Clean, clean, clean?

In a Facebook note, Adrian wrote about the 'ethnic' Westerners we keep sighting - the ones with matted, dirty uncombed hair, a highly random hodge-podge assortment of clothing that they might refer to as a 'cultural pastiche' (gag) and an overall coating of grime layered over their skin and possessions. We didn't see so many down south, but here in Delhi and in Dharamsala, they were out in packs, with their batik tank tops and dreadlocks. Perhaps they feel a sense of solidarity with the less fortunate Indians who live without proper sanitation facilities and want to show that they can fit in here. Dunno.

We were in Old Delhi a few days ago and arrived very early in the morning as many of the city's inhabitants where just stirring from their sidewalk beds. Our train arrived at 5:30 am and by 7 am we were on a cycle rickshaw going through some parts of the area we had missed last time. We stopped for some chai at a chai stall and as Adrian and our driver had some, I surreptitiously watched as a young man bathed nearby at a pump? A hose and bucket? I don't remember. But I do recall the morning sunshine and his zealous application of shampoo to his hair, a tiny packet sold for 1 rupee at various stalls in many neighborhoods where small packets are most accessible. He squeezed some out to use as soap and scrubbed his body and arms well, rinsing with a cup (like most Indians, washing is done with bucket and cup to conserve the water). Around him, people were stoking small coal fires for breakfast, but he was busy scrubbing his face, his ears, serious about his morning ablutions. It gave me pause as I considered this phenomenon that I knew about, having read so much about India - people here are very clean and take pride in being clean no matter what their circumstances. Soap and shampoo is available everywhere in one rupee packets. Water comes out of pumps and public taps. Everybody washes and everybody is clean, ready to face another dusty day in Delhi.

In fact, everyone in India is very clean, washing many times a day (as it is very dirty on the streets). People wear clean pressed clothing and are extremely conscious of their appearance, wanting to appear tidy and neat at all times. It is such chaos here on the streets, such dirt and noise and pollution, it is no wonder that people hold on to the only kind of cleanliness they can control, that of their own person. Except the hippie Westerners. Apparently, they weren't told.

Old Delhi

After spending two weeks in Kerala, a province that shares the southern tip of India with its neighbour Tamil Nadu, we returned to Delhi for the last leg of our trip which has taken us to Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh, home to the Tibetan government in exile and residence of the Dalai Lama. We figured that our day in Delhi would just be about organizing our journey, picking up our tickets and killing some time. Our train departed from the Old Delhi railway station and our travel agent arranged to get us driven there. On parting, he advised us to spend some time going through Old Delhi on a cycle rickshaw, since our train was a night one at 10pm.

Oh boy. Little did we know that the few hours we spent in Old Delhi with a Nepalese rickshaw driver guide would be one of the highlights of our journey, on par with our houseboat experience in Kerala (I think Adrian wrote something about that). Adrian and I gravitate to urban environments. We like people watching and the hustle and bustle of daily mundane life - you know, stuff like winding our way through narrow lanes filled to bursting with wedding saris and fabrics, dripping with jewelry and heady with incense fumes. Normal everyday stuff like breathing in the scent of a hundred spices in the wholesale spice lane that was so choked with airborne spices that even the merchants were coughing and sneezing right along with us. I cannot even describe how tight these Old Delhi lanes are and how much human and motorized traffic winds its way through them - in both directions! And how many shops, wide open to the lanes with merchants often sitting on floor mattresses. Tiny woodworking shops with old-skool tools and men wearing dhotis to cope with the heat. And amidst it all a tiny girl lovingly polishing a motorbike (we almost got her on camera... almost).

Sometimes when we couldn't proceed on the rickshaw, we had to disembark and follow our guide on foot. Our first such foray (mind the um... shit) led us to a lovely old lane with a hidden Jain temple at its end, where we had to be careful to remove all leather items and wash our hands AFTER removing our leather shoes (I learned this the hard way as I touched my shoe as I took it off and was asked to wash my hands again). Our second venture on foot was through the spice wholesalers stalls and up the stairs to a rooftop where a group of boys were on a break from working as fry cooks for candy factory workers. We looked over the choked chaotic streets of Old Delhi and took pictures with our new friends who wanted us to send them a copy of the photos ... but how?

We return to Delhi in 4 days and will explore more of Old Delhi hopefully getting the same guide, if we can find him. Words fail me and I am still trying to process all that I have seen in the space of a few hours. All India is teeming with life and Old Delhi epitomizes both the worst and best of this incredible country. I have read many accounts of Old Delhi and India in general invoking the misery and the squalor, but all I see is Life in all its facets, all its moods, a cacophony of sights, sounds and smells that reminds us of that which is most basic - the sharing of space with others who have equal claim on it. It is the full symphony of life, with its major and minor chords where sorrow breaks daily bread with joy.

Going native

Even before coming to India, I knew that I would want to wear Indian dress while travelling. I thought that it would be a mark of respect for the Indian culture and its people, that it would be good for the heat and because several travel sources recommended this for women travelling as it discourages excessive staring and potential "Eve teasing" (basically, harrassment) by locals. In addition to this, the women's clothing is beautiful, with goregeous fabrics and patterns.

Because wearing a sari is just too complicated for a novice and especially a travelling novice, I settled on a Salwaar Kameez, also called a Punjabi suit, which involves a 3/4 length tunic, loose pants and a shawl very useful for covering ones nose from diesel fumes and wiping hands dry after meals (we eat with our hands! Well, hand, right one). I have pictures on the camera but I mostly look a bit ass, as Indian women usuallly get SKs made to measure and off the rack ones tailored. My tailoring experiences have been ... less than stellar, and I have decided to cut my losses and just wear what I have so far, even if it is too loose. Clearly, unless I work with an English-speaking tailor, I will never get anywhere. Adrian is getting some suits made to measure, and the men's tailors here are awesome, with a long tradition of tailoring Western style clothing, so at least one of us is making out ok on that front.





In spite of this, I have really enjoyed wearing SKs. When I first arrived, they were my security blanket, I felt that I did not stand out as much, and that the gerenal message that I was presenting to India was "I come in peace". In Delhi there were plenty of tourists and Indian national in Western clothing, but as we moved away from cities and tourists, traditional garb dominated. Even in Delhi, I would say that only 5% of the women were wearing Western clothing in the areas that we visited (probably in wealthier areas this might be higher).

I don't have one quite so nice, but this is a Salwar Kameez as worn by many women in India.
As well as making me feel less conspicuous (nice try) the SKs also opened up avenues for interacting with other women, who were more likely to smile and waggle their heads at me when they saw what I was wearing. It seems to bridge the gap.

And speakin of the gap, my favourite store is definitely Fab India which is like an Indian Gap (no offense to Fab India). You can check it out at http://www.fabindia.com/ . There are of course plenty of other places to shop, but the self-serve mix and match ethos of this chain is a more familiar fashion experience for me. I also bought a kurti (kameez, the top part) at an emporium, which is basically a shop designed to rip off tourists, but I just walked out when I was told the price and the shop owner ran after me shouting "what do you want to pay?" and we finally settled on a fair price. This part of shopping in India is exhausting, always having to haggle and I won't miss it. It is as though every single thing is a small battle and it leaves you weary after a while, even though initially it might give you a charge. Adrian is surprisingly good at haggling, so I let him do most of it. We do a lot of walking away, at least he does.

Five things I find annoying about India

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.

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!)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.