Greetings blogistas from blissfully cool Nainital - an old British hill station high up in India's Himalaya foothills. thanks to all who e-mailed me with sympathies and "get well soon" wishes in response to my recently-reported savage attack by a Buddhist temple ornament in Nepal. I feel all are deserving of the second (and hopefully final) chapter of my explorations of sub-continental medical systems - namely, "Stitches out - the sub-continental Express".
This past Saturday, my stitches were scheduled to come out. Saturday found us in Agra, India - home of the stunning Taj Mahal (talk about exceeding expectations - this surely is the most beautiful building on earth - perhaps only rivalled by Maple Leaf Gardens - enough said!). Our driver Raju found us a small hospital in central Agra with allegedly English-speaking staff. Patty and I entered at about noon and braced ourselves for a full flight of Indian bureaucracy (Have you ever wondered where the world's supply of carbon paper wound up?). Instead, we did not even have a chance to sit in the crowed waiting room before we were escorted into a small operating theatre. The stitch-removal process was clearly not going to be the subject of the same level of public viewing and participation as experienced in the Nepalese suturing. I was laid out on a hospital bed and then attended to by first one, then two, then ultimately a team of six doctors, interns and nurses. Amidst a lot of English-free pointing and grunting, bandages were torn off, stitches pulled out, antiseptic and bandages placed back on and best wishes extended by the entire team. We then were whisked out of the room, back to the front desk and then, surprisingly, out of the with a wave of bobblehead nods from the staff - no registration, no forms, no carbon paper, no fee - total time expired = 15 minutes! All appears to healing nicely. I have certainly learned my lesson about hanging out at temples with bad attitudes.
Back to our Indian adventure. We are now a team of four voyagers having been joined by our children Elisabeth and Ian who arrived in Delhi on April 27 - bagged and baggless - for a three week trip. A baggage reunion was achieved the next day - the same day that Delhi performed a magnificent welcome for us all as it set the 50 year heat record of 43.5 degrees C. After a shopping blitzkrieg through Chandni Chowk and Ian's efforts to watch the Canucks-Hawks semi-finals on streamed internet, we set off with our car and driver for Agra and then points east. We have just spent three days in Varanasi - one of India's holiest cities and India's claim to the longest continuously inhabited place on earth - clocking in at plus 3000 years. On the banks of the holy Ganges, Varanasi is full-on India - pouring with colour and chanting, home to hundreds of temples and wandering barefoot sadhus, tumbling with cheeky monkeys and clogged with cows and goats and their easily-stepped in "gifts". Our hotel sat perched on top of the Scindia ghat, one dozens of stepped quays that descend into the Ganges. From dusk to midnight, the Ganges in Varanasi is a hive of activity. Here Indians travel from around the country to perform ritual plunges in the holy river. Children swim and play in it to beat the heat. Water buffaloes wallow therein beside laundry being thwack, thwack, thwacked on river bank stone platforms. At night, the river is a colourful scene - set ablaze with floating candles set in small flower boats. Set aside the fact that the river itself is seething with garbage and apparently starved of oxygen at near-morbid levels of toxicity. Evidently, this does not matter to anyone - its holy status trumping all such worldly problems. Most moving without doubt was the Manikarnaka ghat - the so-called "burning ghat" - located about 100 metres from our hotel. Here Hindus bring the corpses of their loved ones for cremation followed by a scattering of ashes into the river. Women are draped in red or saffron shrouds and men in white - all heavily garlanded with flowers. Funeral processions - some 200 a day - wind through the choked, narrow streets of the old city to the ghat. The shrouded corpses are dipped into the river and then set alight on wooden fire pits lit from a flame that has allegedly remained burning for thousands of years since it was ignited by the Hindu god Shiva. These processions served as useful navigation aids for us as we tried to figure out how to get back to our hotel through Varanasi maze. Varanasi is a very moving place which reverberates throughout in a spiritual tone. It should be an easy entry for any one's A-list of places to visit in this wondrous country.
Namaste all
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