Welcome to Bihar.

What's gonna happen?

November 20th, 2011

So with my last couple of weeks in India, I was going to try to have one last little adventure. After far too much deliberation, I decided to go to Bihar. That, at least, would be my starting point. All I needed was some sort of starting point, goal, or kernel of an idea of what the point of my travel would be. I liked the idea of Bihar because it was way off the beaten track and has a “wild west” reputation. It is poor, dry, rife with crime, and has its share of rebel movements. In urban areas of India, Bihari immigrants are the typical scapegoats when it comes time to pin the blame for crime on some group of people. But these things are not any reason to go somewhere. I needed some other excuse to spend some time in this state which is mostly ignored by tourists. I had hear about a big festival that happens there every year. This would be my excuse. It was the Sonepur Mela, which is both a festival for trade and religious devotion. It is most notable as Asia’s largest cattle fair. I had already missed the well-known Pushkar Mela, Rajasthan’s exotic and eye-candy laiden camel-trading festival, on two occasions. Perhaps this could be my less-touristy alternative. Either way, it was a starting point.

I would be joined by fellow volunteer and traveler Joe McKernan. For those who don’t know, Joe is the little brother of Lizzy, who I went to school with and India with five years earlier. At this point, I have probably spent more time with the McKernan kids, save for Lizzy, abroad. This was Joe’s first time traveling outside of North America, but he had adjusted well, and seemed like enough of a wild man to make a good travel partner. He had already been exposed to the world quite a bit after working at a hostel in San Francisco for nine months, where he met people from all over the world and undoubtedly heard loads of tall tales from travelers. He had also spent six months on a reservation in northern Saskatchewan, which I imagine is pretty foreign to his home in Portland.

The first leg of our journey would be a night train from Kolkata to Patna, the capital of Bihar. Most Indians that heard we were going to Patna were confused about why we were going there, and gave us warnings to be careful. We had no plans of lingering anyway. Our train arrived around 5 in the morning. It was still dark. Outside the station there were lots of people conducting their various businesses, however it was dark enough that it was a while before everyone noticed a couple of foreigners were wandering around. Vendors sat at their stalls, half asleep, with their space lit by small oil lamps or candles. The mood was heavy. We skulked away from the station and found a cycle rickshaw driver. It took some haggling, but we got our price and got on our way to the bus station outside of town.

The ride between stations was peaceful and beautiful. The streets were slightly eerie in their emptiness. The sun was starting to reveal dark purples and blues on the horizon. By the time we were at the bus station the sun was beginning to show itself, as fiery reds and oranges streaked across the sky. We waited for our bus to fill up and we were on our way in less than an hour. We were only going about 25 km before reaching the turnoff for Sonepur. At that point, we got off the bus. It felt it seemed like we were in the middle of nowhere. We asked around and were directed down a dirt road. We knew Sonepur was not big, but it seemed like it would be farther removed than we expected. We walked a couple kilometers before arriving at the edge of town. It definitely seemed like there was something big going on. Crowds were arriving in the town and filling up the few streets that were lined with temporary stalls. It was a little like an Indian county fair. There were rides, fried foods being hawked, people playing music and toys and clothing being sold. We walked up and down a few crowded streets keeping an eye out for a place to stay. We were also keeping an eye out for animals. Although it was mainly a festival devoted to cattle-trading, there was also supposed to be a variety of other animals including elephants and snakes. We turned down a street where the festivities ended. An old man sitting outside a shop sparked a conversation with us. We asked him about places to stay. He said there were a couple hotels back the way we had come. He also said that there might still be some elephants around somewhere, but he wasn’t sure where. I had heard that the festival lasted anywhere from two to four weeks, but it peaks in the first week. We started to wonder if we had arrived late.

After finishing our conversation with the old man, we walked through the quiet neighborhood, then went back to where we had come from. We walked to the other end of town and still could not find any hotel. Either way, we had considered camping among the cattle herders, so we headed that way. There was a very thinly wooded open space on the western side of town where small groups of men stood around with some horses and cows. It was obvious that just days earlier this area was packed with men and their animals. We walked past the open area and found a small road. Not far down the road we saw a camp of temporary huts that was intended to house tourists. We knew we couldn’t afford it, but we asked anyway. They were close to eighty dollars a night. We asked if it was possible to camp there, but they gave us a price that was not much lower. I found this tourist camp odd, as the entire day I might have seen no more than two or three foreigners.

Down the road was some sort of police or military encampment. In other countries I had always found military to be very accommodating to me, so it was worth a shot. We asked the man standing guard at the entrance if there was any way to camp there. He went and found someone that spoke English. The answer was a very firm no, and he pointed us back to the camp. Across the street there was an open-air restaurant attached to a house. We asked there if they knew of any places where it would be ok to set up a tent. A young guy said we might be able to camp behind the house. He showed us the space and it seemed like it would do for us. First, though, he needed to ask the owner. We waited for a while and when he arrived he said he would charge us 500 rupees ($10) per night. This was way outside our budget, so, discouraged, we made our way back to the wooded area where people were tending to their animals. Although it was not too crowded, there were enough people around that we weren’t sure about camping there.

We had been walking so long with our packs on that we decided to sit down and make ourselves some tea. It would also be a good way to test the waters about setting up camp here. We gathered some sticks and pine cones. Unfortunately most of it was either green or damp. As I set out my tarp for us to sit on, I said to Joe, “I bet we will have a crowd of thirty people around us soon, how long do you think it will take?” It started with just a couple younger guys standing at a distance, but within two minutes it had snowballed into a crowd of 35 men. They didn’t want to talk to us, just watch. This was certainly not the first time I had been the object of stares in India, but this was by far the biggest crowd I had attracted this quickly. It also came at a moment when I was especially tired and frustrated. On top of that, Joe and I, who both know how to make fires from the worst twigs, were failing repeatedly at getting some coals going to cook tea over. I wanted to yell at the men. I couldn’t tell anymore what was socially appropriate. Was there crowd and staring justified? Would I be justified to make a scene and shoo them all away? I fumed inside, but didn’t react too strongly, knowing that it was naive of us to think that it was a good idea to sit down and make tea out in the open in India. Being stationary and foreign is enough to attract a small crowd in India.

The crowd never shrank and our fire never grew, so we gave up and walked back toward the town, unsure of what we should do. It was really looking like this cattle festival was a bust. We still didn’t want to waste what was left of it, though, so we headed to the carnival. We rode a couple of rickety rides. The Ferris wheel was exciting because its decrepit condition actually gave me an adrenaline rush. Then we found something that made the whole trip well worth it. It was some sort of daredevel show in a wooden stadium that was taller than it was wide. Really it was more of a wooden cone with a platform at the top where the audience could stand. Down on the dirt floor of the stadium there were some motorcycles and small cars. We had paid our small twenty rupee fee and climbed the stairs to the platform that ringed the top of the wooden structure. The walls, made of thin planks of wood, were at a steep angle, close to vertical. It started abruptly when there were a hundred or so spectators inside. One man on a motorcycle started doing circles slowly around the base of the wall and did a couple trial laps. Then he was joined by three others. They rode high up on the walls to the point that, if I wanted to, I could reach out and slap them. Then they weaved all around each other. Then they continued without hands. There was a brief break in the action after they returned to the ground. Then the small cars, which I had previously said there was no way they were going to drive up on these walls, started driving, one at a time on the walls. All six of them made it on and the whole structure shook. I would not have been surprised if the whole shoddy thing collapsed suddenly. Once they were all doing laps, the motorcycles joined them making it even more chaotic. Joe and I were dumbfounded. The motorcycles wove around the cars, occasionally showing off by standing up, raising their arms up and wiggling their bikes underneath them. Then the drivers of the cars started to climb halfway out their windows, engaging some sort of cruise control I guess, and steering with their legs. With their torsos out the window, the bikers would ride up and link arms with them. All the motorcycle/car combos did a few laps linked arm in arm. It was one of the most shocking and incredible things I have ever seen. Joe took a short video of it and for the entire trip Joe would watch it on his camera every day, quite often just before going to bed. Hopefully this video does it a little bit of justice. You can see the cars with their drivers part way out and one of the motorcyclists latched on.

At this point we realized that we had reached the peak moment of our day, and gave up on trying to stay at this so-called animal fair. We had obviously missed the high point of the festival, and we couldn’t find any practical place to stay for the night. So we slowly made our way back to Patna.

We arrived at the Patna bus station late in the afternoon. We were hounded by a bunch of aggressive taxi and auto rickshaw drivers. Although we knew what a fair price to town would be, nobody would give it to us, so we started walking, some of the men persistently following while others gave up. Occasionally we would ask passing cycle rickshaws for their price, but they also didn’t want to give us a fair price. It was terribly hot and we had been walking with our packs on for the entire day. Once we had walked a couple of kilometers, and we were closer to town, we found a cycle rickshaw driver to take us to a guesthouse. We had negotiated the price beforehand, but I suspected he would demand a higher fee when we arrived, since he was taking an awkward roundabout path that did not make any sense. When we arrived, I was surprised to find a very huge, and almost fancy looking hotel. The driver demanded more than we had agreed upon, as expected, but we just gave him what we had agreed upon and left. In the hotel, not only was it far out of our price range (despite being listed as the cheapest one in our guide book) they were booked solid. So we hired another cycle rickshaw to take us close to the train station, where there were more cheap guesthouses. Halfway there, the road was blocked for some sort of street festival or parade that had not started yet. So we we got off the rickshaw and proceeded on foot.

For the next couple of hours, we battled the crowds of Patna as we scoured the neighborhood for a room. Most of the surly guesthouse owners just shook their head at me as I walked in, or grunted, “No room!” At about the sixth guesthouse I arrived at, there was a Sikh receptionist who was much more kind. He explained that he was full, like many guesthouses, because many people were in town for weddings as well as some sort of street festival. Everything about the city felt chaotic and over-flowing with people, so that made sense. He also said that even places that did have space would tell us they didn’t since they don’t allow foreigners. In Bihar there is a regulation for hotels that says they must have a permit to allow foreigners stay there. Most hotels never bother with this red tape since they probably wouldn’t get any foreign customers anyway.

We kept looking, confident we would find something eventually. There were so many hotels around that one was bound to have something. The first one that claimed to have a room was charging something ridiculous. When I balked at the price, the receptionist held firm, unwilling to budge on his inflated price. Our moods grew terrible. We were tired and hungry. Everyone in this town was trying to rip us off, and our unwillingness to get ripped off was leaving us at a standstill. During our search, the only bed we found was in this dormitory for what seemed to be Indian men in transit, whether they were truckers or train travelers. Everything about the place was filthy, even by my low standards. The beds were packed in tight, and it was dark and sweaty. The man in charge was hesitant at first to show us, but then seemed a bit too eager to check us in. We turned it down.

With all of our options exhausted, we decided we really needed to sit down and have a plate of food. We got some chow mein noodles from a cart. When it came time to pay, he charged us double what the sign said, saying that he had given us double plates. While the plates were big, we had not asked for this. I was past the point of getting angry, but Joe lost it. I thought he was going to punch the guy. This was the tipping point and we decided that we needed to get out of town. Patna did not want us and we did not want Patna.

We walked to the train station, and asked about the next train to Gaya, Bihar’s second largest city. Luckily for us it was leaving within the hour. We bought our tickets and at 9 PM, we kissed Patna goodbye.