Hi!

Before ACAT 2010 I spent a week in northern India, visiting e.g. the royal bath of the Kumbh Mela in Haridwar, a 10 million Hindu Ganges bathing event. Scary? Yes. But what an amazing experience!

 

In the Red Fort, New Delhi.

 

Jama Masjid, New Delhi.

Handling these masses of visitors in a small city is far from trivial. Of course there was no free hotel room anywhere, so we had to camp way outside the city, on a foreigner camp ground. During the whole day and night we heard a continuous stream of trains coming in, blowing their horns.

Happy kid, Haridwar.

Getting anything to see at all was already difficult (security is tough: too many people, they always blame the conflict with Pakistan for increased police presence, and they just have masses of police forces that need to do something). Even worse we wanted to take pictures. A professional photographer's contact to an ashram helped us out: we were declared "good friends" of those crazy people. The naked men (Naga Babas) smoke pot and are fun, the non-naked men (Gurus) enjoy their money and followers.

Happy Naga Baba, Haridwar.

Bath in the Ganges in Haridwar.

Varanasi's crematory.

Did I say Naga Babas are fun? Yeah, unless you approach them with shoes on, in which case they hunt you down with a 4m long pole and beat you up. No kidding, happened right behind me while we were drinking chai with one of them. O, and they're holy, so police isn't going to help you.

We also saw New Delhi, Rishikesh (proving that Westerners can go nuts, too), Varanasi (think you've seen dirty and loud? Go there and learn...) and Saarnath, Agra and Fatehpur Sikri; the conference was in Jaipur. My brain was nearly bursting from the amount and intensity of impressions: what a wonderful trip. Almost makes you forget that trains can be delayed by five hours, a day's meals can be reduced to peanuts, the smell of BBQs can be misleading, vomiting and diarrhea can be synchronous, a highway with two lanes per direction and flowers separating them can be safe even if three cars overtake one another and a bike which overtakes a camel with a truck coming towards you on the wrong side of the highway.

Incredible India.

Cheers.