February 6, 2010 – Delhi, India
We squished into a taxi and left the Blue Horizon for the Kathmandu airport to catch our flight to Mumbai. The plane was delayed for 3 hours due to fog so we ended up missing our connecting flight to Goa…another mad rush through an airport only to miss it by 10 minutes!! Air India took good care of us and we spent the night at the Mirador Hotel. It was amazing…they had heat, hot showers, satellite TV, huge buffet and complimentary M & M’s!!
Didn’t see much of Mumbai, but on landing you see a dense patchwork of slums full of shanty shacks, only a stone’s throw away from the runway. We had read quite a bit about India and how it is positioned, along with China, to overtake the USA as the world economic superpower. But its challenge is to pull the 300ish million of its 1+ billion population out of the abject poverty. These slums represented only a small portion of the 55% of the Mumbai population that live in slum districts!
Left Mumbai early the next day and landed in 32°C tropical heat…and it felt glorious after our shivery stay in Nepal! We checked in to a hostel on Anjuna Beach, part of the Goa region in the south of India. Goa is known for its laid back, easy going beach bum lifestyle and we found it to be very westernized with a huge contingent of Woodstock-expats from the 60’s. Sort of like flower child meets spicy vindaloo. The flea market is a huge event where you’ll find 100’s of vendors selling the usual (and same) stuff, lots of great food and drink and live music…we think it was the second coming of Jimi Hendrix!?? The beach is a beautiful stretch of sand along the Indian Ocean boasting picturesque sunsets. We would come to meet up with many ‘sacred” cows during our time in India but it is still bizarre to see a herd of them co-mingling with the sunbathers. Terry Sullivan told us nothing about this during my 4-H days! Dogs and more dogs, too, would become a common sight in our travels. Often times, it was distressing to see these animals, with many appearing sickly or underfed. It was not uncommon to spot dead animals along the side of the road being eaten by packs of pariah wild dogs.
Anjuna Beach was our respite before venturing out to explore more of India and it was terrific until the dreaded Delhi Belly raised its ugly head!! This of course was not our first bout with food poisoning (it’s India right…) but the timing was a little less than ideal. We had enjoyed our Premiere Train experience in South Africa, so we decided to book a First Class compartment on the Rahjani Express to Delhi. Oh dear God…what have we done!!!??? The 26-hour rail trip ended up to be 34 hours with frequent unscheduled stops. Thick fog made enjoying any scenery impossible. The trip was acerbated by the frequent runs (no pun intended) to the train toilet. Squatting, trying to maintain your balance, as you watch the ground race by through the dirty open floor is something one will never forget. But we did arrive in Delhi safe and sound. And, talk about busy…it seemed like there were a half-million people to wade through just to get out of the train station!! But the “wave of humanity” dumped us out at the curb and we caught a cab to our hotel.
From Delhi, we embarked on a 10-day tour of Rajasthan with a driver, Remish. India is punctuated by its shear busyness. Every highway, small town and rural village is a jumble of cars, tuk-tuks, farm animals, dogs and people. And, trucks…India moves everything imaginable by truck. These trucks all look the same…behemoth tandems decked out in Hindu décor with drivers convinced (or under the illusion) that they own the road. Remish described these drivers as stupid men and he would give these trucks lots of room on the road because of their unpredictability. Driving on all roads was always a bit unnerving. Overloaded buses careening around corners, near misses at intersections and constant games of involuntary chicken seemed to abound. Is it the Hindu belief in afterlife and reincarnation that seems to make life expendable in the here and now??
Rajasthan has some amazing sites and places of interest…lots of temples and forts. Outside the city of Jaiselmer we went on a camel safari. The Great Indian Desert, is vast, sparsely populated except for the scrub brush and odd deer. The camel camp (sounds like a place where Joe Cool would spend the summers!) was situated just 70 miles from the Pakistan border. Camels are still very much part of everyday life in the Rajasthan area. The local farmers & herdsmen use them to pull huge wagons full of hay, gravel and grain. Camels are one of the strangest looking creatures in our animal kingdom but we found our mounts, Captain and Akul, gentle, friendly and up to the task. We rode out tandem to the sand dunes with Aadhira and Sabal, two young kids about 20 years old. One spoke pretty good English and the other we trained to say “Super Cool” which he delighted in using incessantly! Enjoyed some sand diving and then took in the sunset before heading back to our camp. After some traditional food and drink, we were entertained by 2 musicians and a dancer. The dancer looked a little suspect to us and she turned out to be a he which is apparently pretty common in Hindi culture or maybe it has something to do with those lonely desert nights! We had the choice to sleep at the lodge or outside under the desert stars. We went for the stars. What a cool experience that was! We mounted our camels once again and headed to the desert along with Mahatru (we called him Desert Dude because we couldn’t pronounce it), a true nomad who was likely 60 years old, maybe 80, and liked to smoke kack which is some sort of Indian tobacco. Desert Dude than took up an empty plastic bottle with ridges and serenaded us with a desert ditty as we sat around the campfire. Ann even joined in much to the delight of Desert Dude singing Kumbaya. Our other little friend busied himself with gathering firewood and setting up our sleeping bags. We settled in for the night upon the dunes and under a very bright full moon. We’ve mentioned dogs before and sure enough, a furry friend snuggled up at the foot of our sleeping bags. We awoke early to greet the sunrise and to discover that a sand dune isn’t as comfortable as you might imagine…oh, our aching bodies! Luckily, the jolting camel ride back for breakfast took the kinks out of our necks and straightened our spines. Not covered by OHIP though!
India’s dispute with Pakistan over the Kashmir region is very much in the news here. So it was interesting for us to see a huge convoy of military trucks heading towards the border as we were heading out. And, we’re not talking about the few trucks and jeeps we see from time to time heading back to Base Borden from the county fair. Indian defence power is immense. The combined army, navy and air force count is the largest of any nation. And, these guys actually have modern weaponry – huge tanks, anti-aircraft cannons, rocket launchers. The khaki-green line of traffic took at least 20 minutes to pass by us on the one-way road. Our attempt at a photograph was menacingly waved off with a finger wag but we did manage to sneak one pic that we may “sell” to the Pac if we run low on money!!
Pretty much every town and city we visited had a colourful nickname. Jaiselmer, the Golden City is mainly constructed using yellow sandstone and was once the capital of the region. This honour now goes to Jaipur, which is the Pink City…so named after a visit by the British monarchy in the 1800’s when the town was all decorated in pink. The Blue City of Jodhpur has most of its buildings painted a steely-sky blue, which help keep mosquitoes at bay and the buildings cool under the hot desert sun. No one seemed impressed when we mentioned “Orangeville”!! Bikaneer is home of the Karni Mata temple or Rat Temple. For me (Tim), rats are my greatest fear ever!! So what better way to face your phobia then to dive right into the nest! For the Hindus, the rats are sacred and represent good luck. For me, it represented sheer terror as rats ran across my shoeless feet. But, no religious miracle or divine intervention here…still scared shitless of rats!! See YouTube video here for more rat fun! Pushkar was an amazing little town surrounded by mountains and had a cool market area. Our guidebook talked about the beautiful lake that draws Hindus from around the world to bathe in the sin-cleansing, soul rejuvenating waters. What we found was a dried up, garbage-filled basin with the odd muddy hole that the believers dropped flowers into as an offering. This changes during monsoon season. Our last stop before arriving back in Delhi was Agra and a visit to the Taj Mahal. This man-made wonder of the world was, well…wondrous…a million square feet of marble and definitely a must see.
So, what about this India…really?
India is big and diverse and in every sense; the country’s size (7th largest in the world), its population (over a billion!), its diverse cultures and religious beliefs.
It’s a place that attaches its self to you, for good and bad reasons. We loved it. We hated it. We felt absolute joy, and frustrated anger. We saw exquisite beauty and indescribable filth. Everything that’s good, bad (and in between) about travelling, we found in India.
A trip to India is an adventure! Each day you wake up, shower (often a cold one!), dress, then take a moment to steel yourself before flinging open the doors and letting India back in your face. All of a sudden, it’s all honking horns, wandering cows, scooters, tuk-tuks, smog & dust in your throat, open sewers and stray dogs. And if you’re having a bad day in India, it just gets worse!!
Nothing happens the way you’ve been conditioned to expect it should. You soon find out that… everything has a price, everything is negotiable! If you can haggle, you can get it at a fair price, if not, you’re ripped off. There are people everywhere and we mean everywhere! The buses carrying people are dangerously over-loaded, tilted towards one side with people balancing on top, defying all laws of physics! The larger tuk-tuks, referred to as Indian helicopters, are jammed beyond belief. Highways are transformed into one huge, multi-directional, every man, woman (& animal) for themselves, tangle on asphalt. With the astounding exception of road rage…put someone from TO or LA here and there would be Armageddon. The Indians just take it in stride.
The tuk-tuk drivers all want to take you to their cousin’s marble emporium or carpet shop and will keep pedalling their tuk-tuk along with you as you’re walking on the sidewalk… with the hope that you’ll change your mind. Men urinate in the street. It’s apparently okay to pee anywhere as long as the pee-er is somewhat discrete….or not. Slum-dwellers take their morning dump beside the train tracks. Everyone cleans themselves with a jug of water and a left hand. The food in restaurants is often a mystery…to us anyway. And, there is always the fear of food poisoning. Cows and dogs are absolutely everywhere, people throw scraps, along with cardboard and paper, on the street for the cows to eat. We would be awoken throughout the night by the howl and barking of marauding dogs roaming the streets. I fear for the cows!
India is in your face. Is life here so precarious, they must grasp at it each day to survive?? One British chap we met, sighed when asked how his trip was going and replied “this tapestry that is India…is wearing very thin!”. And how true, a visit to India leaves a huge impression but you need to push yourself through it in an attempt to balance the good with the bad.
And there is plenty of good. There is 1000’s of years of history, amazing forts, monuments, temples and museums. There are beautiful beaches, deserts and snow-capped mountains. There is good and bad in each and every nation and Indian is no exception. Have you heard what India stands for…? “I’ll Never Do It Again”. But that’s unfair. India is a “smorgasbord” that each traveler must discover on their own! It will ruin all other travel…once you have seen India…you will have seen it all!!!
Stay tuned for our adventures with Jessica Bogue in Taiwan!!