Smaller is better

After some pretty spicy food (the waiter didn’t think it was spicy at all) I went to the train station. Despite my troubled relationship with scheduled traveling everything is going fine – actually, I feel way better and more relaxed here than I did in Singapore. Indian trains are an adventure, but a good one – I really like my top berth with the ventilators right in my face, with vendors running past every ten minutes with something, and some family eating their diner just underneath me.

The berth wasn’t most comfortable, but at least it didn’t have bed bugs. Another night of half sleep, and from about 6:30am it’s impossible to sleep. CHAI!!! The tea and food vendors don’t give a damn about your sleep, they want to sell you chai and walk up and down the carriage every minute shouting CHAI! Later in the morning I felt very disappointed – a guy sitting next to me looked like a pretty smart and educated person, yet after he finished his breakfast he just threw the packaging out of the window, to join the piles of rubbish surrounding the tracks. I was hoping that at least some more cultured people will keep the environment and their surroundings in mind, but apparently not. Also, it’s not just car drivers that make constant noise – the train siren was on at least for a third of the journey.

I changed for the bus in Indore, sat right next to the driver will was shouting at all passing cars, and for the next three hours and a bit I was wondering how long can it take to travel the 76km to Omkareshwar. But once we got there… Yes, this is the place I was waiting for. Big cities are just too much, but here it’s fantastic!

First of all, and this is not to be underrated, it’s relatively quiet here. I might have just spent my first five minutes in India without hearing a car beeping. It’s amazing. I instantly slowed down from the hectic Mumbai pace to a leisurely stroll. People seem much more friendly, vendors aren’t pushy anymore, life is more chilled out again.

Omkareshwar is a holy town of Shiva, full of temples, pilgrims and monkeys. I finally see some properly Indian architecture and environment, and it’s good. Everything is still horribly run down and covered in rubbish, but it has some charm to it. Or maybe I just got used to it. Or maybe I just stopped looking for beauty the way I do in the West and just seek out interesting stuff. The guest house is great – very basic and quite run down (actually, unless I say that something isn’t run down, assume it is), but I have a private room for just over £1. With some good food living here would cost something like £3 a day. There are less interesting things to buy here than in Mumbai, but instead they sell a lot of dried cow dung. A lot of kids work in the shops, too. I met a couple guys from England and Spain and explored the town with them, then got some colorful threads and braided them in my hair. And it’s relatively quiet, did I mention? Life is good.

I`m sitting writing this on a terrace and the moon just really confused me. I can’t tell if it’s waning or waxing, because it’s in zenith. I discovered that on the southern hemisphere it grows when it’s C-shaped, opposite to the North, but here I just can’t tell, because it’s right above me and the shape depends on how I turn. Weird…

Anyway, I hoped to send this on the next morning, but couldn’t because now the power was cut in the whole village and the internet cafe doesn’t work. Instead I explored the village a bit more and found some great things. First, an old maharajah palace placed high up the hill. A quiet old man allowed me to sit in quiet in the bay window overlooking the village and river. Then I moved up the stairs to what was once an sacred island (not anymore since they built a dam on the river) – quite a climb in direct sun. Once up, I stopped in a temple complex and was invited for a tea and a chat by a very archetypal holy man with a long grey beard, dressed in orange. He was speaking in Hindi, me in English, but it was all OK. He taught me how to properly do OM and told me a lot about the gods, little of which I actually understood. I left him a generous donation for the temples.

Another few temples and a 20 meter statue of Shiva later I was stopped by a couple guys who shouted my name. Apparently we met yesterday and they remembered me (everyone asks for my name and nationality here the moment they meet me), so now we were already best friends, took more pictures together and went down the hill holding hands, Indian style. I had to say goodbyes in a hurry though, because I had to run to the hostel to check out and catch a bus back to Indore.

After three hours in a crowded hot bus I finally got here and found a cafe with WiFi (sic!). I’m soon heading to catch a bus to Jhansi from where I’ll go to Khajuraho and maybe Orchha.