Endia

Well, I made it out alive.  My overall impressions haven't changed in the three-odd weeks since my last post, and as always the bulk of my experience in terms of raw details is best captured in my photos, so this will cover the broad strokes and additional impressions of my final days in this vast, strange, awful, marvelous country.

Delhi

Arriving in Delhi, a fight almost broke out between two autorickshaw drivers over which of them I'd agreed to have take me to my hostel.  Violence was narrowly avoided.  This surreal experience gave weight to what I'd heard about Delhi being made up of rootless people engaged in desperate mercantilism, but the following five days, happily, didn't reinforce this view.  Certainly there were hawkers and cheaters about around the guest houses, but no more than in other Indian cities I'd been in.  By happy coincidence, I got into the city just in time to attend Comic Con India, which was fun.  I also spent the my last evening in the city with an Australian expat friend I'd made in Varanasi, drinking beer, talking about comics and watching (and making fun of) The Wrath of Khan.  Not exactly an authentic Indian cultural experience but a nice break from the near-constant novelty of travelling.

Photos:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152276025245879.1073741852.514945878&type=1&l=328c7f5573

Rishikesh

I'd heard about Rishikesh from one or two other travellers as being a much-needed respite after the frantic chaos of Delhi, and though I didn't find Delhi as bad as they seemed to, I still figured it would be worth visiting.  As it turned out it's a small city remarkable mainly as a nexus of yoga and meditation practitioners and Hindu gurus.   The upper reaches of the Ganges flow through the town, and it's surrounded by forested mountains inhabited by peacocks and large monkeys.  The scenery is quite beautiful, and in fact reminded me a lot of BC.  But unless one is planning to stay for weeks or months to study yoga or meditation, there isn't much to do here, not even any real hiking trails to which I could find reference.  By the second day I was ready to leave, and would have, had I not then come down with a flu that kept me in bed for most of the next three days.  As India goes, it was a decent place to recover at least - peaceful, but a bit chilly.

Photos:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152301270235879.1073741854.514945878&type=1&l=120dbd68e5

Jaipur

This was the only city in Rajasthan I visited, and I was there for not quite two days.  Like Agra, it's full of gorgeous heritage sites, the best of which in my mind was Jantar Mantar.  As a physics geek, for me this collection of preindustrial astronomical instruments had special appeal.  Though I'd seen pictures before arriving, I was stunned for a moment or two when I first entered the complex and saw it for myself.  That each of its towering buildings was in fact a functional machine for studying space made them more wonderous than any of the larger and more ornate temples and palaces to be seen in India.

Have a look!
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152301295420879.1073741855.514945878&type=1&l=b1cdc4751d

Mumbai

The most populous city in India, and the first place where I did any couchsurfing.  Anu Sharma, who put me up (and put up with me) in her home for six days, was a great host with a lovely home.  She generously let me stay the full six days I was in Mumbai instead of the two originally agreed upon when my follow-up host cancelled on me.  A large chunk of my time here was spent reading research papers and communicating with professors at various universities about potential graduate appointments, but the time I did spend in the city was fascinating.

I wrote in previous posts on this blog about the economic disparity evident in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, but they were paragons of egalitarianism next to Mumbai.  The city contains forests of high-rises and a fairly active nightlife, which I got to experience first-hand thanks to some contacts made through couchsurfing.  One particularly avant-garde skyscraper I saw, according to a native friend, was occupied entirely by one billionaire family as their downtown home.  They'd had it built for the purpose.  Meanwhile, some 9 million of the city's inhabitants - three times the entire population of Vancouver - live in the sprawling slums that occupy the larger part of the city's area, and which are visible almost everywhere outside the core affulent region.

I've also never been on a train as packed as the local trains in Mumbai in the morning, unsurprisingly given the city's general overcrowding.  At every stop, the crowd on the platform begins shouting and pushing into the train, compressing the already-squished passengers still further until there is hardly enough room to breathe.  Riding these trains, one gains a deep and nuanced understanding of the spectrum of body odours of the modern Indian city-dweller.

One thing that surprised me were the many cross-dressing beggars who inhabit the city.  I'd observed this phenomenon nowhere else in India.  They wear saris and head-wraps but make no effort to disguise their deep voices, and many have highly visible stubble on their faces.  A Russian expat friend explained that they form a community in the city; that transgendered people come to Mumbai to join them and to make money to afford castration operations; and that some of them make tens of thousands of rupees per month from begging (a substantial income).  I wasn't sure what to make of this in the context of India's quite conservative culture, but they were so common and so flamboyant - and apparently so successful - that I suppose they must be generally accepted by other Mumbaians.

Photos:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152303194580879.1073741856.514945878&type=1&l=e7a03bfc6f

Final Impressions

I don't recall mentioning this previously on the blog, but one thing I noticed throughout the rest of Asia was that in the static ads I saw for clothing and other fashion items, the models were almost invariably European in appearance.  Very few ads had models of the same ethnicity as the people being advertised to.  This apparently top-down enforcement of a Euro-centric ideal of beauty was unsettling.  India, happily, was an exception.  Most of the models pictured in Indian fashion ads were Indian, though predominantly on the pale end of the Indian skin spectrum.

More broadly:  I had a rough idea of a schedule of things to do when I started my month-and-a-half in India, but by the time I was half-way through the items in that plan I had just one week left in the country, so I had to drop most of the later destinations.  I kept hearing from other travellers about other destinations along my route, and usually decided to spend a few days checking them out.  Makaibari Tea Estate, Bodh Gaya, Khajuraho, and Rishikesh were all places I hadn't heard of before arriving.  One thing every traveller I met seemed to agree on was that India was packed with far more places to see and things to do than could possibly be done on one trip.  A Brit I met in Kolkata said it best: India is an acronym, standing for "I'll Never Do It All".

I think this is to do with the fact that India isn't really one country.  It's dozens of places with distinct cultures, histories, and languages, all lumped together as a single political entity.  And while my feelings about the country were conflicted, I find that despite myself I'd like to go back someday, to see things I'd missed and revisit some things I didn't.

I'm writing this post from Turkey, where a new wave of anti-government demonstrations have kicked off at about the same time I arrived.  Antalya, the town I'm in, seems unaffected, though there was a very peaceful and orderly march two days ago.  Most of my time here will be spent trekking, and it will probably be a month or so before my next post.  Until then, thanks for reading!

India

Long gap since the last post.  I've been in India for nearly a month now but haven't yet brought myself to take the time to write about it, partly because I wanted to wait until I had uploaded some photos to go with the post.

So - What to say about India?  I'll start with immediate impressions.

There are low standards of quality of all things - the pervasive attitude seems to be, why do better than just good enough?  Sheets on beds are rarely fully dry; toilets don't work properly; easily fixed problems like broken bathroom fixtures or loose door hinges are left to decay or given jury-rigged fixes, and get steadily worse.  Trains usually run hours behind schedule.  People urinate and defecate on the sidewalk.  Garbage is thrown into the street or the river, the nearest possible place that its owner can not have to immediately deal with it anymore.  Animals flourish in cities and towns as a result - cows famously, but also stray dogs and large monkeys.

Thieves, cheats, schemers, of all ages, predominantly male but not entirely.  Is this true of Indians generally?  Or is it only a property of those who gather around travelers, drawn to the easy money promised by naive people with fat wallets?  One cannot generalize from this self-selecting sample to the whole, but at the same time I have not encountered this in other countries to nearly the same extent.  What about Indian culture makes this kind of exploitation so common?  Does it share a common root with the widespread corruption in the country, itself stemming from the culture of "backsheesh"?  Or could it just be a product of India's exceptional poverty?  This doesn't seem right - I don't think India is really any poorer of a country than Ghana, where I recall the scammers were considerably fewer.

The food is generally very good, and very cheap.  When I leave it's going to be tough not being able to have Indian food for every meal of every day.

But all of these are minor factors, the kind of things which after a week one stops noticing much, and which then fade into a kind of third-world background noise.  So what are the more enduring impressions, the things that matter?

The one thing I really hate about India is related to the pervasive cheating I describe above.  The 99 people who approach you to get money from you make you suspicious of the one who genuinely wants to get to know you.  And the 98 of those 99 who try some scheme or want to grossly overcharge you harden you towards of the one honest businessman in the bunch.  If all one hundred were cheaters I wouldn't mind nearly as much.

On to more positive things.

For many Indians, just seeing and meeting a Westerner is a strange and marvelous thing.  Everywhere one goes one is stared at by half the strangers they pass; many smile, many others just look shocked.  Some want pictures with you ("Proof that I really saw a white guy!"), while others are happy to just take pictures of you as you pass, without asking - though I've only seen this happen to women travelers so far.  Some people, charmingly, want to add you on Facebook after five minutes of broken, language-inhibited conversation.

The best experiences I've had with people have been in public transit, specifically while riding trains and waiting in train stations.  Mass transit throws people together who otherwise would probably have no interest in one another.  The person across from you on the train isn't there to sell anything, they're there to get somewhere just as you are, so when they try to start a conversation, you know they're being genuine.  And Indians are more friendly and outgoing to strangers than people anywhere else I've been*, so there have been a lot of great encounters.

There is a pleasant, mildly comical rhythm to daily life in the cities and small towns.  Clusters of ragged-looking old men sitting around drinking chai, chatting and joking with each other.  The streets populated by both people and all manner of animals living, if not in harmony, at least in a kind of hierarchical equilibrium based on grudging mutual respect.  An unceasing background noise of honking horns from autorickshaws and motorcycles (cars aren't very common) as jams form and unform in the absence of anything resembling traffic lanes. Paintings of Shiva and other deities hanging in almost every room.  Sadhus on street corners.  The occasional cacophony of a nighttime wedding party, drummers and horn-blowers leading a groom on horseback and a procession of relatives and lamp-bearers.  Fun stuff.

Particular observations about the places I've been...

Kolkata

Exploring a city neighborhood in the morning; a market consisting of blankets spread out on the sidewalks along a street; vegetables, poultry, nine-inch prawns with whiskers still twitching.

Tremendous air pollution.  Spend twenty-four hours in Kolkata and when you blow your nose it will come out black.

Astonishing poverty.  Anywhere you look, in every nook and cranny, someone has taken up residence.  Elsewhere as well - homes made of plastic sheets stretched over bamboo frames.

The most memorable thing I saw in the city, more than the stately old British graveyard, was the "trash mountain" of the municipal dump, the subject of a recent documentary; a toxic, smoking five-kilometer-long wall of garbage inhabited by a community of trash pickers.  I was literally dumbstruck for about twenty minutes after seeing it up-close.

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152257978435879.1073741846.514945878&type=1&l=895d5ad110

Makaibari Tea Estate

Leaving Kolkata, a homestay at this tea estate was the next stop.  Emotionally worn by the often grim spectacle of the city's life and trying to get over a head cold, this turned out to be a perfect remedy.  High in the mountains in the Darjeeling region, far from anything resembling a major city, surrounded by spectacular scenery and genuinely friendly people, this was probably my favorite experience in India thus far.  For the whole stay I ate authentic Indian-Nepali home cooking which was taken with lots of tea grown almost right outside the door, all generously prepared by the mother of the family I was staying with.  I learned about the tea-farming business, played soccer with the local kids, and was taught to play carrom (badly) by my host family's son.

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152258009175879.1073741847.514945878&type=1&l=9e6315fea8

Bodh Gaya

Cool temples, nice vibe; more relaxed than big cities but more energetic than Makaibari.  Coming in to town I saw an elephant going down the road with some crops and a man on its back, but I was on the back of a motorcycle so I couldn't take a picture.

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152258027010879.1073741848.514945878&type=1&l=f6c29a046f

Varanasi

Varanasi is a sacred city in Hinduism due to its location right on the river Ganges, itself an object of reverence.  It's considered highly auspicious to die in Varanasi, and if one's body or ashes are put into the river it supposedly gives one's soul a direct path to Nirvana.  Consequently, there are lots of temples along the waterfront, and at two spots, bodies are burned on funeral pyres out in the open for all to see (though not to photograph).  The burning goes on night and day without ceasing, and hundreds of bodies are burned daily.  Lots of weddings are also held at the waterfront, with all of the pomp Indian weddings are famous for.  The whole cycle of life is thus brought together here (or nearly - I didn't see any births).

While the narrow streets make avoiding underfoot garbage and feces a constant effort, it's still a beautiful place down by the water, and I spent a good week mostly just drinking it in.

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152258050330879.1073741849.514945878&type=1&l=8b629ac02f

Khajuraho

Decided to make a quick stop here after hearing about it from a friend in Varanasi who was going this way.  Lots of temples covered with intricate carvings illustrating deities, animals, and sexual positions - often all three at once.  Worth seeing.  Couldn't say much about the town itself, except that I lost my passport and it was found by one of the guards from the main temple, who got it back to me.  Lucky break.

Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152258095155879.1073741850.514945878&type=1&l=a5d654f5ef

Agra

Agra was another one-day stopover so not much to say.  The Taj Mahal is worth the hype, and the Red Fort is very cool too.  Photos of this will come later.

That's all for now.  I'm in Delhi at the moment, and tomorrow I'm going to check out Comic Con India, which by total fluke I arrived just in time for.  Thanks for reading!

* With the arguable exception of Japanese girls in Roppongi clubs, but that's a different story :P