India, 3rd week

PHOTOS: McLeod Ganj / Monks debating outside the Central Chapel McLeod Ganj / Sakyamuni Buddha McLeod Ganj / Mani prayer wheels in McLeod Ganj / India Gate Delhi / Aerial view of Paharganj from Club India restaurant Delhi / Laksmi the Elephant Hampi / Virupaksha Temple Hampi Bazaar / View from near Anjuna Goa / Largest hand washing laundy area in Asia Mumbai / Old Fiat taxis in Mumbai near CST / Gateway to India Mumbai

Tuesday 23rd June 2009, 1600Hrs local time McLeod Ganj

India is not dirty. It is filthy. Everyone throws trash in the open. I have seen cow shit cleaned up but not street trash. I hate littering and on the city tour in Delhi, I carried my trash around from morning to afternoon. Sometime in the mid afternoon, an Indian also on the tour finally said to me. “Why don’t you just throw it in the ditch? You won’t find a bin anywhere.” Fed up of carrying my trash around for 5 hours I tossed it in the ditch. That felt shitty. This is my third week in India. I am currently in the exiled HQ of the Tibetan government, home to the exiled 14th Dalai Lama – McLeog Ganj. It has been here since 1949 that the 14th Dalai Lama and his government has made home since the Chinese Cultural Revolution almost obliterated the 2000 year old Tibetan civilization. Here on this hilly town, the Tibetan culture is very much alive. It feels like Tibet. It was a grueling 15 hour bus ride from Delhi. It is the only way to get here. It gets harder as one heads north as the mountain roads and passes only open during the summer months. The alternative is to fly to places like Leh in Ladakh or Srinagar in Kashmir. Tomorrow I head to Amritsar to get fed in the Golden Temple with the thousands of Sikhs and watch the pompous closing of the border at the Pakistani-India border Indian town of Attari. I return in 5 days to head eastwards to Manali, then further north to Leh. It will be a 1 day bus ride to Manali and 2 day bus ride from Manali to Leh. The road is now open. I will not have time to continue onwards to Srinagar in Kashmir. In total to get to Leh, it will have taken 3 days on the bus. The roads are full of pot holes and very windy and reaching elevations where AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) may begin to set in. I figured that I am already here and might as well head further north. God knows when I will be in this part of the world again. I arrived in India 3 weeks ago in Mumbai. Within 5 days I had had 2 strange Indian fellows stalk me to my hostel. Been asked a gazillion times if I was married, single and had kids. So now my response is that I am married, 3 kids and my husband is a big man and will be here in 10 minutes. Been asked if I wanted to buy weed. Got recruited to a Bollywood set and got paid 500 Rupees. One of the fellows who followed me to my hostel, the story goes: earlier in the day I was visiting the Jain Temple in Mumbai. Later that day, as I was walking down Colaba Causeway ( I was staying in Colaba in the Salvation Army hostel, diagonally across the Taj Mahal hotel which is closed and currently undergoing repairs from the 2007 bomb blast) towards the 2nd shithole place I was staying at (some place called Venus Guest house) this Indian approaches me and says hello (I already had many Indian fellow greet me on the street. This is a thing that happens to lone female tourists. It is harmless most of the time) He says he recognizes me from earlier in the day when I visited the Jain Temple where he was garbed in his holy white toga prayer getup with his face half covered. I acknowledged it and it continued into harmless conversation. Somewhere in the conversation I had mentioned where I was staying. Duh. OK, nice to meet you then we say good bye. 4 hours later or so when I return to my hotel, he is standing in the stairway. Now, most Indian hostels and budget hotels, will not permit guests in for a security measure. This fellow tells me that he is a professional sex therapist and if I or any of my friends would like a personal consultation. I look him in the eye and ask him if he wants me to summon the police. Having said this, he leaves immediately. To cut a long story short. I was pretty blunt and to the point. At this point, 6 months on the road, after Morocco and the middle east, I am rather fed up of being accosted and squeezed for every dime out of my pocket. Nothing shocks me anymore and I get rude when I want to. You have to or they take advantage of you. The second place I stay is a shithole. The first room I get has an attached bath with a hole in the wall for a window right in front of the shower. Upon inspection I saw a person looking straight at the window from the opposite wall. So big deal. I stick a sarong on the window. Problem solved. With the heat and humidity in Mumbai, you really need AC. Well the room has AC but the room had no fan or window. Well guess what. At about 1am the AC dies. To cut a long story short, the hotel had no one at the front desk so I had to call the front desk with my cell phone with me sitting right there to get someone awake. Once down, the hotel owner and the manager, and 2 staff all show up. I am beyond pissed by now. Who likes to wake up in the middle of the night gasping for air, and I mean, literally choking for air because it is so damn hot and no air in the room. At 145 am they offer to fix the AC. By this time I have my pack on my back and I am screaming at them to give me another room. I eventually get it but it is with a shared bath facilities. I couldn’t give a shit just as long as the room had AC. Oh yeah the hotel staff slept on mattresses on the floor right in front of the communal toilets and baths. How the hell are you supposed to get to the facilities in the middle of the night without stepping over them? This is India for you. Not your package tour 4-5 star hotel but backpacker cheap lodging. Day number 2 and there is no water at the hotel. I won’t go further into this. But I end up taking a shower at another hostel where some people were staying whom I had befriended on the Bollywood set. I left Mumbai for Anjuna in Goa and stayed at a nicer hotel. Took the 8 hour train ride down to Thivim. Monsoon season and I was lucky. The 3 days I was there the sun was out. I heard the 3 previous days it had rained continuously. The rain picked up on the day I left for Hampi. I had befriended a German lady who is working in Pune at the hotel in Anjuna. We traveled together by train to Hospet 3rd class AC (sleeper). It was her 1st time on the train and was pretty nervous. The Indians stare at you and they will stare for up to 7 hours on the train. That is another thing I can’t stand about India. The people stare at you. And they keep staring. It is very annoying. They also don’t queue or line up. That is another story. On this particular train ride, there were 8 sleeper beds per open compartment. I saw 2 uppermost sleepers get filled with boxes and suitcases, meticulously stacked with no space to spare. The train was on its from Vasco da Gama in Goa to Howrah near Kolkatta. A newly wed couple and their families were on their way home or visiting and had tons of luggage. First off, there isn’t a lot of room for your luggage. And these families had enough to fill a container barge. The drinks and food pass throughout the train ride and you buy when you want something so you never go thirsty or hungry. I don’t even need to describe the condition of the toilets. I will let your imaginations run wild. What I will tell you is that the Indian Railway sewage system is the railroad track itself. If you don’t travel AC class, which, I didn’t on the return, you DO smell the stench of the shit and urine. Oh yeah, and of course there is trash on the railroad tracks. After all, this is India. Absence of trash on the ground would be a shock. The train was really dirty. At one of the stops when the cleaners came on board to sweep out the trash, the pile of trash which collected as a result of the fellow sweeping was unbelievable. Again, I won’t go into it. I think you get the idea. While in Hampi, I stayed in the Hampi Bazaar. I got to see Lakshmi the temple elephant get her daily morning bath in the river. I followed her walk from the temple down to the river. What an experience! At the Vittala Temple a monkey jumped on me to try and grab my water bottle from my arm. How exciting! I have been chased by cows in Goa and in Hampi. In Goa, I was busy taking pictures of a calf when its father decided to charge me. Boy, did I run for my life! In Hampi, I rented a bicycle and got lost. I got transported across river on a coracle (a small rounded boat made of hides stretched over a wicker frame) with another motorbike on it as well and a ton of people! Before I got on it I saw the guy bail water out of it with a metal bucket. Then as he loaded my bicycle and another man’s motorbike, the coracle filled with water again. Then the people got on. Two men or boys paddle the coracle to the other side. Another coracle going in the opposite direction, the locals in it whipped out their cell phones and started taking pictures. When asked, I was told that they were taking pictures of a tourist with her bicycle on a coracle: me. Haha. How funny. I turned around and whipped out my camera and took photos of them. So like I was saying earlier, I took the wrong turn and rode out in the direction of Kampli. I added an additional 40km and 2 hours to my ride. I was tired and frustrated because I didn’t know where the hell I was going. With the cows, goats and children chasing me (and I mean, CHASE!) I was getting hostile. As the heat of the sun wore down on me and all I had were flip flops on on a shitty bike with a shitty seat, I was getting crankier as the day wore on. The kids after a while are not cute. They become a menace. When there are 10-12 of them and they are determined to push you over or ride on your bike, believe me you cycle for dear life! Along the way locals working their buffaloes in the rice fields would wave at me. Kids would yell out “Schoolpen! Schoolpen!” They want schoolpens or coins from your country. After a tiring 7 hours I finally got back in time to say byes to the German lady who was leaving that evening. I supposed I saw more in 2 hours of the real India then I would had I gone the right way and followed the tourist path. Another interesting thing that happened earlier in the day was that I ran into a Malaysian couple, and 2 Singaporeans at a restaurant after the river crossing. They were working in Bangalore with a Singaporean development company and had taken the weekend to visit Hampi. We chatted and exchanged contact info and I got invited to stay with them if I found myself in Bangalore. They footed the bill for my lunch and the whole while were very impressed to hear my tales. They kept saying that the real way to see India would be to do it the way I was doing it. We discussed the Indian train conditions. But when I asked them what class they were traveling, they gushed and said first class. Obviously, there is a BIG difference between first and third class, let alone non AC sleeper class! Yeah, the cow is king. Shit everywhere. They eat what they want, drink what they want, sit where they want, sleep where they want. They are the holy one the king of the road. They wander all over the place. While I was dining with the German lady and another traveler from Finland (both of whom I had met in Goa) a cow walked in on us. How funny! My next stop after Hampi was Delhi. I stayed in an area called Paharganj, which, has been told to me, will no longer be around since the road in the one Main Bazaar will be widened and all the hotels in the area closed. If you need to wear a face mask, this is the street. Dusty and dirty. I got a bad sore throat within the first day I got in. The hotel where I stayed at was down a side alley and there was a group of American students and their professor occupying the place for their 10 week media course from San Francisco State Uni. Actually come to think of it, I have met more Americans in India than any other country I have been to so far on this trip. I have met more recent college grads traveling India than any other type of traveler. The Main Bazaar is Paharganj and you cannot walk and not shop. OMG. Have I shopped. I have bought too many cotton clothes. They go for about USD2-3 depend how your bargaining skills are. I like to think my haggling skills have been somewhat refined since Morocco. Traveling in India with the bus or train both entail long travel times. The roads are so bumpy and the trains are never on time. Taking a bus is quite a fiasco. The first bus I took from Delhi to McLeod Ganj was total chaos. The other foreigners and I were picked up by a rep at our hotels and guided to a pick up point. We were then picked up and brought to another central location. All the time nothing explained and people getting frustrated just because nobody knew if we were on the right bus. The RIGHT bus to the RIGHT destination. Then the stops in the night for the men to get off and pee. Forget the women. Then the AC dies. Next time I will get a non AC since buying a seat on a bus with AC you can be guaranteed the AC will stop functioning or the bus engine has overheated so the AC has to be turned off . Anyway from this point onwards I expect more amusement along the way all the way to the Nepalese border. Right now I am enjoying the Tibetan ways in McLeod Ganj. I stopped by the Dalai Lama residence yesterday and obviously was not granted a drop in hello. Somehow I doubt I will see real Tibet when I get to Tibet since the Chinese Cultural Revolution has surpressed the Tibetan ways since 1949. I visited the Tibetan Museum today and had a good insight into the history of Tibet since 1949.

India Exerpt #1: Driving and Honking in India & the Mumbai Taxis

If you drive in India I guess you are expected to honk. I supposed if you don’t honk enough you didn’t pass your driving test. The little non-taxi autorickshaw vehicles which transport goods around or even the smaller vans have the sign in the rear saying “Honk OK Please”. I have observed the taxi, bus , autorickshaw drivers honk when there is nothing obstructing them. The thing I enjoy about catching a taxi in Mumbai is that the meter is on the outside (on the older Fiat models circa late 1950s-early 60s model) and you can indicate to the taxi man that you will turn it on for him right before you get in, that way you make sure the meter is on when you are moving.

India Exerpt #2: The Concept of Queueing or Lining Up India

At Rajiv Chowk metro stop in Delhi people queue. Once the train arrives everyone gets out of formation and makes a dash for the interior of the train. People coming out get pushed back in, well, sometimes. I HAVE! Here's another concept of queueing in action. At the Laksmi Narayan Temple in Delhi I was trying to deposit my shoes and camera/cell phone (See Exerpt #3 Security in India) and of course there was no line or queue. I only had 30 minutes to see the temple as part of the city tour but it took about 15 minutes to deposit my shoes and cell phone and camera. And another 5 minutes to pick them up, if I was lucky. Yeah I made a dash for it. It felt more like refugees reaching out for food at the counter rather than depositing one's shoes and getting a token for it.

India Exerpt #3: Security is Tight

Eversice the 2007 bomb blast at the Taj Mahal in Mumbai, I am assuming, you get x-rayed and spot checked going into the Delhi metro, temples, and public areas. Most temples don't even let you bring your camera or cell phone with camera in. So much for being able to take pictures. On my domestic flight from Goa to Delhi, after my check in went through the scanner, I was asked to open my bag and take out to show them precisely: batteries, swiss army knife and travel speakers. This is the only efficient thing I have observed in India. For the security person to pin point exactly what they wanted to see in my check in bag. Security at its finest, when the person is efficient.