December 5 - 14, 2011: Uttar Pradesh (Kushinagar - Ayodhya - Lucknow - Kanpur - Allahabad)

I left Varanasi by train about 8 in the morning of December 5th for a tour of some of the less visited cities of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state with something like 200 million people.  In fact, only four nations have greater populations:  China, India itself, the United States and Indonesia.  Eight of India's fourteen prime ministers have come from Uttar Pradesh.  The morning was chilly and hazy and the train crowded, at least for the first hour and a half or so until the first stop.  But it was a relatively fast train as we traveled through the flat countryside, with some rice stubble, sugar cane, mustard and lots of just plowed or just sprouting fields, probably of newly-planted wheat.  Bound for Gorakpur, the train crossed the wide Ghaghara River, one of the great rivers flowing down from the Nepalese Himalayas to the Ganges, about halfway on our trip and arrived about 12:30.  I had a simple, but not too bad, lunch of potatoes, spinach and chapattis in a discouraging looking roadside restaurant and caught a shared jeep heading east to Kushinagar, arriving about 3.

Kushinagar is one of the four great Buddhist pilgrimage sites, the one where Buddha is believed to have died.  I had hoped to stay in one of the temples but they were all filled with pilgrims, so I had to get an expensive hotel -- about $25, by far the most I have spent in India.  I walked to the park with a temple and stupa in the center, the spot where Buddha is believed to have died.  They are both much restored, by Burmese Buddhists in the 1920's.  This site, like Bodhgaya and Sarnath, was abandoned after being destroyed by Muslims about 1200 and only rediscovered by the British in the 19th century.  Apparently, the British relied on the accounts of Chinese pilgrims from a thousand and more years earlier to find the sites.  Inside the temple is a twenty foot long reclining Buddha, much restored and now with gold leaf, with his hands under his head.  Pilgrims were kneeling all around and praying.  At dusk the temple closed after the Buddha, covered by an orange cloak, was covered by priests and pilgrims with additional red cloaks.  Afterwards I talked with a Burmese guy who told me most of the pilgrims were Burmese, and a Thai monk, who walked out with me through the ruined  brick foundations of monasteries that surround the temple and stupa.  Somewhat surprisingly, there were no other western tourists in Kushinagar, a small town, just a few thousand people, I think.  I talked to a Bengali man who moved here 17 years ago and he told me when he arrived there wasn't much here, just three shops.  Now there are dozens catering to the pilgrims.

I got up and out before 7 the next morning into a very thick fog.  You could see only about 100-150 feet.  I walked to a stupa where Buddha is supposed to have drunk his last water and then to the main temple and stupa, which I had visited the night before.  It was all very nice in the fog, though chilly.  I had switched from shorts to long trousers that morning.  There were many bands of pilgrims in the temple and around the stupa, led by monks with microphones and portable speakers.  The Buddha was again being wrapped in robes of different colors.  Walking around the stupa, I took a photo of a monk and pilgrims kneeling before the stupa and he called me over, gave me his camera and asked me to take photos of them praying.

I had breakfast and then walked about a  half mile out of town, a nice walk under trees in the fog, to a ruined stupa, really just an irregular pile of bricks, where Buddha is supposed to have been cremated.  A band of pilgrims was kneeling and praying on one side. I took a cycle rickshaw back to town as the fog began to lift and headed back to Gorakhpur soon after 10 in a packed jeep -- 15 of us.  We arrived about noon and I immediately got on a bus headed further west to Faizabad.  I would have liked to have gone to the fourth major Buddhist site in the area, Lumbini, where Buddha was born, about 50 miles to the north, but it is just over the Nepal border and with my visa if I leave India I have to wait two months before returning.  The afternoon was overcast and foggy, much like the Central Valley of California can be in the winter, and I suspect for much the same reason, with cold air coming down from the Himalayas (rather than the Sierra Nevada) and condensing when it hits the warmer and moister valley air.  We again crossed the wide Ghaghara just being reaching Faizabad.  It took me a while to find a hotel, but it was a good one.  On the way into town there were Shi'ites celebrating, if that is the right word, Muharram, when Hussein was killed.  They build these colorful paper replicas, called tazias, of his tomb at Karbala in Iraq.

It was foggy again the next morning.  The newspaper reported 50 meters (about 165 feet) visibility the day before.  Temperatures had dropped, too.  Highs were in the low 80's in Varanasi, but had dropped to about 70 with the fog.  Lows were in the high 40's.  About 9 I took a tempo, a shared, large version of an autorickshaw, to Ayodhya, only eight miles or so away.  Ayodhya is considered the birthplace of Rama and has become a place of great controversy over the past two decades.  In 1992 Hindus destroyed the Babri Mosque, built by the Mughal Emperor Babur in the early 1500's after first destroying the Hindu temple on the spot.  They claim the site is the birthplace of Rama, an incarnation of Vishnu and the hero of the epic Ramayana.  Arriving in town, I first climbed the stairs to the Hanuman (the monkey god and an ally of Rama in his war against the evil Ravana) temple in a walled, fortress-like enclosure.  The pilgrims there were friendly and there was lots of activity.  Two soldiers guarded the entrance and I had to run a gauntlet of beggars on the steps.

I then walked to the Rama Janam Bhumi, the site of Rama's birth in the precincts of the former Babri Mosque.  The security was amazing.  I had to deposit my bag and camera and even my pen.  I was led by a man throughout, passing the Indian worshipers at checkpoints.  I had three or four thorough pat-downs, although the soldiers were all very friendly.  There weren't many pilgrims that day.  Finally, I was led through a caged walkway, enclosed on both sides and above, for hundreds of feet in what seemed a sort of labyrinth until we reached the garish little shrine in a white canvas tent that commemorates Rama's birthplace.  I had a short look and then made another long walk through wire enclosures back to near where I had begun, passing a very large army base on the way, with steel fences and guard towers.  Nearby videos, which you could buy, were playing in the little shops showing the destruction of the mosque in 1992 set to martial music.  Young men are using hammers and sledgehammers on the dome of the mosque after they had overwhelmed the guards. This caused all sorts of Hindu-Muslim rioting in India, with thousands of lives lost.

I walked around the town some more.  People were very friendly and I saw no other westerners.  One temple had a courtyard full of cows and saddhus, until the saddhus chased out the cows. There were lots of monkeys all over town.  I walked to the palace of the former raja, and to some temples behind it.  Some painters were repainting one of the palace rooms and showed me around.  I had a good thali lunch for 35 rupees, about 70 cents.  A thali is a metal plate with sections in which they put various kinds of food, mostly cooked vegetables, along with rice and chapattis.  The sun came out about 1 and I walked around town a bit more before taking a tempo back to Faizabad.

In Faizabad I took a cycle rickshaw to the enormous, white-domed Mausoleum of Bahu Begum, a wife of a Nawab of Avadh (or Oudh, as the British spelled it).  I think it was about 150 feet high.  Both going and returning we got stuck in an enormous traffic jam at a railroad crossing.  I've now seen this several times in India.  When the guard rails go down, traffic on each side of the tracks does not stay in the left lane.  Instead, the cars and motorcycles and rickshaws and bicycles and everything else crowds into both lanes, jockeying for position.  Needless to say, after the train passes and the guard rails go up, there is a complete morass, which takes ages to untangle.  I suppose this says something about India.

It was foggy again the next morning and I left by bus about 9 heading west to Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh's capital, with more than two million people.  We traveled on a four lane divided highway, though there were mounds of cow manure patties drying on the median, something you rarely see on four lane divided highways in the United States.  The fog cleared about 11and there was sugar cane and other crops, and lots of trees, to be seen on the way.  Coming into town, we passed a huge new plaza with a statue of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the dalit, or untouchable, who was independent India's first Law Minister and principal author of its constitution.  Uttar Pradesh is now governed by a predominately dalit party, although it is also supported by what are called OBCs ("other backward castes"), Muslims (also often poor) and others.  The Chief Minister is a woman named Mayawati, often called the Queen of the Dalits, known for building monuments, often with elephants, her party symbol, and for corruption.  There are billboards and posters of her all over Lucknow.

We passed through the old British cantonment on the city outskirts, with the Indian military now in their place, and reached the bus station about noon.  It took me an hour to find a hotel, across from the huge train station, and then I headed downtown after lunch.  I walked by several British era buildings, the huge early 20th century legislative building, the GPO, Christchurch (closed and crumbling) and the yellow buildings on the city's main street, Hazratganj, with newly installed Victorian style street lamps.  I walked and then took a rickshaw to the Shah Najaf Imambara, where that Nawab of Avadh is buried.  Later I visited a bookshop run by a 91 year old man named Ram Advani and spoke with that very friendly and interesting man for about an hour.  He was born in Lahore, educated at Cambridge, taught in Simla during World War II, and opened a bookstore in Lahore after the war.  He moved to Lucknow after partition and his bookstore has been in the same location since 1950. His children and grandchildren all live in Britain.  We were talking about the traffic and he told me that in 1950 you could park your car right in the middle of what is now the hopelessly clogged street in front of his store.  Further down the street I stopped at a place and had one of Lucknow's most famous foods, called a basket chat. The basket is a web of fried potatoes, with aloo tiki (a fried potato patty) inside with other chunks of potato.  This is all covered with sugar sweetened yoghurt, a chutney made from green mangos and lots of other tasty treats, including pomegranate seeds.  It was delicious.  While eating it on a bench on the street, I talked to two medical students, one of whom warned me against speaking to "shabbily dressed" people on the street.

I had a fairly good hotel in Lucknow, the only real problem a Hindu temple nearby which about 5 each morning went into a frenzy of bell ringing for about 20 minutes.  A few minutes after that ended, the Muslim call to prayer would begin.  It was foggy again the next morning and I headed to the Residency.  This is where the British endured a difficult siege during the 1857 Indian Mutiny, as they called it, or the First War of Independence, as the Indians call it. It is an extensive area, something squarish, about a thousand feet by a thousand feet.  During British rule, a good part of India, maybe 40%, was not ruled directly by Britain, but by native princes with a British Resident in each principality as a sort of power behind the throne.  The siege lasted about four and a half months and the many buildings of the Residency area were much damaged or destroyed by cannon fire.  The British left it as was as a memorial and it is quite interesting to wander around the ruin buildings and memorials.  One memorial honors the "Devoted Native Officers and Sepoys" (sepoys are soldiers) who fought on the British side.  It seems that about half of the 3000 people under siege were Indians and about half the 3000 were non-combatants, including women and children.  When a relief column reached Lucknow after three months, only about 1000 had survived, and then it took another two and a half months before another relief column finally ended the siege.  Again, I was the only westerner wandering around.  Lots of Indians, mostly couples enjoying the park, were there.

Afterwards, I walked around some, visiting some huge, early 19th century mausoleums of the Nawabs of Avadh.  They were pretty run down, with boys playing cricket on the dusty grass nearby.  I passed another plaza with a statue of Ambedkar and them took a cycle rickshaw to a famous Lucknow restaurant called Tunday Kebab and ordered a plate of their famous mutton kebabs.  These kebabs are not chunks of meat on skewers, but very mushy patties tenderized by papaya and cooked in oil.  They are served with a sort of spongy round bread and are delicious.  I watched them being cooked in a big wok-like pan in front of the restaurant.  After lunch I walked through the streets and narrow alleys of the neighborhood, called Aminabad.  A woman was ironing in one alley with a huge iron filled with charcoal.  Eventually I took a cycle rickshaw to Lucknow's huge train station to look around.  It is quite attractive, built by the British in that style called Indo-Saracenic.

The next morning the sun was trying to break through the fog soon after 8.  I took a vikram, a shared, large autorickshaw, to the huge Bara Imambara, a tomb built by the Nawabs of Avadh about two hundred years ago. The main hall is 500 feet long and 50 feet high, with no columns. In front is a huge courtyard with a mosque on one side and a five story step well on the other.  When I arrived, fog was swirling through the huge courtyard, but it dissipated about 9:30 as the sun came out.  Above the great hall is a labyrinth of passages that take you to walkways that look down on the two halls and lead to the roof.  It is a lot of fun to wander through the narrow passageways and the views from the roof are great.  I finally met some other western tourists there.  After about three hours I walked further west past other sites.  It had warmed up a bit and I could take off my jacket.  (I hadn't needed a jacket in Varanasi.  I'm still wearing sandals rather than shoes, though, mainly because they are easier to take off at temples and mosques.)  I passed a huge gate, a British built clocktower, and a museum with paintings of the Nawabs of Oudh, or Avadh.  They were Persian, and therefore Shi'ites, and were able to establish their independence from the Mughals in the 1700's.  They were quite cultured, devoted to poetry and the good life.  In the paintings, as time goes by, the nawabs become increasingly corpulent and bejeweled.  The last one, deposed by the British in 1856 for bad governance (one of the causes of the revolt the next year) is painted in a luxurious gown with one of his nipples exposed.  Quite odd.

I continued to the Chotta Imambra, with black and white calligraphy on the exterior and two mini-Taj Mahal tombs in the courtyard.  Black flags and banners were everywhere.  The tenth day of Muharrum, the day Hussein, Mohammed's grandson, was slain at Karbala, had occurred a few days before and there were bloody photos of Shi'as parading in Lucknow and cutting themselves to show their solidarity with Hussein.  Most Indian Muslims are Sunni, and Ram Advani told me most Muslims in Lucknow are Sunni, but the nawabs apparently converted many to their faith.  I took a cycle rickshaw to a neighborhood of narrow streets and alleys called Chowk and wandered around.  There was lots of activity and some women in black chadors.  I took another cycle rickshaw to the Residency again, as I wanted to see the museum, which had been closed the day I had first visited.  I sat on a bench as the sun set behind the trees and watched the boys flying kites on the wide lawn in front of the main residency building.

The sun was out soon after 8 the next morning.  It had felt colder the night before.  I took a vikram, then a cycle rickshaw to La Martiniere, a boys school in the palatial former home of Claude Martin, a Frenchmen who made a fortune working for the Nawabs and the British East India Company in the late 1700's and early 1800's.  It is a huge Indo-Classical building with many classical statues on the roof.  Lots of statues of lions, too.  It was closed on that Sunday morning, but a guy let me in to see the library and the chapel.  Three friendly boys, 13 years old or so, showed me around.  They showed me their dormitory, above the library in a room with beautiful blue and white molding, with classical designs, but in need of conservation.  The many beds in the rooms had mosquito netting.  They told me there were 200 boarders and 3500 day students.  Boys were playing cricket and two were playing ping pong on a cement bench with bricks serving as the net.  One boy had on his school jacket, with the school crest.  On the way, I had seen protestors at a Gandhi statue showing their solidarity with a man named Anna Hazare who was staging a one day hunger strike in Delhi that day to get the government to agree to his anti-corruption reforms.

I left Lucknow about 1 that afternoon on a train from its huge station.  The train was about an hour late, but I spent the time talking to a medical student on his way back to medical school in Mangalore in southern India.  The train was crowded, with five on a seat supposed to seat three.  Lots of people buys unreserved tickets and then squeeze in among those with reserved seats.  I was traveling second class sleeper, with berths that are made into seats in the daytime.  There are also AC class seats, but the windows are smaller and can't be opened, so I prefer traveling second class, although it is dirty and dusty and often crowded.  Beggars and sellers of food and drink and other things came through almost constantly.  One guy was selling belts, another perfume.  The sun was out, though it was hazy, as we passed mustard, some rice harvesting, lots of trees and lots of newly sprouting wheat.  We crossed the very dry Ganges and reached Kanpur after about an  hour and a half.

I found a good hotel and then took a cycle rickshaw to All Souls' Church in the Cantonment, surrounded by Indian Army buildings.  The 150 year old church was closed, with barking dogs guarding it, but a guy let me in and showed me around.  The were lots of plaques inside and memorials outside about the 1857 Siege of Cawnpore (as the British spelled it).  The small party of besieged British were told by the insurgents that they could board boats and sail down the Ganges to Allahabad, but as they were boarding the boats the insurgents raked them with cannon fire and charged them with cavalry.  Only one boat escaped and those that didn't escape were killed.  Outside the church is a statue of an angel and a stone screen, apparently moved to the church from downtown Kanpur after independence.  Posts nearby mark the site of trenches from the fighting.  I walked along the wide streets of the cantonment and eventually made my way by rickshw to the spot on the Ganges where the massacre took place, but there wasn't anything to see but a small temple and the mostly dry bed of the Ganges.

Back in the city center, I watched some friendly boys and young men playing cricket in the dusk in the dusty yard of the former King Emperor Memorial Hall.  In the dark near my hotel I found a big new mall, very clean and modern inside with four levels inside a big atrium.  There was a Christmas tree maybe 40 feet high, with presents nearby and snowflakes above.  There was a food court on the top level, with McDonalds, Pizza Hut, KFC and Indian and Chinese food places.  I had a not very good Chicken Maharajah, India's version of the Big Mac with two chicken patties, and some not very good Baskin Robbins ice cream.  There were lots and lots of people inside and I seemed to be the only westerner.  I had my photo taken.  In fact, I've had my photo taken everywhere.  Many people have cell phones with cameras.

It was sunny the next morning and I walked around Kanpur unsuccessfully looking for some other 1857 sites.  I did find the colonial Christchurch and some other colonial buildings.  I left Kanpur about 11:30 on a three hour train trip east to Allahabad.  The train wasn't too crowded and we passed lots of mustard, trees and newly planted wheat.  I also some some tall red-headed Sarus cranes from the train at small pools of water.  They are the tallest of the cranes.  In Allahabad I got a room with 20 foot ceilings in a dirty hotel near the train station that apparently originally was a stable.  Actually, it turned out to be fairly comfortable except for a hard bed, and I think it is cleaner now than it was when it was a stable.  In the late afternoon I walked over the walkways crossing the tracks and platforms of the train station and walked to Khusru Bagh, with four Mogul tombs.  One is that of Khusru, who rebelled against his father Jahangir and as punishment was blinded and imprisoned in Allahabad.  Later his brother, who became Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal, had him killed to ensure his own succession as Emperor.  Another tomb is that of his mother who is said to have committed suicide with an overdose of opium as she was so distraught with the feuding between her husband and son.  The garden surrounding the tombs was filled with friendly people.  One man from Indore took a photo of me and his two very friendly little children.

There was thick fog again the next morning.  And it was cold.  The newspaper said the low was about 44, the high 68.  I had a good breakfast, with good coffee, at the Indian Coffee House, similar to the one in Simla.  I went back to the hotel waiting for the fog to lift some, and then walked to All Saints' Cathedral nearby.  It was closed, but the Presbyter-in-Charge, the Reverend Gabriel Daud, offered me tea and then let me in and showed me around.  He told me it the largest church in Asia and it is very big.  It's not in the best condition, with broken windows, including some of the stained glass ones. It was decorated for Christmas inside, by his wife, he told me.  He told me on the 24th they set up a creche and thousands come to see it.  His congregation numbers 268.  I also walked to the High Court and talked to some of the black robed, white collared lawyers.  I had down the same at the High Court in Lucknow, and noticed many of the motorcycles were marked "Advocate."

I walked a bit, then took a cycle rickshaw to Anand Bhavan, the Nehru family home.  Actually, there are two homes, one purchased by Motilal Nehru in 1899, a huge place with 52 rooms.  In 1930 he gave it to Congress and it was renamed Swaraj (for "self-government") Bhavan.  In 1927 he built next door a very elegant new Anand Bhavan.  Motilal died in 1931 and his son Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, lived in both.  Indira, his daughter, was born in 1917 in Swaraj Bhavan.  They are both now museums, with many rooms left as they were and many very good photos.  My favorites, I think, were those of both Motilal and Jawaharlal as young lawyers, each sporting white wigs. I spent about three hours there.  There were lots of visitors, including a very big group in white gowns.  I was the only westerner.  A bookstore had some of the books written by Nehru and they looked very interesting.  Afterwards, I walked to the British built Muir College, a beautiful building with a 200 foot tower, now part of Allahabad University.  A kid was practicing bowling cricket balls to his father.  The ball is quite hard and he was bowling with both arms. I then walked to a British era library, another very nice building, and the Queen Victoria Memorial, now lacking any plaque whatsoever. I sat in the park and watched the sun go down through the trees.  Back at my hotel there was a Tibetan Market until 9.  Tibetans come every November and stay until January, selling warm clothing.  I guess people figure Tibetans must know about warm clothing.  One Tibetan woman told me she lives in Delhi.

It was sunny the next morning and I took a vikram to the Sangam, the point at the eastern end of Allahabad where the Yamuna and the Ganges meet.  Actually, Hindus believe that another, underground river, the mythical Saraswati, also meets at this point.  It is very auspicious to bathe here, and in January 2013 it will be particularly auspicious to bathe here, and tens of millions are expected to arrive at what is the world's biggest religious event. I walked along the dusty shoreline.  Lots of poles and electrical wires run through the area, in preparation for when tents are set up for the big gatherings.  People were engaging in puja (religious ceremonies) on the shoreline and getting rowed out to the meeting of the waters.  I joined a group of about twelve in a boat.  Went out to a line of boats where the somewhat greenish Yamuna meets the brown Ganges.  We tied up to a boat that was attached to another boat with a submerged platform between them.  All the members of our party except me, and people from other boats, took turns submerging in the waters standing on the platform..  Men undressed to their shorts while women went in fully clothed.  A priest on the boat conducts pujas, with coconuts.  I saw one guy pouring what looked like milk into the water.  It took over an hour for our group to finish, but it was all interesting.  On the way back, they threw some sort of food to the many birds, hundreds of them, on the water.

Right next to the Sangam (which means "confluence") is a huge, but not particularly photogenic, fort built by Akbar.  The military still uses it and you can go into just a small part of it, with an underground temple and a banyan tree.  I did so and then walked along the walls of the fort along the Yamuna until I reached a garbage filled park with a pillar marking the spot where authority was transferred from the East India Company to the British Crown in 1858.  After that, I headed back to the city center for a late lunch and an internet cafe.

November 28 - December 4, 2011: Varanasi and Sarnath

On the 28th I left Patna on a train bound for Varanasi that left shortly before noon.  We headed west, passing through flat, agricultural land just south of the Ganges River.  There was lots of rice growing and being harvested, but also other crops, under India's constantly hazy sky.  I saw farmers plowing with both oxen and mechanized plows.  I was in a second class compartment, as from Calcutta to Gaya, but it was comfortable enough, though dirty and dusty.

After a while, two girls, one a teenager and one a little younger, sat together  in the seat in front of me.  I could hear their companions encouraging them to speak to me, and eventually the older one did, and I talked off and on with both during the rest of the trip.  They were on their way to Varanasi for their uncle's wedding, and he and about 20 other relatives were also traveling in the carriage.  They were very nice, and spoke fairly good English.  They gave me what they told me was some wedding food:  some sort of dry pastry, a round sweet ball, and some nuts and other tasty goodies, all served to me in a little plate made of dry leaves.  The train made good time for the first three hours, but then we stayed in and around the station in Mughalsarai, just acoss the river from Varanasi, for an hour or so.  Eventually, the train got going again, crossed the Ganges just downriver from Varanasi, and arrived about a quarter to 5.  I took and autorickshaw (basically a three wheeled motorcycle with a chasis built around it, in which Indians can stuff ten or more people) from the station to the old city, found a hotel on one of its narrow lanes, and had dinner.  After dinner, I walked through the old city's narrow lanes to the ghats (the sets of stairs that lead to the river -- there are supposed to be more than 100 ghats lining the Ganges in Varanasi) on the river and walked about in the night.

The next morning I walked to the ghats again and spent a couple of hours or more walking up and down the riverfront.  There was all sorts of activity, though not as much bathing in the river as I expected.  Maybe it is because it is getting colder as winter approaches.  It must be about 60 degrees in the early morning, perhaps even a little colder.  Varanasi is the holiest place on the Ganges, and in fact the holiest place in India, I think.  I'm not quite sure why.  There was a ford here in ancient times, and fords are important in Hinduism as symbolic entries to other worlds.  The principal ghat, Dashashwamedh, celebrates Brahma sacrificing (medh) ten (dash) horses (ashwa).

The river water is extremely dirty, but men strip down (women stay clothed for the most part) and bathe, brush their teeth, drink, and so on.  Saddhus (holy men) bizarrely dressed, usually in yellow or orange, with ash and other markings on their skin, roam around seeking alms.  Priests perform puja (religious ceremonies on the steps for shaven head celebrants.  Nearby on the steps are barbers using razors to shave the heads of men.  Some are also shaving faces.  The pujas are quite interesting to watch.  The priest will place all sorts of stuff on plates in front of the celebrants, including a mound of flour, which the celebrants knead into little balls with Ganges water and perhaps a little milk.  Other stuff, like mashed bananas and little black seeds, might also be added.  And there are flowers, usually orange marigolds, and other stuff on the plates.  The priest leads them in chants.  After finishing, I saw one group board a boat with their offering plates and go out onto the river.  Lots of birds hovered around them as they headed downriver, so I supposed their were tossing food into the river.  Eventually, I made my way north along the river (while the Ganges is generally flowing west to east, it makes a curve in Varanasi and flows south to north along the city) to Manikarnika Ghat, the principal burning ghat.  There were three or four cremation pyres burning, and untouchables, who handle all the burning, scooping up ashes from previous cremations, for deposit in the Ganges, I imagine.  There are huge piles of wood stacked all around, and boats full of wood just offshore.  To die in Varanasi is a good thing:  you instantly attain moksha (I think it's called), or heaven.  Lots of old people come here to die.

Later in the day, after breakfast, some internet time and lunch, I walked through the narrow dirty alleys of the old city.  They can be quite crowded, with cows, and cow shit, and speeding, honking motorcyclists adding to the congestion.  I made my way through the narrow alleys (usually about 6 feet wide, but sometimes maybe only 3-4 feet) to the burning ghat again.  There was much more activity.  It is a very dirty, smoky place, and 10 to 15 pyres were burning.  It takes about three hours for a corpse to burn.  Bodies wrapped in white cloth and covered with bright orange or yellow cloth are brought through the old city's narrow alleys on bamboo stretchers, accompanied by male family members.  The body is first brought down to the Ganges and either immersed in the river or river water is poured over it.  It is then taken to a stack of wood built by the untouchables, the orange or yellow cloth removed, and the white wrapped body placed on top of the woodpile.  More wood is placed on top and the family members, led by one family member with a shaved head and wearing a white dhoti and shawl (so dressed like Gandhi), parade around it.  Eventually, the guy in the dhoti uses a bunch of straw to set it alight.  The fire comes from a sacred flame of Shiva kept nearby.  The family members all stand around and watch.  Usually, there seem to be about 20 of them.

The untouchables tending the fires usually eventually need to use bamboo poles to push the charred, partially burned corpses into positions where they will burn more readily, and they do this skillfully but without much care.  It is a little disconcerting to see a charred torso and head, the arms and legs already burned off, being pushed and shoved by the bamboo poles into a hotter part of the fire.  One of the untouchables told me everything burns but the chest of men and the hips of women, because men's chests are so powerful from work and women's hips from childbirth.  Near the end, an untouchable will pick out the unburned bone with two pieces of wood and give it to the guy in the dhoti, who will take it down to the river and toss it in.  He will then fill an urn with Ganges water, take it to the smoldering remains of the fire, and toss the urn over his head, with his back to the fire, onto the ashes.  Then all disperse rather rapidly.  Cows and dogs and goats hover nearby.  I saw one dog cautiously pawing at something in the burning embers.  Perhaps searching for a bit of the person cremated?  The cows eat the straw used to light the fires and seem to find something to eat on the bright orange and yellow cloth that had covered the bodies on the stretchers.  One of the untouchables told me the oldest son leads the formalities for fathers and the youngest son for mothers.  I was told by various of the untouchables that it takes 200 to 300 kilos of wood for the pyre, so about 440 to 660 pounds, and that the cheapest wood can cost 200 rupees (about $4) a kilo.  The most precious wood, sandalwood, costs much more.  I think they said 2000 rupees a kilo.

I watched until past nightfall and them made my way to the ceremony, the ganga aarti, held each night at the principal ghat.  Actually, there are two different ganga aartis at adjacent ghats and they attract big crowds, about 90% or more Indian, I would say.  They are quite interesting and colorful. Seven guys clad in white robes waved brass censors of incense and large candelabras of fire to music and the incessant clamor of bells.  They blew conch shells before and after the ceremony.  It lasts more than half an hour and I enjoyed it, as did the crowd.  Afterward, I had dinner with a Canadian microbiologist in India for two weeks for the wedding of a colleague and she told me the Ganges has 1.5 million micro-organisms per 10 milliliters of water (so an ounce or so) and that you shouldn't bathe in water with more than 500 micro-organisms.  I thought I had read that the Ganges is so polluted from upstream industrial chemical pollution that nothing can live in it.

I got up early again the next morning to watch all the activity on the ghats and slowly made my way south along the river over about two hours to the southernmost ghat, Assi Ghat.  (Varanasi gets its name because it is located between two tributaries of the Ganges, the Varuna to the north and the Assi to the south.)  On the way, I passed the ghat where washermen and women beat cloths on wooden planks at the river edge to clean them.  They don't appear to use soap, just the force of whipping the clothes against the wood.  One guy was using a pole to beat the dirt out of the clothes.  Big white, or rather whitish, sheets, lined the nearby steps, drying in the sun.  These steps are not very clean.  Water buffalo were wandering on the steps nearby.

At Assi Ghat I had breakfast and then took a cycle rickshaw (basically a three wheeled bicycle with a wider seat behind the pedaler for passengers) to the red  Durga Temple, with a sign requesting that "non-Hindu gentlemen" not enter, then to the museum at the almost century old Banaras Hindu University, and finally to the pontoon bridge that crosses the Ganges during the dry season to Ramnagar.  I walked over the rickety bridge to the riverside fort and palace of the Maharajah of Benares (another name for Varanasi).  The Ganges, at this time of year, is not that wide, maybe between a quarter and a half mile.  At the center of town, there is a very wide sandbank, or more like a dirt bank, on the other side.  During the monsoon the river must be miles wide.  On the buildings along the ghats are markings from a particularly high flood in1978 and they must be 40 or 50 feet above the present river level.  I visited the maharajah's palace and fort in Ramnagar, with a dusty museum inside with lots of weapons, old cars, palanquins and howdahs (the latter for riding elephants), before taking an autorickshaw back to Assi Ghat and having a late lunch.

On the way back to the center along the river, I stopped at another of the city's burning ghats to watch the activity.  Three or four cremations were going on when I arrived about 4, but by the time I left maybe an hour and a half later, there must have been about ten going.  It was fascinating to watch.  Just below me, I watched an touchable build a funeral pyre, and then guide family members as they poured sandalwood powder and little blocks of sandalwood on the pyre.  Ghee (clarified butter) was also squeezed out of plastic bags onto the logs and some black powder was also added.  The body was placed on the wood and more sandalwood powder and ghee was spread onto it.  The pyre really burned well when lit.  All this was happening only maybe 20 feet below me.  I walked back along the river after nightfall and watched another ganga aarti, this one with five yellow-clad celebrants, but with basically the same routine as the night before.

The next morning I got down to the river early again to watch all the activity.  It is all very interesting, but you do have to put up with persistent touts who want you to take a boat ride, have a massage, or buy something else off them, and they just won't take no for an answer.  I try to totally ignore them.  I made my way north, upriver, past the Manikarnika burning ghat, and eventually reached as far north as somewhere beyond the Alamgir Mosque (Alamgir is another name for the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb) high above the river.  River activity decreases as you head away from the center, but there are interesting things to see, including some massive, but run down, buildings along the ghats.

After lunch, I wandered through the narrow lanes of the old city.  At one point, eight or ten massive water buffalo came through the narrow lane.  I climbed on a step into shop to avoid them.  I reached the Shiva temple known as the Golden Temple for its gold-plated spire.  It is supposed to be the holiest temple in Varanasi, with darshan, or worship, here belived to remit all sins.  It is only a little more than 200 years old, previous ones having been destroyed by Moslems, most recently by the intolerant 17th century Mughal Emperor Augrangzeb, who built a white, domed mosque on the site.  The newer temple is right beside the mosque and there is tremendous security all around.  Despite a sign requesting non-Hindu gentlemen not to enter, tourists are allowed to enter, but (as with Indians) without bags, cell phones, and cameras and only after about four or five pat downs by the police.  Inside the temple the courtyard was wet, dirty and slippery.  Monkeys (red-butted, red-faced macaques) scampered around.  Inside the main temple in a foot-high, bulbous, black stone lingam (penis) of Shiva, which worshipers touch several times and then touch their heads.  Nearby is a pool, which non-Hindus are not allowed to see, where one of my guidebooks say Shiva "cooled his lingam."  I would like to have seen Shiva do that, or come to think of it, maybe not.

The big mosque nearby is off-limits to non-Moslems, though you can look at it from a narrow lane.  Around it are two walls with barbed wire and a high guardtower.  I talked to a shopowner who told me it has been this way since 1992, the year Hindu fanatics destroyed the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, setting off all sorts of Hindu-Moslem violence.  He told me there were 1000 soldiers around the old city, and you do see lots of them, with rifles, at intersections in the lanes in the old city, occasionally frisking motorcyclists.  So I guess the soldiers are there as much to prevent Hindus destroying the mosque as to prevent Islamic terrorism.  There was a bomb that exploded about a year ago at Dashashwamedh Ghat, killing several people.  From the temple and mosque I walked through the narrow lanes to a lassi shop with excellent lassi, a yoghurt drink.  While sitting in there sipping my lassi, I saw two funeral processions come by, with chanting men accompanying a yellow or orange clad body on a stretcher.  I eventually made my way again to the burning ghat, Mandikarnika, watched for a while, and then made my way back to Dashashwamedh Ghat for the evening ganga aarti.

Again I got up early the next morning to watch the activity on the ghats.  I went into a massive riverside palace built by Man Singh, the Maharajah of Amber, about 1600.  On top is one of the observatories built in the 1700's by Jai Singh, his descendant, who founded the city of Jaipur and built six other observatories, including ones in Delhi and Jaipur which I visited last year.  The palace is much run down, but there are great views from the roof.

After a couple of hours on the ghats and then breakfast, I took an autorickshaw to Sarnath, about 6 or 7 miles away.  I had planned to go the day before with the Canadian microbiologist, but she had taken ill.  A little too much Indian microbiology, perhaps.  I got to Sarnath about noon and was disappointed to find its museum was closed.  It contains the famous four lion capital to a pillar erected by the Buddhist Emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century BC, which is now the national symbol of India, depicted on seals and some coins.  Sarnath is where Buddha gave his first sermon, five weeks after his enlightenment at Bodhgaya.  A great brick stupa about 165 feet high arises in the grassy enclosure.  It apparently was much higher until destroyed by Moslems around 1200.  Like Bodhgaya, Sarnath was abandoned and then rediscovered and restored by the British in the 1800's.  Around the stupa are the foundations of monasteries and the broken remains of the Ashoka pillar, with a Sanskrit inscription warning Buddhist monks to avoid schisms.  There weren't many pilgrims, though I did see a few Tibetans.

In Sarnath I also visited a Jain temple and a Buddhist temple built in the 1930's with interesting Japanese murals depicting Buddha inside.  Outside is a Bodhi tree grown from a sapling of the Bodhi tree in Sri Lanka with statues underneath of Buddha delivering his first sermon to the five ascetics who were his audience.  The story is that before his enlightenment he had been fasting in the hills around Bodhgaya with them.  Nearby are plaques with the text of his first sermon.  They are in the languages of all the major Buddhist languages, but the main one is in the ancient Pala language, but oddly in Roman script, with an English translation,  In the sermon he advises the way to enlightenment is not through denial of sensory pleasures or self-mortification, but through "the middle way,"  the eight fold path, right thinking, right behavior, etc.  The English version contains a lot of basic Buddhist concepts, though some of it is almost gibberish, which I hope is the fault of the translation.  I took an autorickshaw back to the old city and searched for the place I had stayed in when I visited Varanasi.  It was a private home in the old city of a guy we had met on the way to Varanasi and I had found the address while reading my old letters from 1979.  I wandered through alleys looking for it, with lots of help from friendly people.  I did find the alley, but not the house.  I think I might have eventually, but it was getting towards dark.

After again getting up early to watch all the early morning activities on the ghats, I spent a relatively lazy day the next day.  I have a comfortable hotel here, with a bed with a fairly good mattress for a change (though it's only a foam mattress) and hot water showers for about $9 a night.  I enjoy wandering the narrow lanes of the old city (despite the annoying honking motorcycles, it is much nicer than walking the chaotic streets) and along the ghats.  There is always something to see.  You do have to be careful in the narrow lanes.  They are filthy and you have to be careful not to step into the piles of cow and dog shit, besides avoiding all the other garbage and the cows themselves, those damn motorcycles and men carrying big loads through the narrow alleys.

I got up soon after 6 the next morning, headed to the ghats, and boarded a boat for an hour trip on the river along the ghats.  It was cool and misty, or perhaps hazy is a better word.  It is always hazy here.  The sun arose barely visible through the haze about 6:45.  Actually, it had arisen before that, but you couldn't see it through the haze until then.  There were lots of boats on the river, most but not all with foreign tourists.  I enjoyed being rowed along the ghats and watching the bathers and a group celebrating a puja facing the rising sun across the river.  Afterwards I walked along the ghats, chatting for a while with a group of students from Banaras Hindu University on a Sunday morning stroll before, they told me, heading to the cinema on their day off.  I saw a group of pilgrims, the men all in white with hats like those Nehru used to wear while the women wore colorful saris.  The students said they were from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, recognizing them from their clothes and speech.

After lunch I took another walk through the old city's narrow alleys, first watching three boys playing wiffle cricket in the garbage and cow excrement filled narrow alley just outside my hotel.  Actually, I guess it wasn't a real wiffle ball as it had no holes, and they were using a standard wooden cricket bat.  I eventually reached Manikarnika Ghat and watched the cremations for a while.  There were ten or more going on, with quite a crowd watching, mostly Indians but some westerners.  One woman was brought to the ghat not on a bamboo stretcher as usual but on a sort of wicker bed.  Her face was uncovered, with Hindu religious markings on the forehead.  That is the only corpse I've seen here not completely wrapped in white cloth.  At one point a half dozen or so water buffalo charged up the ghat steps, scattering the watching crowd.  I walked through some more alleys and reached the river again and then walked along the ghats to the central Dashashwamedh Ghat, where they were preparing for the evening ganga aarti ceremony.  I watched a guy laboriously putting wicks and oil in the candelabras.  He dumped the wicks into a big pot of oil and placed them one by one into the seven candelabras.  Each has 49 spots for wicks, so it takes a while.  I gave up watching after he finished the first of the seven.  

November 23 - 27, 2011: Calcutta - Bodhgaya - Patna

I had enjoyed Calcutta, and left on a train bound for Gaya to the east about 1 on the afternoon of the 23rd.  On the way to the train station (not Howrah, but one of Calcutta's other three train stations), the taxi driver got lost, getting himself tangled up in a street market and then turning around and cutting through small alleys.  It was quite interesting driving through that massive city, with something like 14 million people (India's second largest, after Bombay).  We reached the train station in plenty of time, though.  The train fare for the seven hour journey was only 240 rupees (about $4.80), though I paid a commission to the guy who got me the ticket of 150 rupees and the taxi to the station cost 180.  The rupee has dropped quite a bit since I was here last January.  Then it was about 45 to the dollar; now about 52.

The train slowly made its way through the city and crossed a bridge over the wide Hooghly after half an hour or so.  The flat West Bengal countryside was green, with lots of yellowing ripened rice, much of it being harvested.  There were lots of palm trees and people working in the fields, some with mechanical plows.  In the eastern part of the state we passed some huge, rusting mills, at least one of them a steelworks.  We crossed into the recently created (2000, formerly part of Bihar) state of Jharkhand and the topography became more uneven, and even hilly in places.  We reached the city of Dhanbad soon after 5, and it was dark by the time we left.  We sped through the night and I had two seatmates from Calcutta also bound for Gaya.  The train was relatively uncrowded, though dirty and dusty, and we reached Gaya, in Bihar, just after 8.  I got a halfway decent hotel across from the train station.

The next morning about 8 I took a bus south about 8 miles (but 45 minutes) to Bodhgaya and found a hotel and had a big "English breakfast," kind of greasy, but with eggs, beans, mushrooms, fried tomatoes and fried potatoes in a tented restaurant called Mohammed's in the Tibetan tent village.  I then walked around the small town, surrounding the temple honoring the site where Prince Siddhartha Gautama achieved enlightenment and became the Buddha.  This is Buddhism's holiest site and there are subsidiary temples built by various Buddhist countries:  China, Japan, Thailand, Bhutan, Tibet, Nepal and others.  The Bhutanese and Japanese temples are particularly nice.  There are lots of Buddhist tourists around, including a lot, it seemed, from Thailand.  There are also lots of Tibetans, who come here in the winter.  The Dalai Lama is said to come every year.  There are also lots of Indian Hindus, who consider Buddha an incarnation of Vishnu, along with Rama and Krishna and others.  Apparently, the Buddhists and Hindus clash over management of the main temple. 

Outside the main temple are hordes of beggars, including cripples, sometimes fighting over the alms (bread, toys) distributed by the groups of Asian tourists.  As usual in India, there is filth and garbage everywhere.  But the main temple, the Mahabodhi Mahavihara, and its big enclosure are very nice.  After visiting the subsidiary temples and an archeological museum, I entered the main temple about 3:30 and stayed until after 6.  Interestingly, the site had only been rediscovered by the British in the 19th century.  The great Buddhist emperor Ashoka had built a temple here in the 3rd century BC, and the current temple dates, I think, from the 5th century AD (though it is now much restored), but the Moslems sacked the site about 1200 and drove the Buddhists away.  Buddhism was already in decline at that time.  The restored temple is quite nice, a tall spire around which people walk on three different levels.  You enter the compound on the east and just west of the temple is a peepul tree, said to be a descendant of the tree under which Buddha achieved enlightenment.  The original tree was destroyed, perhaps by Ashoka before he became a Buddhist or by his jealous wife (there appear to be various stories), but a sapling from the original tree had been taken to Sri Lanka, and a sapling from the tree in Sri Lanka was brought back and planted in Bodhgaya. 

I walked all around and sat here and there.  A big Chinese contingent in bright yellow robes was praying and chanting on the west side.  Lots of red-clad Tibetan monks were everywhere.  Hundreds (mostly Tibetans, but some westerners and others) were prostrating on smooth wooden boards under the trees in the compound surrounding the temple.  Towards dusk, I sat under the Bodhi Tree, as it is called, and watched the pligrims.  The tree, a peepul, has heart-shaped leaves and sheds little black berries.  Pilgrims quickly grabbed any leaf that fell and a man swept up the berries.  The tree itself is behind a stone screen.  It was all very nice.  After dark, I walked around on the upper levels surrounding the temple.  The whole compound was lit by thousands of little electric lights, with a big spotlight on the temple.  By 6 most of the prostraters had covered up their boards with plastic, in case of rain perhaps. 

At 7 the next morning I left on a day trip organized by Bihar Tourism to several sites to the northeast.  There were eight of us in the group, including another American (a student studying in India), a Japanese, and four Indians from Calcutta.  We drove through the countryside, past more rice paddies and other agriculture (the guide told me they grow rice during the rainy season and then wheat during the dry winter) to Rajgir, the former capital of the Magadh Empire, one of India's earliest, from about the time of Buddha (6th-5th century BC).  We saw evidence of the former walls, said to be 25 miles in circumference, and wagon or chariot tracks worn into stone.  It is a hilly area and we took a rickety chair lift up about 750 feet to a bright white Japanese built (in 1978) stupa with good views over the hilly countryside. 

Further down the hillside is Gridhkuta, where Buddha is said to have given his second sermon after enlightenment.  We walked down there, where there is an altar and two nearby caves said to be abodes of his two principal followers.  There were quite a few pilgrims.  We then drove to a hot springs, full of Hindus partaking of its medicinal properties.  Up the hill from that is the place where the first Buddhist convocation is said to have been held after Buddha's death, where they agreed on a compilation of his teachings.  We then drove further northeast to Nalanda and visited a huge new temple built by the Chinese dedicated to a Chinese who made his way to Nalanda over the Silk Road in the 7th century.   After a good lunch, we finally made it to the ruins of Nalanda, formerly a great Buddhist university.  It flourished for centuries before being destroyed by Moslem invaders about 1200.  Its library is said to have taken six months to burn, though I imagine that is an exaggeration.  There are something like eleven monasteries of brick ruins, though it is somewhat hard to tell what is original and what is restored.  Nalanda, too, was rediscovered by the British in the 1800's.  About 3:30 we headed back to Bodhgaya, a more than two hour trip through the countryside, also passing through a few densely populated little towns.  It was a pleasant journey, but I would hate to have to drive in India.  The driver carried a short (maybe four foot long) bamboo stick, used, he told me, to hit other drivers and pedestrians he got into fights with.  Back in Bodhgaya, I went back to the main temple and walked around it several times in the dark with the pilgrims.

The next morning I went back to the temple for several hours, watching all the activity.  I had a late breakfast and then about noon took an autorickshaw to Gaya and finally a 2 pm bus north to Patna.  I had a seat in the last row of the bus and we bumped along Bihar's narrow roads.  Bihar is one of India's poorest states, with something like 100 million people in something like 40,000 square miles.  We reached Patna, Bihar's capital with more than a million people (I read in a newspaper that India has 51 cities of over a million) in the dark about 5:30.  The bus parked in an area of seemingly hundreds of buses.  I took a cycle rickshaw to the train station through a chaos of people and vehicles.  After getting my bearings at the huge train station, I sought out a hotel.  A small, old guy (probably not as old as me, though) came up to me and asked if I wanted to go to the Garden Hotel for 10 rupees.  That was on my list, so I took his cycle rickshaw through the massively crowded streets.  The Garden had no rooms to my liking, so he took me in search of other hotels and after maybe 45 minutes we found one to my liking (well, not really to my liking, as there wasn't much to like about it).  I checked in and had a good dinner in a nearby, nicer hotel.

Patra is the site of Pataliputra, the capital of the great 3rd century BC empire of Ashoka, and was described by Greek ambassadors of Alexander's conquests as more impressive than the cities of Persia, but there appears to be nothing left of it.  There are a few sights, though.  The next morning I took a cycle rickshaw to a dome shaped building called the Golghar, built by the British in 1786 to store grain after a famine in the 1770's.  Steps spiral up to the top on either side, one set for those bringing grain to be dumped into the top and one for their descent.  I climbed up the 150 or so steps for the view over the hazy city.  I could see the Ganges but it looked quite narrow.  During the monsoon it is supposed to be three miles wide at Patna.  A guy on top told me that during the monsoon the nearby maidan is flooded, as is the base of the Golghar.  Now, crops were planted on the former bed of the river. 

From there I took a cycle rickshaw to the train station and very easily got  a train ticket for the next day for Varanasi at the foreigners' ticket window.  I then walked to breakfast and then to the Patna Museum, in a massive old colonial building, when it opened at 10:30.  The museum had some wonderful statuary, plus moth-eaten stuffed animals, weapons, Mughal paintings and other stuff.  I spent about two hours inside.  There is a statue of  a former viceroy outside. 

From there I decided to go to the old city, six miles away.  It took me over two hours to get there.  I hired an autorickshaw for 100 rupees and there was terrible traffic along the way.  He decided to take a short cut through narrow alleys and they were even worse clogged.  I was inhaling massive amounts of exhaust and my eyes and throat began to sting.  I sometimes wonder if traveling in India is comparable to smoking several packs of cigarettes a day.  I finally made it to the Har Mandir, the birthplace of the tenth Sikh guru, and stayed there over an hour.  It is a gleaming white domed building.  The people there were very friendly (I was the only westerner there), but unfortunately there was no music playing in the hall.  They did have on sale Sikh knives, bracelets, combs and underwear.  First time I had seen the underwear.  There was also a museum, filled with depictions of Sikh martyrs and battles and the like.  There were a couple of other places I would like to have seen in the old city, the great mosque of Sher Shah and the East India Company opium godowns (warehouses), but it was past 4 and as much as I dreaded the trip back across town, I wanted to do it before dark if possible.  I made it back by about 5:30 in a shared autorickshaw.  Another unpleasant journey because of the exhaust, but an interesting one.

November 16 -22, 2011: Saipan to Bangkok to Calcutta

I'm back in India for another tour around the country.  I'm not sure how long I'll be here this time, but unlike last year, I doubt I'll stay for the full 180 days allowed by my visa.  India is a fascinating place, but can be very exasperating.  Plus, it starts to get hot in late March.

I left Saipan November 16 on a 4:30 flight to Guam, followed by another flight to Tokyo and then a third to Bangkok, arriving in Bangkok about 3:30 in the afternoon (6:30 in Saipan).  Descending into Bangkok I saw lots of water, though I couldn't tell if it was caused by flooding.  On the way into town I did see a few flooded roads, but most were dry.  There were sandbags around quite a few buildings in the city.  After I got my hotel, I walked over to the Chao Phraya River and it was very high, with sandbags preventing it from leaking into the streets.  The river ferries were all closed down.  Tired, I went to bed early.

The next morning my flight to Calcutta left about 11, and I had very good views of the flooding north of Bangkok.  From the air you could see big brown smudges of water.  On the way we flew over the Irrawaddy Delta in Burma, a maze of waterways, and eventually over the much larger Ganges Delta.  Arriving about noon in Calcutta after a two and a half hour flight, I took a bus into the city center and my first reaction on being back in India was "Look at all the garbage!" on the way into town.  Bangkok was so clean and modern.  I found a hotel in the backpacker section, near the much grubbier hotel where I stayed in 1979, and then walked into the Maidan, the big, grassy park in the middle of town.  It's not the nicest park, but there were people playing cricket and soccer and flying kites.  Also, some horses and goats.  The sun set before 5 and it was dark soon after 5.  Again, I went to bed early.

The next morning I got up very early and walked through the uncrowded early morning streets.  There is always so much to see in India while just wandering the streets.  And in Calcutta are the last man-pulled rickshaws, and I saw plenty of them. (I've read these guys seldom survive much past age 30.)  Plus, there were people sleeping on the streets, a man delivering bunches of bananas on his head, and all sorts of make-shift stalls on the sidewalks.  It's never easy to walk on the sidewalks.  I walked to the Sir Samuel Hogg Market (1874, it says on the brick facade), also called the New Market, where there must have been a hundred people sleeping in the open space in front.  The main part of the market was not yet open, but the butchers' section was quite busy.  It seemed quite medieval inside, with men butchering goats and some water buffalo on sections of wide tree trunks.  Very filthy in there, with dogs all around.  I went over to the poultry section, with hundreds of chickens, and even some ducks, in wicker baskets.  Some were being tied by the feet and attached to bicycles for delivery.  And then to breakfast. 

After breakfast I walked through the Maiden again, past a herd of goats, a guy defecating into a ditch and a happy couple who told me they were in love and wanted me to take their photo.  I made my way to St. Paul's Cathedral, built in the 1840's and containing lots of interesting memorial plaques inside.  Nearby is the huge, white Victoria Memorial, built from 1906 to 1921 and described in one of my guidebooks as a cross between the U. S. Capitol and the Taj Mahal.  It is quite a beautiful building in beautiful gardens, with a statue of a forbidding looking Queen Victoria in front.  Inside are some imposing halls, with various statues, displays and an excellent museum on the history of Calcutta. (Calcutta, by the way, is now officially Kolkata.  Three of India's four largest cities -- Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, but not Delhi -- were founded by the British and all have been officially renamed in recent years, although it seems most people use the old names.)  I ended up spending more than four hours at the Victoira Memorial and its gardens.  Even had a small lunch in the garden canteen.  I walked back through the Maidan just as the sun was setting.

The next morning I again set off early and walked toward the center of town, passing lots of magnificent old colonial era buildings in various degrees of decrepitude (mostly advanced degrees).  Calcutta was the capital of British India until New Delhi was completed in 1931 and the former palace of the Viceroys is now the residence of the state governor.  It is a massive building modeled after some great house in England and is closed to the public.  I walked over to St. John's Church, built in the 1780's.  In the yard is the mausoleum of the East India Company trader who established the trading outpost here in 1690 and a few other decrepit graves.  There is also the memorial to those who died in the Black Hole of Calcutta, moved to the graveyard in 1940 from its previous location where the deaths occurred in 1756.  The Nawab of Mushidabad had captured Calcutta from the British and stuffed the survivors into a small room.  It is disputed how many of them died in the airless, close confines.  The church itself had massive Corinthian columns inside and the ceiling must have been 40 feet high. I met a guy inside who showed me the 1905 Hamilton piano from Chicago and demonstrated the 1830 organ, run now by an electric motor that sparked as he turned in on.  The organ sounded magnificent and he showed me the works behind it.  Again, there were lots of interesting plaques to be read inside.  Lots of people dying in their 20's and 30's and 40's. 

From there I walked to what was formerly known as Dalhousie Square, after a Governor General who served from 1848 to 1856 (there were no viceroys until 1977, when Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India) and is now officially known as BBD Square in remembrance of three guys who tried (but bungled) an assassination attempt on a British official in 1930.  It is huge square, with a tank (as reservoirs are called in India) on the south side.  This is the heart of the city and the tank is filthy, with garbage all around.  Nonetheless, people were bathing and washing clothes in it.  On the north side of the square is the enormous Writer's Building, built in 1780, but redone a century later, for housing the clerks (then called "writers") of the East India Company.  Now it is the West Bengal state government building and closed to the public.  I had lunch a block or so east of the square.  I couldn't find any restaurant, so settled for one of the many sidewalk vendors.  I had fried rice with a little chicken and an egg while sitting on a little wooden bench.  Later I drank a couple of coconuts sold by street vendors to quench my thirst.  It has not been very hot here, with highs in the mid 80's (a little less than 30 celsius).  It's dry, too.  The monsoon is long past. 

I walked back to the square and went into the huge, white, domed General Post Office Building on the west side of the square.  The original fort was in this area, with the Black Hole of Calcutta in its southwest bastion. After the British retook the city in 1757, they built a new fort further south and cleared the jungle all around it, creating the grassy Maidan.  I walked over to the wide Hooghly (now spelled Hugli) River, which flows from the Ganges to the sea, and then to the former Town Hall, modeled after a medieval building in Belgium and now a museum.  From there, after a long day of walking, I headed back to dinner and my hotel.

The next morning was Sunday and, hoping for a slow day for traffic, I again headed downtown.  I found a couple of old synagogues, now closed and not in good repair.  Calcutta used to have something like 30,000 Jews, mostly originally from Baghdad, but not many now.  There was a mass at the Portuguese built Catholic church, with only about 50 attendees, including a couple of nuns in the distinctive white saris with blue trimming of Mother Teresa's order.  I went to an Armenian church, but it was closed, with a notice about a Sunday service at another Armenian church.  It did have very interesting Armenian language tombstones all around it.  I then went to the city's largest mosque, with maybe four stories of prayer halls, but few worshipers that morning.  I then found the old Chinese section of the city, though most of the Chinese were chased out at the time of the 1962 war with China.  (The Chinese introduced the rickshaw a little more than a century ago.)  In front of a former Chinese restaurant in a once grand building was a huge pile of trash, with several women searching it for something worth taking.  Nearby on the sidewalks were some pretty demoralizing hovels, some barely big enough for one person, with women cooking outside. 

I headed further north and made my way to the Marble Palace, built for a maharajah in 1835.  It is an extremely opulent place, filled with statues and paintings and furniture.  Two large moose heads adorn the entrance and there were dozens of statues, mostly allegorical (the four seasons, the four continents, dawn and dusk, and so forth) and in which the nude female form was well represented.  There were also three statues of Queen Victoria (fortunately, none of them nude), including one carved out of a single piece of rosewood more ten feet high.  There were also statues of Napoleon and Wellington, on horseback at opposite sides of the long sitting room.  Plus, George Washington, St. Sebastian and others.  The paintings included, so they claimed, those of Rubens, Murillo and Reynolds.   Outside in the park were cages of birds, including the most colorful pheasants I've ever seen, deer and a poor monkey acting very strangely.  I wonder if he has been driven mad by his horrendous little cage.  From there, I walked a little further north to a museum in the former home of Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.  It was quite an interesting and very large house. 

Walking further north, I finally reached the Kumartuli neighbor, where sculptors (kumars) make idols out of clay over straw molded in the shape of gods.  It was very interesting to watch them do so.  Many are puchased and them immersed in the river, to melt away.  I met two Bengali guys who spoke good English and walked around with them, reaching the wide Hooghly, at least a half mile wide. Only a few ferries were plying the river.  It was getting close to dusk, so I took a ricketty, old, but not crowded, tram back to near my hotel, a ride of half an hour and an interesting way to see the city.

The next morning I walked to the Hooghly and took a ferry upriver to the huge Howrah train station on the other side. The sky, as always, was very hazy.  Calcutta has terrible air quality.  I looked around the station and then crossed the Howrah bridge that crosses the Hooghly.  Finished in 1943, there wasn't too much vehicle traffic, but what there was made the bridge vibrate quite a bit. Lots of pedestrians, a steady stream, were using the bridge, including dozens of men carrying big bundles or boxes on their heads. On the other side, near the foot of the bridge, is a big flower market, with mostly orange and yellow marigolds, most of them offerred in long, wide garlands.  I walked through and ended on Mulick Ghat, with a great view of the bridge. Bathers were in the river and a holy man was conducting a puja, a prayer offerring, for a young man who had just shaved his head.  A barber was shaving another man on the steps nearby.  An old, apparently sick, woman was being massaged by another woman. 

I watched all the activity for a while and then took a tram and then Calcutta's 1980's Russian-built subway south to near the Kali temple in an area called Kalighat.  This is another of those places, like Kangra in the north that I visited last years, where parts of Sati, or Kali as she is also known, landed after her dead body was cut up into 51 pieces and flung all over India.  Here, a little toe landed, though it is not clear to me if it is the left or the right one.  In Kangra it was the left breast.  The temple was not all that interesting, though there were worshipers flinging flowers at the image of Kali.  Goats are supposed to be sacrified here, and I did see what appeared to be freshly butchered goat meat in a bloody corner of the temple precincts.  Supposedly, in recent years the goats have replaced human sacrifices.  Next door is a hostal run by Mother Teresa's nuns and I saw one of them in habit.  Apparently, lots of poor Indians used to come to this holy area, and perhaps still do, to die.  Nearby, is a garbage filled little creek where on the steps above it a couple was being married, the bride with elaborately hennaed hands.  I talked with the friendly brother of the groom and his daughter, from Lucknow, who spoke excellent English. 

I took the subway north and had lunch and then walked to the Park Street Cemetary, filled with hundreds of quite substantial tombs, with obelisks and columns and the like, under big trees.  Many are restored, but are still in some disrepair.  It was quite a nice, peaceful place.  From there I walked north to Mother Theresa's headquarters, where she lived and where she is now buried in a simple white tomb in the front room of the building, with traffic noise outside.  On the tomb were her name, birth and death dates, and in marigold petals below the words "Possessing Nothing Only Jesus."  It got dark as I visited the small but interesting museum.  Her bed room is preserved and you can look into it.

The next morning I walked around a bit, in particular watching the rickshaw traffic.  Lots of kids were being taken to school by rickshaw.  At 10 I went to the Indian Museum in a grand old colonial building with lofty halls, perhaps 30 feet high.  There is some great sculpture, but most of the exhibits are pretty dusty. There is a very impressive skeleton of a elephant eleven feet high at the shoulder, with some pretty big, but smaller, elephant skeletons around him.  After two or three hours I left and had lunch and then took the subway a couple of stops south (for a fare of eight cents) and walked to the museum in the house of Subhas Chandra Bose, an independence leader who fought with the Japanese against the British on the India-Burma border.  That pretty much wrapped up my sightseeing and I headed back to my hotel.

February 11 - 15, 2011: Sihanoukville - Krong Koh Kong - Bangkok - Saipan

I left Kampot about 11 on the morning of the 11th on a minibus bound for Sihanoukville further west on the coast.  Kampot was a very pleasant town and I probably would have stayed longer there if I didn't have a flight to catch in three days.  We had some good views of forested Bokor Mountain on the way.  It took less than two hours to reach Sihanoukville and the minibus let us off about a block from the main beach.  Sihanoukville was founded only in the 1950's to provide Cambodia with a port after independence.  During French colonial rule most trade had passed through Vietnam.  It is still the country's main port and is also the country's main beach resort. 

I found a hotel about three blocks from the beach and had lunch and spent time in an intenet cafe before making it to the beach about 4:30, after the heat of middle of the day.  This beach, called Ochheuteal, stretches for something like four kilometers, or about two and a half miles, along the coast.  It's not very wide, not even 100 feet, but has nice white sand.  The end closest to the city center is called Serendipity Beach and was full of people, thousands of them, both foreigners and Cambodians.  The beach in places was covered with chaise lounges and chairs and there were jet skis in the water.  Lining the beach are dozens of rather well-built restaurants and bars with grass roofs and they were fairly crowded.  I walked along the beach from one end to the other and it took me a little less than an hour each way.  The far end of the beach was almost deserted and ended at a river mouth and, beyond that, a rocky headland.  While I was walking, the sun diappeared into the haze on the horizon about 6:10.  After dark, I sat on a very comfortable padded chair on the beach with a nice breeze blowing and had a great dinner of barbecued baracuda, shrimp and squid, plus french fries and salad, for only $3.  Plus, the draft beer was only 50 cents a glass. 

I got up the next morning and watched CNN in my room for a while covering Mubarak's resignation and then went to the beach for breakfast.  It was a cloudy morning and after breakfast I walked along the beach a bit before returning to my hotel.  I had an early lunch on the beach about 11-11:30 and left about 12:30 on a bus I thought was bound for Krong Koh Kong further on the coast to the west, near the border with Thailand.  However, the bus was headed to Phnom Penh and after about two hours let the four of us bound for Krong Koh Kong off at a roadside restaurant where we had to wait for almost two hours for a bus coming from Phnom Penh and heading to Krong Koh Kong.  We didn't get there until 8 o'clock.  The road to Krong Koh Kong is fairly new and used to have four ferry crossings, now replaced with bridges.  It passes through forest and I enjoyed seeing the dense forest and the waterways along the road until it got dark about 6:30.  After dark, I could still see some of the trees in the moonlight. 

I got up about 7 the next morning and looked around town, but there wasn't much to see.  I walked to the riverfront along the wide river on the west side of town.  It looked like it might be a mile wide, but the riverfront itself wasn't very nice.  I had breakfast and about 9:30 took a motorcyle taxi to the border, only about five miles away after crossing the long bridge across the river.  The Cambodian side of the border was lined with several fancy hotels, probably also casinos, but they didn't seem very busy.  Getting through the border formalities took little time.  I joined with four other tourists and took a songthaew, a pick-up with seats in the back under a canopy, to Trat, about an hour an a half away.  We passed more forest on the way, with views of the sea here and there.  It rained a bit just before we reached Trat, a little after 11:30.  I had a very good lunch of noodles and squid at the bus station while it rained very hard.  About 12:45 I left in a minivan bound for Bangkok.  We had some rain at first, but soon it cleared up and we made good time on Thailand's modern highways.  It was a Sunday afternoon, so when we reached Bangkok there wasn't as much traffic as on a workday.  By 6:30 I had checked into the hotel in the Banglamphu area where I had made a reservation before heading to Cambodia.  As before, the area was full of foreign tourists.  I had a good dinner and went to bed about 10 but didn't get much sleep.

I got up at 2:30 am and left in a cab for the airport at 3.  My plane left shortly before 6 and landed in Narita (Tokyo) a little more than five hours later, about 1 pm Tokyo time.  My plane to Saipan left about 8 pm.  I spent the interim in Delta's lounge eating, reading newspapers and using the internet.  We landed in Saipan soon after midnight, about 12:30.  Good to be back.

February 6 - 10, 2011: Kompong Thom, Phnom Penh and Kampot

I left Siem Reap on the 6th on a 10 am bus heading southeast to Phnom Penh, but got off three hours later at the small town of Kompong Thom, about halfway to Phnom Penh.  I checked into a very nice hotel ($6/night and very comfortable; the budget hotels here in Cambodia are very good) and had a good lunch at the friendly and busy restaurant next door and about 2 left with a moto (a motorcycle taxi) heading for the Sambor Prei Kuk, about 20 miles and an  hour's ride to the north.  The ride was quite interesting and scenic, through the Cambodian countryside on dusty red roads.  We passed several villages with no electricity and with wooden houses on stilts.  There were few cars, but bikes and motorcycles and even a few ox carts.  Sambor Prei Kuk is a pre-Angkorian site from the 7th century, a construction of what is called the Chenla Civilization.  I spent about two hours there exploring the remains of brick temples in the forest.  The temples are nothing to compare to Angkor, but the setting in the forest in the late afternoon was nice.  One temple gateway was completely overgrown by a tree, the roots encompassing all the remnants of the arch of bricks.  There were a few tourists there, but not many.  I got back to town about 6 after an enjoyable ride back, passing lots of friendly kids.  I was quite dusty from the ride and had to wash my shirt, shorts and daypack (and, of course, myself)..  I had CNN on the television in my hotel room and stayed up till 11 watching it, including its live Sunday morning (in the U.S.) talk shows.

About 9:30 the next morning I left on a bus for Phnom Penh, reaching it after three hours after crossing a new bridge over the Tonle Sap River north of the city.  I checked into the hotel I had stayed in last year, had lunch and then spent the afternoon at the National Museum, with its great collection of Khmer sculpture.  It is a very nice museum, with a great courtyard where I relaxed after going through the musem until the museum closed at 5.  I then walked along the riverfront, past the royal palace and then south along the Tonle Sap River.  The Mekong flows into Phnom Penh from the northeast and splits into three branches, two heading southeast to Vietnam and the Mekong Delta and one heading northwest to the Tonle Sap lake.  During the wet season the Tonle Sap River flows from Phnom Penh to the lake but during the dry season the flow is reversed, partially draining the lake.

I didn't do much the next morning and left on a 12:30 bus for Kampot on the coast.  There are other things worth seeing in Phnom Penh, including the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, and the S-21 Museum, a former prison of the Khmer Rouge, but I was running out of time before my flight from Bangkok and had visited both places last year (and in 1994).  Last year I had seven weeks to explore Laos and Cambodia and spent more than five of those weeks in Laos, leaving me only ten days for Cambodia.  I spent that time visiting three places (Ban Long, Kratie, where you can see Mekong River dolphins, and Kompong Chom) in the northeast, Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, with three days at Angkor.  In 1994 I visited only Phnom Penh, a few sites outside Phnom Penh, and Siem Reap and the road via Battambang between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap.  They were the only places safe enough, and the road between the two cities wasn't entirely safe.

The bus ride south was quite comfortable on a very modern air-conditioned bus, but with loud and violent Asian (Chinese, I think, but dubbed into Cambodian) videos.  We passed palm trees and rice fields and reached the coastal town of Kep about 4:30.  In Kep we drove right along the oceanfront for a while and it was good to see the ocean again.  Kep was a resort town in the 1960's and there are remains of big concrete houses destroyed in the war. 

From Kep we drove further along the coast, but inland a bit, and reached Kampot about 5:15.  I checked into another nice hotel and walked to the riverfront.  Kampot is only a few miles upriver from the sea and has a very nice riverfront with a newly paved promenade lined with casuarina trees, one of which has almost completely succumbed to a strangler fig.  On the other side of the street along the river are old French colonial buildings, in various states of disrepair for the most part, though some have been refurbished.  The river here is quite wide, maybe 750-1000 feet, I think.  In fact, I think it is an estuary.  I walked along the riverfront promenade at dusk.  There is an old French-era bridge to the north and further north a newer bridge.  There were lots of people out on the riverfront at dusk.  After it got dark I had dinner at a riverside restaurant in the garden of a colonial building now a hotel and restaurant.

I got up early the next morning and walked along the riverfront.  There wasn't much activity except at the far southern end of the promenade, towards the sea, where four or five fishing boats, all painted green and maybe 40 feet in length, had tied up along the muddy bank and were off-loading fish.  Actually, there wasn't much fish, mostly crabs, shrimp, calamari (and maybe octopus, as some of the water in the basins was very inky) and maybe even some lobsters.  Great baskets were carried from the boats to the shore and the catch was being cleaned by several women in metal or plastic basins.  It was all quite interesting to watch.  Baskets were loaded onto motorcycles or onto motorized canoes for delivery upriver.  The fishing boats headed downriver after off-loading, perhaps to return to the sea.  Soon after 8 all the activity had ceased and the area was deserted except for the detritus of the market.  I walked around town a bit afterward, mainly to see the old French colonial buildings in the old city center and then returned to my hotel for a late breakfast.

I spent most of the middle of the day relaxing at the  hotel, which had a nice garden restuarant, and then about 3:30 took a moto about 5 miles north on another dirt road to Phnom Chhnork, a limestone hill ("phnom" means "hill") with a cave,  Inside the cave is a small brick temple dedicated to Shiva dating from the 7th century, a construction of the Funan Civilization.  Protected by the cave, it is well preserved, with a stalagmite about two feet high serving as the linga.  Much longer and more impressive stalactites hang down from the cave's roof into the top of the temple.  In the fields around the hill cows were grazing on the rice stubble.  Patches of vegetables (onions were all I recognized) next to a pond were being watered by men and women with large (several gallons, I would guess) water buckets with spouts, which they toted between the pond and the vegetable patches using yokes on their shoulders.  Back in town, I walked to the riverfront and watched the sun set into the hills to the west.  The wind picks up in the afternoon and it is very pleasant along the river.

The next morning about 8 I left in a minivan heading to Bokor National Park in the hills to the west.  Bokor Hill is 1080 meters, or about 3500 feet, in elevation.  The French built a road up to the plateau on top in 1917-1921, using convict labor, and built a hill resort up there in the 1920's.  It was abandoned twice, first in World War II, though the Japanese army was there, and then in 1972, due to the Khmer Rouge.  The old road is being redone and is expected to be finished in five or six months, we were told by our guide.  There is a plan to build five star hotels up there. 

We drove only maybe 7 miles up the new road, to about 1600 feet, according to my altimeter, and began a beautiful walk through the jungle.  The trail was a little steep in places, but it was a very enjoyable walk.  There were 28 people in our group, but I was able to space myself so that I mainly walked alone.  With so many hikers and the construction activity, there isn't much wildlife along the path, though I did hear birds and insects.  We climbed for a little over an hour and a half, ascending about 1100 feet, to 2700 feet, about 800 feet below the plateau.  From there we rejoined our vehicles and reached the ruins of an old casino on the plateau about noon.  We looked around the four story building, with everything ripped out of it.  There are even gouges in the cement walls where the electric wiring was ripped out.  There is lots of bright orange lichen on the walls. We had lunch on the entry steps and then looked around some more.  The backside of the casino has a terrace on the cliff facing the sea.  You can stand on the cliff edge and hear the hum of insects and the chattering of birds below.  Wispy clouds were shooting up the cliffs towards the plateau.  Bokor is known for its cool weather and its fog.  It wasn't foggy, but the cool breeze felt delightful.  I walked all through and around the old casino, which was a battle scene when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1979 and deposed the Khmer Rouge.  The Khmer Rouge hung on in the jungles here longer than in some other places.  I walked along the plateau, visiting some other deserted buildings and ending up at the old church.  From there we boarded our vehicles again and headed down about 2 or 2 :30, with a shorter afternoon trek, less than an hour and a descent of about 800 feet. 

We got back to Kampot about 4 and at 4:30 boarded boats for a very pleasant cruise up the river and then back.  We went upriver for about 40 minutes, passing palm trees, both sugar palms and coconuts palms, riverside houses and green painted fishing boats.  Small fish, maybe only two inches in length, jumped out out the way of the wake of our boat and at one point a whole school of them, scores of little fish, jumped out of the water brieflly in unison several times.  We had good views of the Bokor Hills to the west, and watched the sun set over them shortly before 6  It was a very pleasant way to end the day.  Our smiling boatman steered the boat with his feet on the rebar tiller while lounging to the side.  Reaching the riverfront in Kampot about 6, I strolled along the promenade until dark and then had dinner in a riverside restaurant.  I noticed the bright planet I had first noticed in the eastern sky just after sunset in Zanskar in September was still in the sky, though now far to the west in the sky after sunset.

January 28 - February 5, 2011: Battambang, Siem Reap and Angkor

I got up at 6 on the 28th in preparation for a 7 am departure for the Cambodian border, but we didn't get going until about 8 after picking up tourists at several guesthouses.  It took about an hour for our minivan to get through Bangkok's morning traffic and another three hours of travel through the flat, now dry, rice lands east of  Bangkok before we reached the Cambodian border at Poipet.  There were quite a few people, both tourists and locals, coming and going and it took over an hour and a half to take care of the border formalities.  The Thai side was quick, but on the Cambodian side I had to buy a visa (for $20, plus a suspicious 100 baht ($3) fee) and then wait in a long line to be stamped in.  The Cambodian side of the border has casinos almost right on the border catering to Thais.  I had to deal with Poipet's infamous taxi mafia to get a ride in a share taxi to Battambang.  (Almost all the other tourists were heading directly to Siem Reap.)  I finally negotiated a $10 fee, probably about twice the real fare, and was soon on my way.  We passed first through dry countryside and then through  greener areas, filled with banana trees, just before Battambang, Cambodia's second largest city, where we arrived about 4.  I checked into a good hotel for $5/night and looked around.  The city is on a river and has quite a few attractive old French colonial buildings.  I walked along the riverfront and through side streets and had a good dinner.  There were a good number of western tourists in that friendly city.  I spent an hour or so after dinner sitting in a quiet outdoor street side bar with a guy from London on a pleasant night.

The next morning I walked around town, up the river a bit to the old French Governor's Mansion and eventually to the old train station, which seemed closed for good.  Back in 1994, when I first visited Cambodia, you could take a very slow train from Phnom Penh to Battambang and ride for free in the first few carriages because they were the ones most likely to be blown up, or at least derailed, by mines set by the remnants of the Khmer Rouge.  Nearby some kids were playing a gambling game with a plastic basin and three dice, using very small bills, worth two and half cents, for their wagers.  Two of the older ones hid their faces when I took a photo.

I had a long breakfast and about noon took a tuktuk (a motorcycle with a comfortable open-air carriage attached) on a tour of the countryside.  First, we headed just a few miles out of town to a place where you catch the so-called "bamboo train."  This mode of transportation began in the early post-Khmer Rouge days when the roads were terrible.  The bamboo trains consist of two sets of old train wheels (each set consisting of two wheels linked by an axle).  Over these is placed a bamboo platform that hooks onto the axles.  Attached to the bamboo platform in a small motor that powers the contraption.  Another tourist who was waiting there when I arrived and I set off down the warped, wobbly tracks, with the motor man behind us.  You don't go that fast, but it is exciting since you are so low and close to the tracks, somewhat like riding on a cowcatcher, I guess.  When you meet a bamboo train coming the other way, which we did several times in our half hour excursion, the one with the lightest load gets pulled off the tracks, first the bamboo platform and motor, then the wheels, and then is reassembled after the heavier load passes.  It was great fun.  After a half hour stop at a small village, we traveled back the way we had come.  The scenery was interesting, with mostly dry rice stubble, but several ponds, one with ducks and one with people fishing with nets and poles.

After the train ride, we headed south to a hill called Phnom Sambeau, about 300 feet above the flat plains.  I climbed it and looked around the various temples, some honoring the victims of the Khmer Rouge, with a shrine full of the victims' bones next to it.  There were good views over the country from the top.  From there we headed to another hill, Phnom Banan, with five Khmer towers on top.  I climbed it, too, a climb of only about 250 feet.  The  towers are in a fairly ruinous state, but the place was peaceful in the late afternoon, with good views.  Red "Danger Mines" were posted all around the hillside, restricting  you to the safe stairs up and down.  These signs were all over Angkor when I first visited it in 1994.  I enjoyed traveling in the tuktuk, sort of a fresh air taxi, through the countryside, passing villages and fields.  We got back to town about 5:30 or 6, just before nightfall.

The next morning at 7:15 I left on the boat, with maybe 25 passengers, bound for Siem Reap.  It felt cold in the early morning as we came down the narrow river, with much activity to be seen along the banks -- washing, fishing, agriculture and villages.  About 9 I wised up and sat on the roof, where it was warmer in the sun than in the boat under the roof.  I stayed up there until about 11 as we passed through a very narrow stretch of the river, bumping the river bed several times.  The wakes of boats caused little fish, only two or three inches in length, to leap out of the water.  I saw one land on a small wooden boat tied to the bank and leap around several times until it regained the river and safety.  We had a half an hour stop for lunch at a little shop with good rice and chicken and vegetables and then reached a much wider portion of the river, maybe 300 or 400 feet compared to maybe 30 feet at its narrowest earlier on.  About 3 we finally reached Tonle Sap, the enormous lake in the middle of Cambodia.  We crossed its western end for maybe 45 minutes, with only a faint view of the shoreline to the west and north and no view at all in other directions.  We eventually reached a river on the northwest bank, went up it a short distance and docked about 4.  A tuktuk took me to Siem Reap, where I checked into the same very nice hotel I had stayed in last year, for only $6/night.  I talked to some of the staff there about travel to the outlying temples and had a good dinner.  They have excellent Cambodian fish dishes, with garlic, or coconut milk and curry, or pineapple.  I was tired, after too many early morning departures (Delhi, Bangkok, Battambang) in the past few days and went to bed about 8:30.

I got up the next morning after 7 and spent a leisurely day.  I read my guidebook and planned my itinerary (which has subsequently been revised and is likely to be revised again) and rested.  In the late afternoon I took a walk around town, first to the gardens in front of the 1929 Grand Hotel d'Angkor.  I went into the hotel and looked around.  In the "Celebrity Bar" were photos of Charlie Chaplin (I think), W. Somerset Maugham, and Jackie Kennedy.  There were were several of Jackie Kennedy, most with Prince Sihanouk with her taken during her mid 1960's visit to Siem Reap and Angkor.  When I first came to Siem Reap in 1994 this hotel was boarded up waiting renovation, which occurred in 1995-1997, according to a plaque.  Siem Reap itself wasn't much in 1994.  It was so nondescript that I hardly remember it.  Now it is filled with fancy hotels and restaurants, a huge chance from 1994.  I walked along the river, passing a new, or newly renovated, wat, to the old market area, now in the middle of restaurants and bars and shops catering to tourists.  The town seems to be almost completely given over to tourism, but still seems a  pleasant place.

The next morning I got up at 5:45 and was biking my way to Angkor by 6:15.  I stopped at the guard post to buy a three day pass for $40 and passed Angkor Wat about 6:45.  I continued north, going through the monumental old south gate of Angkor Thom, the former Khmer capital city, and reached the Bayon temple, at the center of Angkor Thom, about 7.  Angkor Thom covers a huge area, several square kilometers, but all that remains are the walls, gates and the stone religious buildings inside.  Everything else, including the royal palace, was made of wood and is gone, with only forest covering the grounds.  It was quite enjoyable to pedal through in the early morning, under the giant trees, with monkeys on the roadside.  The Bayon is a Buddhist temple at the center of Angkor Thom, with 216 giant, half-smiling faces of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara on its 54 towers.  It wasn't very crowded when I first got there and I enjoyed watching the faces get lit up by the rising sun.  I spent about two hours there, the last part walking past the great bas-reliefs on the first level.  There were huge crowds pouring in when I left at 9.

I biked north to a spot near the Terrace of Elephants and had breakfast and then biked further north, out the north gate of Angkor Thom, to the Preah Khan temple, where I spent a couple of hours looking around.  I walked along its outer wall, with few other tourists around, and then through the temple itself.  It was midday and hot in the sun, but not bad in the shade of the trees or of the temple.  I biked back to the place I had eaten breakfast to get lunch, then biked south past the Bayon and Angkor Thom's south gate to Phnom Bakheng, a hill with a temple on it just south of Angkor Thom.  I climbed the hill and then the temple for the views over the countryside.  It was a little cloudy, but the views were pretty good.  I could see the towers of Angkor Wat to the southeast but I couldn't see any of the ruins of Angkor Thom just to the north.  All I could see was the jungle canopy.  I walked down the hill on a path with elephants ferrying tourists up and down the hill, and biked the short distance south to Angkor Wat.  I parked and crossed the causeway over the wide moat and entered the west gate.  There were masses of tourists coming out. From the entrance gate there is a long stone procession way to the temple itself.  I walked about halfway down, to a set of stone buildings along the procession way, but didn't have the energy to battle the crowds in the temple itself.  I sat there enjoying the view for half an hour or so, although the facade is covered with scaffolding and green mesh, as it was last year when I was here.  In fact, it seems to have spread.  It was now late in the afternoon, so I returned to my bike and pedaled back to town and my hotel, arriving about 6, just before dark.

I got up at 6 the next morning and at 6:30 left on a tuktuk for Angkor.  It was cold on the tuktuk that early in the morning.  We reached Ta Prohm, east of Angkor Thom, about 7 and I went in.  There weren't many tourists there for the first half hour and I enjoyed walking around, mostly by myself, as birds, mostly parrots, chirped in the trees.  Ta Prohm, unlike almost all the other temples at Angkor, has mostly been left unreconstructed, giving it a "lost in the jungle" look.   This temple was my favorite spot when I first visited Angkor in 1994.  Back then there were far fewer tourists (maybe one per cent of what there are now?) and you were allowed to rent a motorbike to visit the sites.  I spent seven days at Angkor that year and most mornings I would get up in the dark, leave at first light and go to Ta Prohm.  Almost no one would be there early in the morning and you were allowed to climb all over.  I would climb up on a roof with a good view of the massive trees growing on the temple roofs and eat the breakfast I had brought with me, a baguette with cheese and tomatoes, while monkeys played in the trees and the birds chirped away.  (Back then there were no restaurants or food stalls at Angkor.  You had to bring food from Siem Reap or return there for meals.)  I was so disappointed to see how Ta Prohm had been transformed when I came here last year after 16 years.  Construction activity was going on, and is still going on.  Wooden walkways have been built to guide you through the ruins that previously seemed to be left to nature, and there are little wooden platforms to allow tourists to pose next to the most photogenic tree roots fastened to the masonry.  Of course, you are no longer allowed to climb up on the roofs.  I suppose it is all necessary given the massive crowds visiting now, but it is still disappointing.  But being there early in the morning this year was enjoyable.  The first group arrived at 7:30 and when I left at 9 they were pouring in.  I would say there are as many, if not more, Asian tourists, as western ones.

From Ta Prohm, we headed to a restaurant opposite the Eastern Mebon on the eastern side of Angkor, and then headed north about 20 miles to a temple called Banteay Srei.  I had gone there in 1994 on my motorbike on a very dusty and sandy road, which made for very slow going with several wipeouts (which I believe is the technical term, or am I confusing motorcycling with surfboarding?) in the extremely sandy portions.  Now there is a good paved road with tourist stalls seemingly all along it.  Before, there were just quiet villages and homes with people seemingly surprised to see me.  In 1994 Banteay Srei was as far north as you could safely go, with the Khmer Rouge to the north.   I remember a soldier greeting me at the temple entrance.  Others were lounging in the shade to the side.  Now there is a huge tourist complex in front of the temple, with exhibits, restrooms, restaurants, and a massive parking lot.  There were hundreds of tourists and Banteay Srei is a small temple.  In 1994 I think I was the only one there.  Banteay Srei is famous for its delicate carving, the most delicate in the Angkor area.  I enjoyed seeing it again and was a little amazed by the change.

From there we headed further north to a hill called Kbal Speon.  We parked and I took a trail up the hill for about a mile, rising 400 or so feet through dense forest, to a river, only a trickle now in the dry season.  The river's rocky bed has many Hindu carvings -- lingas, Shiva, Vishnu and other deities. There are hundreds, maybe over a thousand, carved lingas in the riverbed.  It was all very scenic and pleasant in the forest gloom despite being mid afternoon.  From there we headed back south to the Angkor area, stopping at Banteay Samre, an interesting temple to the east of the others with two walls around it, and a now dry moat between the two walls. It was almost deserted and pleasant there in the late afternoon.  We headed back to town, arriving just after 6 and catching the sunset reflected on a pool on the way back.

The next morning I again got up at 6 and left on a tuktuk at 6:30.  We reached Angkor Wat about 15 minutes later and I spent four and a half hours there.  I entered through the quieter eastern gate, passing the large trees on the route.  Quite a few monkeys were playing just east of the temple and I watched them for a while. Among them were a very young baby with his or her mother and a very fat female, perhaps pregnant.  Angkor Wat wasn't too crowded early in the morning and it was great to just wander around.  The third level was closed, though, for "cleaning."  It, too, has changed since 1994, when you could clamber all over it.  Now you can't go up the very steep stone stairs up to the third level.  You have to take a wooden staircase (when they are not "cleaning).  I finished off with a walk along the bas-reliefs on the first level and then had breakfast in the northern portion of the courtyard outside the temple.  By then the crowds were enormous.  I think they may have been bigger than usual as it was the Chinese New Year.  From Angkor Wat we headed north into Angkor Thom to the Terrace of Elephants and the royal palace area.  I got off there and spent a couple of hours in the royal palace area looking at the carved terraces and the temples among the trees.  There are a couple of stepped ponds, full of greenish water, in the royal palace precincts.  Nearby they are reconstructing the Baphuon, a temple that was the center of the capital city before Angkor Thom was built after invading Chams from Vietnam had destroyed the previous capital in 1177.

I had lunch where I'd eaten two days before, looked over some more ruins just to the east of that, and then we set off and went out the north gate of Angkor Thom, turned east and headed to Preah Neak Poan, east of Preah Khan.  This is a fountain complex, with five pools, with fountain heads in the shape of a horse, a lion, a man and an elephant.  Continuing east and then south in the late afternoon, I visited Ta Som, not much crowded and with its eastern gate crowned by a big tree growing on the stones, and then the Eastern Mebon, with stone lions at the corners of that multi-level pyramid and views of the setting sun.  The last stop was at the large pyramidal funerary temple of Pre Rup.  Big crowds were gathered there to watch the sunset.  I climbed to the top and looked around, but left before the sunset to beat the crowds on the way back to Siem Reap.  I did catch a scenic sunset on the way back reflected in a pool of water.  The moat around Angkor Wat had quite a few picnicking Cambodians on its banks (and quite a bit of their garbage left behind).  Some Cambodians have Chinese ancestry, so they may have been celebrating the new year.  There was a huge amount of traffic on the streets as we got back to town.

The next morning I left with the tuktuk at 7:30 and we made for a temple about 40 miles from Siem Reap called Beng Mealea.  It took us almost two hours to get there, the first hour on the national highway to Phnom Penh and the second on a quieter, but still paved, road.  I enjoyed the second half of the trip more in the fresh air taxi.  There were buses, vans, cars and only a few tuktuks there when we arrived.  I spent about four and a half hours there looking around.  It was cool when I first arrived, but heated up, though it was still okay in the shade.  Beng Mealea has not been reconstructed and has trees growing all over its roofs and corridors.  Fallen stones lie everywhere.  There is a wooden walkway, built for the filming of a 2004 movie called Two Brothers, my guidebook says.  The walkway is in large part elevated and affords some great views over the temple ruins.  I also clambered all over the ruins, over the massive fallen blocks, into dark corridors and up onto the walls and towers, and it was great fun.  There were quite a few people there in the late morning, including lots of groups clogging the wooden walkways.  I found my way to a deserted interior courtyard to avoid them and spent a half hour or so sitting on a block of stone and listening to the birds, chirping even at midday.  From about noon on there were few tourists, though groups were again arriving when I left about 2.  I had lunch and then we made the two hour trip back, arriving in Siem Reap about 4:30.

The next day (today) I was planning on heading north to Anlong Veng, the last  holdout of the Khmer Rouge until 1998, and hoping to go the the temple of Preah Vihear on the border with Thailand, but fighting broke out yesterday afternoon between the Cambodian and Thai armies near Preah Vihear.  I did visit Preah Vihear before, in 1992 when I approached it from the Thai side.  It was then guarded by young Khmer Rouge soldiers in tattered uniforms and flipflops, and rifles, and they and the Thais shared the entry fees.  Both Thailand and Cambodia at one time claimed Preah Vihear and the World Court resolved the matter by awarding it to Cambodia.  Thailand accepts that, although some Thai nationalists do not, but they are now disputing a 4.6 square kilometer area (a little over one square mile) nearby.  News reports say two Cambodian soldiers and one Thai villager were killed yesterday.  I checked out the travel situation last night and this morning and decided to spend the day relaxing and eating the good fish dishes at my comfortable hotel.  There are a couple of other temples I would like to visit in this part of Cambodia, Koh Ker and Preah Khan, but they are either expensive or difficult to reach.