As a young boy I wondered if foreign countries really
existed. Quite why I thought that someone had invented China or France I do not know.
I can only suppose that the idea may have stemmed from attempts to convince me
that a supernatural being existed, but could not be experienced.
I was not an early traveller, my school did not take groups
abroad and if they had then I know my parents would not have been able to
finance such a thing. In fact my first foreign visit was to Sweden when as
teenagers my friend and I embarked on an unsuccessful quest for free love.
However, through work, I did meet men who had been abroad - mostly as soldiers
during WW2: men from my father’s generation. One of them was the most narrow
minded bigot I ever met (I have mentioned him before – he’s the man who refuted
the existence of negative numbers).
Just back from a long trip to the Indian sub-continent, I
feel that if travel does broaden the mind then mine should be the breadth of
Myanmar’s, mostly unused, twenty lane highways located in its new capital
established by the military junta some time ago. Like most people I did not
visit the place, leaving that to Boris Johnson on his recent visit to remind
Aung San Suu Kyi of the plight of Rohingyas. I went instead to the old capital
to visit the home in which Myanmar’s leader grew up and also the one in which
she was for so long incarcerated by the junta.
Yangon, formerly Rangoon was a little like taking a long
refreshing shower after nearly three weeks travelling through India by train
and bus – and that was a complete surprise. I left Kolkata, formerly Calcutta,
expecting somewhere much worse – and I was gratefully wrong. I would say that
my most harrowing experiences – of filth, poverty, neglect and overcrowding – occurred
as we left Delhi by train, as we approached the incredibly beauty of the Taj
Mahal through Agra, and finally in the city which many still call Banares
(Varansi). It was in the latter that I could so nearly have experienced the
worst possible end to my travelling life.
Arriving in darkness from Lucknow, we were informed by a series of
tuk-tuk drivers that our hotel was not reachable. They would drop us as near as
they could, then we would have to drag our luggage a kilometre or so through
narrow, twisting and dangerous streets. Usually I ignore such tales because
tuk-tuk drivers will tell lies in order to get a fare or even better to get you
into a pal’s hotel – but this time the story was consistent. Added to which my
phone would not work so I could not call the Hotel Alca (carefully selected
because it served alcohol AND overlooked the River Ganges).
I chose the least villainous of the crowd vying to transport
us to an alternative hotel and negotiated a price of 150 rupees (£1.50). It
took about half an hour to get there: Banares is a very holy place for Hindus
and therefore has a very high density of sacred cows roaming its busy narrow
streets where these bovines are endangered by every conceivable means of speeding,
roaring and beeping transport imaginable. I immediately rejected the first hotel
judged solely on the state of the reception and the proprietor. The next place
was much the same, and, as I left that sleazy hotel, I felt genuine despair – perhaps
that’s why I crossed the street rather hurriedly, daring the mass of traffic to
allow me passage. And perhaps my rapid
progress accounts for the fact that I did not see the slimy puddle of holy cow
excrement in the middle of the road and slipped awkwardly on it, arms
windmilling. Luckily, I regained my balance and was able to continue through
the rush of vehicles; otherwise I would certainly have fallen beneath the madness
of traffic and died there in a pool of dung on that grim street in Banares.
On the brighter side Banares is where the Hindus bring their
dead to be cremated, a process that supposedly purifies the deceased once the hot
ashes and bones are thrown into the sacred Ganges River. This process must take
place within 24 hours of death so Margaret would not have had the cost and inconvenience
of transporting me home and, since my corpse would have been already embalmed
in holy cow dung, my transport to the next life would surely have been guaranteed.
Next day I ventured out of our rather expensive, but gratifyingly
excellent, hotel to explore the ghats that line the Ganges. There, I found the
main cremation area where they burn up to 250 bodies per day and watched the
process with interest (all part of broadening the mind) and was particularly impressed
with the occasional pop as an overcooked brain exploded. Pregnant women and
children are not cremated in this way. Their corpses are weighted down with
stones and thrown directly into the great river since they are already considered
pure. Sometime these bodies pop up – which must be shocking for the young men
who swim in that heavily polluted water course (and even drink from it).
There is so much more to say about this trip which touched on
seven Asian countries, my notes alone approach forty thousand words – and the
photos, don’t ask!! But one thing that will stay with me, particularly concerning
India, is the poverty. One image that I have in my head and did not capture on camera,
is of an emaciated, young mother with a child hanging onto her shoulder, one in
her arms and two holding her hand. The birth rate is more than three times the
death rate in India – and clearly much higher among the poor than the rising
middle classes.
Did the trip broaden my mind? I think that knowledge must
achieve that to some degree even though I cannot claim a deep understanding of
the countries visited. But, if I could return to my young and cynically doubting
self I could now truly say – they are there, those exotic, teeming, hot and sometimes
beautiful countries: they really do exist.
