Varanasi

Two things drew me to Varanasi. It's most famous for the burning ghats by the Ganga, where corpses are first bathed in the holy waters, then set aflame. Second, I wanted to see Holi, the festival of colours, which is a riotous celebration of spring.

OK, three things. I also wanted a few days off to rest up before getting back to Delhi to apply for visas. Felix had told me that Varanasi is an interesting place, as had Teddy in Rishikesh, both of whom mentioned the rivers of shit. they weren't wrong. It's quite the most pungent place I've ever been. My guest house is in the maze of narrow alleys which line the waterfront by the ghats (baths), alleys along which cows wander freely, and raw sewage runs down to the river. These photos really should be scratch n sniff, to get the full experience.



Obviously, since I spent two days fixing my bike, that kiboshed some of my plans, but Arnaud and I took the walking tour yesterday, and went down to the ghats to see the burnings. I had seen one of the biers being taken through the alleys when I first arrived in Varanasi. It was a colourful procession, and the body was wrapped in rich red robes, and I thought "ooh, that looks pretty," until I realised what it was.

The ghat and the surroundings are piled high with wood for the burnings, which is so expensive that many families struggle to afford it, and a common scam is to grab a tourist and tell them that they can take photos, then make a fuss and demand that they pay for the wood. Photography is completely forbidden, but we saw people with camera phones, video cameras, and even a tourist who'd made a half-baked attempt to disguise her camera by wrapping it in an orange plastic bag. It's an extremely public event, and even watching felt a bit ghoulish, so I wasn't keen on taking photos, especially if I'd end up paying for it.

The bodies are first dipped in the river, then laid down at the burning site, where a priest blesses it, and sets it aflame. This is the end of the ceremonial part. The bodies burn in public in front of huge crowds, and to make sure they all burn, workmen throw kindling onto the biers and use huge sticks to crack open the ribcages and feed the flames. As the flames grow, the wrappings burn first, revealing blackened flesh, which shrivels away from the skull and bones in the open air. There is no privacy or distance allowed. It's quite different from a cremation in the UK, where grandad's coffin vanishes behind a metal plate and you get an urn at the other end.

Arnaud and I stood on a balcony overlooking the burning site. We were downwind of the smoke, and I remembered Teddy's comment that he came away shaking, when it struck him that he was breathing in dead people. It was an intense atmosphere of burning wood and charred flesh. The heat was incredible, even at that distance. We could hear flesh popping and bones cracking under the pressure.

I came back to the guest house, and as I was sitting drinking my coffee, I noticed the stench. My clothes still reeked, the heady aroma of barbecued flesh.



And today was Holi! It's a riotous event marked by lots of drinking, bacchanalia and the chucking about of coloured dye. The guest house wouldn't let women go out into the streets, as the celebrations can go over the top, and they only let us out when we assured them that we didn't have our wallets or cameras or any valuables on us.

Even walking up the alley from the guest house, we were soon sopping wet and colourful as dye and water were being thrown from the balconies and rooftops around us. We got in a water pistol fight with some local kids, and a guy ran out of a doorway and tore the t-shirt off my back. It was hilarious. Again, there was no privacy or escape from it: if you were on the street, you were a target. A kid on a motorbike ducked his head and shouted "No Holi! No Holi!" but we paid no attention.



We decided we didn't really want to go into the main town, where things do get very rowdy indeed, and finding your way in and out of these alleys is tricky at the best of times, let alone while under fire. We decamped to the guest house, and joined the crowd on the rooftop, flinging about yet more coloured dye, covering the street below and engaging in battles with the kids on the next rooftop.

The two events, wildly different in character, both have the same traits which make India such a culture shock when you come from the West. The public nature of the celebrations and commemorations is difficult to appreciate, and what would be ghoulish or inappropriate in the UK is everyday here.

One tourist on the rooftop got very annoyed when the waiter covered him in orange dye, but if you get involved in it, you have to accept it for what it is, you can't impose another set of values on it.

Of course, another similarity is that I had to go and get a shower to wash all the dye off - it's stubborn stuff. I'm going to go and get my third shower of the day.

photos from Holi

Fixed and Working Again

"You're a mechanic!" said the guy in the street.

I suppose I am. As a kid, I was always quite cack-handed and mechanically inept. Toys would break when I played with them, and in Technology class the bookshelf I tried to build became more of a book cubby, as the saw tended to go north, south, east and west in my grip.

But I love bikes, and the simplicity of their mechanics. After an incident where a bike shop sold me a rear wheel as a front wheel, then charged me again to put it right, I decided that I should know more than just how to repair a puncture. I took apart and re-built an old bike in the back yard, and since then I've built all my own bikes, serviced them, cared for them, and set them up myself.

The bike I have on this trip, I know from top to bottom. I could probably recite its components from memory, and I had a Masterplan that it would be simple, reliable, easily repairable. At least this has given me one point of stability when I'm otherwise moving from place to place, staying day or two before moving on. The bike is my home, the trusty workhorse which I can get on and pedal all day.

India has changed that. Two shredded tyres and punctures on a daily basis has given me a snese of dread when I check the tyres, expecting to find a flat. Suddenly the solid foundations are shifting and I don't feel that I can rely on the bike to function. That guy on the motorbike snapped off my rear pannier and I've periodically had to re-attach it. And yesterday my rear skewer snapped. This is such a small part, but it's fundamental to the functioning of the bike; without it, the bike's unridable. And a bike which can't be ridden isn't anything except a millstone, dead weight.

I spent yesterday trying to find a replacement or some sort of bodge, but it's not a part that's widely available in India. I was told that I could only get one in Delhi (800 km away) or Kolkata/Calcutta (700 km).

I knew I could replace the rear axle with one of the solid axles which are standard in India. I bought an axle for 20 rupees, and a spanner for 25 rupees. Arriving back at the guest house, I tried to take out the old one, but the spanner was too wide. I simply couldn't do the job with the tools available.

I was in limbo - I knew I could fix the problem with the right tools or the right parts, but neither of those could be had in Varanasi. Not to mention that this was sucking away my time to see Varanasi and enjoy the Holi festival.

I slept on the problem, somewhat. My neighbour's snoring kept me awake - it was so violent that I thought he might be in trouble. I only fell asleep to the sound of bells as people walked down to the holy Ganga to bathe at dawn.

This morning, I went back to the bike shops to see what I could get, and this time I took the wheel so I could demonstrate the problem. I didn't expect to find a replacement skewer, but I hoped that one of the bike shops would have a suitable tool, or at worst I'd be able to buy a new wheel, even if I had to strap my old wheel onto the back of my bike for the ride back to Delhi. I hoped it was a matter of saying the right words to the right person, but I couldn't find that person, or those words.

The first bike shop didn't have a thin enough spanner, or a spare wheel. There are, it turns out, no spare wheels to be had in Varanasi. They suggested I try the hardware shop around the corner.

At the hardware shop, they didn't have a thin enough spanner, or any tools to thin down the spanner I had, but they did sell angle grinders. I asked about them, thinking that I could use one on my spanner, as there's a guy next to the guest house with a little workshop and a big vice I could use, but 2000 rupees was too expensive for a one-time job.

I bounced from bike shops to machine shops and even a scale shop, where the proprietor was helpfulness itself, until he produced an allen key and tried to turn it in the hollow where the skewer goes. No, I told him with a patient smile, it doesn't work like that.

I met disinterest, incomprehension and brute force. Places which looked like they had the right tools couldn't understand what I wanted, and a mechanic at a bike shop hammered the wrong tool onto my hub before I could stop him. One bike shop owner waved me off with an incense stick, and another told me that I wouldn't be able to get what I needed in Varanasi, which was probably the most helpful thing anyone told me. I was going to have to do this myself.

I went back to the hardware shop and bought a hand file. I hoped that the metal of the spanner was soft enough that I'd be able to file off the couple of millimetres I needed to fit it onto my hub.

The little workshop with the big vice was closed when I arrived back, and I did the job in the street. After ten minutes' furious filing, it was done, the spanner was thin enough, and I could swap the axles. It was a perfect moment. From there, everything could flow. I knew I could fix it, and that was when my observer uttered the admiring words "You're a mechanic!"

The job took fifteen minutes, including patching the very small holes in my innertubes which I only found when I checked them in a bucket of water. The bike is a bike again, and I'd fixed it myself with parts available locally, rather than having to wait for parts to be couriered from Delhi, or even having to hop on a train.

I occasionally manage to kid myself that I'm a rugged individualist, self-reliant and thrusting myself into the unknown with no ties to the world outside my bubble of independence, but in reality I'm at the end of a very long chain of people who supply cake and other less-vital supplies by post from England, I accept hospitality and support and companionship wherever I meet it (which is everywhere, except Austria), and with the availability of the internet, I'm in touch with friends and family every couple of days.

However, there are still times when I have to fall back on my own knowledge, and skills, and ingenuity. I was faced with a problem which people repeatedly told me could not be fixed here, and I fixed it. I rescued myself from frustration and near-despondency. The relief when I pumped the tyre and slotted the wheel back into place was delicious.

So yeah, alright, I'm a mechanic now, as I needed to be a mechanic. I wonder what skills I'll have to rely upon next time something goes wrong.

Is This the Way to Allahabad?

The day into Allahabad to briefly cross paths with Phileas Fogg was marked by a series of minor catastrophes. The hostel tried to skank me out of fifty rupees, I had a puncture after only 3 miles and had to fix it in the blazing sun before yet another goggle-eyed audience, bellowing questions into my face while I was trying to find the hole, then I lost my iPhone when the road - National Highway 76 - turned into a rutted track of loose hardcore and four-inch stones. I rode that section twice, quartering the ground for my phone.

I was accosted by a holy man in the village, who insisted on daubing green dye on my forehead. I don't count that as a catastrophe - it cheered me up a bit, and I rode on, saying farewell to my phone. I was probably more annoyed at having to do a double turn along the awful surface, which snapped the cable tie repair on my rear pannier, which I had to fix again, and above all it cost me time which I didn't have as I wanted to get to Allahabad that evening. I'd been riding mostly long days since Bundi to get to Varanasi for Holi and have a couple of days off, and consecutive days of 85, 95, 75 and 80 miles had taken it out of me, especially in the heat. I had to take long breaks in the afternoons to get out of the sun, and as anyone who knows me can testify, I'm not good at getting up in the mornings, so I usually failed to take advantage of the cool dawn air.

The road surface improved, and I was making good time at last, until the next setback, when I had a rear wheel puncture. And I had to replace the cable ties on my pannier again. Then I couldn't repair the tube, as it was split at the valve, so I hoyed it. This left me with only one spare tube; I'd had to throw the other two out as they'd been chewed up by a rat which bit its way into my drybag at a ratbag hotel in Shivpuri, also perforating my sleeping mat and condemning me to an uncomfortable night's sleep on the stony ground when I camped up.

I fitted my last tube. Then, riding into a village, the road turned to cobbles, and I noticed that the rear tyre was deflating again. I rode on. The cable ties on my pannier couldn't cope with the cobbles, so the pannier landed in the dust.

It was getting dark, and I'd had enough. In the heat and humidity and with a huge crowd, I fixed the puncture and re-attached the pannier. Then, I opened one of the beers I'd bought and drank it. That was my best move of the day. I was having a grand old time chatting with the crowd which had developed, and for once they had to tell me to clear off, as it was getting dark and I needed to get to Allahabad.

Night riding in India is insane. I always try to avoid it, but on a couple of occasions I haven't had a choice. The sheer heedlessness seems to go up a few notches, as drivers have their headlights on full beam (those who bother switching them on) and drive down the middle of the road. A few times, I simply couldn't see where I was going in the dazzle of headlights. The roadsigns to Allahabad petered out, but a few locals pointed me in the right direction, onto the huge suspension bridge which crosses the Ganga. At night, when the mist was rising from the river, it was an eerie experience, and I was completely worn out. I fell off a little bit in traffic -I clipped my front pannier on a bit of corrugated iron which jutted out into the road and which I hadn't seen in the dark. I dropped the bike, but unclipped and stayed on my feet, and the tuk-tuk driver behind me had good enough reflexes to stop before smacking into me. I smiled an apology - he seemed more amused than anything else.

Yes, I was feeling sorry for myself. I had a near-meltdown at a hotel where, after I'd said I didn't have enough cash and specified that I'd have to pay by credit card, they made me go through the whole rigmarole of looking at the room and trooping up and down the stairs before they told me that the machine wasn't working so I'd have to pay cash. I left in a ranting fury and found a different hotel, a much nicer hotel than I'd stayed in since Jonathan went back to the UK, as this was no time to go hunting for the budget option. A comfy bed, pleasant staff, a shower, TV and a lie-in were on the cards. It had been a very long day - 13 hours and 92 miles, which was at least 10 miles further than I needed to travel.

I made it to Varanasi the next day, in contrast riding the 85 miles in about 8 hours. I picked up yet another puncture, and the skewer on my rear wheel has snapped, which will require major surgery to my bicycle and probably the use of a machine shop to get me back to Delhi. Every other bike I've seen has solid axles, and Delhi's the only place I can get a replacement quick release.

India is tough. But, I alwas knew it would be, and if there's anywhere in the world where you'll get loads of help when things go wrong, it's mega-populous Uttar Pradesh. OK, the help isn't always very helpful, but the warmth and the desire to be useful is heartwarming. There are bike shops and puncture-wallahs every couple of miles. I'll ride back to Delhi somehow, even if I have to bodge a single speed wheel into my frame and strap the old wheel to the back. Dammit, this isn't going to beat me. It's a test, everything's a test.

But it can wait until tomorrow. Now, I'm off to negotiate some beer.