Lessons on wealth in Bodhgaya

With a few extra days in Kolkata before it was time to meet dad, I decided to make a little circular tour to Bodhgaya and Bhubaneswar before returning for a final night in Kolkata to see the puja festival.

Bodhgaya is the place where after many many years meditation Siddhartha Guatama achieved enlightenment sitting under the Bhodi tree and became Buddha. I arrived off the overnight train at 5am so by the time I'd found and taken a shared autorickshaw for the halfhour journey to town it was broad daylight but still coolish. There were a few people around on the main promenade outside the Mahabodhi Temple but it wasn't busy yet and for the first time ever the street vendors 'shop music' was actually a real addition to the atmosphere! The were playing some sort of Buddhist medition in a very deep voice with a very slow style (which of course they were tyring to sell on CD). It gave the affect of a very peaceful meditative place which is exactly the main attraction of Bodhgaya.

I didn't get far before a young boy, Soni, asked me where I was going and then accompanied me in the opposite direction to the hostel I was seeking. On the way I met his teacher Rajesh and when I was unsatisfied with the hotel they both took me to the Tibetan Monastry where I found a basic but airy room for a good price (though the Monks where not very engaging). I then found myself in the unusual position of being ready to explore my surrounds at 6:30am! Rajesh and Soni took me through the Mahabhodi temple and grounds, which are free to enter and a wonderful place to wander barefoot without my blistering sandals. The grounds are quiet, large and green with further plans for expansion. This was a stark but pleasing contrast to the noise, busyness and filth of Kolkata.

Having seen the main local sight in my first two hours I then had two whole days to spend relaxing in this small sanctury of a town. For a moment I thought I might be bored but Rajesh and his friends showed me an amazing time. On the first day he took me on his motorbike to the cave where Siddhartha had meditated for six years before coming to Bodhgaya. More importantly he took me to the school where he volunteers as a teacher. There I met it's founder and director Laxman who like Rajesh is still in his early to mid 20s. You see Bodhgaya despite it's status as worldwide Buddhist pilgramage site and many well resourced temples and monastries is still part of one of India's porest states - Bihar. Rajesh who's father died when he was young was lucky to find a sponsor in the form an american pilgram who paid for his education. He now studies Japanese part time and considers it his duty to help education others who are less fortunate. I know less of Laxman's story but he was obviously concerned enough about the lack of a school in the district to establish one and tour local villages encouraging parents to send their children for free. After a few years they have three basic classrooms and a boarding house for several local orphans. Amazing to see what enterprising local young people can do for the local community! It puts my own efforts in an appropriately humbling light. Then of course they need more resources - how can I help? Their current project is to obtain a computer for the school. They need US$500 and someone else already contributed 200. I decided after knowing them only a few hours to contribute another $100. This doesn't seem much now (though it sounds more when you say it as 4000 Rupees) and part of me would have given more. But a part of me was very hesitant and concerned about giving money to people I'd just met. I was not prepared for the rude shock of realising how wealthy we are and therefore our obligation to help even though this might mean freely giving to near strangers.

The lesson was reinforeced the next day when Rajesh's friend Motu took me to his village for breakfast and school me the sewing school some Belgians had set up for the local women. Women here are not allowed to work in the town by themselves but sewing is something they can do independantly from home - if they have the skills. Motu would like to purchase a third sewing maching (4000 Rupees) so that the dozen or more women can each have more practice time. Later he took me to a village of the untouchables (who of course look no different to any other poor Indian - I always had images of lepers or something). The village has no tap and they constantly have to walk 3km to get water. The cost for installing a tap is 9000 Rupees or about $250 (or possibly 15000 if the digging requires a machine). After wrestling all day with my conservative instincts and stingy nature I eventually decided to provide the money for the tap. Thank you to all those who told me that coming to India was about letting go!

I should also say that I had a great two days just hanging out with Rajesh, Motu and friends and touring around learning about each other. Requests for money were not the dominant part of our exchange, just the most signficant learning for me. There wasn't really any pressure being put by them, the situations spoke for themselves! None of them are soliciting for themselves, but on behalf of others who couldn't even ask. They are community activists and these money requests are part of life for them. So while they said thanks, none were ecstatic at my gifts - so I must learn to give not for the sake of thanks but for the sake of giving. Yet a strong bond was formed in our time together. For them I was more than just another tourist, but a friend and we have spoken a few times by phone in the days since.

Finally I must point out that if anyone is feeling geneous, there are still needs of A$100 for a sewing machine and US$200 for a computer for the children. I remain in contact and can facilitate any transfers or provide more information.

Kolkata

So here I am in the city of Mother Teresa and after three days I think I am getting used to it. It's taken a bit of time to settle into the way of things and there's still plenty to work out.

The practicalities are one thing and once you understand the system it's not difficult to use. The biggest psychological adjustments are to the traffic and the lack of privacy. Kolkata is 5.0 million people (or 7.8 million, wikipedia seems to have two different figures) cramed into 185 square kilometres. The Melbourne I'm used to is 3.8 million people spread across 8800 square kilometres. In density terms Kolkata has 27,000 per square km compared to Melbourne's 1,500 - so no wonder I'm noticing the crowds! Depsite that, it appears that Melbourne has about 4 times the number of sky scrapers, which I guess says something about the comparative wealth of the two cities. In every day terms this doesn't necessarily mean it's a permanent squash of bodies. This is still the exception rather than the rule but just imagine that the small roads are like queen vic market on a busy morning with motor bikes riding through the crowd. It's difficult to find a place to sit down anywhere in public because all the vaguely clean places are already taken. The thing about the traffic is not really that it's unruly or crazy. I actually prefer it's style which essentially a form of anarchy that favours maximum efficiency over safety and pleasantness. The thing that gets me is the constant blowing of horns from bikes and cars trying to maximise that efficiency by pushing people out of the way with their really loud horns. Thank God for quiet hotel rooms - the only real privacy I've found. I guess the large Midain (similar in size and location to melb's alexandra gardens would be a great place to hang out most times of the year. But during the current monsoon season they're mostly a bog growing plenty of lush grass and their aren't enough horses to keep it under control. I guess that when it does dry out enough to sit on/in it will also become crowded but one can only hope.

So apart from sorting out the practicalities I've been getting a few essential Indian experiences under my belt. Day 1 involved throwing up food I'd eaten at a street stall - so I'm sticking to restaurants for the moment. Day 2 involved getting completely drenched in the monsoon rain. I think that rain would have to top even what I experienced in Papua New Guinea as a kid. The drops are just so big and so closely bunched together it's surprising the resulting flood was only ankle to knee deep. Getting soaked was actually rather fun and a I swapped a few grins with other drenched foreigners caught in the same predicament. It's still 30 degrees of course and being wet is fine, it's getting cold that's the problem - but not here. The locals though, are over it or perhaps they just foresaw the coming flood so they don't tend to mess about or just find shelter and wait it out. So with a lot of things closing down my adventure became how to get back to my hotel through the flood. I wasn't keen on wading through it over the uneven roads, even if my shoes were already soaked through. I managed to get most of the way via a few detours before getting stuck provided the perfect excuse to hire a rickshaw runner to take me through the final flooded stretch. Aparently Kolkata is the last bastion of the rickshaw pulled by foot, and they are not expected to last becuase they slow down the traffic to much. They will be a loss for those who use them for carrying large loads but there are cycle rickshaws (now becoming more numerous in London) and auto-rickshaws to take their place. So that pretty much ate day 2, along with an evening walk to find the flood had mostly subsided. Chalk it all up to experience, oh and I've now purchased an umbrella and a pair of sandals :-)

No rain since though, so I'm not sure what's happened to the idea of day after day monsoon rain. I understand it's a bit of a problem actually, with a lack of water meaning less hydro power and more power failures. However I don't think they can claim this for the day 3 city wide power failure. This resulted in some places shutting for the day and others just adding to the general noise and smell by starting up their generators. Interesting side note here is that there is certainly some consciousness about conservation of energy use, not anymore than Australia but it's at least a recognised issue. From the Australian press you'd think India (and China) were just recalcitrantly burning fossil fuel. However various billboards indicate that the government here has tried to educate the public and seek behavior change and I guess the simple fact that energy is unreliable here contributes to an attitude among at least some people that energy shouldn't just be blindly wasted.

The other essential experience is getting ripped off on various purchases. However while the discrepencies are in the order of 100% the actual amounts are so small I don't really mind. The difference in wealth is so great it's impossible for me to estimate how much things are worth here simply based on my Australian knowledge. They need our money though so I just see this as contributing to the levelling process - as long as it's not just up to me though!

Anyway that probably gives you enough of an idea of my Kolkata experience. I'm trying to make train bookings to visit Bodhgaya and Orissa in the next few days before meeting Dad on Tuesday. However the population density means you normally have to book trains well ahead, so it's touch and go and pay a bit extra at the moment - all part of the adventure!

India Intro

So the next big trip is India with a bit of hiking in Nepal thrown in. Not my first prefence trip but somewhere I've always wanted to go and the timing worked with finishing my and being able to meet Dad in Tripura and my good friend Cara in Dehli.

The basic plan is to start in Kolkata, meet dad in Tripura, travel with him to Darjeeling, Varanasi, Jabalpur, Agra and Dehli. Then depending on what Cara's up to head to Nepal before coming back to Kashmir, Rajastan and work my way down the coast to Kerala and around to Chenai to fly home. Trip length is three months. Fixed tickets are new since I travelled to Europe, a result of increased competition and prices coming down a long way, meaning you now have to pay for extra's like flexibility.

So I hope I'm up for the adventure it's certainly going to be and I hope you'll enjoy hearing the stories.

PS I never finished blogging about the rest of my trip through Morocco, Spain and France, I still hope to do so one day though.