It was another one of those moments, like I had in Fez, Morocco so many years ago, when I found myself deep in the Medina, surrounded by hash pipe makers, boiling vats of the most intense colors, clotheslines swinging with brilliantly dyed silks, crowds of people blithely ignoring me.
I felt liberated.

It was only later that I encountered the Arab proverb
that to be lost in one’s own city is to be closer to God



I just keep walking.
The lights of the oncoming cars and motorcycles, the cacophony of horns, whistles, singing voices only contributes to the oceanic feeling of being swept along on a tide,
first ebbing, then flowing.
I can't stop shaking my head and smiling at the incongruity of it all.
Seriously, I have no idea where I am going and I can’t take it at all seriously.
Except that I really don't want to contract malaria.

-India puts a lot of faith in guides. That’s what yogis are, after all.
As I walk against the flow of humanity, I see coming towards me a skinny old man slowly leading a buffalo.
As the two of them draw nearer, I notice, even in the half-light, that the buffalo has the white eyes of the blind.
Tenderly, the man helps the buffalo through the swarms of people, rickshaws and motorbikes.
I stare just a bit longer than seems polite because this old man, leading a blind buffalo through the perils of everyday life, seems to exemplify the heart of Indian Hinduism.
The yogi, as sage, as teacher, as guide leads the acolyte
on the path to salvation-
a system so old that it has all but died out in the West.


-But...
it does feel really liberating to be away from Panday and on my own again. I do like him, but there is something inexplicable to wandering freely.

-I leave the crowds.
I leave the mosquitoes.
I leave Mother Ganga.
I leave Panday.
I leave worrying about where I’m going.
Nothing seems dangerous.
Every moment seems necessary,
Every step holy.


-For an unknown length of time,
I meander through all the sounds
of humans feeling good:
laughing,
singing,
buzzing conversations
around the snapping and popping
of the deep frying foods
in the myriad roadside stands.
and music from every kind of apparatus.

I do not want to stop,
but I am exhausted.

-A rickshaw driver comes up beside me and I decide to get in, telling him to take me to the Hotel Clark. He jumped at the chance and off we went.
He said that he knew where he was going, but they always say that in Varanasi.
Trucks, horns, and lights to the left of us; trucks, horns, and lights to the right of us,
onward, into the night rode the two of us.

All this, he said, for 70 rupees!
Well, let me tell you, after an hour of pedaling, I emptied my pockets to him.

-Before anything else, let me say that it feels really crippling not to be able to eat any of the street food. It's not so much that it looks good, but that it is so much a part of the life of the country. Everybody eats in the kiosks along the side of the road, and socializes. More than almost any other country I've been in, I wish I spoke the language. I would love to be able to hang out and chat under a propane lamp, popping pappadoms.

-At the moment, I am ensconced in the hotel bar with a gin and tonic, watching Australia play Kenya in cricket, with not a mosquito in sight, no chance of dying miserably beneath the wheels of a massive dump truck, and feeling rather proud of myself that I am here at all.



-What exhausts me about India is that I am trying to pay attention to everything. For example, in the restaurant two musicians, a drummer and flautist have me enthralled and no one else in the restaurant seems to know that they exist.
Maybe it's because I'm traveling alone, but that's a good reason to travel alone.

-I see so many Japanese people and wonder what they are feeling so far from their home, with all that has happened.
They look tentative eating rice with a fork.

-I kill a bug in the restaurant.
Somewhere, a Jain is frowning.

-Panday shows up later and we agree to meet tomorrow.





-The drive to Sarnath, from Varanasi, while only a distance of 10 miles, might as well be transcontinental. The calm of the forest of what once was called "the deer park" remains, even as the din of the ghats of Varanasi still echoes in my ears. The walk from the road where Panday leaves me, towards the small temple, is deserted. No one asking for anything! Not only that, but signs discouraging any giving or soliciting line the pathway.

-The temple, though small, yet ornate in naive way, bears no resemblance whatsoever to the great cathedrals of Christendom.
I am reminded of some of the churches in Italy built by the Franciscans, exemplifying some of the original simplicity of St Francis, who would have loved the deer park.

-This place, the site of Gotama Buddha's first sermon (his Sermon on the Mount) and the birth of the Eight-fold path, the Middle Way, the way, not of self-abnegation, but of self-responsibility, is today honored with a few scruffy workers hacking at the unresponsive earth, attempting to replace a few bricks in front of large, green statues of Buddha and his five original disciples.
This lack of grandeur seems to go to the heart of Buddha's teachings. As St. Francis tore away at the rot of medieval Christianity, so Buddha excised from Hinduism, the extreme asceticism and human sacrifice, the caste system and elaborate rituals.
Though, just as Hinduism still has Varanasi, as lively as ever, so too, does Vatican City still flourish.

-Somehow, the ability to balance the spinning plates of religious contradictions may well be one of humankind's more remarkable achievements.



-Talk about going a long way to try to put pieces of a puzzle together; I am sitting on the steps of the temple on the site of the Buddha’s first and most important sermon, reading "The Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist", given to me by a Jewish friend back in America.

Worth a least a chuckle.

-Interestingly enough, the author, Stephen Batchelor, starts his quest in India and then goes to Vevey, Switzerland, above lake Geneva, near where I just was.

-If, as he says, the point is to "encounter the phenomenal world in all its vitality and immediacy" then this is a phenomenally vital place to visit.

-And here I am thinking that I am on a quest like no other person, but having read all the same books as Batchelor: Ram Dass, Camus, D. T. Suzuki, and then Jung, and on and on and on.

-It certainly seemed authentic at the time.
-
I leave the quiet spot in the woods and go nearby to a museum/art gallery to look at some of the paraphernalia that people seem compelled to accumulate.
I stand, staring, at a statue of a meditative Buddha and try to pick out the "exquisitely rendered" folds of cloth draping his arms.
Without much success.
A guy walks up beside me and comments in American English as to what a beautiful statue it is and aren't the carven cloth folds especially nice.
I just have to shake my head.
Buddha’s little joke.
What a bizarre trip this is.
Without drugs, even.
It's fun to talk to him. He's been in India since November and has just gotten to Varanasi. This is his fourth trip to India and he comes for the meditation.
When I tell him that I have been on the road for two weeks and have already been to Geneva, Delhi, Kathmandu, and now Varanasi, he asks, incredulously, why would I do that?
He considers a month the necessary minimum amount of time to be in one place.

-Nice guy.
We discuss Buddhism and meditation and the business of pewter- making and how difficult it is to compete with so many desperately poor, yet hard-working, people.

-If I try to explain this trip to myself, it's that I love being alive and I want to keep pushing the boundaries so that I don't get complacent.


-Later, back at the hotel and needing to tweak my reservations,
I take a rickshaw to the travel agent. The driver introduces himself as Sillamuddin, a Muslim. You know, he says, like Ladin.
I counter with " do you mean like bin Ladin, al Quaeda?"
He says, "yes".
I tell that that's an awkward way to start a conversation with an American.
We do both agree the Obama is the best.

-Everywhere I turn, in every guide book, there is a reference to Mark Twain being here. I simply cannot imagine what this city must have looked like to him, and how he managed it. The man has my utmost admiration.

-I have to say that this hotel has terrible food, but the bar is a lot of fun, full of English, French, Indians, Spanish, Russians, Swiss, though no other Americans.

Last day in Varanasi.

-I decide to save as much money as I can by going to the rail station and canceling my train tickets.
In the foreigner's office, I am sitting next to a Frenchwoman and I could offer to translate for her, but I am having such a difficult time comprehending the Indian’s English, that it would probably be futile.
And futile, also will be this attempt to get any money back for these tickets.
In actual fact, even this experience shows me a side of India that I would never see otherwise.
Another woman walks in covered in mosquito bites. She must have stayed for the entire Holi celebration down by the river.

Salamuddin, the rickshaw driver who takes me to the station, spells out the obvious, that is, that India has many problems. All his parents on both sides are dead and he has to support 12 people.
Might I help?
I have no real idea whether what he says is true, but I like him and determine to pay him extra. I give him about 20 times what the trip is worth, which amounts to about $20. That is 1000 rupees, and there are drivers who will offer to take you anywhere for 5 rupees. He thanks me profusely.

It's a lot, and yet, a little- much like India itself.
Over the top in richness,
and desperately poor.

Sitting by the pool, reading and writing prior to heading to the airport, and as I am wondering whether it might be worth a swim, two Brits jump quickly out of the water.
A snake.
That makes my decision easier.
The staff bring a net, the British guy goes into the pool and snags the snake, the pool attendant lifts it up and out and walks about ten feet and dumps the snake, seemingly alive and well, into the bushes.