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Part one - Delhi, Varanasi and Agra
India 1997 - Part one
Dougburnett2003-11-22 13:03:45
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The sadhu turned his elephant in my direction. He had seen me watching from a distance and now had caught me taking his picture: he wanted payment. That seemed fair, so I stepped up to the 10 foot (3 meters) high beast and offered it a ten Rupee note.
Have you ever looked into an elephant's trunk? There are two large nostrils and something like lips around the outer edge. With that trunk the elephant gently picked the banknote from my fingers and handed it over his head to the sadhu on his back. I wiped my now wet fingers on my trousers and stepped back from the giant, waving trunk.
"For luck," I heard a voice next to me say. It was the owner of the shop I had stepped into. "We offer the elephant and his holy man Rupees for luck. The elephant is associated with Ganesh, the Hindu God of luck." So that's what the sadhu and his elephant were doing in this grimy, commercial district: collecting donations. They now moved off down the street looking for more and I continued my walk.
This moment, more than any other, characterizes India for me. Like most tourists, I had come to see India's great monuments: the Taj Mahal, the holy city of Varanasi and the forts and palaces of Rajhastan, but it was this kind of unexpected encounter that I'll cherish most.
Delhi, February 16
The two back-to-back 8 hour flights from Detroit, through Amsterdam, to Delhi were a mind/body altering experience. It was 24 hours from the time I left my house until I checked into the hotel at 1:30 A.M. I had pre-booked my hotels with Travel Corporation of India (TCI) and was met at the airport by one of their representatives. This saved me the headache of having to deal with Delhi's notorious airport taxi drivers. He then escorted me to the Ambassador, a wonderful old hotel just south of the commercial area in Delhi. I stayed there at both ends of my trip and loved the
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See photographs from:
India Gallery
