Onwards to Banares

Time to leave Kushinagar. This place is in the middle of nowhere. Towns are just roadside stands in crumbling buildings. The bus doesn’t seem to be coming and when buses do come, they’re so packed that people ride on the roof…ehh….

I walk back to the center gate of the town and see an Asian man and a White woman with travel back packs…Excellent…I ask them about the bus and they say they’re trying to figure it out as well. He is from Nepal. She is from Chili. They’re also on Buddhist pilgrimage…See, my thesis was correct…Brings us together…We sit for a moment or two and a friend of theirs walks up who is also from Nepal. They tell me the bus situation isn’t working out so they’re going to try and get a jeep back to the city of Gorakhpur where my train leaves tomorrow at 6:35 a.m. Awesome. Excellent. Right when I need help the universe gives me a doorway to walk through out of the labyrinth…They wander around for a while, looking, while I wait with the first dude I met and they have no luck. However, after twenty minutes or so some people just drive up to us and offer a ride. The Nepalese dude I’m with speaks Hindi and sets it up. He calls his friends and we load into the car and off we go. No cramped bus this time around. In fact, they even insist I sit in the front seat and we cruise with the windows down. I learn they are coming from Lumbini (The Buddha’s birthplace in Nepal) and Sharvasti (A place where Buddha spent 24 of so years) and after Kushinagar they are going on 36 hour train ride to Mumbai to learn a meditation discovered by the Buddha. They’re leaving from Gorakhpur as well. They offer to split a hotel room with them tonight. Great, I no longer have to find a hotel on my own. Cheaper, easier, and more social. Super. Two Indians, Two Nepalese, One Chilean, and one American traveling through the rural landscapes of Uttah Pradesh…

I see two old skinny men in robes get into a fight on the side of a road. Another jumps in. He grabs hold of one the guys in attempts to restrain him, too late, the dude throws a punch but swishes through air. The inertia from the missed punch sends the two men tumbling to the ground. I point this out to the Indian man behind me while laughing. He laughs as well and says with hindenglish and hand gestures they are probably drunk.

As we drive back to Gorakhpur the third world element of India is in full throttle. Insane spectacle. I specifically remember saying to myself to not forget what I’m seeing. However, I also told myself its pointless to attempt to describe this. Word are useless. Pictures are useless. The contrast between the social infrastructure of India and America has to be unparalleled. One thing I did see though that I will talk about was…

We’re driving slowly through a market place. People everywhere. Garbage everywhere. Animals everywhere. Men selling fresh fish on a tarp. I see a bunch of what looks like goat guts—intestines, stomach, bladder—lying out near some splattered blood. This must be where they slaughter animals, I guess. Correct. I look and I see a man kneeling on a baby goat and with one hand he is pushing the squirming goats head down and with the other he is holding a blade and he starts to slit the baby goat’s throat. The goat jerks its head up, temporarily pushing the bloody knife away. The incision has already been made though. The man shoves the animal’s head back down and violently cuts through the already exposed wound. I can still recall the look in the animals eye—one of pure terror and pain. Man, it look liked it hurt—a lot. I felt like becoming a vegetarian after seeing this and reflected back on all the meat I’ve eaten and the animals I’ve killed hunting (one deer, maybe 15 pheasants or so…)……Four hours later I eat chicken and noodles for dinner….To my credit, however, I ordered the veg noodles but they gave me chicken. I’m not so pure. I think I’d still go hunting, too. I think there is some sort of primal connection with the Earth about hunting, so long as you eat what you kill and “honor it” or whatever. Native American style. Cycles and re-birth. Respect and death. The end of you, sustenance of me…The Buddha is said to have eaten meat (according to one book I have) on his last meal…It is also the thing that killed him (poisoned, whoops)…So who knows…He died in Kushinagar. Hey! I was just there…alright, carry on…

We arrive in Gorakhpur. We get a hotel room. One Nepalese man is staying with the Chilean woman. They’re a couple. I am sharing a room and a large bed with the other Nepalese guy who I met first. They all speak English well—I forgot to mention that...we talk about various things that you would expect people who are traveling to discuss. Where you’ve been. Where you’re going. Why you’re here and what you’re doing. I let them use my computer to check facebook and what not. The one dude who I’m staying with friends me on facebook and he also gives me his card, he runs a travel agency in Kahtmandu, Nepal. We order dinner—room service. I accidently ordered two plates. Apparently, asking for rice means they give you a whole meal with a bunch of other stuff. I share it with the others. I show them my books on pilgrimage and they love them. We exchange pictures of our travels.

They pay for my meal without even saying anything. I thank them…I must be doing something right, people keep giving me things…Before I left for Lucknow I was in South Delhi and I had to go like 14 metro stops up to my hostel and its like 2:30 in the morning. These two dudes pull up and offer me a ride. They’re really friendly and…I know this sounds sketchy…but I personally believe I have a knack for reading people and…to my credit…I go, “okay, you aren’t going to rob me though, right?” One dude with glasses laughs and says “hahah no we aren’t going to rob you!” They drive me up to Connaught Place. The dude in the passenger seat offers me a beer (the driver wasn’t drinking)…but at this point in the night…I’m good…We start talking and the driver is a spiritual seeker and we talk about Osho, who the driver respects deeply and follows in one way or another, he shows me a necklace that has to do with Osho’s teachings…I like Osho…There is this really good thing by him called, “Ego—The false center”. Its really short and online. I suggest you read it…They drive me up and drop me off. Awesome. Like I said, I have to be doing something right because I keep getting handed rides, food, and blankets for free…

Alright, back to Gorakhpur…I play them some music. The one dude has never heard of The Beatles…I play some Indian music and some Western music with an Eastern flair and they love it. They all give me their flash drives and I send them a playlist with 4 hours or so of music. They will probably be the only Nepalese people to have Bassnectar on their computers…Sleep time. The dude falls asleep and is fully knocked out. I realize right there its pretty cool he trusts me enough to just go fully unconscious with me in the room with him and all his stuff and no one else around…Trust….A beneficial attribute in the right circumstances…I sleep but its loud as hell due to the traffic outside and the train station across the street—every 2 minutes a woman speaks in a monotone voice announcing the train arrivals…

I didn’t ask how old my fellow pilgrims were…Maybe close to 30? I don’t know…They wake me up at 4 in the morning to say goodbye and I shake hands with my roommate and the woman…the other Nepalese guy gives me a hug. I am planning on buying a white water rafting trip from my roommate’s travel company, so we shall meet again. I leave the hotel at 5 in the morning.

I am sitting in the train station waiting for my train. A man comes up with his young kid and has me shake hands with the two of them.

I am sitting in a cloaked passenger sleeper cabin on my way back to Varanasi, the city of lights, and the couple next to me abruptly removes the curtain blocking me off from the rest of the train and the husband thrusts his infant baby into my arms. The kid is probably a year old, if that. The man smiles and informs me he must have a picture of me holding his child, pulling out a camera phone. Two seconds ago I was sitting festering in anger/frustration over the fact that tata (company) keeps pulling the plug on wireless internet, despite the fact I paid the bill. I don’t know the last time I have held a baby. I am not quite sure I ever have, I have, but not like this. I usually have aversion to babies for some reason but this time I don’t. I melt a little bit. I don’t throw him into the wind, unlike the last time I came in contact with a child on a train …That actually never happened by the way…some people seemed to be a little confused as to whether or not that’s true…its not… I wonder what this kid (baby) will turn out to be…A criminal, a businessman, a politician, a drug addict, a nothing, a no one…Whatever. Either way I held him before he could walk or speak and he seemed to like me. Maybe he’ll be the one who kills me later in life or the one who helps me out or something. Probably not. But who knows…Be here now…Come to think of it, I’m not even sure if it was a boy… Maybe we’ll get married if it’s a girl…Hey, my professors husband is twenty years younger so its not that obscure…Also, I saw an article online (it was real) a couple months ago about some people (West Virginia, I think, it must have been West Virginia…) a grandmother and a grandson met each other after 34 years or something of never knowing one another and formed a relationship…The grandmother stated she had never been more sexually alive. The knowledge of this story violates something holy I’m sure. So, sorry for bringing it to your attention.

“Sunday morning, I’m waking up…don’t even know whose bed I’m in, where do I start, where do I begin…”

My meffloquin dreams are intense. I continue to hallucinate in the middle of the night. I saw this dude (ghost?) walk into my room last night and I was going to interject saying that’s not okay but I realized (and I actually thought this) oh, right, its India, people do stuff like just walk into your room randomly…And I went back to sleep…There was no person and I don’t think it would be cool even if he was real...There is a little kid outside my train window selling beetlejuice chewing tobacco…He’s probably six years old…If that…He’s making a deal right now as I type this…Life is very different here. Its interesting because although I’m mesmerized and stunned by tons of different things multiple times a day, I am also getting more and more used to a lot of this stuff. When I look back at the things that used to throw me off I realize those things are now normal to me.

I’m in the third world for another like…8 months or so…I have a feeling I’ll feel more like a foreigner than an American when I arrive in Newark or D.C….Wherever I fly into…Culture shock…India, according to many people I’ve talked to, is the epitome of chaos..If you can master traveling and living here than you can do it anywhere in the world. Relatively speaking of course. I don’t think I would last very long in Baghdad with my iPod, credit card, and MacBook computer…But compared to Nepal, where I will be spending several months, India is a cultural warzone (so I’ve heard)…Even the woman from Chili and the two Nepalese men find it overwhelming here…When I asked them about it an intense wide eyed look came across all their faces followed by a slow head nod…

Its odd that I’m here right now. I’m only twenty years old. I’m going to places people wait their entire lives to see, maybe even lifetimes…no, they certainly do... The climax of some people’s life experiences can be summed up by visiting the Ghats of Varanasi, the gardens leading up the Taj Mahal, the Bodhi tree of Bodh Gaya, the Karma Sutra temples at Khajuraho, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the winding streets of Kolkata, the Jungles of Orissa…I could go on…How many people go on Buddhist pilgrimage when they’re twenty years old? I can’t imagine many…I don’t know, I’ll find out, I guess…I am not trying to boast in anyway. I hope it doesn’t come like that. Because honestly all this kind of scares me…I’ve done this when I’m twenty? Where the hell am I going to be when I’m 80…weird…The benefits of living in the moment need not be overlooked at this point…Be here now…Its all part of the plan….Lotus unfolding…Overwhelming..

Before I forget, my bull terrier dog back home, Brindle (her name based on the color of her fur), left me a message in the Delhi Times (newspaper)…For real, check this out. The opening and conclusion of the short article is good so I’ll just post that. I read this just as I was living for Pilgrimage…Jungian synchronicity…

The article is called, “Letting Go: It’s Indian people who make a big deal of death, we Indian street dogs don’t” written in the perspective of a street dog in India by the name of…Brindle…The guy who wrote the article is named Jug (nickname maybe?), I presume his wife goes by Bunny in some context…The dog is his, obviously…Here’s the article, or what I’m posting of it…

“Woof! I’m Brindle, the street dog who adopted Bunny and Jug some 12 years ago. I’m writing this article because Jug is in no condition to do it himself, all red-eyed and hollow-voiced and looking as if the end of the world is at hand. Bunny’s no better, which surprises me because I have always thought she was more sensible of the two.

The reason the both of them are carrying on like this is because, they keep telling themselves, I’ve gone. Going is the most natural thing in the world particularly if you ‘re a dog who’s lived for 13 years—which is the equivalent of 91 years in human terms…The doctor came in for the last time, with the last injection. Bunny and Jug looked as if they were doing the hardest thing they’d ever had to do in their lives. I tried to tell them they were giving me the greatest gift they ever could But people don’t understand the language of us dogs, who speak through our eyes. I tried to tell them through my eyes, but their own eyes were so full of water they couldn’t see.

And now they look at the blank space of where I was or wonder where I’ve gone. Don’t they understand that I’ve gone nowhere? Or rather that I’ve gone every where. I’ve gone where we all—people, dogs, even cats—come from and eventually go back to. When they cry, I am the salt of their tears. I am the laughter of children. I am the noise of traffic, the dust of streets, the sound of water. I am the greenness of leaves and the blue of the sky. I am every where and every thing.

People have a big word for it: they call it the Universe. We dogs, we Indian street dogs, have a simpler word for it. We call it Freedom.”

"You know the day destroys the night
Night divides the day
Tried to run
Tried to hide
Break on through to the other side
Break on through to the other side
Break on through to the other side
Chased our pleasures here
Dug our treasures there
But can you still recall
The time we cried
Break on through to the other side
Break on through to the other side
Break on through, yeah! "