Johnny Cigarini (25 page)

All the hotels in Pushkar were booked out, but one hotel had tents on its roof, and as I had tackled the night train, I was ready for more adventure. I hit the tents and fell asleep under the trillions of stars that covered the black desert sky like white powder clusters. All night, I could hear the deep beating rhythm of the Rajasthani drums being played out of the town and into the navy night sky of North India.

Jaipur: the pink city, population of three million, the desert lands of the Rajasthan. Famous for its ceramics, marble statues, gems and jewellers, forts and monuments, temples and gardens, magic and a kite festival. It had big roads, hardly any cows and was home to some of the world's finest Indian restaurants. I went to Shekawati, where all the havelis (palaces) are painted with murals. It is located north of Jaipur, and visitors can stay in hill fort hotels, run by the descendants of the former rulers. They were tall, proud and magnificently built men, and you could see their ancestors' warrior blood still lived inside them. The prosperous early merchants on the spice route across the Rajasthani desert built the painted havelis of Shekawati. Their descendants now control most of the large conglomerates in India, and are based in Bombay and Delhi, but they retain the painted havelis as a family heritage. I suppose nothing changes and it happens all over the world: the rulers, the royal bloodlines, it all stays in the family.

The pink city: where street kids line railway tracks and old women sell onions on the side of the road. It is also home to the greatest opulence I have ever experienced, even in England. Some of the palaces, like the Wind Palace, are extraordinarily ornate. It is where the Maharaja kept his harem. The windows are designed so the concubines could see out, but not be seen by the people in the street below. I bought and shipped a container full of Jaipur pink sandstone, cut into 60cm slabs, to put around my pool back in Wiltshire. It looked wonderful, alongside the 10,000 four-inch cobalt blue tiles that I had bought in Thailand, for the inside of the pool. When I swam in it, I thought only of Asia.

In Jodhpur, all the buildings are painted blue. From the magnificent Mehrangarh Fort, there is a wonderful view over the whole blue town. Like each and every place in India, it is uniquely different from anywhere else. India was becoming intricately more diverse, the more I saw of it. All the languages and all of the idols and all of the sights. I was beginning to consider it one of God's truly great countries – jungles, deserts, lakes, mountains, cities, beaches – and it was changing, being mowed down by industry and software companies. On the train, I thought about the miles of virgin farmland and I became sad. It was to be replaced with motorways and business, and I didn't want it to. I wanted it to stay like it was, like real India.

There was no opulence like in Udaipur. I booked a room in the Lake Palace, but when I got there they had no record of my reservation, so they put me in the Maharaja's Suite. All the walls were painted, mainly with portraits of old warriors and the ancestors. Whilst sitting in the bath, I could practically put my fingers in the water of the lake. It was not bad at all.

Jaisalmer is what they call The Golden City, and my favourite part of Rajasthan. It is built out of dry stone with no cement on a ridge of yellow sandstone that rises out of the desert, like a lost city that archaeologists have found after centuries of digging. Its havelis have great stone windows that are carved like lace, and there is the most wonderful Jain temple, lined with fine works of stone carvings. The Jain nuns are a particular sect of spiritual devotees. They wander the streets of India carefully avoiding any acts of violence from town to town, arriving in villages barefoot without even a rupee and still treading lightly, so as not to kill any plant or bug life. Some people consider that life quite harsh, like the tearing out of their own hair, but they see it as the route to the almighty and a beautiful thing – not a painful thing. The temple is near the Pakistan border and the military airport had only been opened up to commercial flights the week I went there. Prior to air travel, it was a three-day journey by bus and I may not have bothered. I would have missed something special, like learning about the Jain people.

I went with a photographer friend, Robyn Beeche, and a Hindu lady friend of hers on a pilgrimage to the source of the sacred Yamuna River, high in the Himalayas. There is nothing quite like the Himalayas – totally and utterly silent. So still and quiet, in fact, that even whispers can be heard around town. It was a powerful place, with bent-over Buddhist monks hobbling up hills and through little lanes. I knew I had been transported once again, to a special place: the Himalayas, the crown shakra. The trip required driving for days up a precipitous mountain road, then climbing on foot for three days up a stony path on a cliff edge. Many other pilgrims were making the journey, from all colours and all religions, just to find the source of the river – the lifeblood of mother earth.

For Hindus, going to the source of India's holy rivers – the Ganges and the Yamuna – is a sacred journey. One day, when darkness fell, we hadn't reached the lodge where we were going to sleep that night and I had to climb onto a mule. I had never ridden an animal before and I didn't know that you should put your weight on the stirrups. It was terrifying. The damn thing was clambering over the rocky path, getting too close and almost throwing me down it. I was swaying and hanging on for dear life in the dark, with a drop of 2000 feet and nothing but the sweating and the panting of the mule to keep me company. I remember calling to my companions, “I'm not even a Hindu!” My goodness, was I relieved when I got there. The next day, we arrived at the river's source, and all the men, including yours truly, stepped fully clothed into the hot thermal pool.

Before the pilgrimage, I spent a month on the ashram where Robyn Beeche lives in Vrindavan, near Mathura. Vrindavan is the centre for Krishna followers and this doesn't just mean members of the Hare Krishna movement – who are usually Westerners – but Indian Krishna devotees. I was there for Diwali, the festival of lights, where lamps and candles are lit to signify good over evil. In Vrindavan, the town became full of sadhus during Diwali – the Indian monks who could be seen walking around playing their musical instruments. The real sadhus have chosen to live on the edges of society, have renounced all material possessions and are often painted in white powder, wear long beards and have dreadlocked hair. They are an extraordinary sight, like everything in India.

It is, of course, difficult to talk of India without mentioning cows. They are as common in India as dogs or cats in England, and they are members of society – sacred and holy. But I wasn't convinced they were being looked after as well as they perhaps could. On one occasion, I happened to watch one eat its way through an entire plastic bag in a skip full to the brim with garbage and shit. Considering how a cow has four stomachs, that really did prove how biodegradable plastic bags aren't! In Vrindavan, the temple floors were patterned with elaborate displays, all made of cow dung, and I had heard that in certain parts of the country, they even drink their ‘holy' urine. Cows in India are everywhere and all of the time, like in the middle of motorways or at your hotel reception – quite different to England and the occasional squirrel or robin. I thought the cows were quite scary at first, but then I saw the monkeys – the monkeys of Varanasi.

Varanasi is the oldest city in India, and the spiritual capital. Mark Twain once wrote that Varanasi was “older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looked twice as old as all of them put together”, and he said that over a hundred years ago. Varanasi crawls with tourists who have travelled the world to come and watch. I was one of them and this place was certainly old India, and there was a real atmosphere of death.

In Hinduism, death at Varanasi brings salvation. As it is located on the riverbank or ‘ghat', many people go there to die or make provisions – sometimes years prior – to be in Varanasi for the moment of death. Some come too early, and they will remain there until they die. When they die, they are cremated on the banks of the holy river (or Ganga) and along the river there are funeral pyres. Babies, though, are not cremated; they are tied to stones and dropped in the river. This is because they need not be burnt, as they are ‘already holy', like the sadhus, who are already dead, and have no connection with this world (they're not even listed as citizens when alive). The unburnt corpses often release themselves from the binding and bob to the surface. When I took a boat trip, I saw a bloated infant corpse floating down the river. There are also many dead cows in the Ganges; they too are sacred, having saved Indian society.

It was all becoming quite claustrophobic and I walked downhill towards the river through the mist to find some peace, but there was no escaping it. I passed some French brothers down a side road eating street food, practising their Hindi and their head bobs, when suddenly – a great crash – a woman had collapsed down some steps and into some baskets and a crowd of men quickly came to her rescue. As I mentioned, people have made provisions to arrive here for their deaths and it's the ultimate wish of a Hindu to die and be cremated on a riverbank. She must have just died. The holier the river, the better for the soul, but put more accurately, it's not dying, it's ‘leaving bodies'. Hindus believe in reincarnation because stuff or matter has never been made or destroyed, just transferred from one thing to another. Most Hindus will be burnt where they part with their physical selves and are released from the never-ending cycle of transformation, samsara, and suffering through reincarnation. A rumbling had begun and suddenly the people in the street began to part. I looked uphill and saw a line of men carrying a body that lay dead on bamboo. They carried it toward the river while chanting ancient mantras. I got swept into the traffic and ended up back at the burning ghat, Manikarnika Ghat, which is the main attraction (so to speak) where the dead come to be weighed – so the men in charge know exactly how much wood to spare for the burning. The bodies are then burnt and sunk.

I left Manikarnika and walked up river. Kids played their beloved cricket on the bank and one boy tried to force a pack of dogs to eat a cow. A group of tourists played kites with some children and a sadhu sat on a step around a group of ten smoking charas – a common practice among the holy or babas to destroy all sexual desire and help contemplate ‘the mysteries of the cosmic'. He had a tin pot for spare rupees and I gave him some, but not enough. It was never enough in this country; too many people are incredibly poor. India is highly overcrowded. It has over a billion people and unless you leave the cities, you will rarely see a tree. They have all been cut down for firewood, so in much of India, the people dry and then burn cow dung for heating and cooking.

In India, the traditions and customs run to infinity. Hindu religion is unimaginably diverse, with more lineages and philosophical schools than any other, and over 320 million gods. I was still walking along the riverbank and I decided that I wanted to come back again one day. The sun's rays leaked through clouds and I could see a mother standing with her daughter beside the river with lips chanting light mantras. An elderly man was in the lotus position praying before wetting his head in the holy water, and there were Buddhists and Muslims too. A group of tourists clambered into a boat to record it all on camera and in journals. They will return to the West reporting to their loved ones what they have seen or what they think they have seen. Astonished, astounded, we are fascinated.

Beautiful India, I have seen merely the surface of you.

*

I went to Nepal and stayed at my friend Mary Heale's Lakshmi Lodge, on the trail toward Machapuchare mountain – a fish tail, as it is known, angling its spike into the ocean blue sky of upper Nepal. It is in the Annapurna Himalaya of north central Nepal, revered by the local population as sacred to the god Shiva, and hence is off limits to climbing. Her village Birethanti is a Gurkha village, where there were many distinguished-looking elderly military gentlemen with very smart houses. There are no roads to the village. You have to walk for about half an hour from the nearest road, crossing a small bridge – normal for the guides who begin hiking at age four, carrying the luggage as porters for the tourists on one dollar a day. I went for a hike in the magical foothills, with a guide from Mary's lodge, where we stumbled across a sloth bear that was sleeping on the path in front. It woke up with a start and a loud roar, but fortunately ran off and hid behind a tree. They can be dangerous, but this one seemed more frightened of us – or maybe it was me? The air here was clean, the sounds of the birds as sharp as a knife blade, and the food – dal bhat – was fresh and ripe mountain food; the same Sherpa diet my guide's ancestors ate.

I stayed a few days at Tiger Tops. I didn't see any tigers, but lots of elephants and rhinoceroses. It was where my guide told me: “Two things tourist people never getting bored of, Mr Johnny… elephants and rhinoceroses.” I certainly agreed with that.

Kathmandu is a great city, and as the main city in Nepal, it is a cross-section of cultures and nationalities – including the Tibetan people, who are so very peaceful and light when they speak, Indians, Chinese and visitors from Israel, Germany, Argentina and England. It is a place people come to from all the world's far corners. Something has called to them all, and here, it was something you could feel – in the Himalayas. There truly is nothing quite like this powerful mountain world, one I saw on a dawn flight over Mount Everest.

I love India, but after three months I was nearly screaming to leave. With the vast population and intense cultural change, it is quite unadoptable and unadaptable! If another young boy had asked me where I was from, and what my name was, and if I would like to visit his brother's store, I swear I would have throttled the bugger. My hat goes off to any Westerner who has managed to settle there, or for that matter worked out how to use the squat loo and hose. On that note, “Happiness is having a hard shit”, I remember one traveller telling me when she had just finished her second stint of Delhi belly. That pretty much summed it up for me in the end – it was exhausting, it was exhilarating. It was time to get out!