India: Day 4
Apr. 22nd, 2005 01:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatarperegrineJustin gave me permission to continue posting his journal from our India trip.
If you recall, we last left our heroes in Varanasi, the sacred city of Shiva, where they were preparing to wake up early in the morning for a dawn boat ride on the Ganges before catching their train to Gaya, another sacred city of Hinduism, outside of which the Buddha achieved enlightenment.
January 22
Up at five, groggy. We got down to Assi Ghat around six o'clock, where we were promptly offered a boat ride from a very insistent gentleman. His initial offer for a two-hour ride was 400 rupees -- the guidebooks say it should be about 100. We didn't bargain too hard, ending up at a price if 150, which seemed to have upset him, though this was probably not the case.
Overcharging tourists is definitely the rule, not the exception. It becomes very wearying to argue over the price of everything.
The ride itself was quite nice -- it was a two-hour progression that saw the very devout washing before it was light in the (relatively) silent morning air, priests doing a ritual involving fire at the water's edge [this was arati, the offering of oil lamps. -Ed], people doing laundry as the sky lightened, and a funeral pyre at one of the traditional cremation ghats.
Downsides: the river is sacred, but the line of thought seems to be that the river will wash away undesirable things, including a lot of trash and sewage. The north end of the river, the downstream end, is significantly more trash-filled than the upstream end, where we are staying. Another downside: the boat rides are not a well-kept secret. About halfway up the ghats, we started encountering many, many boats of tourists, some of which held 20 plus people, taking flash pictures of people bathing, doing laundry, and (inappropriately) the funeral pyres. It felt like the people at the ghats were zoo exhibits for our entertainment. There were also many vendors -- some children -- who carried entire stocks of souvenirs to the passing boats. Thankfully, we were less appealing marks than the big boats, so we weren't bothered as much.
We made reservations at our hotel for the 24th and 25th, when we'll be back in Varanasi -- it seemed like a pretty nice place for the price. We packed up our bags and took them with us when we checked out, making us conspicuous backpackers. With no particular destination in mind, we wandered the streets for a while, and got hopelessly lost. We flagged a rickshaw and asked to be taken to Vishwaneth, the Golden Temple, but apparently the driver misunderstood as we ended up just off of Dasaswamedh Ghat. We didn't realize it until after we couldn't find the Golden Temple and sat down to get our bearings.
To do so, we sat at the ghat, which evidently is something of a Pier 39 of ghats. An elderly man, after I refused a shave or haircut, began massaging my hands and arms, insisting it was "free, no charge." I feebly resisted, and after a while he demanded 150 rupees. It was a nice massage, but given the scam motive I paid 60, an amount over which he seemed visibly upset.
I forgot to mention the stretch of road not next to the Golden Temple. I've never been in such a crowded press of people and animals. Lots of beggars, shopkeepers calling for customers, and water buffalo being ornery in the street. It was all very overwhelming, and somewhat soured my view of the city.
We ended up walking the ghats back south to Assi Ghat and found that there was an art sales/show going on by the water. Canvas was strung between posts in the bank, and a wide variety of works from students of the local arts school were on display. Marjorie and I each had a favorite, and we ended up buying both for 1250 rupees [slightly under $30]. We didn't bargain, as a student of the school told us all the money went to the artists, and we (perhaps naively) believed him.
After lunch, we made a successful foray south to find a poster tube for our purchases, then grabbed an autorickshaw to the train station. The train was repeatedly delayed, ending up almost two hours late (and about 30 minutes after it was announced to be "arriving at the station"). An English gentleman helped us understand the system, and we had no real trouble finding our seats. We have full bunks, complete with sheets and blankets. We are now off to Gaya, where we hope it won't be too difficult to find a place to stay at 11:30 p.m.
[On to Day 5: Bodh Gaya]
[back to Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3]
If you recall, we last left our heroes in Varanasi, the sacred city of Shiva, where they were preparing to wake up early in the morning for a dawn boat ride on the Ganges before catching their train to Gaya, another sacred city of Hinduism, outside of which the Buddha achieved enlightenment.
January 22
Up at five, groggy. We got down to Assi Ghat around six o'clock, where we were promptly offered a boat ride from a very insistent gentleman. His initial offer for a two-hour ride was 400 rupees -- the guidebooks say it should be about 100. We didn't bargain too hard, ending up at a price if 150, which seemed to have upset him, though this was probably not the case.
Overcharging tourists is definitely the rule, not the exception. It becomes very wearying to argue over the price of everything.
The ride itself was quite nice -- it was a two-hour progression that saw the very devout washing before it was light in the (relatively) silent morning air, priests doing a ritual involving fire at the water's edge [this was arati, the offering of oil lamps. -Ed], people doing laundry as the sky lightened, and a funeral pyre at one of the traditional cremation ghats.
Downsides: the river is sacred, but the line of thought seems to be that the river will wash away undesirable things, including a lot of trash and sewage. The north end of the river, the downstream end, is significantly more trash-filled than the upstream end, where we are staying. Another downside: the boat rides are not a well-kept secret. About halfway up the ghats, we started encountering many, many boats of tourists, some of which held 20 plus people, taking flash pictures of people bathing, doing laundry, and (inappropriately) the funeral pyres. It felt like the people at the ghats were zoo exhibits for our entertainment. There were also many vendors -- some children -- who carried entire stocks of souvenirs to the passing boats. Thankfully, we were less appealing marks than the big boats, so we weren't bothered as much.
Dawn over the Ganges. While around a million people live on the west bank at Varanasi, the far shore is an uninhabited floodplain.
Other boats on the Ganges. These broad stairs down to the river are the ghats.
We made reservations at our hotel for the 24th and 25th, when we'll be back in Varanasi -- it seemed like a pretty nice place for the price. We packed up our bags and took them with us when we checked out, making us conspicuous backpackers. With no particular destination in mind, we wandered the streets for a while, and got hopelessly lost. We flagged a rickshaw and asked to be taken to Vishwaneth, the Golden Temple, but apparently the driver misunderstood as we ended up just off of Dasaswamedh Ghat. We didn't realize it until after we couldn't find the Golden Temple and sat down to get our bearings.
To do so, we sat at the ghat, which evidently is something of a Pier 39 of ghats. An elderly man, after I refused a shave or haircut, began massaging my hands and arms, insisting it was "free, no charge." I feebly resisted, and after a while he demanded 150 rupees. It was a nice massage, but given the scam motive I paid 60, an amount over which he seemed visibly upset.
I forgot to mention the stretch of road not next to the Golden Temple. I've never been in such a crowded press of people and animals. Lots of beggars, shopkeepers calling for customers, and water buffalo being ornery in the street. It was all very overwhelming, and somewhat soured my view of the city.
A photo of Dasaswamedh Ghat from someone else's website. (Click for link.) We were too overwhelmed to take a picture.
We ended up walking the ghats back south to Assi Ghat and found that there was an art sales/show going on by the water. Canvas was strung between posts in the bank, and a wide variety of works from students of the local arts school were on display. Marjorie and I each had a favorite, and we ended up buying both for 1250 rupees [slightly under $30]. We didn't bargain, as a student of the school told us all the money went to the artists, and we (perhaps naively) believed him.
Marjorie's pencil drawing of a goddess (maybe Durga?).
Justin's watercolor of a woman.
After lunch, we made a successful foray south to find a poster tube for our purchases, then grabbed an autorickshaw to the train station. The train was repeatedly delayed, ending up almost two hours late (and about 30 minutes after it was announced to be "arriving at the station"). An English gentleman helped us understand the system, and we had no real trouble finding our seats. We have full bunks, complete with sheets and blankets. We are now off to Gaya, where we hope it won't be too difficult to find a place to stay at 11:30 p.m.
Marjorie on the train from Varanasi to Gaya, reading a Diana Eck book about India.
[On to Day 5: Bodh Gaya]
[back to Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3]
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-04-22 12:00 pm (UTC)Yeah. This is one of these places that my dad and I occasionally argue. He's amazed at my unwillingness to haggle and make a semi-scene about every little thing, whereas I cannot understand how a highly-paid executive would want to waste his precious time trying to lower a price by $5.
Of course, in India proper, I also have this tendency to look at the person standing in front of me, ponder the exchange rate, and realize that by paying an extra $5 on my end, I give him the equivalent of $20 or $50, which he probably needs a lot more than I do. Good ol' paternalistic Western values.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-22 08:38 pm (UTC)Yeah, that's one side of the argument, though I think your estimate of the relative value is conservative. But there's also a macroeconomic effect which is not so straightforward. For example, in Varanasi there is a glut in the supply of transportation. This is, in part, because tourists, intentionally and unintentionally, pay significantly above local market rates for their transportation. The market, being one of the purest free markets I can think of, quickly adjusts by raising the supply of taxi drivers until the average individual wage declines back to the fully-employed local market rate.
So, by not haggling, or tipping extravagantly by local standards, you are effectively making it possible for one class of jobs in the local economy to support more people though a direct subsidy, but at the same time you are making that class of jobs dependent on some proportion of extravagant tipping.
Is it a good thing? I don't claim to know, I just think it's not straightforward. Certainly we did a fair bit of (relative) extravagant tipping; I'm just not convinced it's the best long-term strategy.