The district of Nalanda may contain one of Buddha’s Holy sites, but it’s also where you’ll find Rajgir, an Indian town that’s a bit of a hell hole. You know, the kind that’s a nuclear bomb short of perfect. In fact, it’s as if an atomic explosion has gone off and the town is the apocalyptic aftermath. Everything in Rajgir seems to suffer from the nuclear fall-out of its past glories. For once it was the capital of the first Indian Empire, had a mention in the Buddhist and Jain scriptures, as well as the epic Mahabarata (the Indian version of the Illiad), yet now it’s just a diversion on the Barauni and Patna highway.
The hotel we were staying in hadn’t escaped the nuclear fall-out either. When the taxi pulled up outside it, we nearly locked the doors and refused to get out. Yet curiosity, or whatever it is in horror films that makes the victims wander off on their own down dark alleys in the direction of a funereal wailing sound, got the better of us, and zombie-like, we dragged ourselves towards the empty shell of what might have once been a luxury hotel, well, by Indian standards at least.
It was clean, but very, very basic. There was 1 bed, 1 sofa and 1 hole in the ground, or ‘squat and drop’ as we fondly nicknamed the Indian toilet. And 1 old television set, although as soon as our backs were turned, this was almost nicked by the guy who’d shown us to our room. Although we took comfort from the fact that he was stealing the hotel’s belongings, and not ours. Fortunate, because there weren’t many comforts to find here.
When we took part in the Indian hotel ritual of signing the visitor's book for their record of who’s stayed, which is usually full of names, we saw that the last people to stay in this hotel had stayed there over a month before. We wondered if Steve McKenzie and his fellow travellers’ jaws had dropped too when they’d entered their hotel room. Not because of the Eastern European prison-style hard bed, floor and naked light bulb, but the yellowing Winnie The Pooh and his Friends curtains. Pooh, Tigger, Piglet and Eeyore were all there, with fixed, stunned smiles on their faces, as if aware of their fate of being left hanging there until the building falls down.
So we were in a bit of a lime pickle. We had a whole afternoon, night and day here. But the hotel room hadn’t been the nuclear bunker that we’d hoped for. Now we knew that a little adventure outside might cost us our lives, but staying in, staring at the lizards dart between the cracks in the ceiling and watching countless programmes in Hindi became so tedious that we all decided to venture forth into the abyss.
And what did we see? Well, let’s just say that terrorists probably wouldn’t bother to attack Rajgir. There aren’t any 5 star hotels, and any plans to cause damage to buildings with grenades and bombs would be scuppered, because no-one would notice the difference.
So what do you do when you’re stuck in an Indian town that Shiva destroyed, but which creation itself couldn’t be bothered with? Well, drink. And conveniently, Rajgir is in Bihar, the poorest state in India, yet also the one with the strongest beer. For reasons that become apparent the more time you spend there, Kingfisher brew a special beer that’s only available in Bihar, with an alcohol content of between 5% and 8%, as it says on the label. It’s a lottery, as you may get the one with only 5%.
We found this nectar of the gods in the first bar we could see, past all the empty bicycle rickshaws, disturbing lack of beggars and tumbleweed. The barman hastily ushered us away from the 3 local men sat inside by the bar with their vacant zombie-like eyes glued to an Indian soap opera and their mouths stuck on their beers, and into our own private booth complete with shabby curtain. In most places in India you don’t really see people boozing, and in some cities you can’t even buy alcohol, such as Pushkar and Varanasi. There are no such problems in Rajgir. And our fear for our lives was justified, as after just two of those large beers with an alcohol content of 8% (or maybe even 11 or 14, I mean who’s counting?), we were annihilated. And what didn’t help our survival was our beer-soaked desire to befriend the local policeman who’d popped his head in to check on the bar. Yet after a few mug shots and countless questioning along the lines of ‘where are you from?’ and ‘what is that you’re drinking?’ he finally let us go, but not before he’d dutifully escorted us safely back to our ravaged hotel.
So after our first 12 hours in Rajgir, we’d just managed to cheat death by intoxication and policeman’s lathi. Yet who knew what was going to happen in the next 7 hours? If you’re a Buddhist, Jain or Hindu, Rajgir is jam-packed full of fascinating sites and must-see attractions. If you’re not, then you’re left with just the Vishwa Shanti Stupa, a beautiful peace pagoda made of white marble that was built by the Japanese. It sits on top of the Gridhakuta Hill, where Buddha spent months meditating and preaching. And the only way to get to this top attraction is by, well how else in Rajgir, a life-threatening chairlift. Or chair drop, as I liked to call it, seeing as it consisted of a thin piece of rope from which fragile metal chairs were hung, with only a feeble, barely attached bar to hold the passenger in place.
To add to this living on the edge experience, we thought we’d fill our empty bowels first, and handily, right there at the base of the chair drop was a café in the style of those dirty stalls you get by the side of the Indian road. It sold pakoras and vegetable curry made by a cook with an interesting technique, which may be particular to the cuisine of Rajgir. Always follow every other stir with the pick of the nose, and finish off the dish with a sprinkle of coriander then a scratch of dandruff. Well if we were going to die anyway, what were a few contaminated pakoras to us? And in any case, they tasted great.
Unfortunately we had a long queue of almost an hour to regret this decision ten-fold, as we waited for our turn in the chairlift. The gaps between each bowel movement became shorter and shorter while we got closer and closer to the front of the queue. Overhead, legs dangled and we heard the sound of metal screaming as the chairs bumped over the pulleys. And then the screaming stopped, and it all went deadly silent. An electricity failure. The chairlift was left stationary for a few minutes. A different sort of screaming started, a child’s. Fortunately the chairlift started up again, and the metal screams drowned out the child’s. And our own.
Then before we had time to reconsider for the fiftieth time, it was our turn. The secret is to never, ever look down. Just keep your head up and admire the beautiful scenery. You see, one of the best reasons for visiting the Stupa is that it gets you out of the town and into Rajgir’s verdant green hills. Yes you really feel close to nature on the chairlift, perhaps because you’re so near to death and of becoming one with the trees and flowers. It’s a different way of understanding Aum. It’s a lot quicker than years of meditation. The fear makes you believe in the oneness instantly, and clears your mind of everything, except that one thing.
What really gives you confidence though, are the infinite smiles of the constant stream of people coming back the other way. Their friendly faces and greetings of ‘Namaste!’ take your mind off your impending doom, and compel you to smile back, muttering a feeble, ‘Hi’. Children, Mums, Dads, Grans, Grandads and teenage boys’ faces all break out into huge grins as they pass you, giving you the assurance that people do actually make it to the top and back again in one piece. And when you reach the summit, one of the first things you hear is a deep, mellow reassuring drum coming from the temple – the sound of Aum. It’s the sound that signals the end of your journey from the hell of the modern town into the heaven of Rajgir’s serene countryside. And on top of the Stupa you feel so peaceful and calm, that you could just stay there forever.
You see, in the end, everyone comes up smiling in Rajgir. Even us. Because not only had we cheated death, but we’d also successfully killed time.
