Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (Toy Train)

I was a bit surprised to see the Toy Train in the itinerary of the trip, because I only had very vague memories of it or the regular train between Siliguri and Darjeeling that we saw along the road to  Darjeeling in 2000 in very bad light. I wasn't expecting much, but I got a lot in terms of views and driving pleasure.

The Darjeeling - Siliguri route has been extended to New Jalpaiguri and the route is a little under 90km but it overcomes more than 2000m of elevation gain (Ghoom on the route is some 200m higher than Darjeeling). The train takes 6.5-10 hours on this route. It is a narrow-gauge railway with a track width of 610 mm and this is called toy train in English, whereas the German word  Spielzeugeisenbahn would only be used for toys, but a toy that is no longer in demand.

Planning for the railway dates back to 1878. The plan was approved in 1879 and by 1881 the railway line was complete. The route runs mostly along the roadside of the Hill Cart Road, leads over 554 bridges, and has twelve stations - more information at [1].

"The railway has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999." "When the Darjeeling Railway was not continuously navigable for a long time, UNESCO threatened to withdraw the World Heritage Site if it was not repaired immediately."

The passenger trains between Darjeeling and Ghoom are pulled by steam locomotives, or the steam locomotive drives ahead and a diesel locomotive pushes the train from behind. Of the 34 locomotives originally built up to 1927, 12 were still available in 2005, but only a few of these are operational, the others are used as a spare parts store. But I could also see that spare parts are manufactured or repaired in their own workshop.

The inner-city route sometimes leads only a few centimeters past houses and market stalls. People constantly walk across the track and at times the rails cross the road, but the train runs slowly and the very loud horn is used extensively. The steam locomotive also spreads quite a lot of soot.

We arrived at the train station in Darjeeling much earlier than necessary for the start of the journey. And so we were able to see the hustle and bustle at the station, the shunting, the people and also the museum train. The steam locomotives are located across the street from the station and you can sometimes see how parts are repaired there or what material is available for repairs. Early on, one of the locomotives was put under steam. Every locomotive, including the diesel locomotives, blew their horns (felt as) all the time. The steam locomotives produce a lot of smoke and therefore a lot of soot. You couldn't do that at all in Germany, for example. With so much noise and dirt, there would already be a class action lawsuit by the population against the railway company. But it might be possible there because otherwise the world cultural heritage would be lost.

You drive very slowly on the route, which is also necessary because a lot of people cross the street and the train sometimes changes from the route on the left to the right side. The cars then have to stop, as does the bus service. In Ghoom there is also a museum dedicated to the railway. When you come back after the ride, there are very nice spots that are open where you can see the next train for yourself. It was very interesting how someone sat on the coal tender and handed down the coal to fire the engine.

Overall it was a worthwhile ride. It was a lot of fun. And you learned something about the past. About things that have become completely foreign to us today in trains that travel at a speed of 300 kilometers per hour.

Links and Annotations:
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darjeeling_Himalayan_Railway  

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Funeral Rites at the Ghats at Pashupatinath in Nepal

 

A note of warning and advice:
If you feel agitated by reading about funeral rites, please do not read further. Pictures of the rites will not show naked parts of corpses, which I have blurred, not only for your protection, but also not to display the diseased person.

I have thought for a long time whether I should write about the funeral rites in Pashupatinath, in particular whether I can show photos of them, because there are corpses to be seen. But I think I've found a compromise that allows me to report on this important issue that has been on my mind for over 25 years. I had made a trip to Tibet 25 years ago that started in Nepal and also ended in Nepal and we visited Pashupatinath. There we saw funeral pyres that had fascinated me since then. But there were also disconcerting aspects, such as little boys scampering through the mourners to jump  into the river further up, letting the current carry them downstreams, then coming out of the water below the mourners and then back running through the group of mourners. This did not bother the mourners, because they continued to perform their rites to honor the dead. After that, the burning of the pyre was carried out. We didn't go to opposite of the Pashupatinath Temple at the time, because my friends were too agitated to see the cremation. However, one of the friends later wrote a book titled: Why I am immortal (translation). This time I've been able to see more and do more research and so I want to share this experience, because I think it's very important. I've been interested in burial rites for a long time, not just the funeral customs of peoples outside Europe but also those in Europe and especially in Germany.

Entrance at the other side

I would like to start talking about the Pashupatinath Temple and interestingly the German Wikipedia article is a much better source than the English article for this purpose [1]. Pashupatinath means „Lord of Life“ or „Lord of the Living“ and is located about 5 kilometers east of Kathmandu's  center. The Hindu temple is one of the most important places of worship for Shiva and thousands of Hindus travel there every year. But it is also the place where the cremations take place, below at the ghats. The sanctuary itself was classified  as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.

The emergence of Hinduism is dated to 1,200 BC; that means ample time to the development of many traditional rites, especially for honoring or burying the dead [2]. According to Hindu belief, man, like all matter, consists of five basic elements (the Panchamahabhutas - pancha means five, which is why we also know the punch, which originally consisted of five ingredients), which have the properties of earth (pritvi), water (jala), fire (tejas), wind (vayu) and space (akasha). For the Hindu, death means liberation and passage into a new existence – reincarnation – for which personal karma, made up of positive and negative actions, is decisive. The funeral rituals support this. However, attaining a better reincarnation is only an interim goal; the real goal is moksha, liberation from the long chain of incarnations.
In Hinduism, every living being has an immortal self (atman), often translated, not entirely incorrectly, as soul. The atman refers to pure consciousness or witness consciousness, beyond identification with phenomena [3]. With the cleansing of the body comes the cleansing of the soul. Water, milk, and ghee (clarified butter) are used. A five-time circumambulation of the corpse is also performed. According to tradition, the fire is lit by the firstborn son.
When the corpse is half or completely burned. st, one should split the skull; among the Grihashtas (housekeepers) with a log and the ascetics with a coconut. After opening the Brahmarhandhra orifice in this way,  sacrificesare made with e.g. ghee. I haven't seen it myself, maybe just not being there at the right time or the practice has been abandoned. However, Sannyassins may be handed over to the floods unburned (this is meant to be done at the Ganges) or buried. Srila Prabhupada, the Founder Acharya of the Hare Krsna movement, was buried seated in the earth, first covered in sugar [4]. But this is just meant as a small digression.
After the fire has burned out, often after three days, the ashes are then strewn into the river – in this case the Bagmati River, though a wonder whether the three day interval still is feasable with so many people being cremated there. A burial in the ground is possible in principle, but unusual at Pashupatinath. Until 1829, women were immolating themselves with their deceased husbands; however, this ritual has been forbidden [5].

The cremation sites, the Arya Ghats (higher caste cremation sites) and the Surya Ghats (lower caste cremation sites) are on the right bank of the Bagmati River together with the Pashupatinath Temple.
The corpse is usually wrapped in yellow cloth, carried to the ghat and cleansed (feet and face), then offerings are made and afterwards carried to the cremation site, where a pyre has been built, on which the corpse is laid. The firstborn son lits the pyre as already mentioned. Family and friends watch, sometimes from a distance. After about four hours, the body is burned to ashes. The ash and incompletely burned logs are thrown into the river, with unburned jewelry etc. being removed from the ashes beforehand. The river seemed very muddy to me – just weeks before the rainy season.

Shortly after igniting the pyre - 25 years ago

Pyre burning down - 25 years ago

Pyre burning - April 2023

Mourners and purification rites

Bamboo stretchers are prepared to be burned

A closer look at purification rites - the white fluid is milk

On the bamboo stretcher to the funeral pyre

Another group of mourner - this time the diseased person had been in the
security business and the colleagues give the last goodbye

Links and Annotations:
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashupatinath  
[2] https://www.tod-und-glaube.de/die-bestattungskultur-des-hinduismus/ and https://www.pietaet-am-dornbusch.de/  
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80tman_(Hinduism)
[4] Be advised that this video goes far beyond the pictures I show here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXmRMqDbSvo
[5] But such a ritual would prevent young, pretty women from marrying old geezers – not seriously. The ritual has been rightfully abolished. And I guess that more women were immolated instead of having immolated themselves.
 
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Yung Drung Kundrak Lingbon – a Bon Monastery in Sikkim

On the way from the big Buddha statue we passed a Bon Monastery. Its full name is Yung Drung Kundrak Lingbon and it is located in the village of Bakhim near Ravangla [1]. There has not been  enough time for a visit. But I could take some photographs from the outside and I take this as an opportunity to tell you something about the Bon Religion.

Externally, the Bon Monastery hardly differs from a Buddhist monastery. But that's probably because Bon and Buddhism have become closely linked and fertilized mutually in Tibet. It is assumed that many of the spirits, demons and similar figures from the Bon pantheon, as well as rituals and dances, have been adopted. One can assume that the Bon religion adopted the monastic structure of Buddhism.

When I visited the royal tombs of the Yarlung rulers in Tibet, more precisely in the Chongye Valley, about 25 years ago, and there I also went to a monastery. An old lama played a drum and recited sutras to the hollow rhythmic beat. The way he looked and the way he was beating the drum with a curved mallet, I figured it must be Bon. I found out later, of course, that it is common practice in all Tibetan monasteries. But this impression of Bon stuck with me. That's why I kept being interested in the Bon religion later on.

Bon developed in Tibet from a Siberian animistic-shamanistic religion, whereby ecstasy techniques, sacrifice and death cult play an important role. Bon dances are also performed – this has certainly left traces in tantric or Vajrayana Buddhism in Tibet. Mircea Eliade in particular did research on shamanism and ecstasy techniques [3].

The Bon religion, like Buddhism, suffered during the Cultural Revolution. It is believed that nowadays there are 264 active Bon temples and monasteries in Tibet and China. The Dalai Lama recognized Bon as the fifth spiritual school in Tibet in 1977 [4]. As there are only a few Bon [5] monasteries in India, I felt lucky to see this monastery.

 

Links and Annotations:
[1] https://www.indien-reise.com/german/Bon-Kloster.htm  Doutbtful source, as the age of Bon is given as 18,000! You can see the monastery on Google Maps:
https://www.google.de/maps/place/Bon+monastery.+Sog+yungdrung+ling./@27.279591,88.3344422,662m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m7!3m6!1s0x39e699fa66410817:0x2a4b462755f55e69!4b1!8m2!3d27.2923261!4d88.4113135!16s%2Fg%2F11kb1k_scw  [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6n  
[3]Mircea Eliade: Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton University Press, Princeton 2004.
[4] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6n The english article is even more elaborated:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon  
[5] John Bon Jovi has nothing to do with Bon, but if you look into an old travel diary of a trip to Bhutan, you'll see, that he is known in the region: https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2020/09/glimpses-into-bhutan-in-year-2000_8.html
 

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Sankar Gompa (Monastery) in Leh (Ladakh)

There might be more impressive, bigger, more ancient, more venerable monasteries in Ladakh than Sankar Gompa [1], but it has been the first one that I've visited in Ladakh. 

Hermann Hesse says in his poem “Stufen”: “And there is a magic in every beginning, / Which protects us and which helps us to live.” [“Und jedem Anfang wohnt ein Zauber inne, / Der uns beschützt und der uns hilft, zu leben.] Let's have a look at the magic of Sankar Gompa. 

 

Visiting monasteries in Ladakh, 

make sure know 

where to find the monk with the key

Though the monastery is located above Leh, it is an easy walk up there as it is well below Khardong-la, of which I have already written [2]. Sankar Monastery is the residence Kushok Bakula Rinpoche, the senior incarnate lama of Ladakh, but who died in the year 2004. He is head of the Gelukpa sect of Buddhism, which you might easily recognize because of the yellow hats. Sometimes the Gelukpa sect is called yellow hat sect, but I think Gelukpa is more appropriate. The monstery itself is 90 years old, but a 500 years old temple also belongs to the complex [3]. Inside you will find wall paintings (new and old), figures, statues (Buddha, Tara, Avalokiteshvara), mandalas, calendars, and so on. 

 

Interior, where the monks sit 

to recite sutra and attend ceremonies

 

A manjusri yab-yum painting depicting 

Yamantaka (or Vajrabhairava) with consort 

 

Gautama Buddha with two disciples

note the offerings including water

 

Avalokiteshvara (Tibetan Chenrezig)

the boddhisattva of Compassion

 

Monk chanting and playing several instruments

 

Drum - details

 

Avalokiteshvara 

1000-armed and 1000-headed

Head (detail)

 

The monks' quarters - peaceful

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Links and References:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sankar_Monastery

[2] https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2020/07/a-retreat-on-khardong-pass.html

[3] https://www.travelogyindia.com/leh-ladakh/sankar-gompa.html

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A Retreat on Khardong-Pass

Khardong-Pass or in Tibetan Khardong-la is the second highest pass road in the world with about 5340 m altitude. The pass is overlooking Leh, the principal town of Ladakh. The pass is of strategic importance and so usually the pass road is open.

The pass joins the Nubra valley with Leh and especially Hundar sees a lot of tourists, mostly Indian tourists.

If you climb at the pass a little you will reach a retreat of a monk. Passes in the Buddhist region always are decorated with prayer flags. On this pass the retreat is nearly invisible because of the flags. Inside there are the drum for ceremonies, deity and patriarch statues, ceremonial shawls, butter lamps (actually in Ladakh the people use oil), offerings, and pictures of the Dalai Lama. The monk however hasn't been there.

 

Two days later on the way back to Leh

weather conditions had changed

 

Cars were blocking the road 

 

The military post at South Pullu stopped traffic to the pass 

and lots of bikers had to wait

The Moravian Church in Leh

 

The old church of the Moravian Church in Leh

Lately I have been travelling through Ladakh. Before leaving Germany for India, I had been busy with building a homepage for our parish. We also use the Losungen (Moravian Daily Texts), which are issued each year by the Moravian Church, which is better known as Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine in Germany (OT: most Germans would misspell Brüdergemeine as they would expect Brüdergemeinde).

So, when we had some time in Leh, I have been stumbling into the Moravian Church. 

The Moravian Church had been established in Bohemia as part of the Bohemian Reformation in the 15th century. The Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine took its name from the place of the Church's renewal in the 18th century, Herrnhut, and Brüdergemeine means Brethren's Congregation. The church is classified as protestant and has a Hussite orientation with Lutheran Pietist influences. The Hussites are named after Jan Hus, who had been burned at a stake in 1415. My grandfather (from Silesia) told me that the Johannisfeuer (fire at Saint John’s eve) was to commemorate Jan Hus, which it actually never was, but in this way I was introduced to the Hussites during my childhood.

It’s quite strange that the Moravian church is active in Ladakh, one would have speculated that the Southern tip of India would have been more likely.

 

The new church building

Links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravian_Church#Publications

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