My ex (but still a good friend) came for a visit to India. I think he had a good time, but unlike me he would not like to live here for any extended period.
I am sharing what he wrote to his family/friends about his trip here. I enjoy hearing other people's impressions of India, both good and bad. It is a very entertaining note.
As most of you know, I took a trip to visit Cathy and India from Thanksgiving Day until 04 Dec. For those of you who don't want the details: I had four days living as an Indian with Cathy in Ahmedabad followed by three days as a tourist in Jodhpur, Jaipur, and Agra. It was a fantastic trip and experience; here is the link to pictures, which start in Jodhpur: http://2011nickvisitsindia.shutterfly.com/.
For those that want the details (sorry if some of this is redundant for some of you; much of what is conveyed below is learned from Cathy more than experience, so my thanks to her), here is a novel:
I arrived in Delhi very late the night of Friday, 25 Nov and quickly discovered the pervasive chaos of India, as it took my asking about six different airport employees before I found one that could get me to the right place to get to a shuttle bus that would take me to the domestic terminal, which is separated from the international terminal by a drive of a few miles. I also noticed a haze in the Delhi airport; I was uncertain whether this was a permanent thing or attributable to the time of night.
Saturday, 26 Nov:
My flight from Delhi to Ahmedabad got me there early morning, and Cathy and I took an autorickshaw (Fig. 1; "auto" for short) to her place, which is a pretty decent place. Some notable facts: Despite the hot, dry climate (think Phoenix, with the exception of monsoon season, which Cathy compares to Miami summer), there is no central air conditioning. There are also not screens on windows, although they do have bars, presumably to keep out the pigeons, which they do with a decent success rate, but the pigeons can and occasionally do still find their way in and need to be chased out. Cathy's place--and most the hotels at which we stayed--do not have a ready supply of hot water. They do have geysers (pronounced, by Indians, at least, "geezer") that you turn on for five or ten minutes to heat some quantity of water. In Cathy's case, this is connected only to a spigot in the bathroom, and not the shower, so showers are with ambient-temperature water. For a hot "shower," one must fill a bucket and dump it over oneself using essentially a large measuring cup. Given the heat, the hot bucket shower is not needed most of the year; in fact, despite being there in November, the ambient water was tolerable enough that I used that for all my showers before capping it off with a hot-water rinse. There are no dryers in India, so all clothes are hung out to dry after coming out of the washer, but the climate makes the hang-dry process almost as fast as a dryer anyway. Monsoon season provides some logistical difficulties with the rain and clothes need to be hung inside or during the few hours of non-rain. We took a walk through her neighborhood and hit up a bootleg-DVD store and the local grocery store, which has decent offerings, and even an "international" section that had a lot of Wheatabix and some Kraft macaroni & cheese.
Figure 1, Autorickshaw:
Sunday, 27 Nov:
On Sunday we checked out a few more sites near Cathy's place, beginning with Vastrapur Lake. Apparently it is a nice place by A-bad standards, since the stone archway entrance it is clearly marked "No Romance." Following the lake, we ventured to the brand new mall that opened right next to it. Like just about any place with large gatherings of people, one has to get wanded and perhaps frisked to get into a mall in India. Even by American standards, this mall was very nice. In the evening, we took an autorickshaw to Iskcon temple and had the good planning/fortune to be visiting during a lively worship ceremony. Afterward, we stopped at Croma, the Indian Best Buy. We watched a bootleg Bollywood movie in the evening; despite apparently being good as far as Bollywood movies go, I thought it was awful. It was a supposed to be a serious movie, but felt like a Mel Brooks film. Dinner, as on the previous day, was saucy meat on rice. I had a lot of rice on this trip.
Monday, 28 Nov:
I got a good taste of Indian beaurocrazy (initially a typo, but it seemed suitable, so I left it) on Monday, as I accompanied Cathy in her attempt to get her visa renewed. This was her fourth or fifth trip to the Ahmedabad Foreign Resident Registration Office. It started right at 11 am, when the office opened. After sitting around for about three hours, she was one of a group of people ushered off to another room. After a short while, she returned, sat around a little longer, adn was then given some paperwork and had to go make a payment. After the payment, we were sent off to the neighboring city and capital of Gujarat, Gandhinagar. Gandhinagar was, as it promoted on its signs, clean and green relative to the remainder of India that I saw and was in less a state of disrepair. The process was no better than A-bad, though. Upon arriving in the government offices in Gandhinagar, we sat around for another several hours before being given the new visa right at 6:00 pm, the office closing time, and being told to take it back to Ahmedabad. That night we met up with other group leaders from Piramal, Cathy's place of employment, and their families for dinner at a pretty nice restaurant. The food throughout the trip was very good, although for someone with Celiac disease the options in India can be pretty limited.
Tuesday, 29 Nov:
After returning to the A-bad FRRO to finish the visa extension process, we rode Cathy's motorcycle out to Piramal for me to see her work and meet her colleagues. They have a very nice facility full of very nice people. We stopped on the way back at one of the handful of egg restaurants, which incorporate eggs into all their dishes; this is where I had my favorite dish of the trip: special anda (egg) bhurji rice. That night we caught a midnight train from A-bad to Jodhpur. The inter-city trains have, from what I can tell, three different classes: air-conditioned (which is then broken down into additional "tiers"), sleeper, and second class. We took the sleeper class. In second class, there are no assigned seats, so it is an absolute melee when the train arrives to be the first on to try to get a seat. In sleeper class, one has, in most cases, an assigned berth; however, they will still apparently sell you a ticket without an assigned seat, and it then becomes your job to figure out where to situate yourself. The sleeper class has nine "sections," each of which has two berths--one upper & one lower--running parallel to the aisle on on one side of the aisle and six berths--two upper, two middle, and two lower--that run perpendicular to the aisle on the other side of the aisle (Fig. 2). The middle berths fold down so that passengers can sit during non-sleeping hours.
Figure 2, Sleeper class car:
Wednesday, 30 Nov:
We arrived in Jodhpur in the late morning and checked into our hotel, which had a terrific view of Merangarh Fort and Gulab Sagar lake from its rooftop. The city of Jodhpur itself was very cool in its old schoolness. The streets were all very narrow and full of pedestrian and animal traffic. It is less tourist-oriented than the other cities we visited and not as modern as Ahmedabad. We hired an auto for the day, who began the day with a trip to Jaswant Thada, an ornate memorial. Following that, we visited Merangarh Fort, which offered excellent views of Jodhpur, which means "blue city;" many of the old buildings--or their roofs, at least--were constructed of a blue material that functioned as an insect repellent. The fort was pretty cool with some nice old architecture and fairly ornate rooms. Following the fort visit, we ventured to Mandore Gardens, which, to my delight, had a large number of monkeys, which were being fed fruit by some locals. It also contained a number of cenotaphs, which were very cool to check out. We finished the early evening at the royal palace, which still houses the local royal family, which I am sure has little influence of any source. In addition, it is now part museum and part luxury hotel as well; we walked through the museum portion; it was nice, but not too remarkable. On the way back to the hotel, our auto driver dropped us at a shop that hawked its textiles to us. We asked for a restaurant recommendation, and they said to check out On the Rocks. I had noticed that place on the way to and from the palace and noted that it looked like a lame attempt at an American restaurant. We decided to listen to the locals, though, so got an auto to drive us out there. The driver to whom we spoke, though, decided to turn over operation to a kid of, by my estimation, about 14 years old and his slightly-younger buddy. We soon discovered he did not really know the way to On the Rocks, but we eventually made it there after getting some directions at random restaurants that our kid-driver stopped at to see if they were OK for us. When we got to On the Rocks, we discovered that we had been sent to the place they must send all tourists, since 75 % of the clientele was non-Indian; it was certainly not what we had in mind, but it worked out all right.
Thursday, 01 Dec:
We caught the train from Jodhpur to Jaipur, the "pink city," in the morning. We started our tour of Jaipur at Isar Lat, a tower in central Jaipur that afforded a wonderful, 360-degree view of the city. The path to the top was a winding "staircase," only the stairs were something between stairs and a ramp. After descending from Isar Lat, we got another taste of "real" India, as our auto driver was pulled over for not having a license to drive tourists (apparently that requires a special license and he was only supposed to be driving locals), so had to pay off the officer. Once that was done, we were able to continue to "Monkey Temple," essentially a hill at the top of which there is a temple. As one might suspect, this hill is heavily populated by monkeys, along with other animals. We purchased a bag of peanuts and fed the monkeys (and a cow) by hand, which was obviously one of my favorite experiences. We also witnessed a battle between two groups of monkeys that, sadly, looked to have left one monkey on his death bed. I guess that is what happens in nature, though, so I had to accept it. Our auto driver wanted to cap off our evening with a trip to some guru who was going to solve all our problems just by his presence or touch. We convinced him we just wanted dinner instead, and gave him parameters for the kind of place we wanted. His first attempt failed, as he took us to a place without alcohol, but it at least brought us into the center of the city, which was cool to see. Attempt #2 was successful and we got to see a new part of Jaipur as we took the wrong outlet from a roundabout walking back to our hotel.
Friday, 02 Dec:
While waiting on our balcony, our auto driver called to me; he had apparently been waiting despite Cathy texting him the previous night to say we did not need a driver. I later put together that, like 62 % of the state of Rajasthan, he was illiterate, so a text served no purpose. We did a bit of negotiation and at least got a "free" ride to the train station in exchange for his services for the day. He first took us to Jantar Mantar, a very old astronomical site measuring the sun, planets, etc. and using that to determine time, date, etc., kind of like what many suspect Stonehenge to have been. Only it looks far less crude than Stonehenge, likely because it is not as old. After that, we stopped at an out-of-the way place called Royal Gate Hall, which was beautiful and serene, set between a few hills. It was easy to forget you were in the midst of a fair-sized city. Following that, we returned to the hotel to check out and get to our train to Agra. As I mentioned earlier, you can get tickets for a sleeper car without assigned seats. We had assigned seats, but got squeezed by people with tickets but no seats. One group in particular was unpleasant, so I did my best to make their ride uncomfortable. My East Coast US habitat makes me far more resilient to cold than your standard Indian, so I left my window open the entire trip, which went well into the evening. The 60-degree air blowing in meant the woman squeezing me was in her sari, a sweater, and about four wraps, two over her head, by the time we hit Agra. Normally I would feel bad about doing something spiteful like that, but they had it coming. Cathy would back me up on this one. We did not really feel like heading out for dinner that night, so became the only patrons in the silent hotel restaurant. For ambiance, Cathy busted out her phone for background music.
Saturday, 03 Dec:
We did not have much time in Agra before heading to the train station for our trip to Delhi to catch flights, so we spent all of it at Taj Mahal, which was the single most-impressive site visited on the trip, which I guess is not a surprise. It's scale and grandeur is impressive, and the grounds were also very expansive, beautiful, and well-kept. And, with the cost of Indian labor, the grass was being cut by someone with shears. Cheaper than a mower, I guess. We traveled to and from the Taj in a rickshaw (See Fig. 3). On the way there, we negotiated beforehand to pay our driver 30 rupees to take us there. On the way back, we did not negotiate beforehand. Upon disembarking, we held out the 30 rupees for the driver, who refused to take it; he wanted 150. He was still demanding 150 when he at least decided to grab the 30 so we just went back into the hotel. One other Taj experience: We did have a little extra time afterward, so, rather than heading out the same way as all the other tourists, we went through a less-traversed neighborhood next to the Taj. We were like Pied Pipers. We picked up a group of probably eight or so teenage boys along the way; it seemed to keep growing as we continued. Uttar Pradesh (Agra's state) is known to be rough and unsafe, so I do not know if there intentions were nefarious, but by the time we emerged from that neighborhood (with an escort: a middle-aged man who was very interested in talking to us about America), I felt like the leader of the Jets or the Sharks.
Figure 3, Rickshaw:
Then our auto fun began. On the way to the train station in Agra, we blew out a tire. Our driver was able to track down another auto, and we smoothly transferred. Our new driver gave us a simple lesson in geopolitics: "India has no problem with America. India likes America. India does not like Pakistan. I am a Muslim, but I am an Indian Muslim, which means I am a good businessman, like all Indian Muslims. All Pakistani Muslims, though, are terrorists." From what I understand, this is not a minority viewpoint in India. After an uneventful train ride to Delhi, we caught another auto directly to the airport, which went well most of the way. Until the part when he missed the exit for the airport, which was resolved in typical Indian fashion: we all got out and the driver and I pushed the auto backward about 30 yards against about seven "lanes" of traffic so that he could then swing off on the right exit. Upon arriving at the Delhi airport, I discovered that the haze I saw upon my arrival in India is in fact a permanent smog shroud that lingers right outside the Delhi airport (which is otherwise extremely nice). Thus concludes my Indian adventure...but not my novel:
A few general notes:
-Indians are very overboard in their obsession with film. There are countless theaters, all of which do great business, 90 % of new music is from Hindi films, and 90 % of their "news" is about actors.
-India has an immense trash problem. It is piled everywhere. I guess the good thing is that it feeds the many animals that are integrated into their urban environments: cows, buffalo, dogs, goats, and pigs.
-Traffic: It seems like organized chaos, but you discover it is pretty simple when you are in it. Just drive, preferably on the left side of the road, until you almost hit someone. At that point, the two of you carefully try to get in front of each other. Eventually one of you will win, and you can both continue on your way. In Ahmedabad, a city of about 4 million, I recall seeing maybe a half-dozen stoplights. There are posted speed limits, but they are pointless, since you can never get up to those speeds anyway. Some streets are also marked with lanes, which might serve even less a purpose. Also, horns are constant, but, unlike in the US, they are not used to say, "Hey, jerk, that was a bad move on your part." While they can say that, they are more typically used to alert other traffic to one's presence, like, "hey, don't swerve to the right, because I am right beside you" or "hey, I am about to venture into your oncoming lane of traffic." Also, if you have only a short distance to go, it is perfectly acceptable to drive the wrong way on the street rather than trying to swing a u-turn or some other maneuver; just stay off to the side as far as possible.
