Eric Newby - Slowly Down the Ganges

‘I think,’ G. said at last, ‘that at this moment I am not bathing. In such circumstances there can be danger to health.’

Silently we crept up the stairs and back to bed.

When we rose again at seven, it was still very cold and we peeped round the front gate as apprehensively as mice. Wanda had decided to come with us. The sun had risen some ten minutes earlier but the streets were still in shadow and the wind whistled down them, raising little eddies of dust on the cobble-stones. The only other people who were up were two cha-wallahs, sitting by their smoking tea-engines on either side of the gateway, and we each drank a cup. It was hot, weak and milky and tasted of nutmegs. Then we set off up the road. It was a street of dharmsalas. Some of the more ancient ones with eyeless windows, protected by rusty iron gratings and doors bolted and barred and locked with corroded padlocks, seemed as if they were closed for ever, and one could imagine the interiors with room after shuttered room in which skeleton pilgrims slept for ever on charpoys of worm-eaten wood and rotting string; others dating back to the twenties were painted in faded blues. With their elephantine pilasters and heavy lintels they resembled the exhibition buildings at Wembley which I remembered as a child; while some, more modern still, were painted an indigestible sang de boeuf .

We groped our way through the bazaar, at this hour as dark as the grave. Most of the shops were still bolted and barred. Only the food merchants were preparing for opening time, heaping up great mounds of sugar and rice which glowed luminously through the murk. Then, suddenly, we emerged from the darkness on to the waterfront and into the light of the sun that was shooting up across the river, blinding the Sivite sadhus who squatted, coated in ashes, in the alcoves below the temple of Gangadwara, still warming themselves before the smouldering tree-trunks with which they had seen the night through. Here we turned inland, away from the river, and began to climb a steep path at the back of the town which led to the temple of Manasa-Devi.

At the temple, nearly 2,000 feet up, the air was gelid. G. asked the priest to recite the Lalita-sahasra-nama, the thousand names of Vishnu. 8

‘I do not know the Lalita-sahasra-nama’, the priest said, equably and went back to his own protracted devotions.

‘It’s disgraceful,’ G. said. ‘He ought to know it. It’s like priest in Church of England not knowing the Lord’s Prayer.’

From the hills to Sookerthal on the Ganges, the navigation is restricted entirely to rafts of timber and to the passage of boats which, being built in the valley of Deyra, are with some difficulty and great danger floated, empty down the rapids.

Col. Sir T. Proby Cautley: The Ganges Canal , Vol. 1

A list of suggestive articles which are needed on the journey is given here but the pilgrims may have all or some of them as desired and needed.

Religious

Japalma

Agarbattis

Camphor

Dhup Powder

Kumkuma

Sandalwood Powder

Wicks soaked in ghee and kundi

Asanam

Bhagavad Gita or any religious book for daily use

Bhajan Songs or Namavali

Sri Ramakoti Book

Cloths

Rugs, Blanket

Muffler

Dhavali or Silk Dhoti

Dhoties 2

Shirts 4

Baniyans 2

Uppar clothe 3

Towels 3

Waterproff cloth (2 yards)

Rotten cloth (pieces 4)

Coupeens 2

Cloth bag for money to keep round waist

Bedding

Mosquito Curtain

Medicines

Amrutanjan

Smelling Salt

Vaseline bottle

J & J De Chane’s

Medical Service set with its guide book

Homeopathic Box & a guide Booh

Diarrhoea Pills

Dysentery Pills

Indigestion Pills

Malaria Pills

Boric Powder

Cotton

Cloth (Plaster)

Bandage cloth

Aspro Tablets

Purgative chacklets

Tooth powder or paste

Utensiles

Canvas bucket

Cooker

Oven

One set of stainless steel vessels

Ladle

Spoons – 3

Fraid pan

Tiffin Carrier

Tumbler

Glass

Miscellaneous

Looking Glass and comb

Soaps for bath and wash

Nails of all sizes

Locks 2

Cloth bags for food stuffs

Pen knife

Small gunny bag for coal

Wrist Watch

Umbrella

Hand stick

Visiting Cards

List of departed souls and their Gotras

Hand bags 2

Note book

White Papers

Fountain pen and pencil

Candles

Needles and thread

Railway Guide

Pilgrim’s Travel Guide

A small hand axe

Good Camera with flash

Movie (Cene) Camera

Tongue Cleaner

Suit case or hand jip bag

Lock and chain

Pandari bag to carry things on shoulder

Safety pins

Change for Rs. 10 00

Setuvu from Rameswaram

Ganges from Allahabad

Haridwar or Gangottari

Rail and Road Maps

Battery light with spare Batteries

Thermos Flask

Hurricane Lamp

Match box

Calendar both Telugu and English

News Papers

Ink bottles

Postage stamps and cards

from A Pilgrim’s Travel Guide

At six-fifteen the following morning we were at the bridge, ready to embark. A bitter wind was blowing and against a pink sky flights of teal and mallard were rocketing upstream towards the Hardwar gorge.

The boat was moored ready for us alongside one of the piers of the bridge on the upstream side and the current was grinding it against the stones, emphasising its tinniness. It was as full of holes as it had ever been and there were eight inches of water in the bottom. Because of its lightness it had somehow achieved a balance between floating and foundering; but if any further weight was imposed on it, it would certainly scuttle itself.

Of the crew whom we had interviewed the previous day, a pair of terrible ruffians with mops of greasy hair, there was no sign. We had told them to be ready to leave at six and we had arrived at a quarter past, hoping to start within an hour or so, this being the custom of the country, but now it was evident it did not matter at what time they arrived; there would be no sailing in this boat today or any other day.

We were prey to all the violent, unworthy emotions that have consumed visitors to India from time immemorial: impotent rage; the desire that Timur Leng, the terrible Tatar, knew and was able to gratify, to make hecatombs and raise great towers of skulls (he made a sanguinary detour to the banks of the Ganges in the Year of the Hare, 1399, and entered Hardwar and sacked it sometime at the end of January that year); but for us there was no such way to vent our spleen, except by allowing it to evaporate. For the inhabitants of India have a simple genius for concocting exasperating situations which, however long he may have lived in the country and however much he may have anticipated them, burst on the victim each time with pristine force. One of the prerequisites of real exasperation is that there should be no one to vent one’s anger on, and there was no one. The wind whistled through the reed walls of the bridge-builder’s hut but there were no dormant figures inside it to rouse from sleep and galvanise into activity. We were alone on the river bank under a vast sky.

It was at this moment that G. announced that the Executive Engineer of the Irrigation Works, who had been away on our first morning in Hardwar, had come back.

‘He has returned from Tour,’ he said. ‘Now he is giving us his boat. But first we are speaking with Assistant Engineer. He is feeling kindly towards us.’

The Assistant Engineer lived in a bungalow that was almost completely shrouded in bougainvillaea. It was difficult to imagine why he should be feeling well-disposed towards us. After an interval he appeared in a dressing-gown. The patience of Indian officials in the face of requests that must appear to them to be either lunatic or frivolous has to be experienced to be credible. What we were doing in this instance was the equivalent in Britain of waking a fairly senior officer of the Metropolitan Water Board at a quarter to seven on a winter’s morning, in order to ask him to wake a yet more senior official and request the loan of a boat from one of the reservoirs in order to go down to Southend.