India In One Word

So far my painting of India has been incredibly one sided. This is because the craziest experience of my entire life involved booking a train ticket and running and jumping on the moving train I paid for. (Read more at When all the Doors on your India Train are Locked.)

The word that Indian tourism has chosen for itself is “incredible”, with their slogan being “incredible India!”

Now I’ve had time to think about my India trip and I had to come up with one word myself. Now truly, “incredible” has a positive “wowing” implication, but it could be used many ways.

For example, “the train system in India is incredible”, is something I’ve said probably 100 times. And while in India I found myself saying this view is “incredible” as well.

There is no place on earth like India. I’ve seen many many great views, but it’s so different in India. I’ve seen incredible sunsets in Thailand, New Zealand, Chile, the Cooke Islands, Greece, the Alps, South Africa, Mexico, etc… And each of these is to say that the view of nature is incredible.
Similarly, I’ve had many great views of cities. The skyline of Hong Kong, New York, London, Sydney, etc… they are all incredible.

Yet, the incredible views in India came with a meaning completely different. It wasn’t a tall skyline I wowed over, or an incredible beach (although they have those in the south), or a beautiful jungle or mountain (they have those too), it was something else.

India is a different world.

I’m not joking. Even when I got in the taxi in Mumbai and started my journey to the hotel I felt like Indiana Jones. Yes, I know the premise of Indiana Jones is much more adventurous than taking a taxi, but I’m talking about the feel of exploring.

Hopping in a tiny 1950’s car, and seeing the city is something I can’t explain with words. Which sucks… because I’m a writer. If I had to try, I would say: India more than anywhere on earth, gives its best views of her culture.

Fortunately I have pictures. This is Udaipur:

Udaipur is something I never heard of until kind of recently, yet it’s one of the biggest tourist destinations in India. Many of the best hotels in the world are here, and many celebrities from around the world have stayed in them.

The view is natural, yes. But it’s a view of culture. And I would say Udaipur more than anywhere else we went is more about natural views than cultural views.

The best view of culture is the next town over, Jodhpur. $4 and 6 hours on a bus brought us from Udaipur to Jodhpur, the blue city. We only spent two nights here, but it has some of my favorite memories.

I’ll never forget watching the sunset from the fort walls. We took a tuk-tuk down these tiny roads, which were often full of standstill traffic solely because of cows. We then walked up into this fort area and then climbed up on the fort walls to sit and enjoy the sunset. We could see the fort, the bluest of the blue city and the sunset.

But the sunset was eventually overshadowed by a group of monkies climbing from rooftop to rooftop. It started with one monkey climbing on some home owner’s roof to loot their drying food or whatever they had up there. One at a time the number of monkeys went from 1 to 20-something. And we watched them climb from one building to the next for way too long.

Another $4 and 6 hours via train brought us to Jaipur.

Jaipur was the low of my lows. I was enticed by saving a few bucks and staying at the cheap points hotels, but it wasn’t worth it. Never have I been followed so much and haggled so bad as I was here.

When we got off the train we walked out to the parking lot where all the taxis were and this kid comes up and asks us where we are going to sell us his taxi service. At this point I’ve googled how far our hotel is, and know what a reasonable tourist price is for tourists per km. This kid wanted to charge about 10x what I should pay. So I declined and walked away.

But he followed us. And whenever we would talk to another driver he would speak Hindi to them and they were obviously intimidated by this bully and they would not quote us a price (not until much later when he left). So we walked and he followed us. He explained that the other drivers do not know english and that we must go with him.

Telling him no and telling him to go away did not work! Instead of renouncing my pacifism, like I was oh-so tempted to, I eventually stared at him and asked him where I could find him if I wanted his service. He pointed to the entrance. And I said, “Great! If I need you, I will find you over there!”… Incredibly, it worked, and we were then free to get a non-bully taxi easily.

This sums up my experience here.

Then to top it off, I spent two days trying to book a train ticket. The most agrivating experience of my life.

If you met me during this week, I would have needed to explain later, “like, I normally smile and things”.

This was followed up by the greatest most epic train fail ever. Again, read When all the Doors of your India Train are Shut.

Another $4 and 6 hours got us to Agra. The only reason to go to Agra is the Taj Mahal. Which is maybe worth the $20 but not worth the two days and trouble I went through. Don’t get me wrong, it’s beautiful. But it’s also the biggest let down in India.

The Taj Mahal’s history is nice. The view from the outside is incredible. The actual experience is kind of nothing. Expecting the palace from Aladin (I loved that movie), and in reality it’s one tiny tiny room. You walk down the gardens taking pictures thinking “I can’t wait to get inside!”, and when you get inside it’s nothing. I actually tripped into the front door and fell out the back door. That’s what the experience felt like.

After 30 seconds inside, I exited and thought, “that can’t be it”.

All that to say, there are way better things to see in India and Agra is crap – which is certainly the predominate smell.

To read about our train ride to the north, again, read it here, because I don’t have the energy to tell that story again.

In Katra, I was happy to be in nature, enjoy the mountains and stick to my hotel during my episode of “Deli belly”. Katra and Jammu are teasers of the Himilyeans, and only make me want to go up into the Kashmir Valley, which we unfortunately did not do. That would be my next trip, I think.

Amrtisar

Hands down the friendliest people I met were in Amritsar at the Golden Temple. This is where Sikhism was born.

The Golden Temple alone is awesome and one of the best experiences in India. And maybe the Sikhs being so proud of this site, were so eager to show us around and explain things in great detail, even if we didn’t know the same language. Never have so many complete strangers shown such hospitality in such a small amount of time.

One cool travel experience was the free kitchen. I do not know how many thousands of people they feed a day but it must be more than I would think to exaggerate. Volunteers cook giant pots of food and then they serve it out like an assembly line. It’s actually good food too!

There are rows of long cloths to sit on. They single file you in and you take a seat and then the cart with each type of food comes by to serve you. In minutes it seems hundreds of new people have come in and an equal number leave.

The concept is from Sikh’s original founder, Guru Nanak, who made a large attempt to feed the poor. This is truly something to be proud of.

After the train incident I was shook up enough that I just could not take another train. Now I’d be fine, but at the time it just wasn’t happening. So now we took an expensive flight to Varanasi.

Varanasi is seriously the most intense place I’ve ever been. My friend who told me about it said I must go because it’s a lot of “faith and filth”, and no truer words have ever been spoken.

No where else was so crowded. The trash piles were unbelievable. I saw a cow climbing down into a ravine of trash. I don’t know how to exaggerate this, because it’s exactly what it sounds like. Imagine in the city a landscape of trash, a hill and a rivine, and the cow climbing down in it. Quite a site in a tuk-tuk.

Traffic was so terrible and it was so dusty. Many times after long tuk-tuk rides my throat would have pain when swallowing, so I started covering my face with a scarf during these rides.

But finally we got down to the river side temples. Big temples with tons of stairs lead crowds to the dirty water to do their ritual bathings. Pictures, video, and words, would do no justice to being there. No picture fully captures, the traffic, the crowds on the streets walking to the river, the river, the begging while you’re taking the photo, and the people.

Intense.

Another flight took us to Kolkata. My experience here was much less intense than Varanasi and much less interesting than Mumbai. I wouldn’t visit here if it weren’t a cheap flight to KL.

Which reminds me, I never really talked about Mumbai. We stayed at the InterContinental on Marine Drive which is the nicest hotel we stayed at in India. By far. It’s also a relaxed area. It was really nice being on the bay, the food was nice, the sites near by were nice. It was the easiest, mildest, and most pleasant experience in India.

I joke about when we started traveling I was scared to walk down this street in Hong Kong – which is such a joke. Being in the middle of China cured me of that irrational fear. You learn that people are people. Now there are dangerous areas anywhere, and I wouldn’t hangout many places in the world alone at night.

But I’m no longer afraid of the poorer areas. In fact, I’m curious of them. We had two interesting experiences because of this.

The first was in Mumbai just walking through a slum. People’s houses were tin sidings standing up straight with tarps as doors. Nothing is too private here. And honestly, these slums can be scary and depressing from the outside, and when I’m there no one treats me poorly. In fact, most seem surprised to see us there.

Anyways, as we’re walking a toddler was using layed out newspaper as a toilet. Clearly they fold it up, when they’re done and find a place to dispose of it. For whatever reason, this child is ingrained in my mind.

The second memory is much different, and this is just another typical experience in Jaipur. Jaipur had many beggars and tuk-tuk drivers that slept on the sidewalks at night. Walking around many of the cities, particularly Jaipur can be depressing because it’s just loads of people outside on the dusty sidewalk for the night. I mean the sidewalks were covered.

But this time we went through a labor camp. This dusty empty lot that I assume will one day be a big shopping center or hotel is covered with workers. They dig all day through the dirt doing who knows what and then sleep there.

One time when riding a tuk-tuk through this lot the kids, apparently commanded by their parents, chased after us begging. And it looked depressing but I needed to walk across it. Well, I could have taken a tuk-tuk and avoided it (kind of), but it seemed silly to take a taxi to avoid these people. So we walked right through it, not really to prove a point, but to get from point-A to point-B.

At first we started walking and tuk-tuk drivers followed us until the lot asking where we were going. “Just walking there”.

Then we walked across the empty lot towards the tents without anyone really noticing. Until, a parent or two did a summoning and then… then you could see them coming. A dozen kids followed us, sometimes holding on to us and one girl scratching me with her nails. Just minutes of intense begging.

Now this is what people fear, but they are just kids. They were dirty, poor, smiling, and intense. But they were just kids. The scratching annoyed me, but that normally doesn’t happen.

At the end, a tuk tuk driver came up to us and told us that we would take us wherever we were going for free. He looked sincere, but I said that we were almost there. He responded with, “yes, but be careful” and drove off.

Actually, these aren’t the frustrating parts for me. Booking tickets, haggling to do anything, people throwing their trash out the window of the bus, women with rented babies pretending to be begging moms, begging gangs, gangs. These are frustrating things about India. And you know what, it could all be avoided with a tour group or something. But I wouldn’t change it.

It took more energy than I had, but the train thing is what zapped most of my energy. Next time, I’ll be more prepared. For once, I’ll have to plan on going more than a few days in advance.

The day we flew to Asia was a few days after I booked tickets to Asia. The day we flew to Bali was the same day I booked tickets. This is how our travels go and India doesn’t work like that.

Conclusion

India is a place of extremes and some of the only real travel I’ve ever done. Rather, if travel is seeing something new, India is the purest form of travel. The culture, the landscape, the infrastructure, the history, everything. It’s all the opposite of what I’m used to.

It’s incredibly rich, incredibly poor. It’s incredibly hot a and incredibly cold. The biggest mountains and many beaches. The deserts and the most crowded cities in the world. Some of the most ancient history in the world, and with a new booming tech industry. The birth places of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Some of my heros including Gandhi and Mother Teresa are stories of India.

The best travel and the worst travel.

India is incredible.