Pilgrimage Special: Loony tales

From Agra, we took a bus to New Delhi. It was a long journey and as usual, we made several stop for the loo. The cold weather in India and the constant consumption of water for fear of dehydration rendered most of us vulnerable to this constant urge of wanting to ease ourselves. The journey from Agra to New Delhi was not so bad since we could easily stop at petrol stations and other suitable places to find a toilet but throughout most of our trip when we were traveling from one Buddhist site to another, the roads we passed through were long lonely stretches of agriculture land, forest or little hamlets and almost always, there would be someone calling out to the driver to pull over so that he or she could ease himself or herself by the roadside. Of course, only one of us would ask the driver to stop but many others, in fact all of us, would take the opportunity to go down too to ease ourselves since we would not know when the next stop would be. For the men, we would just look for some bushes or a tree to do our business which was quite convenient but the ladies were very particular. They would make their own instant loo. They brought along their sarongs and held four of them up like walls so that one of them could answer to nature calls far from any watching eyes! Traveling by train is therefore the prefer mode of transport in India since one could find a clean toilet there and then you could walk here and there to stretch your legs...

A petrol kiosk in India...


Streets of India...




Goods on sale...