No, I’m not dead

I’m just busy. I’ve had so little free time at the start of the trip that I haven’t had time to write a post. Deal with it. So I’m writing this one a little after the fact. A big part of the problem I’ve had is related to the fact that I’ve had to spend most of my free time making plans for the latter part of my trip. I also haven’t had as much time to spend on the computer since my first couple travel connections were flights, which didn’t leave me much train/car/bus time to kill.

So Delhi was worth a brief stop, but it wasn’t exactly my favorite travel destination. It had a couple nice historic sites downtown, including a medieval fort and a massive mosque built by the same crew. I also rolled through the area of town with India’s national monuments, major government buildings, and the president’s house. By far and away the highlight of Delhi, though, was a tomb of one of the ancient Mughal Emperors. It was very atmospheric, and I was able to get some great photographs (great by my standards, at any rate).

There were definitely some things about Delhi that I didn’t like. First of all, it’s the most polluted place I’ve ever been in my life. Right after getting picked up at the airport by a driver from my hotel, I asked him if there was a fire nearby because there was a noticeable acrid smell in the air and there was a thick smoke-like haze everywhere. No fire, that’s just how the air is. To be fair, it’s particularly bad out by the airport as the area is basically a plantless dust-bowl, but everywhere I went there was a thick haze in the air. On my flight leaving Delhi a couple days later I get in a conversation with a Chinese woman from Beijing, and she actually mentioned what a problem it was. If you’ve got somebody from urban China complaining about the pollution and smog, you know you’ve got a problem.

Delhi was also pretty sprawling. It’s not very tourist-friendly, without a small, walkable core to it. I suppose a certain amount of sprawl may be inevitable in a city of 13 million people, though. It’s not as if the population density wasn’t high. The concentration and sheer mass of humanity packed into the streets in the area I was staying in was shocking. This is probably partially my fault, though. I picked a hotel that was described in reviews as being located “at the end of a long, dark alley situated in the middle of a slum”. At the time I chalked this up to people being prissy, insulated little whiners that haven’t ever traveled to the developing world. At least in this case, though, they were absolutely right. The “street” we were located off of was basically a big dusty, dirt track lined with small concrete block shacks with corrugated metal roofs, or in many cases just corrugated metal walls, as well. Off this you then had to walk about 40 yards into a side alley which at many points was no wider than 4 or 5 feet across to get to the hotel. I would not have thought it possible to get that much dust and dirt in an urban environment with so many people. Ironically, I actually liked the hotel. The rooms were decent, the staff was helpful, and the building was quiet, and they had great food. It was just in a horrid location. Being there actually gave a fascinating look into the life of India’s urban poor. This neighborhood had crappy back-alleys off of back-alleys that seemed to go on forever, with legit looking businesses and people’s homes tucked into them. It’s as if there’s an entire hidden world in these crevices and crannies hidden from the streets.

This environment was just a block or two away from two of the city’s most significant sites, the Jama Masjid Mosque and the Red Fort. I wanted to stay there partially because I did want to be able to walk to as much of the things I wanted to visit as possible. I didn’t spend too much time outside the hotel, though. Even once you got outside of the serious slum area I was in, it was still pretty seedy. There was a market just to the north of me, but navigating the crush of people there was so difficult, and the area was sketchy enough that even I needed to seek refuge back in the hotel. This is saying something as I often enjoy seeing the seedy underbelly of places I go, and am generally able to shrug off conditions in cities I travel to that people would find appalling back home.

The squalor I experienced in Delhi was just about made up for by the quality of the food. There was a renowned restaurant just a few blocks from me that I hit on Saturday. All I can say is “wow”. The food there was almost unbelievably good. I had mutton burra, a kind of barbecued mutton (although I actually think it was goat), aloo gosht, a rich goat brown curry with potatoes, and sahi paneer, a cream and tomato based curry made with paneer, the ubiquitous . I didn’t recognize it by name, but when I came out I realized the shahi paneer was something I’ve had many times before at Indian restaurants in the US. Normally, it doesn’t turn my crank all that much. At this place I damn near licked the bowl clean, despite the fact that I had ordered two full entrée-sized portions of food. The other items were equally as good. The total cost for this feast ended up being around $5. (Incidentally, this place wasn’t in the full-blown slum with the men bathing themselves on the sidewalk and homeless cripples and midgets laying around on the street, it was just in the adjacent semi-slum with the stores with piles of decapitated goat heads out front) (I think one of those goats ended up in my food, by the way). And while this place was definitely the standout for food, the other places I ate at didn’t disappoint either. Even my hotel (in the alleyway in the middle of the slum) had great food.

I don’t want to give the impression that all of Delhi was so shockingly desperate. Many parts of it are relatively nice, it’s just not where I ended up.

While the food was great, the nightlife was a bit of a bust for me. I was there on a Saturday night, so I had high expectations for going out and meeting some pretty Indian girls. Most of the nice clubs are in the high-end hotels in the city. One of the guys from my hotel recommended one, so I threw on the set of nice duds I brought and headed out. Upon arriving, I saw a fancy, modern hotel, with a swank looking club on the first floor, and some rather attractive ladies walking in that were no doubt representatives of the moneyed Indian upper class. This was all rather promising, so I head in. I get to the door, and the host asks me “Are you a guest in this hotel?”. “No”, I tell him, at which point he informs me that the cover charge is 4000 rupees. I do the math in my head, and thinking that can’t possibly be right, pull out my phone and use the calculator to confirm that yes, this clown just asked me for $90 US to get into the club. Based on the cost of living and relative purchase power, this would be like being asked for $450 to get into a place in the US. Thinking I don’t need to spend that kind of money to go in and feel awkward because I don’t fit in with the crowd and being resentful because I know I never would have been asked for such an outrageous sum if I were either female or not a foreigner, I decline, head back to the hotel, watch a bit of Indian MTV, and go to bed. This of course reminds that I actually hate night clubs and how much I despise the bullshit at them, regardless of in what part of the world they’re located.

One of the things I was able to polish up in Delhi was the plans for the rest of my trip. I booked two flights to get me to my next two cities, and then arranged for a private driver to take me the rest of the way. Being by myself, the driver was a bit of a splurge, but should be worth it. I’ll get to cover a lot more territory in my time, and will have lots more flexibility. It will also allow me to spend my time experiencing the places I’m at, instead of trying to figure out train and bus schedules every single night. As part of the package I also had the tour operator who set me up with the driver pre-book all my hotels up until the 17th when I finish with the driver, so the rest of the trip will hopefully be hassle-free. Here’s the schedule:

Day 1-2: Delhi
Day 3-4: Varanasi (with day trip to xxxuusdfklsj )
Day 5: Khajuraho; get picked up by driver
Day 6: Orccha
Day 7: Agra; Fathepur Sikri
Day 8-9: Jaipur
Day 10: Pushkar
Day 11-12: Udaipur
Day 13-14: Jodhpur
Day 15-16: Jaisalmer
Day 17: Bikaner
Day 18: Mandawa
Day 19: Delhi
Day 20-21: Hyderabad
Day 22: fly back to Delhi, catch one last Indian meal, fly home

So next it was on to Varanasi. This is a holy city for Hindus, who believe that they can be purified by bathing in the river waters, and that someone who dies there can also be freed from the continual cycle of death and reincarnation central to their religion. In addition, many people are cremated along the holy river there for reasons which escape me and I’m too lazy to look up at the moment. So you can walk along the river and see some startlingly intimate portions of people’s lives going on: people performing their ritualistic bathing in the river, public cremations on wooden pyres in full view of anyone passing by, and nightly outdoor religious ceremonies. All this sacred activity is going on intermixed with the completely mundane activities also going on along or in the river: people watering their goats and cows, doing laundry, kids flying kites and playing cricket, etc.

I’ve traveled an awful lot, but it must be said the Varanasi was completely unlike any other place I’ve ever been. Just really amazing. In addition to all the aforementioned highlights, one of the most charming and simultaneously repulsive aspects to the city was the intermingling of animals with the people in the urban environment. While not the cheek-to-jowl setup of Delhi, it’s still very densely populated, and in this environment it seems every third person is keeping a cow or a small pack of goats. There are no fields for these cows or goats, they’re literally just living out in the streets, in the back alleys, or in the steps along the river (called ghats) where people bathe, wash their clothes, and cremate their dead. So it’s charming because, well, how can it not be? It cracked me up to be driving around in traffic in the middle of the city waiting for a herd of cattle to get out of the way. And it’s repulsive because, as you can probably imagine, the city is inundated with shit (literally). There really isn’t any trash pick-up, so the animals do their business, and there it stays. This is particularly true of the most touristic areas along the river. There’s one main road that runs parallel to the river, about 60-70 yards away. To get to the river (and most likely your guest house), you have to navigate a mass of tiny back alleys crammed with homes, small shops, guest houses for the religious Hindu visitors, and craft shops (silk weaving is apparently big business in Varanasi). Many of the residents in this area keep their own sacred cows, and many that don’t bring their cows and goats through there to get to the river. So I found it to be incredibly quaint to have to step over a lounging 1200 pound brahmin bull to get to my hotel, but at the same town was absolutely disgusted by the amount of feces lying around. And the people there were extremely nonchalant about it. Women would clean their laundy, then lay it out to dry on the same ghat steps that the animals are continually shitting all over. Guys are just sitting around on the steps along the river (ugh). I didn’t even want to think about the amount of goat crap on the cricket ball the kids were playing with. And of course, all this runs off into the river which may of the locals and Hindu visitors are bathing in. I did my damnedest to not touch anything or anyone the entire time I was there. Being both a city boy and a non-dog-owner, I’ve got serious issues with animal feces, and felt filthy the entire time I was in Varanasi, and continued to do so until I arrive at my next location, washed every single item of clothing I had work during that time as well as my jacket, cleaned my shoes, wiped down my bags and everything else I was carrying (including my laptop, cell phone, and all other personal belongings). It was a fascinating place and definitely worth going to, but if I come back I think it’s going to be in a head-to-toe gore-tex suit with a gas mask. Either that, or stay in a hotel that whenever someone enters they are stripped naked, have their clothes incinerated, and a given a jail-house style power spray wash and fresh clothing before they are allowed in.

After Varanasi I caught a flight to Khajuraho. It’s a city in central India with a large cluster of Hindu temples covered in incredibly intricate sculptures. The recurrent themes in the sculptures are Hindu religious images, women, and sex (or as the non-English speaking caretakers of the temples say when they point at them “Kama Sutra, Kama Sutra”). While the erotic content was amusing (there were some particularly acrobatic scenes depicted in some cases), the sculptures were also great art. And while the architecture there was amazing, I also loved Khajuraho because it was clean-ish. There was still an awful lot of dirt in the air, and while there are still cows and goats roaming the streets most everywhere you go, the levels of dirt and shit were tolerable. I think this will be much more representative of much of India. Enough animals wandering around through traffic to be cute, but not so many that you feel like your entire body is coated with a thin film of cowpie every time you come back from being outside. Thank god. Apparently, the amount of cows in Varanasi is particularly large because of its religious significance there.

At Khajuraho I hooked up with my driver and we headed to Orccha. It’s a small town with a massive fort, a set of medieval palaces, huge Hindu temple, and other associated historical structures. I really liked this place. All the buildings were amazing, particularly the large Hindu temple. It was almost like visiting the zoo. It had a bunch of monkeys hanging around on the roof, a vulture and it’s new offspring perched along the dome, a large bright green parrot zipping around the upper parts, and a bunch of bats that were living in the dark underside of the ancient stone dome. A young Indian guy was able to let me into the locked door leading to the interconnected sets of hidden halls and stairwells in the building to lead me up there. He hustled me for an exorbitant tip at the end, but it was well worth it to see the menagerie in the building and to get some fantastic shots of the other buildings in the town from the roof, including one of me feeding the monkeys on the rooftop. I also scored some amazing street food in Orccha. It was called aloo something-or-other, unfortunately I can’t remember. Essentially, it was a deep-fried crushed potato, which was then stir-fried with some onion, cilantro, some kind of soupy brown beans or lentils, garam masala and other seasonings, and served with a mango and tamarind sauce in a bowl make out of two large tree-leaves formed into a bowl using toothpicks. Killer.

After Orccha, it was on to Agra. I saw a certain building there which you likely have heard of. It didn’t disappoint. Be sure to check out the photos when they are up (taking a while as I have yet to stay at a hotel with functioning internet in my room). As I write this post I’m on the way to Jaipur. I’ll try to post more regularly going forward. Now that I’ve got a driver, I should have 2-3 hours of car time every couple days which should allow me to keep up. Cheers.