Agra-Cadabra; If Katmandu, we can too!: Sunday, January 17: Day 10 (actually 8)

Hi all, Deb here. It's been several days since we've given you an update. We've been in Katmandu and although the Internet is ok for looking at emails, uploading pictures really wasn't an option. Dave, though, has continued to journal every day, so we hope to finish our blogging (with pictures) after we get home (after 1 /26). In the meantime, here's Dave's journal from our last day in Veranasi before we headed to Nepal. At the end of the narrative are a fee random pictures, not necessarily all of Day 10/8. All is well and we are now heading from Nepal back to India, and will spend a few days in Rishikesh before heading home. Surprisingly, we are in the Katmandu airport with the best internet service since we've gotten here...and it's free. Go figure......

Day Ten (Eight)

Up early for the exciting bathing in the Ganges spectacular, which consists of us in a row boat covering some of the same part of the river as last night and catching sight of a few folks bathing. The bathers are unhurried and seem accustomed to having tourists nearby while they shampoo. Gotta say, watching regular-type people bathe in a river is not a highlight. Our guide fills us in on a lot of the spiritual background for Hinduism, Varanasi, and the Ganges. Okay stuff, though dumbed down for us.

We are rowed south to another ghat and disembark where we stop to observe – from a lot closer - another funeral pyre. No photos, Sameer says, as a sign of respect for the dead. Yeah, just gawking is way more respectful. Not educational, unless parallel activities such as "This is how Hindus eat, or copulate, or excrete waste" would also be considered educational. (Of course, we have a general idea about two of the three and have seen illustrations of the other. By coincidence, we disembark at the spot where the celebration of life was held last night. In the dreary light of early, smoggy morning, the same place that was all lights, fire, costumes and music a few hours ago, is dead and dirty with nothing to recommend it beyond seeing goats in t-shirts on the street. (Dunno why. The story is that these and other wandering animals are not owned by anyone. They roam the streets and scrounge anything that looks promising. Cattle, for example, are fond of the marigold wreaths wrapped around the necks of those about to be cremated. Ugh. On our way to the boat this morning we passed both cows and dogs asleep in unused street side shops. Jus chillin'.)

Next up, an inexplicable drive through the campus of Benares Hindu University which Sameer , an obviously proud grad, says is the number three university in the world after Oxford and Cambridge. Guess he doesn’t know about University of Phoenix. "You can Google it!" he says, confident no one will. We do: BHU is the #10 ranked university in India. Gotta say – as smug as this is of me – BHU looks like a dump. It's cleaner and greener than the grubby streets off-campus, but only slightly. The buildings need painting and nothing appears to have been built since the 1950s. Of course, India turns out plenty of top-notch doctors and engineers regardless of how the campuses where they got educated looked to one casual observer.

From there, we travel to The Temple of Mother India. Never heard of it? Maybe that’s because it's just a big topographic map of the nation and parts of a few of her neighbors. A nice reminder that India was once an island, one that rode tectonic plates up into South Asia. The collision caused the Himalayas. Maybe a topographic map was a new and startling thing when this one was reated in the 1940s. Now? Not so much.

The afternoon agenda includes a visit to the very spot ("… under a bodhi tree…") where Buddha first preached. A faux-old church is there now along with mannequins plopped under a modern replacement Bodhi tree to represent The Enlightened One talking the talk. Drab city.

Today’s road ends at a museum of antiquities, which contains lots of stone likenesses of the Big B, all dug up locally. A worthwhile 15 minute browse.

Tonight is the "Farewell Dinner for 8 of the 23 who aren’t continuing on to Katmandu. Hugs and E-mail addresses are exchanged and, who knows? We might keep in touch. Maybe. As with other tours we’ve been on, we’re sorry to see some people go. Others? Nah.