Thoughts from the Beach: Religion in India

In India, religion is all around. It influences the people’s every day life and is a main determinant of the country’s culture. Fortunately, here at the beach, there is no temple in sight, so we have some rest and can reflect about our previous experiences …. just that you know that we do not relax on the beach!

Hinduism is fundamentally different from the religions we have in Europe (Steve is Christian whereas I am agnostic). As previously noted, Hinduism is much more concrete. It speaks to the senses: The rituals comprise meditative music, bells ringing, worshipping images, colourful statues and the use of perfumed essences. Moreover, it gives answers and offers help for much more topics than Christianity. If you want to get rich, if you search for a pretty girlfriend, if you are afraid of diseases or car crashes or if you need a quiet hour to calm down, then the Bible has very few specific recommendations to offer. In India they have. There is a prayer, a priest or a temple for all of these problems, such that the devotees almost never have the feeling of being let alone. Admittedly, the fact that you have to pay for most of these services gives a strong incentive to “develop” a metaphysical solution for any problem. Continue reading

Majestic Mysore, Remote Coorg

Each time we write a new entry, we say to ourselves “This time the post will be shorter than the previous ones!”. As you may have realized, very seldom we achieved that aim. So in the last week, we carefully avoided every place where something worth reporting could happen and focused on the tourist spots and trekking routes. We started the week in Mysore (staying at Hotel Dasaprakash), the former capital of one of the Maharajahs’ dynasties. There we went to the “Chamundi Hill”, a holy Hindu site. Here you have to pay if you want to pray inside the temple, black persons want to sell “very beautiful sunglasses” and seemingly the devotes are convinced that the gods enjoy seeing them shattering coconuts onto the ground. Probably we will need some more time to fully understand this religion ….

Back to the profane world we visited the famous “Mysore Palace”. It is a wonderful building, full of lovely details, creating a marvellous atmosphere. By many tourists it is perceived as representing the traditional architecture of South India, but this is not true. The palace was designed by British architects at the beginning of the 20th century. It is a mix of many different styles from all over the world – actually resulting in some kind of fantasy architecture. And this is the main reason why you have so much fun visiting the palace, since you will experience new surprises in every room. It is just a pity for the Maharajahs that they only could live there during about 25 years, before India’s independence ended their residency. Continue reading

Long Live Couchsurfing

This entry is a bit difficult to write, but we hope it is still easy to read. During the past days in Hyderabad and Bangalore, we have seen only a few really important sites, but learnt very much about the country. The reason is that we stayed in rather normal and unspectacular cities, where we made intensive use of couchsurfing. There, we had many impressive and very personal experiences, which however are rather difficult to share.

After a relaxing 30 hours train journey from Varanasi to Hyderabad, our host Anand was so friendly to catch us up at the train station and drove us to his flat. 1000 taxi drivers hated him for this, but we were very happy he took his time for us, just as during the following days. Anand and his wife Anusha are really inspiring persons, because he knows at least three different worlds: the small village where he grew up, the US where he lived during 5 years and Hyderabad, where he studied and now lives again. Talking with him is priceless since he can compare and has reflected a lot about many things. From what he said we learnt a lot about India’s problems, especially about corruption, education, the relationship between Muslims and Hindus and influences of the caste system. But from his way of telling this and from what we experienced together, we started to love his country. Continue reading

“Namaste from India” – OR – “Religion is Business in Varanasi”

Our last station in Nepal was a very special one: Lumbini – birth place of Lord Buddha. After having seen the popularity of other holy places like Muktinath, we expected tons of pilgrims bursting out in enthusiasm at this site. But surprisingly, the contrary was true. There were nearly no pilgrims, only a very moderate amount of tourists and the place convinced us with its relaxed tranquillity. Contrasting other holy places, archaeological evidence suggests that Lumbini indeed might be the site where Buddha was born. It was visited by Buddhist believers in the first centuries after his death but then forgotten for over a millennium. Not before 1896 it was rediscovered and for about 30 years it is a so-called development zone: every nation can build a Buddhist temple here, so you get a good impression of the diversity of this religion’s architectures. You can find temples and pagodas from Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam or Japan but also Germany and France. On the other hand, construction work is still in progress, it seems that the tradition still lacks. However, we really liked the quiet atmosphere and spent the days with three other travellers we met there, who in turn were international. All were doing an internship in Mumbai but they came from Mexico, Brazil and Turkey. And we stayed at the comfortable “Lumbini Village Lodge“. The next day we had to leave Nepal towards India and on the way to the border we conducted some research of tremendous importance. Whoever has asked how many people can fit into a car like a “Citroën Berlingo”, we now can provide the answer: 25 persons, if the roof is occupied by two huge backpacks …. but you need years of experience in taxi-tetris to achieve such a result! Continue reading

Lots of things have happened here…: Summarizing Nepal

We are not naive. We know that we are tourists, not guests. We are aware that for many people we are nothing special, that tourism is their business and that foreigners are their daily bread and butter. Not surprisingly, in all countries we have been to so far, at the tourists hotspots people were less friendly and more prone to cheat you. However, Nepal differed in two ways: where there were tourists, in general people were much more awful than anywhere else, and more important, it was a lot more difficult to escape from those areas. Whereas in China walking two blocks further is enough to get in normal and human contact, in Nepal you better cross the whole country for that.

Nepalis can be so charming, but whenever money is involved, things become complicated. And Nepalis almost always find a way to involve money. Our first guess to explain our different experiences was referring to the ubiquitous poverty. As mentioned, Nepal is among the 10 (!!!) poorest countries in the world. It still suffers from the civil war which ended in 2006. It is one of the very few countries were school is not mandatory at any age, resulting in sad levels of child labour. And just in case we forget the underdevelopment, the exhausting bus rides on terrible roads and in vehicles you can find in European museums will remind you.

That does not mean that every Nepali is poor. For instance, government imposes a 200% tax on foreign cars. Nonetheless, in Kathmandu’s chaotic traffic, you can discover many of them, implying that every 20 seconds, you see a Nepali who can afford spending more than 30 thousand Euros on a vehicle. But for most locals, we must seem incredibly rich and a great opportunity to earn a huge amount of money. We do not want to judge anybody in a desperate situation, but we do not think that this can be the only reason. We have been to other poor countries, e.g. Bolivia, which is a bit richer but still the poorest country in South-America, and there people were not like this.

But we also have seen that you always have a choice: especially annoying was the fact that, when Nepalis were friendly, it was often a calculated friendliness. To give you a typical situation, in the bus on our way to Bakhtapur, the ticket collector smiled at us and pulled faces to the music. When it came to pay the 70 Rupees, we gave him 100 but he just returned 25 Rupees. After we kindly asked him to correct the change (we do not appreciate the 5 cents so much but we appreciate sincereness), he did so rudely – and the friendliness vanished never to return. On the other hand, we also experienced the opposite. While buying a bottle of water during another bus ride, we gave the boy 25 Rupees, as 20 is the fixed price for water and the 5 Rupees were for the special service of buying in the bus. The boy looked at the money, took 5 Rupees and gave them back – and that was definitely not because he was richer than the other.

Also thanks to Tamara, we have learnt that there may be other reasons for our experiences. Mainly due to the caste-system, Nepalis are used to judge people by the color of their skin and treat them accordingly. For most of them, this is simply normal and they do not feel anything bad about it. Of course, we cannot complain about being in the wrong “caste”, but being the “tourist” makes conversation unnatural. Second, they behave not very differently among each other, for many people pure racism is part of their culture. To see how reckless they can be, consider what they call a “banda”, which happens quite often. It is often translated as “strike”, but this is not accurate. Actually, during a “banda” a certain interest group does not only refuse to work themselves, but forces EVERYONE not to work. And hires some violent gangs of thugs to beat up everyone who is outside or – according to mood – execute them. So “curfew” might still be the better word.

Further, we have heard from many people that they do not like Pakistan, Iran or even China, due to the situation of women there. Seldom such objections are risen against Nepal but for comparison, that’s how it is here: nearly all marriages are arranged, at least this is the traditional and still widely practised way in the mountains. Wedding day is a sad day, especially for the very young girls who usually see their family for the last time, because under any circumstances she has to move to the village of her spouse. Her rights are rare but her duties abundant. She has to care for her parents-in-law and for the family in general. Often, we saw women carrying dozens of kilos of stones while the men were playing cards. According to the most conservative studies, at least 80% of Nepali women are victims of domestic violence. To enable their daughters such a life as servant, the family has to pay a high marriage-portion. Therefore, daughters are considered as financial burden and Nepal is one of the very few countries where life-expectancy of women is below that of men. This is not just due to bad health-care, but also to the fact that they are not seldom neglected and die much more often than boys in early childhood.

Having said this, it could seem we do not like the country at all. This is by no means the case, quite the opposite is true, we feel pity for Nepal. We have met so many nice Nepalis and also had so many good experiences, especially at the remote areas, with young persons or people who had lived abroad. For all of them, and partly for the others, who are prone to bad behavior caused by their poverty, we really wish that things in Nepal change. That the countries enjoys economic growth, a better working democracy and above all, that they change their way to treat each other. The younger generation is usually better educated (if the parents can afford it), more open, informed and they should be the ones to change the country. But given the wide-spread corruption, the extreme population growth of 2.5% per year and the power of the Maoists, there is not much room for optimism. And sadly enough, this view is shared by the best in the country.