Kamakhya

In Guwahati, there is a temple that is considered the second most important temple in the Hindu world. This is called Kamakhya.

The big three in the Hindu religion are the gods Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma. I believe that world rests on Brahma, after it was created by Vishnu. And when the day of judgement comes, it will be Shiva that destroys it.

In the world of the gods, there was a king who was very rich and had lots of daughters. Most of his daughters found and married successful, rich men. He was proud of those daughters. But his one daughter, Sati, fell in love with and married the ascetic Shiva. Shiva's lifestyle was very austere and he had little and wished for less. Sati, by marrying Shiva and settling for the austere life, disappointed her father. He banished her from his life.

One day, the king decided to have a celebration, called a yajna. He invited all of his daughters except for Sati. She heard about the yajna and decided to attend it anyway. When she showed up, her father insulted her and Shiva. With the insults, she had too much and died.

Shiva heard of Sati's death and was infuriated and grief-stricken. He went and destroyed the yajna. Then he took Sati's body up on his shoulders and began a mad dance. His dance made the earth shake and tremble. Vishnu was awe-struck by Shiva's dance. He was also afraid, for he knew the power that Shiva possessed. If he wasn't stopped, the world would be destroyed. So, for the sake of the world, Vishnu took up his disc and spun it and let it fly at Sati's body. The disc cut Sati's body into pieces, which dropped off Shiva's shoulders and fell in different spots on the earth. These locations are called pitha's. They now are locations of sacred temples. These are located throughout what was once ancient India, which included Afghanistan, where Sati's brain is supposed to have landed. This is the most sacred pitha for Hindu's. Kamakhya is where Sati's genitals landed and is the second most sacred of the pitha's.

As I was in the neighbourhood, I decided to pay a visit. After trying in one spot recommended by Assam Tourism to find tea (but it was closed, being Sunday), I headed off towards Kamakhya. It was relatively easy to get there, but after getting off the bus at the “entrance” to the temple, it was another 4 kilometer walk to get to the temple itself. It was located at the top of a hill, and I had seen a little public van, but I hadn't really paid it much attention. By the time I saw the sign telling how far the temple was, the van had gone and I was left with walking.

But it wasn't so bad, with interesting sights along the way. These two idols were just sitting by the side of the road on the way up.

And there was a whole row of monkeys sitting on the guardrail.

I found my way up the hill to the temple and then wandered around for a while inside. There were domes, and apparently a little museum as well. I didn't end up looking inside the museum because I got in a line to go inside the temple. I guess there is a way to get inside as a VIP of sorts. I was told there were two levels of VIP-ness. One level was with a payment of 100 rupees. And the second level came with a donation of 500 rupees. Free was fine with me and the line for that didn't seem to be too long. In fact it wasn't. I have heard that people can wait for hours to get into the temple. They come for all sorts of reasons: to get cured of illness, to bless a child, to have a child, to remember lost loved ones, and of course just to visit. I was just curious and wanted to see what the fuss was about, but if I hadn't been able to get inside because the line was too long, that would have been okay as well.

I was impressed that if people of ill-repute, claiming to be representatives of the temple came up and hassled visitors for money, the temple authorities would take care of the problem.  Maybe.

As it happened, I did get in quite quickly, in about an hour. We stood in line for about 20 minutes and then ended up in a chute cage, that felt a little like we were cattle waiting to get into an abattoir. That is perhaps incredibly irreverent of me given that this was one of the more sacred places to Hindus in the world. I hope any Hindus reading will forgive me.

Finally we were let out of the cage and into the temple. The domed area notwithstanding, the temple was located underground. No photos were allowed. There was a large chamber maybe twenty meters across at the first worship place. In the center there was a throne of sorts where there seemed to be some kind of idol. It was hard to tell for all the flowers that people had thrown over the chair. In front of it, some people were occasionally brought to offer some kind of special prayer. The rest of us were herded past in a long line. We walked to the side of the throne, behind a low fence. As we went past, people reached out to touch the throne, or throw flowers. There was also a Hindu priest (or four; it was hard to tell, as a sign had warned outside of lots of fakes) on hand to bless the worshippers and to give them the third eye. Past the throne, we filed down a short stairwell to two little springs. They were barely springs as there was only a small amount of water that really only barely moistened the area. I suppose this may have been what gave everyone the idea that it was Sati's genitalia that landed here? I probably shouldn't have said that, but...

Even though I probably stuck out like a sore thumb as someone who is not of the faithful, I was encouraged to make my devotion by kneeling before each of the springs and putting my hand into the water and then touching the linga that was beyond. After this, I headed back up the stairs and past a corner where I was again blessed, and they wanted me to do all these little prayer-like things, touching here, murmuring my name there, making a wish, then making an offering. I perhaps misunderstood what was required. I saw money on the altar there, and assumed they wanted money. But when I said I wasn't offering any money, the guy seemed a bit put off that I would think that. He still said I should throw rice. But I had no rice and he didn't seem to understand what I was saying, and then I wasn't understanding where I was supposed to get the rice, which may have been, “throw some money and it will serve as your rice.” So I really don't know what happened there, as it wasn't explained and I am not Hindu, so don't know the rituals involved. Again, I think it would have been clear to all involved that I am not Hindu, so I don't know what he was thinking, unless it made me some kind of easy mark for getting money.

Following the strange little ceremony in the corner, it was time to exit. I headed up the second set of stairs and outside where it was now dark and the lines for going into the temple were empty. Apparently I was among the last to be allowed in for the day. It was an interesting experience, and if you do ever end up in Guwahati (and don't let my rants about how unfriendly it is deter you; it's really the hotels that seem that way, while the regular people are quite friendly), I recommend the trip up to the temple.

Going Back to Guwahati

The trip back to Guwahati was reasonably uneventful. The bus was quite plush, as far as buses in the lower Asia region go. But before it left, there were a couple of interesting sights. There were the cattle heading across the bridge on their way to a grazing pasture. At least that's where I presume they were going.

Then I watched a man making roti (a kind of flat bread) on an earth stove in front of the bus ticket office.

Then it was back to Guwahati, unfriendly, even hostile Guwahati. I had the feeling when I arrived on my first day in the region that many places didn't want to take foreigners in the hotels. And it felt that way again. In general, people on the streets in Guwahati were friendly and helpful, but getting a place to stay is just an incredible hassle. Even with my two new friends accompanying me it seemed that I was more of a hindrance to them getting place than they were a help to me getting a place to stay. But eventually it was handled and I settled in for a couple of days.

Dealing With A Hub City

The train being late to arrive at New Jalpaiguri meant that the train also arrived late in Guwahati, in the state of Assam. This was not a particularly troubling thing because it had been scheduled to arrive at 4 in the morning, and there is just not much that can be accomplished at 4 am. We arrived at 5:30 instead and that was much more manageable. We got off the train and tried to find something to eat. We hadn't eaten dinner, as it happened. When we were wandering around the New Jalpaiguri station trying to find a place to just sit and rest, we had been approached by these two young gentlemen with uniforms. Their crests said they were with Meals On Wheels. The name means something else to me, but here it seemed to mean they were with some kind of train catering company. Because they had uniforms and were actually in the train station, we probably trusted them more than we should have. But they looked at our ticket and then said they could bring us food for on the train. They took our orders and disappeared. When we got on the train, they duly remembered us and helped us find our carriage and brought us some food. At a ridiculous price. We balked and decided that we didn't want the food. He immediately lowered the price and started haggling. I suppose we should have asked how much at the time we had ordered, but we didn't. In the end, we were arguing back and forth so long that the train started to leave. With no agreement in place, they had to get off the train or face a long way back to their “office” and so they took the food and left. Of course, this left us dinnerless. So by the time we reached Guwahati, we were hungry.

We originally went to the wrong side of the station, and couldn't find much of anything useful. We had to get to the other side of the station. But the person we asked pointed us in the wrong direction and it took us some wandering and going through probably forbidden areas to get to the other side of the tracks. There we found hotels and places to eat. But this is where things seemed to be going a bit wrong for Kenichi and I. I had been getting the feeling that he was more or less ready to go separate ways. I wish there was a good way to have conversations like that. But when we were finding our way to the other side of the tracks, he didn't really seem to pay much attention to whether I was with him or not. Then, when we found some hotels and such, I went to talk to some of the jeep drivers that were around. They all had messages about permits on their windshields, so I wondered if they had information about what would be needed to go to other states. They didn't. But when I went back to find Kenichi, he had disappeared. I eventually was walking along the row of restaurants that were open and saw him. I went in and we were re-united.

Then, full, we decided to try and find an Assam Tourism office that was supposedly nearby. We walked around for a bit. I had seen a hostel that seemed to be affiliated with Hostelling International. I suggested that we go there to see if they had information we could use. HI hostels usually have staff that are travellers and are therefore good sources of information. So we headed in that direction. But at one point I turned around and Kenichi had disappeared again. Hmmm... I talked to the hostel people and went back out and Kenichi had reappeared again. He had been in travel office getting some information, which was that we needed to go to a place called Nagaland House in order to get a permit. The hostel guy showed us to the Assam Tourism office, which was closed and then started to help us figure out which bus to use to get to Nagaland House, but Kenichi thought we should wait for the tourism office to open. I agreed to that and so we waited. But at length I noticed that it was Saturday and wondered aloud if the office would even open. It was my impression that Kenichi was a bit annoyed by that observation, and even more so when it turned out that the office wasn't in fact going to open that day. We packed up and Kenichi decided that heading for the Assam Tourism office in the train station would be the next step. We started heading that way, but I turned around a few moments later and Kenichi was gone again. Once can happen, and even twice can be explained away, but this was third time we had managed to get split up. I looked around but couldn't see him, and so I decided to go to the station and see if he showed up. He didn't. And since it was the third time, I figured that the time had come to part company, which is what I was thinking had been on his mind for a while.

I'm not sure what brought it on, but I do know that, while I am perfectly capable of deciding things myself and can make plans, when I'm around someone who is also more than capable of doing those things as well, I can just go along with things and not really add much to the endeavour. And I imagine that puts people off after a while. My suspicion is that that's what happened, but I may never know. I did send Kenichi a message over Facebook later to wish him well, but who knows.

From that point on, though, I began making different decisions. It seemed that I was indeed going to need a permit for Nagaland, so I figured that I would try the Nagaland House and see if it was open. But first I wanted to drop my bag off somewhere. I felt I was going to be in town overnight anyway, so I started looking for a room. And I found that Guwahati was very, very busy. I must have checked in 40 or 50 hotels and everywhere it was the same. No rooms. In the end I gave up and decided to take my bag with me to Nagaland House. I got some directions to take the bus and set off. A forty minute bus ride later, I got off and started asking people where to find the place. When I found it I walked in and was told, no, they don't do permits for foreigners in Guwahati. I was a bit shocked. I had heard so many things, from no permits being needed to permits being done in Guwahati, I didn't expect to come to this complete block in my plans. And there was no shaking them. There was even a notice posted on their door that suggested that all I had to do was show up in Nagaland and report to the Foreigner Registration Office and it would be all right. They nixed that and told me it couldn't go that way. They could only accommodate Indians at that office. But all I had to do was go to Delhi, to Nagaland House there and get my permit. Then I could come back and have no problem. He seemed a bit taken aback when I said that, since it would involve two or three days to get to Delhi, another day to get the permit and then two or three days to return to Guwahati, no, I would not be going to Nagaland after all. And that the lack of information, anywhere, on how to go about a visit to Nagaland meant that they were losing out. And he seemed a bit upset when I told him that since Nagaland didn't seem to want my money, Assam would get instead. But he offered no solution to the quandary beyond going to Delhi to get a permit. It would have been nice, but another time, I suppose.

Then I headed back up to the station to try again to find a place to stay. I eventually did find a place that had a rather expensive room (all things considered), and got checked in. Then I went for a walk. Guwahati is along the Brahmaputra River. This river comes down out of the Himalaya Mountains and travels through various spots before coming into Assam. From Assam it goes down through Bangladesh and then meets the Ganges before emptying into the ocean. In each country and state, the river has a different name. Brahmaputra is the name it has in the state of Assam. It runs from east to west through the state, and forms the northern boundary of Guwahati.

I decided to seek the river as I was somewhat dispirited from finding out that I wouldn't be able to visit Nagaland. It took some searching, but I did find it and I found a way to get to it. It seems that spending time beside a river is not particularly important in much of India. Consequently there are relatively few access points to most rivers (so far) and there seems not to be much in the way of parks beside a river either. Rivers are nevertheless important means of transportation and there are spots where access to the rivers provides access to some kind of ferry. This is what I found here. The view from the spot was divine though.

I decided to just go ahead and climb aboard the next ferry that arrived. However, the ferry didn't cross the river. It went to a small island in the middle with a temple on it. That was fine.

I climbed around on the island for a while and visited the temple. I can't say that I understood who the temple was built for, but I rang the bells that were there and watched some of the visitors get blessed by the religious leaders there. It was interesting and it was also soothing to my disappointment.

At the end of my visit to the island, I met a man who lives in Guwahati. He started chatting with me and so I asked him what I should do in Assam. He was a fountain of information. He told me I should go to a place called Tezpur. From there I could go up to a spot called Bomdila and then Tawang. They were in Arunachal Pradesh, and Tawang has the second largest Buddhist temple in Asia. It is also set in the mountains and is supposed to be quite beautiful. Then I could come back down and take a ferry up to Kazinranga national park to go and see one-horned rhinos and other animals, before continuing on to Jorhat and the world's largest river island called Majuli. After that I could go down into Meghalaya and go see a tree root bridge. It sounded like a great plan and I started to get excited again. He took my email address and said he would send me more information.

With that I headed to my hotel and felt much better about the trip to Assam, even though I wouldn't be doing what I had originally planned. The day that had started badly had turned into a fairly successful seeming one.