North India with born2travel.it

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"…I think of how many different aspects of India I have already seen and how many still await me. The crowded, chaotic streets of Delhi, the lice-ridden heads of children holding out their hands for a few rupees, people and cows sleeping along the pavements and on traffic islands, the blinding splendour of the Taj Mahal, people spitting and clearing their throats on night trains, the rats that come out of restaurant kitchens, the dark, piercing eyes of old men with wrinkled faces, the smell of urine and cow dung, the bare-chested, barefoot sadhus living along the ghats of Varanasi, the intriguing and mystical kamasutra sculptures at Khajuraho, saris colourful as butterflies worn by smiling women, old women crouched in their dark rooms while they cook, groups of men chatting in the street or loading their rickshaws until the wheels buckle, the smell of incense and flowers."

- Paola Pedrini -

07. 10. 2011 Gorakhpur (INDIA)

[Stefy]: We leave at 6.30 in the morning from Pokhara, in Nepal, heading for Sunauli, the border with India.

On the bus it was unbearably hot, the seats were all broken, girls were vomiting into plastic bags, and the boy sitting opposite me kept spitting out of the window. The bus stopped every twenty minutes to pick up people who found a place wherever they could: on the roof, in the aisle…

Once at the border we negotiate a lift in a four-wheel drive to the first big city: Gorakhpur.

Finally, mystical India. It was exciting to walk, with our backpacks on our shoulders, through the great gateway that announced: "Welcome to India".

I will never forget entering Gorakhpur railway station. I have never seen anything like it. Hundreds of people camped on the ground everywhere, lying asleep on their own saris, millions of insects of every kind and size pestering you, jumping on you, buzzing around your head, you felt them everywhere: inside your T-shirt, in your trousers… not to mention the stench… everyone urinated wherever they happened to be, like animals, without restraint or shame. But we have other things to think about. Although we have travelled all day, a night in a sleeper carriage still awaits us, to Varanasi, the mythical Benares. We are a little worried.

08. 10. 2011 Varanasi (INDIA)

[Stefy]: Walking down the great staircase and finding myself in front of the Ganges gave me an overwhelming emotion. I couldn't believe I was really there, at that very river I had seen in a thousand documentaries. The water was filthy but children were diving into it to play, while others washed their bodies and their clothes. Three girls were joking serenely a metre from a corpse floating after cremation; many families don't have enough money to have the whole body cremated, so even a half-scorched one is thrown into the river… But what really matters is freeing the soul and giving the spirit to the sacred river.

Cows in the street, monkeys jumping on your head, rats running over your feet, dogs dozing sprawled out, cow dung everywhere, rubbish, beggars, cripples, lepers… misery, poverty, sadness… India is a world apart, it is confusion, it is mysticism, it is chaos; you have to savour it in small sips if you want to know it in depth and then fall in love with it. Today was only the first day, but already so full that now I need to switch my brain off a bit to take in everything that still shines in my eyes. 09. 10. 2011 Varanasi (INDIA)

Today we spent the whole morning sitting on the ghats watching the daily life of these people... 10. 10. 2011 Varanasi (INDIA)

The alarm rings at 4.45. A few minutes later, together with our French friends Marion and Aurelien, we are already on the street. I can't believe that at 5 in the morning there are already so many people around and in full activity.

The sun is about to rise and we drift silently in our little boat; no one speaks, we watch the sacred rites of the Hindu faithful bathing in the waters of "Mother Ganga".

Slowly we approach the main cremation ghat: the Assi Ghat… Any comment is superfluous, but in the late morning we decide to go back, and this time by land…

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