Hitch-Hiker’s Travel Blog of India

On monday I went to the indian embassy yet again. At the embassy they told me the answer from the embassy of India in Finland didn’t reply yet (they always check with the embassy in applicant’s native country if it’s ok to give visa) so they wouldn’t give me another 6 months now. I could either wait for the reply or take 3 months visa immediately. I decided to go for the 3 months as I wanted to reach Mayapur before Sri Krishna Janmastami (appearance day of Lord Krishna, one of the biggest vaisnava celebrations of the year). I came back yet again in the afternoon to pick up my visa and made one more visit to the Iskcon temple, after wich I returned to my guesthouse to pack up and ready myself for the journey to Mayapur.

Reaching Mayapur took me two days - the first day I hitchhiked for around 300-400km, and after dark I took a night bus for another 300km. The next morning I was on the eastern Nepali border at Kakarbitta, and after having darshan of a beautiful Lakshmi-Narayan temple I crossed the border to India. On the indian side I spent a coule of hours looking for the immigration checkpost - on the border itself there was nobody to stamp my passport. After a couple of hours I decided to give up and go on the road heading for Kolkata as Mayapur is situated only around 150km from Kolkata. I hitchhiked for around 300km again and took another night bus for the rest of the distance, arriving at Krishnanagar (the town on the main road where you have to turn for Mayapur) at around 2 AM. I took some rest at a small dhaba (=roadside restaurant) and took one more bus to Mayapur at around 5 AM. I reached Mayapur today in the morning, and found a nice ashram with one of the Gaudya Maths.

Yesterday, as I was in one truck, I asked the driver (and other people on the same truck) how far is Mayapur. I was a bit surprised at first as none of them had never heard of the place and didn’t know where it is. After a while I noticed a picture of Qaaba (the holy stone of muslims, located at Mecca) in the truck and figured out the reason why they had no idea - they were muslim, and to them Mayapur was of no importance, just another small town on the banks of ganga. As they stopped for tea, I took my backpack and hitched another ride, and as I got in I saw Lord Krishna on a small altar and the instant I told the driver I’m going to Mayapur, he replied “yes, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Hare Krishna Hare Rama!”. I guess this area also has a large muslim population, it’s not too many kilometers from the border of Bangladesh (formerly a muslim-majority part of India wich broke away in the aftermath of India becoming independent).

Yesterday I first went for the Indian embassy, only to find out it’s closed - of course I could’ve found out earlier, had I checked wich day of the week it is, surely it’s not open on weekends. Oh well, that’s something that happens to me on long trips like this, I tend to lose track of time. Forgetting wich day of the week it is isn’t much, but sometimes I have no idea wich month it is :D. After the embassy I decided to take a microbus downtown, I wanted to buy another shirt (one of my two shirt was recently worn out to the point of falling apart), and I didn’t feel like buying it near my guesthouse in Thamel, as the tourist-oriented ‘fashion’ boutiques have only the worst cliches of ‘hippie’ style clothing and other junk wich I wouldn’t want to wear. After the bus ride and a bit of walking I found a neat kurta (shirt, a bit longer than T-shirt and sometimes with long sleeves), and decided to buy it - maybe I won’t be grilled by the sun so badly in this, as it’s light color and very light cloth too. Also I’ll save on the sunscreen as the long sleeves will protect my arms.

After buying the kurta I headed for the Iskcon center - in the embassy I found out it’s saturday and around here Iskcon organises their usual ‘Sunday feasts’ on saturday, as saturday (apparently) is the holiday in Nepal. I heard Nepal has the highest amount of national holidays in the world - approximately every third day is a holiday for one reason or another. I was welcomed by the devotees and joined the kirtan for a moment, but as the kirtan finished I decided to head out to another part of the town before the feast - I had heard the Durbar square at Patan is a beautiful spot and has many temples, so I went for the square. When I got there I was slightly irritated by the fact that you’d need to pay just to enter the square. After a while (and a bit of a walk to find unguarded entrances :D) I surrendered to the fact and paid up 200 rupees (2 euros) just to take a walk on the square. The square was amazing, with some very beautiful traditional architecture and wonderful big old temples. I had darshan of the Krishna temple and took a load of photos of the square. This was the first time I got inside a ‘hindus only’ temple, simply by telling the people on the door I practice Sanatan Dharma (of course it probably helps I don’t look like the average hippie/tourist :D).

On the way to Durbar square, I visited a Mahakali temple. Kali is a form of the Mother Goddess much more ‘tolerant’ towards some ’sins’ than other hindu gods. In this temple people would offer whiskey to Kali, and I also heard sometimes people make animal sacrifices at Kali temples. I made a small (vegetarian, non-alcoholic) offering and was given a bit of prasad and some flowers offered to Kali. Even the flowers smelled of whiskey, as devotees pour their whiskey offerings all over the deity :D.

After the darshan and a bit of a walk on the square, meeting some other travellers, I checked the time and noted it’s about the time I head back for the Iskcon center for the saturday feast. I arrived just in time for the lecture, but wasn’t much impressed by it - I guess it’s a personal thing, some lecturers are more impressive for some people than others. I enjoyed the company of the devotees though and we had a great, ecstatic kirtan session after the lecture - and plenty of delicioous prasad afterwards!

Today I’ll have a day of doing pretty much nothing, maybe going to check out some other sights of Kathmandu, mainly just waiting for Monday to complete the visa application for India. The devotees told me yesterday that next thursday will be Janmastami, the birthday of Lord Krishna. I’m hoping I’ll make it to India to some major Iskcon center for a bigger celebration of the Lord’s birthday.

Today I went for the embassy of Pakistan, again. Yesterday I tried to apply for a visa and I was told I need a letter of recommendation from embassy of Finland. When I got to the finnish embassy, the people there told me the letter isn’t necessary, I could get the visa even without it - though it might need a bit of baksheesh (=bribes) for the officials requesting the letter :D. When I told the officials I’ll be going to Pakistan most likely in the beginning of next year, they told me they could only give me a visa 3 months in advance, so either I’d have to go earlier, or, as they recommended, apply for the visa in Delhi. I’m pretty sure I’ll end up staying more than 3 months in India (if I get the visa - and especially if I don’t! :D), so I’ll probably make another try for the Pakistani visa later in Delhi.

As I was heading back from the Embassy to my guesthouse, the sound of a fire engine nearby caught my attention. My attention was even more captivated by a burning car the fire engine was going to put out. After a bit of looking around I also spotted a force of riot cops, and I knew there’s a protest of some sort going on somewhere nearby - a most welcome and exciting turn of the day! After a bit of asking around and walking around (and taking a bit of teargas) I was inside a university, occupied by protesting students - something that reminded me much of some things from the time before I left Finland :D. It was great to run into student radicals here in Nepal and share a few moments of the protest with them. The situation didn’t escalate much, after a couple of teargas bombs and bricks being exchanged, the police held their ground beyond throwing distance for bricks and just waited until the situation calmed down. After a couple of hours the protest was over, and both the students and cops dispersed. This was something that would NEVER happen in the west, in there if there’s a violent escalation (bricks and teargas), it’ll end up in a total mayhem or lots of people getting arrested. I guess the Nepali cops don’t get angry from a few bricks, since they take ‘em pretty often (strikes, demonstrations and all sorts of protesting, also sometimes clashes with the police, are commonplace in Nepal).

Well, getting the process going for the Indian visa was pretty easy, after a couple of hours of waiting at the Indian embassy I filled one form and was told to come back in a week. I think I’ll return earlier, as when I was applying for Indian visa at Egypt, this phase of the application only took one day.

Finding the Iskcon center at Kathmandu wasn’t much harder - the Lord conviniently arranged me to end up in a guesthouse with one Iskcon devotee staying here and she told me there’s actually two centers, a preaching center, restaurant and some kind of school in the center of Kathmandu, and a bigger temple and a small farm in the outskirts, at Buddhanilkanth.

After finishing my visit to the embassy of India I headed for the preaching center, and more importantly, Govinda’s :). I was recieved in the most welcoming way by the devotees at VISA (the name of the preaching center). They would give me wonderful prasad and afterwards I’d order some more from Govinda’s to take with me. The devotees also told me of a major festival coming up, the appearance day of Lord Balaram, the brother of Lord Krishna.

The next day I headed to Buddhanilkanth, to the bigger Iskcon temple, for the festival. The festival was great, but unfortunately I forgot my camera’s memory card at my guesthouse, so I don’t have any photos of the celebration. Well, at least I had the chance of having a full experience of the festival, not having to distract myself by documenting it. We had a long, ecstatic bhajans session and afterwards a great feast of prasad. After taking prasad I ended up having a long discussion with a devotee from Uganda and another one from Ukraine.

I left Dev Ghat in the morning. I had a most luxurious ride from Dev Ghat to Manakamana, as I got a ride with a quite rich Indian driving a nice Ford with air conditioning and comfortable seats. It was quite the opposite from what I experienced while going to Badrinath and back. When I reached Manakamana, I decided to go on in the luxury line, not climbing up but taking the cable car, in spite of the outrageous price (westerners pay triple the nepali/indian price!). They told me the walk would take four hours but judging by how it looks from the cable car, it might just as well be eight hours - anyway, walking would’ve meant staying for the night on top of the hill or coming down and looking for lodge in the dark. I wasn’t sure how many days I’ve got left on my visa to Nepal so I decided to head for Kathmandu the same day. I spent a couple of hours on the top of the hill, had darshan of the Manakamana temple and made a donation of a coin on behalf of one family who gave me a ride on the way to Dev Ghat - when they heard I’ll be going to Manakamana they insisted I ‘do their part’ also :).

After Manakamana the day went on in the luxury line - I had walked maybe 20 meters from the cable car entrance when I got a ride direct to Kathmandu. At first the driver would tell me he wants a hundred rupees, but after I pleaded him to see me as another human being instead of a cash cow, he agreed to take me for free. The ride didn’t take me all the way to Kathmandu though, as the car suffered a flat tire just 5 km before Kathmandu - and I ended up spending just the same 100 rupees for a taxi to Thamel (a tourist trap part of Kathmandu, the place to look for cheap lodging). Normally I’d just walk or hitch in the city, but it was already getting dark and the air in Kathmandu is incredibly bad - the worst city air I’ve had, or at least on par with Teheran. It’s amazing it can be so bad, as the nepalis can’t afford to drive around like crazy like they do in Teheran, but the nepali traffic makes up in the quality - plenty of old diesel engines going around the city make sure your face (and probably lungs too!) are black by the end of the day. I’m seriously considering buying an air filter mask, it seems to be almost fashionable with the locals - and it’d be handy in places like the Annapurna area, with a lot of wind and loose sand too.

Now I’m in a guesthouse at Thamel. Tomorrow I’ll head out to find the Indian embassy to renew my visa to India and look for the Iskcon temple - I’m getting to miss the great prasad prepared by Iskcon devotees :).

The day I left Galeshwar I decided to start by taking a bus until I get back to a major road - I didn’t want to spend the couple of days needed to reach it by hitching. After reaching Pokhara by bus, I went on by hitchhiking, heading for Kathmandu. By afternoon I had reached Manakamana, one of the places I wanted to see on the way to Kathmandu. Manakamana has the only cable car system in Nepal, taking you up to a hill with one of the major temples in Nepal. I didn’t feel like having darshan right there and then, as I was sweaty and tired from walking (Galeshwar to Beni) and the bus ride and hitching. I had the idea to look for an ashram or dharmshala nearby, and ended up backtracking my route a couple of kilometers to Mugling, as someone in Manakamana told me I could find a dharmshala in there. What I found in Mugling was only a shelter with a roof, but no walls, equipped with a kerosene cooker - a true do-it-yourself dharmshala, for real babas only! I took a bit of a walk around as the site was very beautiful and had some small shrines nearby, but didn’t feel like staying there. I asked around for a proper ashram and some people told me to head to Dev Ghat, around 35km along another road out of Mugling. I headed out, and just by nightfall I finally reached Dev Ghat. I met some devotees on the last stretch of the road before Dev Ghat and they showed me to a dharmshala.

Dev Ghat is an amazing, beautiful and very spiritual place. There’s dozens of temples and I spent the next day just walking around and having darshan of different temples, taking a bit of prasad and joining in the bhajans in some of them. I also took a dip in the river, again at a holy place, in the confluence of two rivers. I heard in the night there would be a religious festival of some kind, called Bhole Bom. In the evening the dharmshala where I’m staying was filled up with pilgrims coming for the Bhole Bom and I think tonight the bhajans will be loud and going late enough to disturb my sleep - wich it actually would’be been yesterday also had it not been for my earplugs!

I really love Dev Ghat and would like to stay longer, but I’m running out of time on my Nepali visa. Tomorrow I’ll head for Manakamana and Kathmandu. Dev Ghat is a bit how I’d imagine Rishikesh was before tourists and commercial interests changed the place. Unfortunately I ran out of batteries for my camera in Mugling and for most of today the electricity was out so I couldn’t charge them and as a result I won’t have any photos of Dev Ghat, but I’ll surely remember the place - this, along with Muktinath, will be one of the places to come back to, should I ever come back to Nepal.

I left Jomsom walking for a bit and later I got a ride on a yet another tractor. Now I started to notice that during the time I was up at Muktinath it’s been raining some - the road was really muddy and this was by far the dirtiest ride I’ve taken on this trip - I was totally covered with mud by the time I reached Tukche. It was still raining a bit so I decided to stop for the day, as another mud-bath or a walk in the rain didn’t feel very appealing. I feel a bit sorry for the guesthouse, I must’ve been the dirtiest customer in a while and you could see it from the room when I left - the mud and dirt was everywhere.

The next day I took a little walk, as just after Tukche there’s a bridge wich was destroyed even as I was going up, so I trekked until the other side and as it was unlikely to catch a ride any time soon (nobody could come from behind me with a vehicle because of the bridge) so I decided to hop on a jeep on the other side of the bridge. After a short negotiation I ended up paying 200 rupees for a ride to Leti, and when I reached Leti I decided to walk on to cover a good distance on this day. I also hoped for maybe getting a ride, but my hopes were in vain - the road between Leti and the next village, Ghasa, was totally destroyed by landslides - you could barely go on foot, and there was absolutely no way to pass with a vehicle. I went on walking still after Ghasa, and the road wasn’t any better for the next few kilometers. A bit before the next village I met a couple of other travellers and we decided to join up for the rest of the day and look for a guesthouse. My companions were an ukrainean guy and polish girl, who had been trekking somewhere apparently a bit higher in the mountains, out from the main Annapurna circuit. I ended up sharing a room with the guy - this was the first time in months I ended up having an attached bathroom :D!

In the morning the others went on trekking before me as I stayed back doing a bit of sadhana. A bit later I also hit the road, and after some hours of walking I came a bit past Tatopani, quite near to the spot where I stopped for a darshan of a temple and a bath in a hot spring. This time I had darshan of another temple nearby, one wich I missed on the way up. While I was at the temple, one of the devotees asked me if I wanted lunch and I was more than happy to accept. Even only two days of not staying in an ashram and not having prasad (well, I do make offerings of any foodstuffs I have but it isn’t the same as having something cooked and offered ‘properly’, in a temple) I could feel it. After taking the prasad I went on walking for another kilometer and stopped at a jeep stand. The jeep was waiting to be filled up with people (they won’t go unless its chucked absolutely full of people!) and I was feeling a bit lazy on a hot day so I decided to sit down and wait. The Lord arranged for an interesting and exciting day even if I wasn’t in a mood adventurous enough to trek or hitchhike. Firstly, I had great company for the trip, as a Buddhist guy with a good command of english language showed up for the jeep and we had long, in-depth discussions about spirituality and the differences of the philosophies behind Buddhism and Sanatan Dharma. Secondly the day turned out to be an adventure after all, as the road down from Tatopani was only barely in the condition to be passable by jeep, and a few times we had to get out and walk (but didn’t have to push the jeep). One time it looked like the jeep (with us outside watching) might go down the canyon with a landslide, as the road was a bit soft and to go around some obstacles (another, broken jeep, actually) the jeep had to go all the way to the edge of the road and we could see the land sliding under the wheels. After some more exciting moments in the jeep and watching the driver and his helper rebuild some parts of the road to be in a passable condition, we finally reached the destination of the jeep, a spot where you could take a bus. I decided to go on in the commercial transports as by the condition of the road it seemed unlikely that there would be anything I could hitch a ride on and I really wanted to reach Galeshwar by the evening. Eventually, just as it was getting dark, we reached Galeshwar and I hopped out of the bus and headed for the ashram. I had a nice surprise as I entered, some people had gathered singing bhajans (=praising the holy names of the Lord) and I was happy to join in.

Now I’m still at the ashram in Galeshwar, and maybe I’ll stay here for the day to let my laundry dry up and to have darshan of the temples nearby - and to take a bit of rest after a couple of rough days of travelling.

Yep, I ended up leaving Muktinath the day after, but not in the direction I planned at first - I just didn’t feel like climbing the Thorung Pass, and I had read that Kagbeni, a village I passed on the way to Muktinath, is also a holy place as there is a confluence of two rivers, one of wich originates near Muktinath. Taking bath in this spot is very beneficial spiritually, and as I didn’t do it on the way to Muktinath, I decided to head back and stop at Kagbeni. My decision was also influenced by the fact that there’s an ashram at Kagbeni, but on the other side of Thorung there isn’t any. Actually on the way towards Beni there’s a string of ashrams, giving me nice places to stay and, most important of all, great prasad every day :)!

The first day going out of Muktinath was a bit slow, I left the ashram at around 10 AM after breakfast and headed for one more darshan at the Muktinath temple. I met a french couple at the temple and spent quite some time hanging out at the temple and chatting with them. In the afternoon I finally managed to head out, and almost ended up taking a jeep with the couple in the direction of Kagbeni and Jomsom. Around here the jeeps are a bit slow to go, they need to be absolutely totally fully packed with people before going, and while we were waiting I heard a tractor coming up.. the Lord had fixed everything for me, again! The tractor driver didn’t want to pick me up right there (from the jeep stand), though, since he didn’t want to anger the jeep drivers by ‘taking their business’. The tractor didn’t leave Muktinath right away, so I figured out it’d be in my best interest to take a  little walk out of Muktinath and after about one kilometer of walking I heard the tractor coming up behind me, and sure enough the same driver agreed to give me a lift now that the jeep drivers weren’t watching :D.

I got out of the shakiest, bounciest and wildest tractor ride after about 10km, at Kagbeni. Going on the tractor made me feel I don’t need to go for rollercoasters at amusement parks anymore, going on the off-roads carved into steep mountain slopes and seeing the long fall it’d be if I didn’t hold on for my life on every bump..

It was nice to stay at Kagbeni ashram for the night, and I met a babaji, who asked me to join him for a trip to Damodar Kund, a place where the two brothers whom Lord Krishna liberated by felling the trees they were cursed into being were told to go and bathe after their liberation. I would’ve really wanted to go and take a dip in the Damodar Kund, but I didn’t feel I have the time and energy for the seven day trek wich it’d take to get there (not to mention another week of trekking to come back!). The bath at the confluence of the rivers would have to suffice for this trip, and it was very refreshing and cleansing (and very, very cold!).

The next day, after breakfast, again around 10 AM, I took to the trail heading for Jomsom. This time I actually walked pretty far, maybe 5 km before a ride manifested. I also broke my sandals, bought just a bit more than a week ago from Pokhara. Luckily the damage wasn’t irreversible, and with a good amount of superglue the sandal was fixed in seconds, just like it says in the glue package (and also two of my fingers were bonded in a second, again just like it says! :D). A bit after breaking and fixing the shoe I got a ride, again in a tractor, taking me all the way to Jomsom. I had thought it can’t get any bouncier than it was the previous day, but this time the tractor itself was stuffed full of people (yep, 7 people on a tractor!) and I ended up in the trailer, wich is still considerably less comfortable than the tractor itself.

Right now I’m at another ashram in Jomsom, and will be heading further on tomorrow. Here I entertained the other pilgrims, a group of babajis, by showing some of my photos from various holy sites I’ve visited and by playing some devotional videos wich I got on VCDs here and there.