Varanasi - 3/14/1999
| TRAVELS WITH MOM - Table of Contents |
Our first email from India, sent from Varanasi on March 14, 1999:
Shortly after we last sent e-mail from Katmandu, I discovered that half my traveler's checks - the ones I had stashed in my backpack - were missing. Mom and I then realized that we had probably been ripped off by the staff of the hotel where we stayed in Cambodia. The details aren't worth getting into, but we lost her new binoculars as well as the traveler's checks. We filed a report at the Katmandu American Express office on Thursday, and they said to check back with them in 24 hours.
Friday morning, our last day in Nepal, we went to the Durbar Squares of Bhaktapur and Patan. We also went to the Tibetan refugee camp, where they weave carpets, and we watched all the steps from making and dyeing the thread through the finished carpets.
Then we returned to the American Express office, where they said there was no response on our claim yet. They told us to see the office in Varanasi (India) the next day.
We flew to Varanasi at 3:00 Friday afternoon, and were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves in seats 1A and 1C. We also ran into our friend Judy (whom we met at Tiger Tops) on that flight. She was returning from a meeting in Bangkok to meet up with her traveling companion Maggie in Varanasi.
At the Varanasi airport, I got my first taste of the Indian approach to things. The lines for immigration were total chaos, and you had to push back through the crowd after getting your visa stamped. It was as if nobody had ever given an moment's thought to how to organize things, and baggage claim was even worse - a dense crowd of men fighting to reach the single conveyor, from which suitcases were pouring off the end into a pile that couldn't be seen from more than a few feet away because of the crowd. After a few minutes of politely trying to maneuver through the crowd and being pushed around by dark little men in moustaches, I figured out how to proceed. You have to be a rude self-centered SOB, and I was, pushing guys out of the way and then carrying our bags over my head back through the crowd to where Mom was waiting with our carry-on baggage. By the time we made it to the front curb, I was exhausted and annoyed, and we had been in India all of about 20 minutes.
Maggie was waiting with Dada, a taxi driver who accompanied us throughout our stay in Varanasi. Dada has been very helpful. He works for Sita, a worldwide travel agency, and he has been with them since 1981. He has many funny sayings, such as "Varanasi is the city of learning and burning" and "I want you to be 125% satisfied." He knows the city very well, and has taken us to the main attractions plus many places where we were the only tourists in sight.
Saturday morning we rode a boat up and down the Ganges at dawn, and it was everything we expected. We watched the dhobi-wallahs cleaning clothes, people bathing and worshipping the rising sun, and of course the cremations along the shore. Two typical sights: three crows picking chunks of bloody flesh off a cow corpse floating down the river, and a smiling family crowded around the body of a woman laying on a stack of firewood. They pulled the veil from her face, the photographer snapped a shot, then they covered her back up and started the fire.
Later we went to the American Express office, and they claimed to know nothing of our claim and said we must file a report at the Varanasi police station regarding the theft in Cambodia that we had already reported in Nepal. I was starting to get just a little bit angry, but Dada came to our rescue. He drove us to meet with "an influential man who would like to help us."
After parking the car, we walked down dark narrow walkways to meet a man in a Muslim cap who invited us into his office. He sat cross-legged on the floor while Mom and I sat in padded chairs, surrounded by mountains of raw and finished silk, with servants bringing us tea, and he said, "Please explain for me your situation."
I explained everything, and within minutes I was on the phone with a man at the American Express office in Delhi who promptly handled everything and arranged for my replacement traveler's checks to meet us in Agra tomorrow.
Well, as John Lord probably knows from this description, we had met the "Sari King" of Varanasi. Before we left, he had also confirmed our train tickets, made us three custom silk shirts, and sold us some saris.
Today we went to Sarnath, heard some great first-hand Dalai Lama stories, spent an hour at a house in a small village (Airhe) where some people had never seen an American in person before, and toured some markets, but I'm out of time, so that's all for now.
- ### -
Shortly after we last sent e-mail from Katmandu, I discovered that half my traveler's checks - the ones I had stashed in my backpack - were missing. Mom and I then realized that we had probably been ripped off by the staff of the hotel where we stayed in Cambodia. The details aren't worth getting into, but we lost her new binoculars as well as the traveler's checks. We filed a report at the Katmandu American Express office on Thursday, and they said to check back with them in 24 hours.
Friday morning, our last day in Nepal, we went to the Durbar Squares of Bhaktapur and Patan. We also went to the Tibetan refugee camp, where they weave carpets, and we watched all the steps from making and dyeing the thread through the finished carpets.
Then we returned to the American Express office, where they said there was no response on our claim yet. They told us to see the office in Varanasi (India) the next day.
We flew to Varanasi at 3:00 Friday afternoon, and were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves in seats 1A and 1C. We also ran into our friend Judy (whom we met at Tiger Tops) on that flight. She was returning from a meeting in Bangkok to meet up with her traveling companion Maggie in Varanasi.
At the Varanasi airport, I got my first taste of the Indian approach to things. The lines for immigration were total chaos, and you had to push back through the crowd after getting your visa stamped. It was as if nobody had ever given an moment's thought to how to organize things, and baggage claim was even worse - a dense crowd of men fighting to reach the single conveyor, from which suitcases were pouring off the end into a pile that couldn't be seen from more than a few feet away because of the crowd. After a few minutes of politely trying to maneuver through the crowd and being pushed around by dark little men in moustaches, I figured out how to proceed. You have to be a rude self-centered SOB, and I was, pushing guys out of the way and then carrying our bags over my head back through the crowd to where Mom was waiting with our carry-on baggage. By the time we made it to the front curb, I was exhausted and annoyed, and we had been in India all of about 20 minutes.
Maggie was waiting with Dada, a taxi driver who accompanied us throughout our stay in Varanasi. Dada has been very helpful. He works for Sita, a worldwide travel agency, and he has been with them since 1981. He has many funny sayings, such as "Varanasi is the city of learning and burning" and "I want you to be 125% satisfied." He knows the city very well, and has taken us to the main attractions plus many places where we were the only tourists in sight.
Saturday morning we rode a boat up and down the Ganges at dawn, and it was everything we expected. We watched the dhobi-wallahs cleaning clothes, people bathing and worshipping the rising sun, and of course the cremations along the shore. Two typical sights: three crows picking chunks of bloody flesh off a cow corpse floating down the river, and a smiling family crowded around the body of a woman laying on a stack of firewood. They pulled the veil from her face, the photographer snapped a shot, then they covered her back up and started the fire.
Later we went to the American Express office, and they claimed to know nothing of our claim and said we must file a report at the Varanasi police station regarding the theft in Cambodia that we had already reported in Nepal. I was starting to get just a little bit angry, but Dada came to our rescue. He drove us to meet with "an influential man who would like to help us."
After parking the car, we walked down dark narrow walkways to meet a man in a Muslim cap who invited us into his office. He sat cross-legged on the floor while Mom and I sat in padded chairs, surrounded by mountains of raw and finished silk, with servants bringing us tea, and he said, "Please explain for me your situation."
I explained everything, and within minutes I was on the phone with a man at the American Express office in Delhi who promptly handled everything and arranged for my replacement traveler's checks to meet us in Agra tomorrow.
Well, as John Lord probably knows from this description, we had met the "Sari King" of Varanasi. Before we left, he had also confirmed our train tickets, made us three custom silk shirts, and sold us some saris.
Today we went to Sarnath, heard some great first-hand Dalai Lama stories, spent an hour at a house in a small village (Airhe) where some people had never seen an American in person before, and toured some markets, but I'm out of time, so that's all for now.
- ### -
/// thoughts on the above; see callouts in the original web version
After we had successfully arranged for my missing traveler's checks to be returned, Dada drove us to a temple and showed me how to give thanks to Shiva for watching over us.
Mom told Dada that she would like to see a typical Indian home in Varanasi, and he arranged for us to visit a friend of his who lived in Airhe, on the northern outskirts of Varanasi. Dada's friend's wife graciously made tea for us, and we talked with them through Dada as our interpreter, because they spoke no English and we spoke no Hindi.
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