak up your surrounding; so peaceful!
My second day in Bodhgaya started with 6am meditation downstairs in my temple, although I didn't meditate, just spent an hour trying not prevent myself from being bitten without disturbing anyone else meditating! I really enjoyed it though, and found the mantras they chanted and occasional music the played pretty enchanting. The rest of my day was spent wandering round temples, until 5pm when I went to what I understood to be a meditation organised especially for tourists. Due to five requests to have my picture taken, I was a little late arriving, and so by the time I arrived everyone was in full swing, and as far as I could tell, I was the only novice there! Several times the Japanese master had to come over to tell me what to do and I felt like such a numpty! After the session though, I got chatting to two American guys, who explained that although the session is open to everyone, it is dominated by tourists who are living in Bodhgaya on special meditation courses, and so clearly have a big advantage over me! I ended up going for dinner with these guys and they told me all about what they are doing (basically paying $20,000 for four months residential meditation lessons) which was interesting, but not something you'd catch me doing in a hurry...not unless I become a millionaire anyway!
So that was the end of my time on Bodhgaya, and all that remained was to catch my bus to Varanasi; a bus I was assured would take 3/4 hours and would be easier than a train. Well I beg to differ. 9 hours in a tin can, wih no AC, squashed into 2 seats with three people, frequently stopping for an hour at a time in the midday sun to cram in yet more passengers, driving through the most abject rural poverty I have ever seen, with no opportunity to go the toilet for risk of losing my precious seat. As I hope you can imagine...it was hell. At one point we stopped in one place for over an hour at 12pm and I honestly thought i was going to faint - my breathing became pretty laboured and I was seeing spots in front of my eyes - but luckily a boy came up to the window offering to get drinks for people and he brought me a blissfully cold Thumbs Up - an Indian coke. Thank goodness he did or else I think I'd have ended up in an Indian hospital!
When I got to my guest house in Varanasi everything became infinitely better. In face, I am going to write a little bit straight from my journal so you can get a sense of the wonder I was feeling when I wrote it (and that's what this blog is all about right?...)
"Am having a magical experience right now; I'm sitting completely alone on the terrace of Vishnu Rest House overlooking the Ganges. It's 6.30pm and everyone is congregating at a ghat nearby for a puja ceremony. For the last twenty minutes I have sat and watched countless boats go past - some motorised, some not - and in between them are scores of floating candles, being pulled along by the current. Every now and then a cluster of about 20 float by and I can watch as they gradually disperse, and eventually float along independently. The moon is glowing, I'm drinking chai, and I cannot believe how lucky I am right now, this very second. This is so beyond anything I had imagined and so overwhelming, it's the actual flippin' Ganges for goodness sake!"
I'm glad to say that the rest of the time I have been here the river has not lost its effect on me...it really is an amazing place to be, either to walk alongside, or go in a boat along, or just sit on my terrace and look at. In fact I find it so mesmerising I wanted to stay and do those things another few days, but clearly some cosmic force is against that happening. Safe to say, at some point in the future I will return to Varanasi and do it properly, temples and all, it just wasn't meant to be this time. I have so much more to say about my time here pre-illness, but I think I am going to make the most of my last 20 minutes before check out time to have a quick lie down and use the 'toilet'...who knows how long it will take me to get to the train station!
Lots of love, as always...please send me well wishes!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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