Final Countdown

India, finally something completely different.

My flight was supposed to depart for Varanasi at 7 o'clock in the morning. Unlike many other travelers, I take others into consideration, so I packed my backpack and everything else the night before. On the way to the airport, my instinct told me to check for my ID again. Oh well, I must have already packed it... after all, I packed everything the night before. At the airport, of course, the shock. No passport! So, switch to crisis mode and still keep a clear head. Order a taxi, negotiate the price, go back to the hostel, call the hostel. The passport was in the hostel, good, one less problem. Online check-in not possible. I immediately got the passport at the hostel, it was in the lounge... Back to the airport, the taxi driver overlooked the speed limit for a few extra baht. It didn't help, of course, the check-in counter had closed five minutes ago and my flight was gone. A year ago, I would have been furious, instead I'm sitting at the airport, putting the crisis mode back on and laughing out loud. Well, then it's off to India tomorrow. Fuck the 120€. I'm healthy and nothing happened to me, no worries!

So the next morning I went back to the airport and finally to India. During the flight or in the hostel, I met Marloes from the Netherlands, so we set off together to explore Varanasi. Everything that is about to come, be it photos or stories, can barely give a glimpse of what actually happens in India. Everything is simply different, new, crazy, impressive, interesting, disgusting and beautiful at the same time. But let's start slowly.

When we stepped out onto the street, we were almost run over by a rickshaw, car or tuk-tuk a few times, but definitely by the noise on the streets. In India, one is always accompanied by a constant, extremely loud noise, consisting of honking, engine noise, honking, shouting vendors, honking, ringing, honking and honking. Varanasi consists of many small alleyways, which are full of life, be it people or animals of all kinds. The riverbank consists of 54 ghats, which are the steps leading to a body of water (in Varanasi it is a river), and most ghats also have a temple. At the ghats, the faithful pray, perform ceremonies, or bathe in the sacred river, the Ganges. At two of these ghats, the dead are publicly cremated. As soon as you approach them, the already completely polluted air is filled with the smell of burning wood and human beings. I knew what to expect there and wanted to see it accordingly.

First, the dead, wrapped in colorful fabric, are carried down to the river and "washed" again there. Then they are laid on a wooden pile and covered with more wood. Then the head of the family sets fire to the wooden pile. Since the cremations take place on a kind of slope, the people around the fire always have something to do. There are poor people who search the ashes for jewelry or dental gold, or relatives who put the half-burnt limbs back into the fire with a large pair of tongs. Those who are not allowed to be cremated are sunk in the river with weights. So it can happen that during a boat tour (like ours) the boat is rammed by a corpse. Yes, Varanasi is truly a rough city, even Indians from other regions are surprised by what happens here. In addition, there are animals running around everywhere, relieving themselves or simply dying where there is space. All of this naturally causes a - let's say - "special" smell...

In Varanasi, I had the best food I would ever get in India. The best lassi, the best shahi paneer, the best palak paneer, simply amazing. In India, I have been a vegetarian for six weeks, as the meat in India is not very good and everything else is incredibly delicious.

We took the night train via Khajuraho and the famous Kamasutra temples to the Taj Mahal. I don't want to talk about admission prices again, but it is really being taken to the extreme in India. Tourists sometimes pay 20 times the price of locals. So I thought I can do that too and I simply had a student ID printed and from then on I only paid a fraction of the tourist price. The Taj Mahal is impressive, but I imagined it to be much larger, luckily we were there on a weekday in the early morning and could avoid the crowds. There wasn't much else to see in this city, so we continued to Jaipur. I also really liked Jaipur. Chaotic, good food, and a beautiful old town.

Then we continued by train via Delhi to Rishikesh. Here, as was my plan, yoga, hiking, and motorcycle riding. In the end, I only made it to the motorcycle. Yoga: I had planned to try everything, but when I happened to see a class in a cafe, I knew I wouldn't be doing that shit! I don't need to look inside myself or silence my mind, blah blah blah, and I can stretch myself before soccer or boxing training... It was still too cold to go hiking, and there was still too much snow in the mountains, so I wasn't equipped well enough with my summer clothes. So I rented a Royal Enfield and fulfilled a little dream of mine, rode on bad dusty roads for a day, and then was rewarded with a breathtaking view of the Himalayas. After four days in Rishikesh and a total of 2 ½ weeks, I said goodbye to Marloes, she went on to Bikaner, while I went to Amritsar and Pakistan. In Amritsar, I had to stay for six days involuntarily because my visa took longer than planned, which was also my own fault because I applied for it at the last minute. In the meantime, I watched the famous border ceremony between India and Pakistan, first from the Indian side. It is interesting, funny, scary, impressive, and a strange feeling at the same time when two nuclear powers compete at the border. Fortunately, the soldiers shake hands twice, let's hope it stays that way for a very long time. The show didn't have as much military character as I thought, the people were dressed in colorful clothes (like always), danced, and were in a good mood.

Then I walked across the border towards Pakistan, my passport was checked five times on the Indian side and seven times on the Pakistani side. In addition, I was asked about five times if I really wanted to go to Pakistan or if I would rather watch the show. The Pakistani officials actually offered me tea and coffee and introduced themselves personally to me, wow, I won't experience that at a border again so quickly! In Pakistan, I made an exception and booked an all-inclusive tour. In retrospect, it was definitely the right decision and the 150€ for six days were very well spent. Everything was included in the price, accommodations, transportation, breakfast, and dinner, I only had to pay for admission and snacks myself. First, we took a small bus for 24 hours on dirt roads and past cliffs, into the mountains, 24 hours for 600km mind you... For the next three days, I was rewarded with breathtaking scenery, we went to glaciers, mountain lakes, various viewpoints, and castles. The group consisted exclusively of Pakistanis, so I was able or had to try a lot of new dishes and learned a lot about the country and its people. The 7000m peaks look like 3000m peaks, it's freezing at night (-8 degrees) without heating or hot water, but it was worth it anyway, even if we couldn't drive to the highest border in the world due to the weather, so I have to come back again and I definitely will!

Back in Lahore, I tried Couchsurfing for the first time and was consciously confronted with the coronavirus for the first time. I was asked where I had been so far. When I had cleared all doubts about possible contact, I was given the address. As it turned out, I should have asked questions better. Rana's brother opened the door for me, obviously he had the flu. Coughing, fever, etc., but that was due to the difference in temperature, he was in Singapore, he told me. Wait a minute, there is already Corona there. "No worries," his brother told me, he had already been to the doctor and tested, after two hours he was told that everything was fine. Okay... according to my information, a test takes about a day or at least eight hours if it goes very fast, well, what can you do. The next few days were super exciting, we rode motorcycles through the area, ate countless different dishes (goat head soup including bone marrow as a side dish), drank several liters of tea, and I watched the border show on the Pakistani side. Not as colorful and cheerful as on the Indian side, because men and women are still separated here, and it is more focused on the military, I liked it better on the Indian side. After five days in Lahore and almost two weeks in Pakistan, I returned to India and then continued to Bikaner.

Actually, I also wanted to go to the Indian part of Kashmir and further into the Himalayas, but the weather forecast was so bad that I decided to travel further south and then back to Delhi to pick up Tim. In India, the topic of Corona also became more and more present, the first countries closed their borders for certain nationalities, and on the streets, people were often greeted with shouts of "Corona, Corona," I don't know if it was meant to be an insult. In Bikaner, I met up with Manisha and we traveled together for the next few days. Apart from the Rat Temple, there wasn't much to see in Bikaner, the food wasn't really good, and there wasn't much else to do either. However, the Rat Temple was something. The most disgusting thing I've seen in a long time. Rats run through the entire temple, so far not so bad. But apparently no one feels responsible for removing the sick or dead rats or disposing of the food that visitors throw to the rats. Accordingly, it smells terrible, because like in every temple, you have to take off your shoes here too, so you walk among food leftovers, worshipers, rat droppings, and the rats themselves, if they don't run over your feet. Crazy and disgusting, after a few photos and videos (it ended up being almost 30 minutes), I had enough and was glad to be outside again.

The next destination was Pushkar, recommended by many travelers, but I couldn't get as much out of it. Too many souvenir stands, too many hippies, too many lice-infected stoners, too little India. The Corona crisis took up more and more of my journey and my thoughts. India had already canceled visas for some countries, even Indians sometimes wear masks, when it gets that far, then it's really serious. But at the Holi Festival, nothing of all this could be seen yet, and thousands of people celebrated a huge festival with colorful colors and lots of water. Meanwhile, I also got sick, fever, sore throat, headache, and body aches, but a few painkillers will fix that (my visit to Rana was seven days ago now). In Pakistan and India, there were only a handful of cases so far, so it must have been something else, and the last thing I want is to be quarantined in India. After 4 days, everything was back to normal, unfortunately, India had already canceled all visas (March 11, 20), so Tim can no longer visit me, damn it. From this point on, the topic took several hours every day, and it was also discussed more and more on the streets. For the first time, I wonder if I can continue my journey until the end, and the first doubts arise. At this point, I still didn't know how quickly everything would go from now on, let alone that I would be home in eleven days. For me, it was off to Jodhpur.

I really liked the blue city as Jodhpur is called. An impressive palace on the central mountain and a nice old town where there was a lot to discover. My first "zip line" experience provided some distraction, it was high, fast, and the 20€ for 40 minutes were definitely worth it, although I had imagined it to be a bit more exciting, despite the 60 meters height. In Jodhpur, I also heard that the first Indian states had already imposed a curfew, at this point (March 14, 20), my plan was already to travel to Goa as soon as possible to spend a few weeks on the beach there. Since the curfew also affected Goa, I had to come up with something else. The first people I heard from said that hotels sometimes no longer accommodate Europeans or rickshaw drivers no longer drive tourists, so I had to think about leaving India early for the first time. In addition, fever checks are now being carried out here, of course, only for tourists. In addition, the minister of Goa claimed that only migrants and tourists transmit the virus, and yes, I am in India, who knows who really believes that. After three nights, I continued to Udaipur, now everywhere on the streets you could see people wearing masks, scarves, or simply covering their faces with their hands. Sometimes people put on masks when they saw me or even walked past me completely. "Corona Corona" calls became louder and more frequent, as it annoyed me eventually I reacted with coughing or gave a thumbs-up, no one dared to say anything more. I didn't particularly like Udaipur, but maybe that's also because I started to think more and more about what would happen next (March 17, 20).

My idea now was to fly to Malaysia, spend two weeks diving on an island, then continue traveling to Thailand, and see what else is possible in four weeks. In the evening, I wanted to book the flight to Malaysia, fortunately, I checked first to see if there are any travel restrictions, and indeed, from March 18, there was a ban on entry for foreigners. So that plan was also in vain. The next day (March 18, 20), I booked a flight to Bangkok, as Thailand was more or less the only country left without restrictions, so far. The EU decided to impose an absolute entry ban on non-EU citizens. Even in Udaipur, the palaces and viewpoints had already closed, and it was slowly dawning on me that it was starting to get serious, even if I already suspected that there would already be a significantly higher number of unreported cases in India. For me, it then went to Jodhpur.

In Ahmedabad, the information and events then piled up. In Ahmedabad, there was already a curfew for foreigners, which I generally observed for two days, but I had to leave the hotel to eat, which was also unproblematic. India announced that it would cancel ALL international flights from March 22nd and impose a curfew for over 1.3 billion people from March 23rd, madness! I was glad that I had already booked a flight, I checked the status every hour... The next day, I discovered on the website that I now needed a health certificate to enter Thailand.

So off to the hospital. In the first one, I was rejected with the information to go to a government hospital. So I went on, where I was sent from A to B for an hour. The funny thing: the isolation unit, where Covid-19 patients will continue to be treated, was on the fifth floor, so you have to go through the overcrowded main entrance, three more buildings, and then to the fifth floor. From there, I was finally sent to another building, another back and forth. Then a friendly staff member took care of me and took me from department to department. People were lying in the corridors, sleeping, eating, or playing games. The walls were brown and dirty from spit. When I finally got my own file for six cents, I thought it might work now... but not in India. It continued, past countless patients waiting for a doctor, people lying on simple stainless steel trolleys, I don't know if unconscious, dead, or asleep. People with broken legs, arms, and open wounds, I felt sick for the first time. Further into the next department, at least there were already doctors. I just want to get a signature. But the doctors were more than busy, one doctor was resuscitating a patient, the other was inserting an intravenous access, and my companion approached him and told him (I suspect) that he should please sign something... but no one really wanted to, and I wanted to leave because the doctors had much more important things to do. Everything happened here without real protective equipment, such as masks or gloves, some doctors and nurses wore plastic gloves like those used for dyeing hair. I felt sick for the second time. So it was back to the fifth floor to the isolation station. Here my fever and blood pressure were measured, and an entry was made in my file. No one still wanted to fill out the form I had with me. So it went to the next station, with the small old elevator we rode, we made a stop and someone pushed a stainless steel trolley with a body wrapped in a cloth into it. The elevator was so tight that I stood 5cm next to the dead body, now in addition to my nausea, dizziness also came, and I concentrated on not fainting at 30 degrees. I just wanted to get out. Finally, I ended up with a senior doctor and explained my concern, but nobody wanted to sign my form. Not even when I promised a few more rupees. After almost three hours, I left the hospital without a signature and was glad to be back at the hotel, even if the plane would now probably leave without me.

In the evening at the airport, I tried my luck anyway, nobody asked for a health certificate. Instead, I was told that I couldn't fly without a valid onward ticket. I tried to explain to the ladies and gentlemen that I wanted to stay in Thailand and that Visa on Arrival was still possible, but in vain. So I gathered my thoughts, and I knew myself that it no longer made sense to continue traveling from here. Even in Thailand, the first stores were permanently closing, and who knows when the first curfews would be imposed there, and I didn't necessarily want to get stuck on an island either. So Frenzel booked a flight for me from home to Germany, and so I was back home in Germany 60 hours later, that's how quickly it can go. Everything changed within 10 days. However, it is interesting to see how relaxed the Germans are dealing with the current situation. Yes, you read that right, Germans and relaxed in one sentence. Nobody wears masks here, everyone tries to stick to the rules as best they can, work and going for a walk is still allowed. At Bangkok airport, I was almost the only one without a mask, sometimes people wore painter suits, safety goggles, gloves, or even proper face masks. In many countries, you are no longer allowed to leave your home, there is no help for small business owners, let alone short-time work. In addition, some of the people I met on the trip have already been brought home by the German government. Once again, it shows how valuable a German passport is...

So I'm now writing the last lines from home, knowing that I spent significantly less money than planned. So I can plan my next trip as soon as the situation allows. But for now, I wait until I can see my friends again, that's what really matters to me at the moment! See you soon!