Don't get me wrong, I love India and am not regretting coming here one bit. It is an Experience that I hope to repeat in the future and see more parts of this topsy-turvy jibber-jabber place. However.
Five things I find annoying about India
1. Everyone assumes that you are dripping with dollars and tries to scam you. All the time. Every single shop, museum, temple will try to get more out of you than is necessary. And I'm talking like 100-200% more.
2. You are constantly being offerred auto-rickshaw and taxi rides. It is assumed that you cannot walk more than 10 meters without needing to sit down and be chaufferred.
3. People watch you all the damn time. They watch you walk down the street. They watch you get on the train. They watch you eat and I am pretty sure that they would ike to watch you go to the bathroom if they could. And not only do they stare, they laugh. Ha ha ha, see whitey walk down the street. Har dee har see whitey eat food. Giggle chuckle guffaw see whitey take in the museum.
4. People refuse to point you in the direction of authentic spicy food. It's as though they are thinking "Oh, I am sure she doesn't REALLY want Keralan food, she must want Pizza hut and got confused due to the heat".
5. Fumes. Not only is everyone driving driving driving or riding riding riding stinky diesel and other buses and cars, but they are also IDLING them for hours. As in, "the tourists have gone into the museum for 45 minutes, so I'll go have a tea at the chai stall and leave the engine on. Why the hell not???"
Aaaah. Feels better already. Next post about the good stuff.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
And some things are awesome
Ok, so there are things that happen no matter where we go and are so heartwarming that they make you forget about the stuff that is muck.
Five Favourite things about India
1. People spontaneously call out hello or smile and waggle their heads (especially if you do it first!) or bring their children over to shake hands. In a museum in Delhi a group of school children wanted to shake hands with me, every single child (like 50 or so), until I started doing Namaste instead and then they Namaste'd back with vigour and energy!
2. When you find good food it is VERY GOOD. Plus they keep giving you seconds and thirds until you can't handle it anymore (so much for losing weight in India!)
3. Every day is an adventure with a constantly changing human landscape. We fall asleep exhausted and sleep for 9 hours because our brains need to process it all.
4. The train! It is awesome! And don't let the dreadlocked backpacker crowd fool you, there is no shame riding in second class Air Con (fancier than regular class) when it is 36 degrees outside and humid! You still experience the "real India", whatever that means.
5. The enterprising nature of everyone. If there is opportunity, there is someone taking advantnge of it. My father would have loved this very American trait (American in the best sense of the word!)
Five Favourite things about India
1. People spontaneously call out hello or smile and waggle their heads (especially if you do it first!) or bring their children over to shake hands. In a museum in Delhi a group of school children wanted to shake hands with me, every single child (like 50 or so), until I started doing Namaste instead and then they Namaste'd back with vigour and energy!
2. When you find good food it is VERY GOOD. Plus they keep giving you seconds and thirds until you can't handle it anymore (so much for losing weight in India!)
3. Every day is an adventure with a constantly changing human landscape. We fall asleep exhausted and sleep for 9 hours because our brains need to process it all.
4. The train! It is awesome! And don't let the dreadlocked backpacker crowd fool you, there is no shame riding in second class Air Con (fancier than regular class) when it is 36 degrees outside and humid! You still experience the "real India", whatever that means.
5. The enterprising nature of everyone. If there is opportunity, there is someone taking advantnge of it. My father would have loved this very American trait (American in the best sense of the word!)
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Holi at home and on the street
March 21st and 22nd marked the yearly festival of Holi, celebrated with much gusto in the North of India where we happened to be at that time. The Holi eve is marked by bonfires everywhere and Holi morning is when the colours come out. People smear each other with dyes for a happy and prosperous Spring. And when I say smear, I mean smear. Faces, clothing, hair, nothing escapes if you are playing Holi for keeps. Adrian and I were caught in a little bit of street-style Holi when some girls called to us from a balcony and asked "Please, put your camera away. Let us throw water balloons at you!". I immediately scampered merrily (ok, ran in terror) to the other side of the road screaming "but it's my only nice kurti!" while Adrian played nice and let himself be a traget for their water balloons (they missed...). We were walking along the street and I was mentally congratulating myself from emerging unscathed when out of nowhere comes a water ballon! And then another! They do not hit me directly but splash my pants with yucky yucky Delhi dirt. I admit that I cried in the rickshaw at the thought of my nice clean Indian pants all mucky. I was worried that the colour might not come off since not everyone uses safe vegetable dyes.
The next morning at home in the guesthouse our hosts Ushi and Avni came up to the dining room and sang a Holi song and gave us sweets and painted our foreheads with colour. We also got to pick a Ganesh mini-statue for luck (Ganesh is the elephant head god who is said to be the remover of obstacles). It was really interesting and my favourite part of Holi.
Adrian pointed out to me that there were some advertising poster featuring Westerners in the Holi spirit, so perhaps it was a great prize to stain a Westerner, or as Adrian puts it "get Whitey". Who knows. My pants are fine.
The image is from the BBC website.
Tourism and food
So Agra, like any tourist beat, is really designed to strip people of all their available cash. In fact, most places to which we have been that cater specifically to tourists, both Indian and Western, are quite expensive by Indian standards. This means that one can expect to pay up to 4 times as much for a meal in a restaurant of dubious quality and certainly zero authenticity as one would pay in a local dhaba or 'meals place'. The problem is that the places that are touristy are touristy for a reason, like for instance, the Taj Mahal. So you want to go there, it isn't Disneyland in spite of the commercialisation that springs up around it - India is a very enterprising nation.
So Adrian and I have made it our mission to see interesting touristy places AND eat yummy delicious food at the same time. Much more difficult than it sounds, actually, but we think we have found the winning formula. See, where there are tourists, there are buses and taxis and rickshaws (auto ones mostly) and where there are buses and taxis and rickshaws, there are drivers. And drivers must eat. Here in Kovallam, Kerala (western tip of India) we located the meals place just next to the bus 'stop' - and it was not easy to find. These places look like holes in the wall - basically an open doorway leading to a couple of narrow tables, a sink in one corner and some much needed and largely ineffective ceiling fans. Plus, to confuse one further, they are often called 'hotels', which in India actually means restaurant. In fact, a good rule of thumb would be to avoid any establishment that calls itself a restaurant since it is BOUND to be aimed at a tourist crowd.
So this meals place that we found today works like this: you come in and get ushered to a seat. As soon as you sit down, a banana leaf is plunked in front of you and immediately someone comes by and plops a large quantity of white rice on it. This is followed by a generous ladle of sambar, a thick curry vegetable broth, and at least three other dishes in small amounts. Cutlery is nowhere to be seen (although quite honestly this varies and in many places you will be offered a spoon). We were also offered some fried fish (a small kind of fish). When it looks like you have finished some of your meal, someone comes around with second helpings of everything, each generously deposited on the banana leaf. When you are through, you take the banana leaf to the sink and put it in a pan with others, and then you wash your hands and if you are not used to eating with your fingers, you'll also need to wash your face, neck, arms, etc. Before you leave, you pay. 25 rps per person. WHAT???? Yes. 50 rps for a meal for two where we were so full we practically rolled out. 40rps = 1 dollar. It was a very memorable meal and one we hope to repeat now that we are more savvy.
In addition to bad tourist food, a major annoyance is the touts trying to sell you stuff you really don't want like shawls, drums, expensive fruit, wall hangings, jewelry. I have never said 'no, thank you' so often in all my life.
So Adrian and I have made it our mission to see interesting touristy places AND eat yummy delicious food at the same time. Much more difficult than it sounds, actually, but we think we have found the winning formula. See, where there are tourists, there are buses and taxis and rickshaws (auto ones mostly) and where there are buses and taxis and rickshaws, there are drivers. And drivers must eat. Here in Kovallam, Kerala (western tip of India) we located the meals place just next to the bus 'stop' - and it was not easy to find. These places look like holes in the wall - basically an open doorway leading to a couple of narrow tables, a sink in one corner and some much needed and largely ineffective ceiling fans. Plus, to confuse one further, they are often called 'hotels', which in India actually means restaurant. In fact, a good rule of thumb would be to avoid any establishment that calls itself a restaurant since it is BOUND to be aimed at a tourist crowd.
So this meals place that we found today works like this: you come in and get ushered to a seat. As soon as you sit down, a banana leaf is plunked in front of you and immediately someone comes by and plops a large quantity of white rice on it. This is followed by a generous ladle of sambar, a thick curry vegetable broth, and at least three other dishes in small amounts. Cutlery is nowhere to be seen (although quite honestly this varies and in many places you will be offered a spoon). We were also offered some fried fish (a small kind of fish). When it looks like you have finished some of your meal, someone comes around with second helpings of everything, each generously deposited on the banana leaf. When you are through, you take the banana leaf to the sink and put it in a pan with others, and then you wash your hands and if you are not used to eating with your fingers, you'll also need to wash your face, neck, arms, etc. Before you leave, you pay. 25 rps per person. WHAT???? Yes. 50 rps for a meal for two where we were so full we practically rolled out. 40rps = 1 dollar. It was a very memorable meal and one we hope to repeat now that we are more savvy.
In addition to bad tourist food, a major annoyance is the touts trying to sell you stuff you really don't want like shawls, drums, expensive fruit, wall hangings, jewelry. I have never said 'no, thank you' so often in all my life.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Delhi: Second Impressions
I love Delhi. Adrian loves Delhi. We love Delhi. It is buslting, it is dirty, you can't lose focus for even one second because you will be run over, but it beats with a pulse that is organic and palpable. A living breathing organism (that possibly needs some serious ayurvedic treatments and a petrol-fume patch to wean itself off the hard stuff).
One of our delights has been to discover that our guesthouse is nowhere near any tourist part of town. This means that when we went to the nearby busy Karol Bagh area for some shopping (hello custom made pinstripe suit) we were by far the only white people there, which isn't so true of the tourist beats of Connaught Place and Paharganj. The first day we found food in a restaurant whose sister establishment had only wall menus in Hindi. People watched us eat and a young girl laughed at us (for reasons that remain a mystery as we were really doing our best to copy what everyone else was doing, which to be frank was quite random. Well, truth be told, she laughed at Adrian, and it may have been his visor that set her off. Haven't seen many visors in India. So far, anyway.)The food in Karol Bagh is awesome. All locals, all the time, eating, eating, eating out, embracing their middle-classness. The food has to be good because it is competing with very accessible home-cooking. So far we have been most often enjoying thalis, which are a way of serving small portions of many different meny items and usually include rice and chappatti or roti and sometimes even tasy fried puri (all breads).
This has been easiest for us as we get to sample many things, usually vegetarian, and not have to worry about 'choosing right'. Plus we are usually so overstimulated when we sit down to eat that choosing just two dishes from a huge list seems to overwhelming.
Our Delhi guesthouse also had yummy food, although not such great prices, so we usually only breakfasted there every other day.
One of our delights has been to discover that our guesthouse is nowhere near any tourist part of town. This means that when we went to the nearby busy Karol Bagh area for some shopping (hello custom made pinstripe suit) we were by far the only white people there, which isn't so true of the tourist beats of Connaught Place and Paharganj. The first day we found food in a restaurant whose sister establishment had only wall menus in Hindi. People watched us eat and a young girl laughed at us (for reasons that remain a mystery as we were really doing our best to copy what everyone else was doing, which to be frank was quite random. Well, truth be told, she laughed at Adrian, and it may have been his visor that set her off. Haven't seen many visors in India. So far, anyway.)The food in Karol Bagh is awesome. All locals, all the time, eating, eating, eating out, embracing their middle-classness. The food has to be good because it is competing with very accessible home-cooking. So far we have been most often enjoying thalis, which are a way of serving small portions of many different meny items and usually include rice and chappatti or roti and sometimes even tasy fried puri (all breads).
This has been easiest for us as we get to sample many things, usually vegetarian, and not have to worry about 'choosing right'. Plus we are usually so overstimulated when we sit down to eat that choosing just two dishes from a huge list seems to overwhelming.
Our Delhi guesthouse also had yummy food, although not such great prices, so we usually only breakfasted there every other day.
I found the thali image at www.messandnoise.com
Taj Mahal
After much itinerary planning, Adrian and I set off for the Taj on our third day in India. We hired a private car to take us as it was quite short notice and not on our way to anywhere else. In retrospect, this was a good idea as we were still jet-lagged and unable to sleep and so we got to watch India go by as we sat lulled by the car and its constantly blaring horn. The road trip was quite an education, lemme tell you what. India is the third world. I know that is not politically correct, but there is no other way to describe what we saw on the way to Agra from Delhi.
The Taj is beautiful and lives up to all expectations. Our favourite part was that as it is not prime tourist season, we got to enjoy the Taj with Indian tourists. The women were all dressed in their finery and floated towards the large white mausoleum like butterflies to their palatial home.
The Taj is beautiful and lives up to all expectations. Our favourite part was that as it is not prime tourist season, we got to enjoy the Taj with Indian tourists. The women were all dressed in their finery and floated towards the large white mausoleum like butterflies to their palatial home.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Wildlife
So far, we have seen many cows and many dogs (cute, sad ones), a few camels, a donkey, some yaks on the road to Agra as well as some wild boars (Mama Boar and Baby Boar), a kitten on our terrace, some parrakeets, gazelles, chipmunks, two gheckos, horses and a single mosquito. And this is after three days in Delhi with one of them spent on the road to Agra (Taj Mahal). Notoriously absent in this list you might notice are rats and cockroaches. It is like a damn safari.
Everybody told me about the beggars but nobody warned me of the dogs. I am not a dog-lover, but my heart absolutely breaks at the sight of these dogs that are everywhere and much more omnipresent than the beggars. I wonder if the city has a neutering programme and whether it is effective at all. I cannot even imagine what it must be like for dog lovers... Under a truck we saw a mother and her cute fuzzy puppies nursing. Adorable and sad.
Everybody told me about the beggars but nobody warned me of the dogs. I am not a dog-lover, but my heart absolutely breaks at the sight of these dogs that are everywhere and much more omnipresent than the beggars. I wonder if the city has a neutering programme and whether it is effective at all. I cannot even imagine what it must be like for dog lovers... Under a truck we saw a mother and her cute fuzzy puppies nursing. Adorable and sad.
Delhi: First Impressions
We had read so much about the Delhi Arrival (scary, moist, dirty, smelling of humans and all their smells, full of touts and people ready to drive you anywhere but where you actually want to go) that we were naturally somewhat apprehensive. We arrived in at Indira Gandhi Airport at 1:15am tired but alert. We were ready. We had only carry-on luggage. We changed money. We went to the bathroom so as not to have to face the Delhi Arrival with potentially soiled trousers. We gave each other a final look, nodded tersely, and ventured through the gates to the waiting area. True, there were many many people for 2am. They were somewhat benignly holding signs with people's names on and smiling or looking profoundly bored. Ours was literaly the 3rd sign in, right at the entrance. Nobody was yelling. Nobody was particularly smelly. It wasn't even that hot. Our driver took us to our guesthouse where our cockroach-less room was waiting and we slept like babies.
However. Delhi is dirty. Not just dirty, but Dirty. Think of the different types of dirty and they are all there, all the pollutants in one miasmic soup of yuck. The air is thick with smog. I mean hard-to-breathe thick. The car headlights beam through a permanent smokey fog and the night sky is yellowish and hazy. During the day, horns honk non-stop. Plastic bags and other debris litter everything (no food, though, too much stray wildlife). Dust rises from broken roads. Water is unfit to drink. It saddens me and scares me. This land of a billion souls seems like an apocalyptic voice from the future. We are too safe in our homes in North America. Too safe and too complacent.
However. Delhi is dirty. Not just dirty, but Dirty. Think of the different types of dirty and they are all there, all the pollutants in one miasmic soup of yuck. The air is thick with smog. I mean hard-to-breathe thick. The car headlights beam through a permanent smokey fog and the night sky is yellowish and hazy. During the day, horns honk non-stop. Plastic bags and other debris litter everything (no food, though, too much stray wildlife). Dust rises from broken roads. Water is unfit to drink. It saddens me and scares me. This land of a billion souls seems like an apocalyptic voice from the future. We are too safe in our homes in North America. Too safe and too complacent.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Sitting still...barely
Adrian and I are going to India in a few days. We are manic and deceptively calm, sipping our tea like its nothing, like we jump multiple time-zones regularly and just as regularly drop over a month's salary on a vacation. We'll be posting our thoughts, well, possibly my thoughts, here, so buckle your seatbelts, people.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)