India

Home « Life in Taiwan « Travels « Links «  Contact

Asian Adventures: India

(12.07.03)

Whoa this is a big one. I've been plagued by bad internet connections that keep freezing and preventing me from writing so it just gets longer and longer. Sorry!

Varanasi

Blow that Horn!

We arrived in India after walking across the border from Nepal . We hopped on a bus instead of taking a hugely exorbitant taxi. Gotta love when prices quintuple for foreigners! So we're sitting on this ancient smelly bus and it isn't going anywhere. Then Katie sees our bags walking down the street. I flew off the bus to find out where my bag was going. Turns out the bus decided it wasn't going to go to Varanasi after all, we had to take the taxi. Luckily he gave it to us for the same price as the bus. However everyone that had been on the bus now all crammed into 1 taxi. There were about 12 or 13 of us packed into it. It was tight. Our driver had three loves: 1. Hindi pop, which he kept cranked up to full volume the entire way. 2. Bubblegum, which he kept offering to me. There are only so many pieces you can actually fit into your mouth--even mine. 3. His horn, which he pushed the entire way. Now we aren't talking just lots of beeps. No. No. I mean when we got in the car he pressed the horn and pressed the gas pedal and didn't let up on either one the whole 2 hours to Varanasi . I don't think we braked once. We only swerved. He did all swerving one handed too since his other hand was glue onto the horn. That was one fun ride.  

Don't Look Down...Do Look Down...The Great Question

We arrived in Varanasi and found a city with heaps of people and heaps of cows. There were cows just roaming EVERYWHERE! The city looked like a Texas cattle ranch. So loads of cows also means loads of cow patties. Also, let me add that every family in India has about 20 goats, 5 dogs and a couple of chickens. Even city people. These animals also just wander the streets with the cows. Also, India has yet to invent trash pickup and garbage man is not a profession that exists in India . Loads of trash also means loads of rats. And with all those big cow hooves it also means lots of dead rats. Katie and I stepped off our rickshaw and walked straight to our hotel and changed into boots. The Indians walk through this nastiness barefoot but Katie and I were keeping our feet completely covered. Good thing. I can't even begin to tell you what was on the bottom of my shoes everyday but whatever it was smelled bad. We could always smell it at meal times and at night. So we started to look down all the time and try to really watch where we stepped. The only problem with this is you can actually see the dead rats and rotting fruit. And when you actually do have to walk on this to get across the street it makes you want to throw up. So I kinda just stopped looking down and decided to just let my boots smell.

Holy Cesspool

So all that nastiness I mentioned above...now let me tell you that all of that drains into the Ganges River . Now many of you I'm sure have heard of the Ganges River . It is a very holy place in Hinduism. Their religion says that all people have to be cremated and then dumped in the Holy River . So there are all these ghats up and down the river where they burn people and dump their ashes into the water. This is just like it was in Nepal . Nepal however does not have the wood shortage that India does. So many many people cannot afford the great amount of wood that it takes to burn a body, especially since the wood selling people are greedy and dishonest. So the only buy enough to burn the body half way or maybe only a little. Then they just dump it in the river so you can see half burnt bodies floating by. Now if you are a pregnant woman, a child or really really poor then you cannot be burned so they just dump your whole body into the river. Also, since cows are holy animals, they too get dumped whole into the river when dead. Now it gets worse (I know you are wondering how this can be). The Ganges River is such a holy place that people are supposed to bathe in it and wash the holy water all over themselves. So in addition to burning ghats, there are bathing ghats. Thousands of people line the banks of the river and bathe in this water. The women go in with their sarees wrapped around only their waists and the men go in with these loin cloth things that I suppose they think cover them but in reality don't hide anything. They fully submerge themselves in this water scrubbing it all over their bodies and swishing it in their mouths as dead bodies float by. They even wash their clothes in it. The water is this greenish brown color that kinda resembles diarrhea. It has no real current and doesn't move very well. It's basically raw sewage. Katie and I read a statistic that the Ganges has 1.5 million particles of faecal colliform per 100ml. For those of you who don't know. 100ml is about a third of one of those old glass bottles of coke. Water safe for bathing should have less than 500 particles. Not even drinking, just safe for bathing. And this has 1.5 million! Anyone up for a scuba dive!?

Avoid Being Ripped Off: Shellie's Top 3 Ways

1. Utilize Tourist Police
We pitch up at the train station after an all night train and some taxi drivers tell us there is an auto rickshaw strike. We think yeah right. You just want us to take a taxi. I was going to go to ask the prepaid taxi stand if this was true when I noticed the tourist police stand. We went it and asked the policeman inside. Sure enough, there was. But he said, you aren't going too far and the taxis will be stuck forever in traffic, take a cycle rickshaw. We say okay, how do we do that. Well instead of telling us he marches outside, waves one down, tells the driver that we will pay him 15rupees (this is peanuts) to take us to our guesthouse. He said it 5 times and the poor cycle man/kid looked terrified. He found out the kid's name and introduced him. Loaded our bags on and helped us in. He even waved as we rode off. We later found out that usually you have to pay more than this and they always ask for even more money in the end. Our guy didn't. He still looked scared when we climbed out.

2. Stand by Big Guys with Guns
In Nepal they had kids with guns. In India they have enough people in their country that they can stock their army with men who can at least shave. So we want to go back to the train station and the cycle rickshaws are balking at our 15 rupee price. They want 80. Ridiculous! So we walk to a traffic circle where there are some big guys with guns (BGWG). We stand by them and hail a rickshaw. They wave away 4 that don't speak English and when they find one who does the guy looks at the BGWG when he starts to bargain with me. He starts at 30. I say 15. He says (still looking at the BGWG) 25. I say 15. He says 25. Then BGWG look at me and so I say 20. The BGWG nod and the rickshaw man waves us into his cart. 20 rupees! That's much better that 80!

3. Ask Other Foreigners How Much It SHOULD Cost.
We pitched up at yet another train station and were trying to get somewhere. This time no tourist police and no prepaid taxi. So we had to get one on our own. We asked some other foreigners how much it should cost to get where we were going and they said 20-25 rupees. We get in the cab. We say we want to go on the meter and how much is that. He says 50 rupees. I laugh and say 20. He says 35. I say, when that meter hits 20 rupees I'm getting out and walking. He starts driving. We got to our hotel for 26 rupees. He only drove around the block once. I think we did alright.

Calcutta

Antique Road Show

Everything in this city is in various states of decrepitude. Actually most things are in a very advanced stage of decrepitude. Every single taxi is an Ambassador Classic, straight out of 1950 or something. Every single one! The busses. Words cannot convey the state that they are in. Dirty and falling apart to say the least. In fact on the way from the train station our taxi thought he could drive straight through 2 busses. They were in two outside lanes that were merging into two lanes. I don't know if the cab thought he could squeeze through like they do in the movies or something but he didn't quite make it and we were stuck. There was some backing up involved to unstick us which is quite a feat in and of itself in Indian traffic. No one cared about the dents and scratched paint either. It just added to what was already there.  

Censored!

Men in India are so great. They say inappropriate things to you and grope you from time to time. Katie has much greater problems with this since she is blond. One night we're walking and I'm a bit in front of her because we were in a hurry and my longer legs go faster than her shorter ones and all of a sudden I hear Katie yell "F**K YOU!" Now, for those of you who don't know Katie, she is just the nicest girl. I don't think I've ever really heard her curse before, much less the dreaded "F word". Apparently some group of men had said "Hey Baby!" and really groped her good. I guess that is what my mom meant when I was little and she told me you should only say those kinds of words when you have probable cause. I'd say Katie had probable cause, but it sure was funny to hear her yell it in the middle of a crowded Indian street.

Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity

We went to the legendary Motherhouse while in Calcutta and volunteered to help for several days. There was a group of 10 or so Americans from Seattle that were volunteering through their university for a term so we got to hang out a lot with them. It was so nice to spend some time with our own kind. Everyone in this country seems to be British. Below is an account of what we did there.

Leprosy is a REAL disease? I thought it was just in the Bible

Thursday is not a work day for volunteers which was cool since it was Thanksgiving. We got to visit the Mother Teresa Leper Colony. The Missionaries of Charity treat the patients who are ostracized from society. Once they are cured, (Yeah, I thought only Jesus could heal lepers, but the Bible left out the part that medicine does the trick as well. I just takes longer) they can't really go work because many of them have deformities or are now missing various limbs. So they have the option to work in the colony as well. They have various jobs depending on their capability. Some of them clean and some cook. Some teach in the leper colony school. Some of them make the prosthetic limbs for patients that have to have limbs amputated. That was pretty cool. But the coolest of all was the ones who sew. I now know how they make cloth. I watched the whole process. There is a factory with maybe a hundred people or more. Some spin the yarn into thread onto spools. Then they take these spools and put it onto the big spinners things where they make a pattern onto a roll. Then they take the roll and put it onto a loom. On the loom they weave the cloth. Then still others who still can use their fingers sew. Now what they make, they don't sell. Everything they make is used in the various Mother Teresa homes. They make all the bed sheets and gowns for the patients and the sarees all the nuns wear. It is really very cool. Seeing this whole thing was just fascinating. No foreigners can even volunteer at the leper colony because it is so self sufficient. They do really well.

Did the Pilgrims have Pizza Hut?

After the leprosy colony we headed over to the hotel when the Seattleites were staying. Since it was Thanksgiving day they planned to have some pizza and beer. It sounded great to us! We thought we would have to spend it alone. It turns out that we went to Pizza Hut instead. They actually have Pizza Hut here. We were so excited to see it. They had coke with free refills (unheard of throughout Asia ) and all the right stuff. The Seattleites had rounded up a couple of other Americans and some stragglers from other countries so our group was about 20. Most of the people wanted to get their own thing. Pansies! Isn't Thanksgiving about stuffing yourself until you can't eat anymore and then having dessert? Well, I found 8 others who felt the same way, oddly 2 of them were vegetarian. Anyway, we got pan after pan of huge. greasy, family style pizza. Luckily for me there were 2 guys sitting right next to me that I bonded right away with. They backed me in insisting for meat pizzas and grieved the absence of American football just as much as I did. So the 3 of us spent much of the evening talking football and eating meat lovers pizza. It was great. Even better when we discovered they had pie a for dessert and still better when the entire Pizza Hut staff did a very backstreet-esque dance for us at our table. All in all the unconventional Thanksgiving was one of the best ever. I think every family should have pizza at Thanksgiving.

Prem Dan

Katie and I split up in the mornings. She went to a place that could use her nursing skills but since I didn't have any of those, I went somewhere else. Prem Dan is a home for mostly elderly mentally and physically handicapped people. I worked in the women's ward. Most of the women in this place were completely nuts. Many of them didn't talk but would make strange sounds with their mouth, kinda like a mute person. Most of these women weren't mute. They all had been victims of some kind of trauma, most of them physical abuse. Many were severely malnourished. Several were dying. It was incredibly sad. The center is excellent though. They have a doctor who comes through and several nurse volunteers who treat the patients. They received plenty of healthy food and are allowed as much as they want. When we arrived in the morning we did all their laundry by hand. The only washing machines here are your arms. After 2 hours of this my wrists ached from the wringing. When we finished we went and talked to the ladies. The volunteers did things like feeding them, giving massages, talking to them and sometimes just sitting next to them and listen, even though you don't know what they say. A Spanish volunteer brought in a tape player with some Spanish tunes (including Achy Breaky heart in Spanish!) and got some of them dancing. That was hysterical. So sometimes it was fun and sometimes it was hard but always very rewarding. By about 12:30 we left and I trusted my life to an auto rickshaw driver to get back home. Many times I was surprised I arrived in one piece to report to my next job.  

Shi Shu Bahvanh

This is a home for babies and toddlers that have basically been found in the garbage. They are taken in and cared for and are available for adoption. More than 90% are adopted and most of the babies go to Indian families. So it was a happier place. Katie and I both worked there together in the afternoon and we just played with them all afternoon. I say played with them. I really mean keeping them from killing themselves. Indians do not know anything about age-appropriate toys. All of these children are under the age of 2 and they are playing with metal toys, toys with wires, toys with tiny plastic pieces that are easy to break off. They loved whacking each other with the metal ones, putting ones with wires in their mouths and breaking off the tiny plastic pieces and putting those in their mouths as well. Then one day we arrived and some Indian woman had come to visit and had brought lollipops and tiny plastic whistles for them. Imagine toddlers running around with lollies on sticks. And the plastic whistles, at first we thought the noise was the worst part until we discovered that the back of the whistle detaches and is the same size as a windpipe. So Katie and I sent the afternoon running around 40 toddlers fishing plastic pieces out of their mouths and confiscating lollies. It was one fun afternoon.  

The Downside to Traveling

Yes, as much as my stories of fun and adventure lead you to believe otherwise, traveling isn't always fun. I ate bad food. Not only did I just get sick but I got a parasite of some sort. Talk about disgusting. I woke up one morning starting at 3am every 45min. Needless to say when the alarm went off at 6:00 to go to volunteer, I told Katie she had to go by herself. I wasn't making it out of bed. I spent the whole day in bed and only ventured as far as the bathroom. Kneeling or sitting--it was hard to determine which to do first. Sometimes sit and puke in a bucket if it all happened at once. (I told you it was gross about 4 lines back.) It felt like someone was just stretching and ringing out my stomach. Serious pain. Katie got home and found me moaning in pain and decided then that I had a parasite and went to get the appropriate drugs. She came back with the goods and some kind of electrolyte supplement. That didn't go down so well either. Finally by 6pm I just couldn't go to the bathroom anymore. So my body is now completely rid of everything and I've got drugs so clearly I'm going to improve, right? WRONG! I lived the next 4 days on bread. Trying to give my still freaking out stomach a break. I would be okay in the morning but by afternoon I would curl up on my bed and moan in pain. It was just great. Did I mention at this point we were on a 3 day train ride complete with squat toilet. Yeah, great, great place to be sick. So after 6 days I was out of drugs, weak to the point I could barely walk with my backpack, only bread and a bit of peanut butter in my system, still lying on my bed (now in a guesthouse) moaning about my insides being raked and wondering how in the world I was going to make it through the next 2 weeks. Add that to the fact that our new guesthouse has a dog that loves to bark right outside our door starting at about 3am for at least an hour every night and somehow I think I made Katie sick too. Things weren't looking good. Then I said, "God, while I know you do miracles in minutes, I'll give you two days and even though I don't feel like eating a thing. I will eat normal food tomorrow even if I don't feel like it to help things out a bit." I ate 2 pieces of toast with jam, yogurt with cereal in it, a scoop of ice cream, some kind of prawn sizzler and a piece of fish for dinner. No tummy problems and today I feel fine. I'm doing good. Which is great since before I thought I was going to die. Now I spend my days eating seafood and baking on the beach. I'm turning, as Katie says, into "Miss Cherokee Nation".

Goa

Our Beach

Our first day at Colva beach in Goa we were walking to the beach and we saw some foreigners walking up ahead of us. We decided to follow them because we thought they could lead us to a good spot. Boy did they! We ended up a fair ways down the beach at a retaurant that had beach chairs, food and best of all...other foreigners!! So needless to say Katie and I were delighted that we could bake on the beach without Indians staring at us and have someone bring us bowls of fruit, banana milkshakes and pina coladas. We were in heaven. We went back every day for 2 weeks! But everyone else did too so it wasn't so weird. We just became part of the group.  

Army Guys

Unfortunately while we were there the army recruits got a vacation and were taken to the beach. In their army getup (minus the guns) they walked up and down the beach. When they got to our section where all the foreigner girls were wearing bikinis they stopped and stared. They wanted to take photos with us and it was awful. They wouldn't go away! At one point I got stuck in the water. I had gotten really hot and went in for a quick dip and while I was in the water, the army walked by. When they saw that a foreigner was in the water. They sat on the beach and waited for me to get out. I decided to try to outlast them but I started to get cold. Then they got out their cameras and binoculars so I decided to try to stay in the water longer. Finally Katie clued into the fact that I had been gone a REALLY long time and sat up and saw the problem. She went over and yelled at the guys for being rude and disrespectful and told them to move along. Finally I could get out!  

Cabbage

Our beach had tons of dogs too. They were all so nice. They would seek refuge from the sweltering sun under the beach chairs. One called Cabbage frequented ours. Katie would give her water from our fruit bowls and we would talk to her and pet her during the day. This was a good thing! One day the army was walking down the beach again and this time they decided to walk up to us and try to take our picture. Cabbage didn't like this at all and ran towards them ferociously barking. The guys ran away. It was fantastic.