India

Let me start by saying India was FANTASTIC and I'd go back again tomorrow. I'm posting a few pictures here, but there are lots more pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/HeidiH8000.

We got into New Delhi a little after midnight after an 18-hour flight from New York (with a brief stop in Brussels). That's a LONG flight. But it's amazing that we can be on the other side of the globe in just 18 hours! My friend Liz and I were traveling with a tour group that provided the accommodations and transportation, so we were staying at hotels that normally would be way out of my price range. But we arrived at our fancy-schmancy hotel in Delhi around 2:30 a.m. and had to check out six hours later, so we didn't even get a chance to enjoy it very much. The coolest thing about this hotel was that the bathroom walls were made of glass. We couldn't figure out a scenario in which it would be desirable to have a see-through bathroom, but maybe that's just what they're doing in fancy-schmancy hotels these days. Or maybe it's just an India thing. Regardless, we were relieved to find that there were blinds for the bathroom walls.

The next morning, after a sumptuous breakfast, we got on the bus to have our first real look at Delhi. It was total chaos, but in a good way. Our tour guide, Vikas, explained to us that while Americans drive on the right and the British drive on the left, Indians pretty much drive wherever there's a free spot. There were traffic lanes painted on the roads with signs saying, "Lane driving is SAFE driving," but nobody seemed to care. There were people everywhere: schoolchildren with backpacks and uniforms, shopkeepers, shepherds with water buffalo and goats, people bathing on the side of the street, Gypsy children dancing in the middle of the street while cars swerved around them, people carrying flowers to visit the temples, bicyclists, camel caravans, entire families on scooters, and it all seemed so energetic and exciting! It was like the city was pulsing with energy around us. People kept waving at us, especially kids on the school buses--they would all crowd the windows to wave at the crazy people on the tour bus. Everyone seemed so happy. My first impressions of India was that it was a land of joyful, welcoming people, and that impression stayed with me the whole time.


We finally settled in for the long bus ride to Agra. It's only about 150 miles from Delhi to Agra, but it took about 6 hours to get there. It was an exciting bus ride, though. We were on a divided highway that was kind of like a freeway, but instead of exits, there was just a break in the divider about every five or ten miles. So vehicles would "exit" by turning at the divider and then driving on the wrong side of the road to wherever they were going. The horns (ours and everyone else's) were blasting constantly. We shared the road with large trucks ("lorries") that had signs painted on the back saying "Horn Please" or "Use Horn OK", and it seems like the procedure is to honk as you approach a lorry (or another vehicle) and honk the whole time you're passing. Then as you're passing, a couple dozen motorscooters will scoot between and around your vehicle and the lorry, honking their horns the whole time. And there will be another lorry or bus or car behind you wanting to pass, so they're honking their horn. I didn't see any rear-view mirrors, but most of the larger vehicles had a driver and an assistant driver, one on the left and one on the right, so they could make hand gestures (polite ones!) out of both sides of the vehicles. The traffic situation was constantly amazing to me, mostly because I didn't see any traffic accidents or even any dented cars! I saw one dead dog on the road the whole time I was there, and there was a crowd of people around it (in the middle of the highway!) scooping it up off the road. I didn't see any road rage, and while the drivers definitely had a "me first" attitude, they also had a great spirit of cooperation.

We stopped about halfway through the trip at a rest stop, which is where I got to experience (a) my first squatting toilet, (b) my first snake charmer, and (c) my first aggressive touts. These touts were all over India, young men selling junk for cheap: post cards, magnets, pens, turbans, peacock-feather fans, potato chips, batteries, and about a hundred other things. Being a tour group, we usually attracted a huge crowd of touts wherever we went, and they would swarm around us and push their wares in our faces. They really weren't as pushy with me as they were with some of the other people on the tour. It was either because I was wearing dark sunglasses so they couldn't catch my eye (a tip I picked up in a guide book) or because I was at least a foot taller than any of them.


We finally made it to Agra, checked in at the hotel, and then got on horse-drawn carts ("tongas") bound for the Taj Mahal. I took lots of pictures from the tonga! The streets were just SO crazy! I was prepared to be disappointed by the Taj Mahal, after seeing so many pictures of it. The first time I remember seeing a picture of it was in Mr. Anderson's geography class in 7th grade (some of you would remember!), and I knew I had to go to India to see that building! I was expecting it to be a let-down to finally be there and see the Taj Mahal in person. But I'm happy to say that it was not a disappointment at all. I've never seen a more beautiful building, and I even got a little choked up. We got there about a half hour before sunset, so we got to see the colors on the marble change with the setting sun. I don't have words to describe it; it was almost a transcendental experience. I understand why it's #1 on the new list of 7 wonders.


We got a little more sleep that night and set out the next morning to explore the rest of Agra with our tour group. We saw the Agra Fort, the "baby Taj" (Itmad-ud-daulah), and the tomb of Akbar. To be honest, the sites and tours run together in my head. India, for me, was more about impressions and less about specific history of each site. Our tour guide was wonderful, but we had to be close to him in order to hear him (India is noisy) and usually I was off looking at something else while he was talking. The sites were still really cool, though, and I got lots of pictures! We had gone down by the flooded Yamuna River to take pictures of the Taj Mahal across the river, and a very polite boy came up to us with his camel. He wanted to know if any of us wanted to ride on his camel. Of COURSE I wanted to ride on his camel!!!


We went to the Mother Teresa Charity Home that evening. There are two parts to the charity home: a children's orphanage and a shelter for mentally disabled adults. One of the nuns showed us around. Just stepping inside the grounds of the charity home, there was a completely different spirit, and everyone in our group commented on it. While the rest of Agra was noisy and busy, this was a quiet, clean, garden-like place. The nuns and other workers just exuded peace. We went to the men's side first, and then men all smiled at us and gave us the traditional "Namaste" greeting as we walked by. Then we went to the women's side, where we were greeted again, but many of the women wanted to touch us gently, on our arms or our hair. One of the women took my hand and just smiled so brightly at me that I wanted to stay there forever. We finally moved on to the orphanage, where the children weren't shy at all. The older children were in school so we didn't really get to see them, but the younger children came right up to us, giggling and touching our hands. They loved to be picked up, played with, and tickled. There was a row of cribs for the babies, and they were some of the happiest, most responsive babies I've seen. I could have stayed there for hours playing with the kids or doing crafts with the adults. Unfortunately, I was with a bus tour and had to stick to the schedule.


That night the rest of the group went to dinner together, but a few of us decided we were getting tired of seeing India through a bus window and took off on our own. We got on some bicycle rickshaws, the ones where there's a guy riding a bicycle and towing people along behind him. There were six of us, so we had three rickshaws. One of the drivers was really old, so the other two drivers kept helping him, pushing his rickshaw ahead of them. Those guys are really in great shape! If the traffic had been crazy on the bus, it was REALLY crazy in a cycle rickshaw! It was dark and we didn't have any kind of lights, so I don't know how the cars and scooters saw us. The scooters--they didn't just carry one or two people, they carried entire families. Dad, mom, and three children, all balanced on this little motor scooter zipping in and out of traffic. And most of the time, nobody was even (visibly) hanging on! They were just sitting on the scooter like they would sit on a bench!


We ended up at a restaurant called Zorba the Buddha, which had great food for a lot less money than the touristy places our guide kept taking us to. Afterwards we stopped at a couple of shops, which made our rickshaw drivers very happy. (I think they were taking us to shops that belonged to their relatives.) I bought two skirts and a blouse at one of the clothing shops, and I NEVER buy anything! Seriously, all I ever buy are magnets. (I hate checking bags and I hate worrying about whether somebody's going to take up all the overhead space on the plane, so I only ever travel with a backpack that fits under the seat in front of me on the plane. Which means I can't be buying stuff--no place to put it!) I gave in to temptation this time. I also found out I'm a bad bargainer. Some of the other women got their skirts for WAY cheaper than I got mine, and they teased me about it all night.


The next day we headed out of Agra for Jaipur, another 6-hour bus ride. On the way there, we stopped at Fatehpur Sikri, which used to be the capital but was abandoned (nobody knows why) so it's like a ghost city. I was looking over the walls into a (greenish) pool about 20 feet below, and one of the Indian men standing below by the pool called to me, "Ma'am, you jump!" I laughed and said, "No, no", and he said, "Come, it's good jump!" Um, yeah, good jump.


On our way back to the bus, there were touts crowding around us as usual, but there was one near me who was really polite. He asked where I was from, and I said America. He said, "Florida. New York. Pennsylvania. Texas. Oregon. California. Michigan. Colorado. Washington D.C. is the capital. New York is a major city. Colorado is a mountainous state." (He repeated this about six times while I was with him. I told him Idaho was a mountainous state too, so he could add that to his litany.) He invited me to his store, which was near where our bus was parked. Since he was being nice enough to shoo the other touts away, I agreed to go to his store. On the way, he helped me find the uncrowded bathrooms (which was very helpful because the rest of the people on my bus were in a bathroom line for ten minutes!) and took me by a shop selling refreshment (soda, chips, and cookies). Luckily his shop sold magnets, so I could buy something without feeling like I had compromised my principles! I did a better job bargaining too, which was kind of an accident. He wanted 200 rupees for the magnet (about $4) but I took out my wallet and showed him that I only had 100 rupees with me. So he let me have it for 100 rupees. I felt so proud.

After we got to Jaipur and checked in to our newest fancy-schmancy hotel, Vikas told us that the bus would take us to the bazaar for an hour (it was about 7:00 p.m.). One of the ladies with the group, Margaret, wanted to go to the bazaar on her own because for some reason she felt like she would get a better price on merchandise if she didn't arrive in a tour bus. I tagged along with her. We negotiated a price with the driver of an auto-rickshaw (one of those yellow three-wheeled vehicles that buzz around the streets like mosquitos), and we thought he was just going to drop us off at the bazaar. Instead he stayed with us the whole time, which was wonderful! The bazaar was huge, probably about four square miles. He parked his rickshaw in the center of the bazaar and then motioned us to follow him across the street. (Crossing streets in India REALLY exciting. It's not like you can press a button and wait for a light to turn green, and then make your way across. I think people who are born there just have an inate sense of traffic rhythms, and they know when they can step out in front of a moving vehicle and not get hit. I finally just decided if I walked where the rickshaw driver walked, I would be okay! And I didn't die, so that plan worked.)


So we crossed the street, and he headed up a set of stairs at the corner of a building, behind some shops. He motioned us to follow him, so we went up one set of stairs and found a small B'Hai Temple with a celebration in progress. On the landing outside the temple there were men playing instruments and singing, inside the temple the women were singing, and around the corner there were children dancing around a pole. It was so neat! But our rickshaw driver didn't stop there. He said, "Come, come" and started up another flight of stairs, this time a dark, spooky flight of stairs where we couldn't see the top. (It was around 7:30 p.m. at this point, so it was pretty dark.) Margaret and I raised our eyebrows at each other but finally decided to follow him. We ended up on the roof of a building overlooking the whole bazaar. It was so pretty! He pointed out the flower bazaar and the spice bazaar, the clothing bazaar, the jewelry bazaar, and then way down on the other end, there was the tourist bazaar (with a bunch of tour buses). It would have been a great place for a picture, but I had left my camera back in the hotel. If Margaret posts pictures, I'll steal one of hers and post it here.


We went to a clothing shop where I got even MORE clothes, an outfit called a salwar kameez, which is like a dress with leggings. The leggings weren't long enough (which wasn't a real shocker, since I can't even find pants that fit here in my own country) but I wore the dress part the next day. (A shop owner in the hotel came up and told me that I look like a real Indian girl, and put he a bindi on my forehead.) We stopped at a place that sold dry food, like what we would call trail mix. They kept giving us samples of their wares, which was all really spicy. Finally I asked for something sweet, and after sampling a few sweet things I bought some stuff that was kind of like peanut brittle, and some other stuff that was like shredded wheat with honey. (Margaret gots lots of the spicy trail mix stuff.) Out on the street we tried crystalized pumpkin and crystalized pineapple, which were both WONDERFUL! The street merchants were really good about telling us what we Americans shouldn't be eating. We would ask if we could try something, and they would say, "No, no, not for you" and give a very descriptive hand gesture that implied intestinal complications. Nice of them.

Then we wanted to go to a restaurant, so the rickshaw driver took us to a seedy-looking joint on the bazaar that was probably owned by his brother or cousin. We decided to trust him and had dinner there. It cost us about $1 each and included drinks. I love cheap food. Then we asked to go back to the hotel, but instead the driver took us to an art shop that sold paintings. Margaret, the champion bargainer, finally bought some paintings but had the proprieter practically in tears with her bargaining skills. I gave up bargaining after seeing her in action.


The next day we got to ride elephants! They took us up to the Amber Fort near Jaipur, a huge fort. The elephant was more comfortable than the camel, and it smelled better, but both animals were pretty exciting. Vikas had warned us to be careful to not let our feet get crushed between the elephant and the wall. I guess it's pretty common! I also got to sit with a snake charmer, and I'm hoping someone in my tour group posts a picture of this soon so I can steal it. (My camera was sitting uselessly on the ground next to me.) What happened was, we came around a corner and the snake charmers were sitting there playing their bins (a flute-like instrument that the touts kept trying to sell us). I was wearing my brand new salwar kameez and had the bindi on my forehead from the hotel guy, and one of the snake charmers called out, "You look like an Indian! Come, come!" He gestured for me to sit by him on the ground, and then he put his turban on my head. Then he handed me a baby python! I said, "Not poisonous?" and the guy said, "No, no." I was petting the python, watching the cobras staring at me from their baskets, and I looked up to see my whole tour group gaping at me. Then they all took pictures. I should have tossed my camera to one of them.


Then we went to the City Palace which had a bunch of museums for clothing and weapons and art, but it was REALLY HOT and I'm not sure any of us got anything useful out of that. We just wanted to stand in front of the fans. Then Vikas said we were going to a planetarium to see sundials, which sounded strange to me. It was so cool! There were these huge sundials, one of which was accurate to within 2 seconds! There were also a bunch of astrology maps that used the sun. The machines (I don't know what else to call them) were enormous, and I couldn't figure out what most of them did. (I should have paid more attention to Vikas.)


That night, once it cooled down, I joined a small group of women who were going back to the bazaar. We had been told Jaipur was a small city, and one of the women asked our rickshaw driver how big it was. He said there were about 2 million people living in Jaipur! India's version of a "small city" is bigger than Los Angeles! But I guess with cities like Mumbai (13 million) and Delhi (12 million), Jaipur is small by Indian standards.


The bus kept leaving earlier and earlier every morning. The next morning it left at 6:30, to get to Delhi (5 hours) in time to do some sightseeing. After being in Agra and Jaipur, Delhi seemed very cosmopolitan and modern. Amazing how your perspective can change in just a few days. One of the highlights for me was seeing Mahatma Gandhi's memorial. It wasn't a grave, but it was the site of his cremation. It was in a very beautiful, clean, green park (and we didn't see many green or clean parks in India). We went to a few other sites: the India Gate, the mosque (Jama Masjid), lunch, but Vikas kept rushing us through everything. We couldn't figure out why we had to hurry until we got to our last site, Qutub Minar, which was a 12th century Hindu temple converted to a Muslim temple by invaders. It closed at sundown, and we got there about 30 seconds before the sun actually went down. They weren't going to let us in, so Vikas had to bribe some guards. I'm glad he did, because it was amazing!


We had a group dinner, went back to the hotel for about an hour, and then got on the bus to go to the airport. The plane left at 2:30 a.m.! That was a long day. But it was worth it, because otherwise we wouldn't have gotten to see Delhi.

Random observations...
The tour group--was great. Liz and I were concerned that the people in our tour group would be either (a) rich, entitled, and whiny; or (b) old, slow, and whiny. But it turned out to be a good group. There was one older, slower couple, but they didn't whine. Everyone was eager and happy to be in India.

Illnesses--I didn't get sick at all. Not even a little Delhi belly. Probably half of our tour group had some minor ailment, and two people got sick enough to have it affect their sightseeing. Vikas said normally with a tour group our size, six or seven people would be moderately afflicted, so I guess we did pretty well! I wasn't really even that careful; I ate street food, and I kept forgetting to use bottled water to brush my teeth. Just lucky, I guess. My malaria pills made my stomach hurt (which started before I got to India, so I knew it wasn't India's fault) but after I realized other people were being bitten by bugs and I wasn't, I quit taking them. Mosquitos just don't bite me. They used to, but I haven't been bitten in years.

Food--I tried, I really did, but it just wasn't my favorite thing. Indian food is much spicier than what I'm used to, and I'm a real wimp when it comes to spicy food. (Sometimes barbecue sauce is too spicy for me. That's how much of a wimp I am.) Besides, Indian food is very heavy and filling, and we weren't doing enough physical activity to work up an appetite. We would eat, then we would sit on a bus for six hours, then we would eat again. By the end of the trip, I just wasn't getting hungry at all. I'd have about two bites of bread (usually off someone else's plate) and some sweet lassi (I loved the sweet lassi--a yogurty kind of drink) and feel stuffed. I didn't eat for about two days after I got home. Then I was ravenous.

Poverty--Even with our tour group, there were different feelings about this. Some people were bothered by what they perceived to be a lack of...something...in the Indian lifestyle. I wasn't. Maybe I'm just hard-hearted. We saw people who were well-fed (India exports food, and none of the approximately 3 trillion people we saw were super-thin except the cycle rickshaw drivers), who didn't own cars, and who lived in huts that had roofs but were open on three sides (since it was the hot season--the walls are closed during the cold season). In the cities, people lived in or above their shops, in maybe one or two rooms. So the people we saw had their basic needs covered, they just owned far less STUFF than we do, so they didn't need to have a large place to store it all. I don't see that as a bad thing.


I'm not trying to criticize the American way of life at all. We have our culture, and the Indians have theirs. We spent some time in a tent town near Agra where the people do the laundry for the city. They live in permanent tents with their families, and if we took that tent town and moved it to America, we Americans would be appalled. In India, it works. The families have been living in the same place for dozens of generations, and they're very joyful people. I had the feeling that if we offered to set them up in McMansions in the suburbs, with all the headaches that go along with the lifestyle, they would laugh and tell us they were happy as they were.

My second thought on the subject (I had lots of time to think about it while we were driving) is that the British looted India for almost 350 years until they were finally kicked out in 1947. If we look back to colonial America, 60 years after our own independence, I think our living conditions were probably much worse than those in India today. How would it have changed our nation if in the early 1800s, rich Indians (since they were comparatively rich at the time) had come to our country and taken pictures of open sewers and starving children to use in infomercials, in order to run for-profit "charities"? How would it have changed our own perception of our country? Would we be struggling to be taken seriously in today's world economy? Would we be considered a nation of beggars? I'm sure (at least I hope) today's charities mean well, but I'm not sure they're doing India a favor by begging for aid for the poor, starving Indians. From what I saw, they're not starving, and they don't consider themselves to be poor.

People--I have never been around people who are more warm, loving, and welcoming. They were always curious about where we were from and how we liked India. Everywhere we went people would wave, especially the children. The people were delighted to share with us, take pictures, give us food, give us directions, and even drop what they were doing to walk us down the street to find some crystalized pineapple. And they were endlessly curious, asking questions that Americans usually don't ask. "Are you married? Do you have a boyfriend? How old are you? When will you be getting married? When will you have children? You need to start having children because you're getting too old." (Actually it's kind of like being at church.)


Cultural Blend--India was a surreal mix of ancient and modern. Like when our cycle rickshaw driver/rider would pull out his cell phone and start chatting as he was propelling us down the street. Or when we would be watching a camel caravan meandering down the highway, with a shepherd and a goat herd crossing in front of them, and we would look above them to see a billboard advertising an investment group. Or when we would be walking through a huge open-air bazaar and come upon a Sprint store enclosed in glass that looked like it belonged in a mall. Or when we would be passing a large modern hotel with a man bathing in the sprinklers out front. Or when we found out that the McDonalds was vegetarian.

It was a wonderful trip! I love India and I'd gladly go back. I'd probably go without the tour group next time and just do my own thing.