Incredible !ndia

(Update from Sept 28-Oct 7; unable to post earlier due to a lack of access to my blog – thanks to the Chinese government.)

I wasn’t sure what to expect from India and didn’t think I could really prepare for it. Well, I was right – there’s not much you can do except keep an open mind and get ready for chaos! I apologize for the length of this entry but there’s a lot of chaos to talk about… I met up with Nick & Kristi, two friends from Kellogg, at the airport – it was great to see them again! They had started their Indian travels a week earlier and had already had some fun experiences; Kristi said she was looking forward to observing my initial reactions as they had already adjusted a bit…I wonder what I’m getting myself into.

We flew to Varanasi on our first day, the world’s oldest continuous city at over 2,400 years old. It is a holy city and a great immersion into Indian culture. After settling in at our guesthouse and enjoying some snacks on the rooftop overlooking the Ganges river, we took an evening boat ride to the main ghats. There are ritual ceremonies that take place each evening which include signing, candles, chanting and dancing. It felt like the whole town came out to watch on the steps and all the tourists were watching from the water. Halfway through the ceremony I noticed an Indian woman in the boat next to ours wave at us. We waved back and the next thing I knew she was on our boat talking to us like we were long lost friends! This was my first, and definitely not my last, encounter of an Indian wanting a picture with us!

After parking the boat our tour guide, Raj, walked us back to the guesthouse. I was shocked during the short walk – not by the cows, crazy driving and loads of people everywhere – but by the poverty. Many people lived in shacks on the side of the road, often a whole family in a room smaller than my bedroom back home. Or they slept outside on wooden carts that they used during the day to sell fruit, live chickens and trinkets. Kids that should have been asleep hours ago were out roaming the streets, playing with friends and saying, “ha-low, what is your name?” After telling them and asking what there name was, you usually got a giggle and their name, or just a repeat of “what is your name?” as a lot of them didn't actually understand English yet.

My first Indian meal that evening was my favorite of our whole time in the country. The waiter at our little rooftop restaurant suggested malai kofta and chili paneer – amazing! The food is nothing like Indian food in the US – even the curry doesn’t taste (or smell) like the “curry” we associate with Indian food. 

The next morning we got up at 5am for a second boat trip on the Ganges. As we took Raj’s tuk tuk (basically a covered three-wheeler) to the row boat, you could hear morning music and prayers on the loud speakers across town and tons of old men were walking to the river (most of them just in towels). Once they got to the river, which, despite it’s “holiness” is the dirtiest water I’ve ever seen, they proceeded to give offerings, perform their ritual morning prayers and bathe themselves. After this was finished the women would go into the water, do laundry and then it was time for everyone to brush their teeth with the river water! I think the guys rowing the boat were getting tired after awhile as they first asked Nick to help out as one of them took a break; and then they let Kristi & I row for awhile!



Street by lassi stand

Raj took us on a tour of the city afterwards to a number of temples, including the monkey temple where monkeys roamed all over the place and even grabbed food out of people’s hands! It was quite an adventure getting around in the tuk tuk – the three of us crowded in the back seat trying to keep every finger and elbow inside, fearful of what would happen as we constantly passed bicycles, trucks, cows, taxis, motorcycles and pedestrians with no more than 2 inches between us and them! It is an understatement to say the city was complete chaos, but that’s the only way to describe it. We stopped for a lassi (a delicious yogurt drink) and were greeted by horns honking, street vendors everywhere, cows stopping traffic to cross the street, children begging for food money and pigs going through the garbage on the side of the road…this is India!

 

Later that night we boarded an overnight train to Agra. Despite military personnel continually coming into our cabin to check on everyone (security is extremely high due to the Commonwealth Games), I slept quite a bit and avoided the bathroom as much as possible! We met Omar, an Israeli law student, at the Varanasi train station yesterday (where we were mesmerized by the cow on the train tracks) so he joined for the day. We headed to the Taj Mahal to buy tourist tickets for 750 rupees; the local ticket is only 20 rupees! The developing world has definitely mastered price discrimination….any English menu has prices 3 – 4 times that of the Indian prices; most stores don’t have prices so they can immediately increase the price of goods once they see a Westerner wants to buy something! But we’re in India – and 750 rupees is still less than $20 – so we made our way past the people trying to sell Taj Mahal snow globes and their tour guide services and saw one of the New 7 Wonders of the World.

The Taj Mahal has always been a little bit of a mystery to me. I think of it in a similar fashion as the U.S. landing on the moon. We’ve all seen pictures, studied it in school, but did it actually happen? Is it real? The Taj always looks so surreal in pictures but I’m here to tell you it does exist, and it’s gorgeous! After walking around the grounds and inside (it looks much better from the outside), we sat down on the backside of the building in the shade to read about the history of the Taj. Many others had the same idea on this hot day and soon we found a group of Indians not so secretly taking pictures of us. So we asked them to be in the picture for our camera, too! This started a long process of people asking for pictures with us and after about 20 minutes I started saying, “10 rupees, 10 rupees for a picture. 20 for small children!” As one guy brought his little girl over with money we all started saying, “No! We’re just kidding!” and that was our queue to head over to the Agra Fort. Shortly after emperor Jahan finished building the Taj, his son moved him to the Agra Fort and put him on house arrest for the rest of his life. He could look at his masterpiece as the Fort is just across the river, but he never went back until he was buried there.

Our guide in Jaipur

That afternoon we caught another sleeper train to Jaipur. Luckily Kristi woke up a few minutes before our stop and woke Nick and me up with just enough time to pack up and hop off the train. There are no announcements about upcoming stops and often there aren’t any signs so when you are stopped, so you don’t know which city you’re in! I had a bad cold so I opted to rest up a little while Nick and Kristi started a tour of the “Pink City”. They found a very energetic tour guide and tuk tuk driver for the day and I met them for lunch on the old city wall.

We all headed out to a fort in the mountains that afternoon, which was surrounded by a big wall that looked like the Great Wall of China. I thought we had seen just about every animal in India but then we saw elephants at the fort! Later we stopped at a water fort  and then the tour guide tried to take us to “friend’s jewelry store.” We already encountered this scheme in Varanasi when we were taken to an overpriced fabric store so we quickly said we didn’t want any jewelry. After insisting that we weren’t going to buy anything and we just wanted to be taken home, our tour guide reluctantly skipped his cup of tea with an old friend from the store and we all hopped in the tuk tuk for a bumpy ride back to the hotel. After arguing over the amount of the tour (of course the guide wanted to charge us more than the original agreed upon price) we got ready to head to Udaipur.



That’s when we met Ram, our driver for the next few days. Ram is from Jaipur, used to work in a soap factory for $300 a month, and now runs his own successful business! He was really professional – a nice change from our experience earlier in the day. We had a new, HUGE car (relatively speaking) for our journey and for a few minutes it felt like we escaped the chaos. But then I looked out the window and saw some very interesting things…groups of people gathered right off the highway watching TV, teenage boys driving semi-trucks and a bike rider on the highway (not on the shoulder but actually in the middle lane) just riding along as if he was in the park! Later that night I saw a truck coming at us going the wrong way on the highway; I did a double take and then asked Ram why that truck was driving on the wrong side of the road. He had the perfect answer, “its India,” he said! From that point on, that was the answer to 99% of our questions. Another great Ram quote was about the “3 Things You Need to Drive in India: 1. Good horn, 2. Good breaks, 3. Good luck!”

Udaipur is a smaller town located on a lake with gorgeous views of the surrounding area. The highlight of our couple days there was a cooking class where we learned to make some of our favorite dishes that we’ve been enjoying: coriander chutney, curry, naan, chapati, masala chai tea, palak paneer, etc. The great thing about Indian cooking is that you just need to learn a few basics and then you can customize the dishes based on your favorite meats and vegetables. We were at Shashi’s house for about 6 hours with 4 other aspiring chefs from France. We all enjoyed learning some new tricks and we especially enjoyed our feast of food at the end of the day!

After Udaipur we headed to Goa, a beach town on the west coast of India, to relax for a few days at the end of our trip. We all enjoyed sleeping in, getting some sun, running along the beach and delicious seafood – after traveling non-stop we needed a break!

Reflecting on the past 10 days, I’ve realized that India is not for the faint of heart. You see things you could never imagine and things you wouldn’t wish upon anyone. But beneath the surface and beyond the chaos, the people I met in India were some of the most genuine, helpful and caring people I’ve met anywhere. It was sad to say goodbye to Kristi & Nick, they were great travel partners throughout this crazy country! They are flying to Thailand now and I’m off to China…