ideas for cheap stuff

First off I wanna say that I am very thankful that we decided to go to visit my friend Tongie in Kolkata and fly out from here after the bomb blasts in Dehli just 3 hours ago. We would’ve been staying in the Para Ganj area tonight if we had’ve decided to fly from there instead. I hope that the people there will get through this ordeal and that any of the people we’ve met travelling back from there are alright tonight.
Anyway, we’re leaving tomorrow for Bangkok and then we’ll be meeting up with our mate Dee and boy can we not wait to have our LTD threesome back together. So I guess now is as good a time as any to state what our first stop on our trip has been like for me. The highlights of my stay in India are varied. If I state my favourite places they’ve definately been Jaipur (the evening in the Tiger Fort, the dancing and elephat ride at the Rajistani Theme Park and the Royal Palace Gardens with the beautiful tombs), the Taj Mahal (Lids had been looking forward to this but I wasn’t really that bothered but it was a stunning setting and story and really was magical after all) and finally Sarnath just outside of Varanasi (I liked seeing the Hindu rituals in Varanasi but even more so I liked seeing first hand the history of India that pre-dates the Moghul invasions of 11th century as there was little or nothing we’d seen of this during our stay). Getting to meet and play with the girls and boys of the Hope Foundation where Tongie works was also great, twas good to see that they were being educated as well as being fed as some organisations, like Mother Teresa’s homes, seem to only feed and clean their patients, not looking after their development as well (we met an author named Sally Warner who wrote a critical book about Mother Teresa’s homes and we spoke to some of the volunteers there while we were staying in the Salvation Army place which was all pretty interesting).
First impressions of India were marred by my inability to get my head around the utter kraziness of it all. India is big. Its very very big, and with a population of near 1 billion people its very crowded. Coming from Ireland we just couldn’t have prepared ourselves for the amount of people, the traffic, the noise, the smells, the dirt, the sanitation problems, the dogs and cows on street, the list goes on. Once we got used to running the tourist gauntlet, learned that the constant stares weren’t meant as insulting as personal space is an idea not much heard of, that not all the beggars and shop owners are trying to scam you, that many people think that westerners just come here to shop, no matter how many times you say you’re not interested, then we began to get that bit more insight into the culture, and how the people live here. Really if we had more time in India we would definately get a lot more out of it cos it took us so long to get used to the transport “system” and way of life here that we only got a glimpse of the real India past the touristy bits.
The main thing we noticed from the start is that India is full of contradictions. Not only the obvious rich / poor divide, but insubstantial things like the generousity of people and yet the fixation of many on money. And we’re not just talking about the people who don’t have money, I’m talking about the educated who want nothing more than cars and gems, the outward appearance of material wealth that many seek and continually talk about. I’m not saying all, just that element that got to me. I mean ya see it all over the world, in Ireland to. Consumers everywhere. It just struck me that many of the educated and well to do here want to become like every other global based consumer. One product that I’ve seen advertised called “Fair and Handsome” is for Indian men who wish to lighten their skin. I don’t know if its like fake tan and comes off after a while or is a skin lightening agent but its still that outward apperance thing and it kinda freaked me out.
The poverty that’s prevalent in towns and villages is hard to see at times. People of course make do with what they have and some of the slums and shanty towns seem quite homely on the inside. There are a lot of people sleeping on streets and its hard not to get upset when you see adults and children, old and disabled people eating, playing, defecating and urinating where they sleep. I prefer to give to charity myself but I’m not untouched by the pleas of beggars calling me auntie and sister. A guy walked me home today from the bank and was saying that he’s looking for a job in Kolkata for months since his leg was healed while staying in one of Mother Teresa’s homes and he said to me “Sister is there any small jobs you need done? I will do anything you need for small wage.” We’re extremely rich compared to many here, even people working in fair waged jobs so ya sometimes get this guilty chip on your shoulder, which I’m postive won’t go away while we travel for the rest of the year but we have to get on with it. Its the one thing I won’t get used to.
One thing that I still can’t claim to have gotten a handle on is the caste system, and sometimes it would really kill me seeing people like waiters or rickshaw drivers getting a click of the fingers or a knock of the hand by people of a higher caste.
The bureaucracy and inability of people to queue are things that almost drove me to the brink of a mental breakdown. The government tourist office, Indian Airlines, post office and police are all places where, if ya didn’t have a sense of humour, you’d cap someone.
Transport here isn’t really clearly marked out or explained but once ya get the hang of the ropes ya get on fine. By far the best run of the transport infrastructure is the railway system. If anyone’s travelling by train in India I’d advise to book the upper berths in 2nd class sleepers on overnight trains. You can really get a good nights sleep in them. With the buses it depend on whether you get a direct bus or one that says its going to where you need to go but instead drops you miles away from your intended destination. With taxis and auto-rickshaws unless they’re using metres then pretty much half any price they give you for an intended destination, course they may also be telling the truth but its a judgement call. We walked off on a few that wouldn’t bring their prices down but usually got the price we wanted.
So there’s a lot to improve in India but it has been an interesting and enlightening experience. God I sound like one of those travellers Lids and I have heard who are looking to find themselves in India but it truly has been an experience I won’t forget. If not only for the reason that I think my hearing has been seriously damaged by the noise level and my sense of smell has been affected by the pungent smell of public urinals.
If I was to make it back to India I’d try spend a little longer here and work somewhere to get a real feel of the place and people, but I’d like to also stay out of the cities as much as possible.