India

Now perched precariously atop our camels (who in real life are far larger, and indeed taller, than they seem in pictures), our band rode off into the sunset led by our walking camel drivers.

Actually, we only walked for perhaps 3 minutes before stopping, at which point the drivers clucked at our camels until they braaaaah’ed their protests and settled down onto their knees again (almost unseating a few of us at the 3-stage process reversed itself).  Explaining nothing, the group looked at each other for a few confused seconds before walking off towards the small group of mud houses a short ways away, assuming this was one of the promised ‘village tours’.

The drivers stayed put, still giving us the silent treatment as they laughed and talked amongst themselves, but waiting to greet us as we walked towards the houses were a small swarm of dirty children, who chanted what was apparently some sort of welcoming mantra.  I believe it went: “won choklet? won pen? won roo pee?”.  This was accompanied by an outstretched hand raised palm upwards, perhaps as a demonstration that they had no weapons and were thus friendly.   Charming.

In the town itself, one incredibly dirty ‘untouchable’ woman looked at us as we kind of wandered around, still with no explanation what was happening or where we were.  Finally, after a few minutes of looking at each other and shrugging, we generally wandered back to the camels, where we mounted and lurched our way off into the desert again.

For the next couple of hours, our way led through scrub desert along no real discernible track (or rather crossing and occasionally following the multitude of tracks that wound their way through the area), getting to know each other via camel socializing.  This in large part meant that as the camels walked along in a constantly shifting mass, one would find themselves next to a random other mounted person for a period of roughly 3 minutes before the pack shifted again and one would have a new conversation partner.  Perhaps this should be explored as a possible speed dating concept for busy professionals; Camel Dating: a one hour camel safari where you’ll get to mix and mingle with other sexy singles according to the whim of a giant farting dromedary.

After those aforementioned 2 hours, the whole pack stopped and the clucking/kneeling ritual took place again.  This time, the drivers hobbled the camels and set them loose to wander and pillage the local shrubs and trees, and urinate copiously.  The rest of us sat around while the drivers prepared a lunch of chapati (flat bread), rice, and a fairly bland and tasteless vegetable curry.

After lunch, there was a rest period of an hour or so, before we were back on the camels, bumping along through the desert again.  The desert was amazingly silent, and despite the chatter of the group, it was incredibly peaceful to hear nothing but the wind after the chaos of Indian cities.  At one point I kick-started my camel into a lurching gallop and spent some time a fair distance ahead of the rest, mostly alone, soaking up the peace and quiet.

Closer to dark, we finally reached a small patch of actual sand dunes, and the drivers stopped us to make camp for the night.  While they did the work of unloading the camels and getting fires going, the rest of us ran up and down the dunes, took pictures, got sand in places it wouldn’t finally be out of for weeks, and generally enjoyed ourselves.  When dark fell, everyone clustered around the fire for more chapati and rice and bland vegetable curry.

While we drank our chai and ate the food, the drivers showed a bit more personality and asked us strange riddles, sang songs, and told stories.  One story involved a japanese tourist who came on a safari and his endless mishaps, the part of the tourist being done in a remarkably well-imitated stereotypical japanese accent.  Apparently, at one point this japanese fellow had intestinal distress, and embarassedly asked one of the drivers for toilet paper.  The driver laughingly told us that the tourist hadn’t liked when he’d suggested that he simply use the desert method, and use his hand.

We all stopped chewing and looked down at our curry-laden chapati, and I’m certain I wasn’t the only one flashing back mentally to the smiling driver mixing a big bowl of flour and water with his hand, and then carefull slapping out each individual one.

(The hapless tourist eventually found the solution to his problem in the 9-foot white turban he’d purchased for the safari, which slowly reduced in length in direct proportion to his trips to the bushes).

That night, we slept under the stars in the freezing cold, but fairly warm under large amounts of stinky camel blankets.  I awoke only once, at around 2am, to find a full-moon turning the desert dunes blue and casting shadows.

The next day and night were much the same, long hours riding the camels, followed by the fire and conversation.  The third morning was short, only a half hour ride to meet a jeep which took us back to the city.  While it wasn’t Lawrence of Arabia, riding through endless sand dunes, it was a pleasant few days, and a nice break from the noise and chaos we now returned to….

Unfortunately, I don’t have time to write the second part of the Camel Farts post just yet.  I’ll get to it, and I promise that the rest of the posts will start to sound less horrorshow and much more positive.  We had a bad run of luck right at the beginning, which unfortunately colored much of the first portion of our trip.  We got over it.

We’re in Singapore at the moment, revelling in the clean white porcelain bathrooms complete with toilet paper and hand soap, spotless streets, friendly people, and relative silence.  The city is super-modern, leading me to believe that while the US and europe are in fact 1st world, this place may indeed be 1.2st world…

Time to go eat some yummy fishball soup.

We arrived in Jaisalamer early in the morning, while it was still dark.  We initially decided to hang out in the train station until it got light, then venture out into the streets to find lodging.  However, the rickshaw drivers can teach mosquitos something about driving a person mad, and their incessant ‘rickshaw? rickshaw?’ despite our emphatic ’no’ soon drove us to take one just to get somewhere away from them.  (This is quite possibly part of their plan). 

The taxi we accepted was actually a jeep, and in the front seat sat two men, one navigating the streets while the other kept up a steady promotional speech about his hotel that we should go to instead of the one we wanted, until finally we started to speak to each other in spanish in the hopes that he would feel uncomfortable speaking at a couple obviously in the middle of a conversation.  Nope.  In desperation, they stopped the jeep outside the fort and told us they couldn’t go in with a car (lie), and that we should stay there because it was dangerous and all manner of things were waiting for us including packs of rabid dogs.  This was also a lie. 

So, we had to take another rickshaw into the fort itself, having decided to stay inside the picturesque old fort on the hill instead of the grotty city below. The book recommended a number of places, so we chose one due it its proximity with us, and were greeted by a smiling young kid who enthusiastically told us his name was “Little Johnny”.

Little Johnny showed us a room, which while staying there would require being outnumbered substantially by spiders, was acceptable to us in our exhausted state and at a reasonable price, so we took it. We wanted to sleep, but he offered us chai on the rooftop and we felt we would have been rude to refuse. We were soon to be given lessons in rudeness.

Only halfway through our chai, Little Bastard started in about the camel safari he could set us up with. At first we expressed mild yet polite interest, as we were planning to go on a camel safari and were open to hearing about what he had to offer. Soon, we became tired (literally), and told him we wanted to sleep for a while, then spend the afternoon looking around for a safari and we’d talk more later. He wouldn’t stop, trying to barter us into a price, pressuring us to commit right then and there. We were exhausted, so finally after haranguing us for half an hour he permitted us to escape and flee to our room.

When we woke, we decided to head out and talk to a number of places to get different options and prices, but as we were heading out of the hotel, Little Prick cornered us again and submitted us to another half hour of high-pressure salesmanship about his safari. The price seemed alright, but we weren’t ready to commit without looking around. This was unacceptable to him. Finally, we again had to resort to rudely fleeing, although by this time we were almost tired enough to simply give in.

We hadn’t eaten, so we went and grabbed some lunch at a pleasant little italian restaurant on the fort wall, and finally saw some of the fort itself (in daylight at least). The fort is a big sandstone pile, built on a hilll overlooking a scrub-desert plain. It’s really quite amazing, like something out of Arabian Nights, and for the first time all day we started to enjoy Jaisalamer. Over lunch, we discussed our options, and in our improved mood decided that while we wanted to look at some other agencies, given the late hour and our desire to begin our safari the next day, we may as well simply accept the tour Little Jerk offered despite our reservations as to him personally.

We walked back to the hotel, peering down alleyways and around corners in the complex maze of the fort, and found Little grinning Johnny waiting for us. Wasting not a second, he launched again into the same spiel we’d heard twice before, describing the route, the drivers, what we’d do on the trip etc. Unfortunately for him, his own mouth got him in trouble. We began to notice gaping inconsistencies in his description of the route, and when we questioned him further, it became apparent he really had no idea what the actual route was, nor what we would really be doing for 2-3 days in the desert. We’d had enough, and told him we were going out to think about it (but not without further hassle just to get out the door).

He’d worn us out, and we were feeling pretty burnt out on the whole thing, but decided to go look for one of the agencies listed in the book. We quickly found Ganesh Tours, and warily asked about camel tours. The difference was night and day. Sebastian, the owner, quietly sat us down and calmly explained everything about the trip, from a daily itinerary to prices and options. He was very mellow and no pressure whatsoever, making suggestions about possible trips but leaving the decision up to us. We felt so comfortable and relaxed with him and his approach, we signed up on the spot (any touts reading this should take note…).

We were a little concerned about our hotel, but Sebastian even had a ready-made story for us to tell them about how we’d run into a couple of friends we’d met earlier and they’d already signed up for another. This sounded reasonable to us.

Walking back to the hotel, we felt much better and far more relaxed, having sorted out our safari and having a few more hours to wander around before nightfall. We felt we owed Little Shithead a definite answer, but I’d only launched into the first sentence of my ‘explanation’ when he stopped me, saying, “This is a lie. Sebastian told you to say this.” Apparently he’d heard that one before. He feigned a lack of care, saying he’d been in this business 4 years, etc., so we retired to our room to leave some things and go out into the city.

We’d only been in there for a minute when a small boy knocked on our door and told us the “Master” wanted to see me. Geraldine was frightened, but I assured her it was alright and told her to stay in the room while I went to see what they wanted. I walked downstairs, and heard Little Johnny calling me from a back room, past a dimly lit antechamber and around two pillars. I was hesitant, but moved closer to get a better look. Inside the room a man sat cross-legged on the floor, apparently watching TV. I didn’t see Little Johnny from my vantage point, but he leaned into the frame and beckoned me in, saying the Master wanted to speak to me. I walked to the door, wary, and asked what they wanted from there. To my left, laying on a bed set into an alcove, was an older man in a long, once-white robe and turban, who entreated me to enter.

I wasn’t comfortable with this, but I entered and sat close to the door. Little Johnny started in about how he’d given me the room at the rate he had on the understanding that I’d do the safari with them, and that his “Master” wasn’t happy about the price. They started in about how they had people who had a reservation for the room, etc., and at this point I’d had more than enough. The room had been negotiated without any mention of a safari, and after the hassle this kid had given us all day to be taken into a back room to be intimidated by 3 men into paying more was too much. In tightly-controlled fury I told the “Master” that that the terms of our deal were seperate from any safari, but if he wanted us to leave we’d be more than happy to vacate, which I meant wholeheartedly. I let them have it for a full minute, and they quickly backed down and became placating. They obviously hadn’t expected someone to stand up to them, and they were suddenly full of assurance that everything was fine, no problem, the price for the room was fine, let’s drink some chai!

Worried about me, Geraldine at this point had come downstairs and was calling my name from the lobby area. I called back that it was ok, even more furious that they would cause her to worry like that. They insisted that we drink chai so that everything would be copacetic with us, but I declined, coldly polite, saying we’d wasted enough time that day and wanted to see some of the city.

We tried not to let the unpleasantness bother us, and went out to spend the last remaining light enjoying the city. We were all too happy to pack up our things early the next morning to go to the Ganesh offices to head out on our safari. We arrived there around 7:30, and went upstairs to the restaurant to eat breakfast before the trip. The other members of our group were already there, eating. We made tentative introductions with the group while eating, before heading downstairs to load into the jeep to head out.

After perhaps a half hour bouncing along the highway, the jeep turned off the main road onto a side track, and soon we came upon a group of camels kneeling in the desert, loaded with gear. We all were excited, actually seeing the camels who would be our conveyances for the next 2 days. There was very little cermony about choosing camels, as the camel drivers simply led us each to a different one and we mounted up.

When a camel stands up, there are in fact 3 distinct phases, something which can come as something of a shock to the uninitiated to camel-riding, which we both definitely were. First, the rider is heaved forward as the camel pushes its back legs up onto the knees. Then, one is thrown backwards as the camel stands up with the front legs. If one is still on the camel given these unexpected lunges, the third part involves a relatively minor thrust forward as the beast stands up on it’s hind legs to be fully upright. None of this was explained to any of the 8 or so of us, which made for comical outbursts from all involved.

We were off on our safari, the rest of which I’ll tell at a later date as this post is entirely too long already.

Udaipur turned out to be one of the highlights thus far of our trip, although we didn’t know it at the time.  The town is fairly small by Indian standards (a ’small’ town has something like  80k people or more), and set picturesquely alongside a nice lake.  Set in the center of the lake are two palaces, one giant and white and looking as if it were in fact floating on the water, and the other smaller but also very nice to look at.  The larger palace is so exotic that it was used as the home of Octopussy in the Bond film from the 70s.  If you haven’t seen the movie, I highly recommend it, mostly because Bond has a crocodile submarine, which is too cool for words.

We ended up spending  2 days in Udaipur, which we now realize probably wasn’t enough.  Mostly we walked around, shopped, and tried to avoid slipping in cow feces (which peppers the ground everywhere, sacred as they are…).  The only real items of interest from those days are:

1.  We saw a traditional dance and music show during one part of which an older lady kept adding brass water jugs onto her head one by one, pausing each time to do something difficult such as standing on the edges of a round plate and stomping it back and forth in a circle without dropping the jugs.  She had 9 on her head when she either terminated the show at its appropriate time, or simply had too much neck strain to continue. 

2.  Late at night after walking back from a nice and expensive (by indian standards) dinner, we were walking past an apparently empty rickshaw, chatting and enjoying the moonlight, when from the depths of the backseat the driver, who apparently woke up from his nap as we passed, saw two foreigners and whisper-shouted at us in a hoarse Lord-of-the-Rings-Wraith-King voice, “Riiiiiickshaw!”.  This caused Geraldine to scream and jump away, much to my amusement.

At our hotel in Udaipur, we asked about how to continue our voyage to our next destination, which was to be Jodhpur, and were told that the best method was to go by bus.  Additionally, the helpful hotel owner told us that given our plans to continue on to Jaisalamer after Jodhpur, we could in fact simply take the morning bus to Jodhpur which arrived at 2, see the fort at Jodhpur in the afternoon (the main reason to go there), and then catch an 11 o’clock overnight train to Jaisalamer.  This seemed perfect to us at the time.  The man was nice and trying to be helpful, but I still wish a pox on him and all of his family. 

First, we caught the bus early, at 7am.  The ride was great, if you like riding in an uncomfortable bus overcrowded with people, during which the driver continually honks his nifty 3-tone horn for the entire 5 hours at every car, truck, pedestrian, tree, bird, nothing that he passes.  Then, throw in a horribly bumpy and windy road, and just for fun a very poor ’untouchable’ class family that demands money from you and gives you dirty looks when you politely decline.  And heck, while we’re at it, lets have some guy puke from the upper sleeper bunks of the bus (small bed compartments above the seats) down your window in a multiple-stage cascade of smelly vomit. 

As the cherry on an otherwise lovely crap-sundae, when we arrived in Jodhpur at the bus station, the bus was still parking when a swarm of men flooded around the bus, shouting and banging on the windows.  I don’t speak Hindi, but the shouts were something to the tune of “THERE’S ANOTHER ONE!!!” and “DIBS ON THAT ONE!!!!”, as they pointed out the roughly 7 tourists on the bus and laid claim to the right to rip them off on rickshaw rides.  Geraldine was understandably concerned as we exited the bus and they crowded around, shouting at us and not even allowing the space to pass to the back of the bus to unload our bags.  I tried to stay close to her and we pushed our way to the back amid shouts of ”Where you go??”, “Rickshaw????”  The other tourists were similarly harassed, and we had not even a second to talk amongst Geraldine and I given the in-our-faces crowd of shouting men.  When it came to blows between two of them over who had the right to us, we fled across the street, while they were temporarily occupied by the fight.  Soon, they noticed we’d escaped and pursued.  Finally, out of desperation, we hopped on one just to get away from the fray.  

Our destination was the train station, where we still needed to get our tickets onward to Jaisalamer, something that hadn’t been possible from Udaipur.  No  big deal, this would take a half hour or so, then we’d be off to spend the afternoon at the fort.   Nope!  At the train station, I waited in the  ‘Tourist Queue’ line for about  45 minutes  with an English couple, all of us getting more and more irritable about the Indian men who would simply bypass the line and push up to the front (until we started shouting at them until they reluctantly obeyed the line rules we are all taught in kindergarten).  When I reached the window with my cryptic train reservation form filled out perfectly, the woman looked at it, punched some things into her computer and then handed it back to me with a smile.  I enquired about my ticket, and she replied that my form was indeed filled out correctly.  Now if I wanted to actually buy the ticket, I had to wait in the next line over.  The long one. 

So, I joined the English couple in that line, they having just had a similar experience, with a shrug of the shoulders and an ‘oh well, it’s india!’ grin.  We now all stood in this line for, and I’m not exaggerating, 3 hours.  The problem seemed to be two groups, the first an older man who was trying to make changes to 4 different tickets, each one being for 4 different people (we learned later him and his wife had been there trying since 10 that morning.)  After more than an hour, they finished, and the next group started their troubles, which also took forever.  During this whole time, more Indians were trying to cut in line, at which point Jez (the english guy in front of me) and I began shouting at them in barely controlled fury to get to the back of the line.  By the time I had reached the front of the line and managed to purchase the tickets, I was exhausted not only from the bus ride, rickshaw drivers, and standing for 3.5 hours in line, but also because I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast.  Oh, and the fort had already closed, as it was now 6 at night and dark.

So, in a foul mood, Geraldine and I proceeded to go to a restaurant and eat, then waste time on the internet until our train.  It doesn’t help Jodhpur’s impression on us that it’s the most crowded, noisy, dirty, and all-around most hassley place we’ve seen to date.  So, it is my great honor to award Jodhpur the title of: Worst Place Ever.    

So yes, I haven’t been all that diligent about posting here on this trip. In large part, the blame for that lies with the relatively poor internet cafe offerings here in India, coupled with the complete exhaustion one feels after a full day dealing with the noise and chaos here. More on that later.

For now, we’d like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas from India!

Currently, we’re in a place called McLeod Ganj in the north, in the first major swellings of the Himilaya. McLeod Ganj is the current seat of the Tibetan Government in Exile, and as such where the Dalai Lama lives (when he’s not away on business). So, we figured Buddhism, Christianity, what’s the difference, we’ll spend Christmas here. We’ve just finished our Christmas Eve dinner with a very nice group of New Zealanders we met a few days back, good times with many laughs.

The McLeod Ganjers have made a sort of Indian effort to either make westerners feel at home or cynically exploit foreign sentiment by having a few places decorated with lights and even a Christmas tree (first tree I’ve ever seen with pink balloons on it.) The small pastry shop on the corner was bustling with activity earlier today, as the proprietors tried to literally splice the wires from a string of lights missing the plugin directly together with a hot cable coming I believe from a powerbox on the nearest light pole, while the restaurant we ate in had their own lights and what we thought were some sort of fireworks. We later discovered that in fact there was a guy welding something on the roof, and the colorful sparks falling gracefully past the window were in fact the fruits of his labor. But, we had spicy pizza and beer, and some very nice cakes for dessert, and all in all a good time was had by all. Except maybe the welder.

Hope you’re all having a great holiday!

(and I’ll try to update more regularly, to tell  the story of how we came to be here where we are now…)

Thursday arrived and brought with it the impending arrival of Geraldine, albeit at the end of what would become a somewhat agonizingly long day.  I spent most of it wandering around, eating, waiting.  I switched hotels from the fleabag I was staying in (surrounded by slums), to a nice hotel so that after a 30+ hour flight Geraldine would have somewhere semi-pleasant to recover. 

The new hotel was nice enough to help me arrange a taxi to the airport and back, and a driver who would be more than happy to wait for her arrival to drive us back.  When the time came to head to the airport, I was surprised that joining me in the cab were 2 hotel employees and one of the managers (owners?).  Along the not-quite-direct route to the airport, we proceeded to leave each of them at their respective homes (or somewhere close).  Apparently, they had decided to take advantage of a taxi paid by the tourist to avoid long busrides home.  I would have been annoyed, except that the taxi ride took me through a bunch of random barrios (and many slums) that ordinarily I wouldn’t have seen, and still managed to get me to the airport an hour before Geraldine’s flight was scheduled to arrive. 

When we got to the airport, I made the executive decision to pass the following hour in the airport restaurant, as I hadn’t eaten anything and the driver didn’t speak any english, and thus couldn’t protest.  A very polite man, he followed me meekly into the restaurant, where we proceeded to spend at least 40 minutes eating our meals, each of us staring off in silence somewhere above the left shoulder each other, awkwardly ignoring the fact that we couldn’t communicate in the slightest.  When the bill came, I began to do the mental calculation to figure out what I owed, but soon realized he hadn’t made the slightest movement towards his wallet, and resignedly pulled out an extra hundred rupees to cover his as well. 

He soon earned his dinner however, as Geraldine’s plane was delayed from 10 until 12, and even then it took almost an hour to get out of customs, baggage, etc.  She was pretty exhausted and wide-eyed with crazy sleep deprivation, and we went straight to the hotel and to sleep. 

Surprisingly (or perhaps not), she adjusted much better than I.  This may be attributed to the fact that she had me there, that she’d been in Asia before, or that we didn’t really do much the first day, but it’s probably more likely that she’s simply tougher than I am.  I’ve grown soft on a steady diet of facturas and Argentinian siestas.  Either way, we spent the first day tentatively exploring a bit and introducing her to the spice level in the food. 

We decided that given that we would fly out of Mumbai at the end of our trip, it would be better to head directly out of town and get moving.  So, on the second day after her arrival, we caught an afternoon train to Ahmedebad, 7 hours to the north, where we would catch the night train to Udaipur, arriving the next morning.

Our first experience with train travel was mixed.  During the day, we rode in AC chair class, which is the nicer of the two main chair classes.  The seats were pretty decent, comfortable at least, and the aisle was a neverending stream of men passing selling various foods and drinks.  Spelling and understanding aside, ‘Garam Garam’ soup turned out to be our favorite, being a spicy tomato soup with crunchy croutony things in it, dispensed by a man from a large metal thermal container into small paper cups.  (For future reference, my one experience with train samosas showed me that despite my previous experience with what I considered high spice levels in my food, I am quite amateur when it comes to India). 

We arrived in Ahmedebad at night, in the dark, and there were required to switch trains from our chair class, to a Sleeper class train.  Sleeper class is the cheapest sleeper car on night trains, and we thought we’d dive right in and go economy as quickly as possible, so as not to get accustomed to higher levels of luxury.  We found our train fairly easily, but the whole thing was dark and fairly ominious, grubby and tightly filled with many people sleeping in their bunks.  Using my headlamp, we found our berths, and after fumbling around for a ridiculous amount of time locking our bags under the bottom bunk, proceeded to wedge ourselves in the tiny upper berths that we had reserved. 

For reference, Sleeper class cars on the train are divided into sections of 6 seats/berths.  The upper two are folded away during the day, and all 6 passengers in any one section sit on the bottom berth.  At night, the berths are let down to form beds, in two rows of three high, facing each other.  (On bigger trains, there are also two extra berths across the aisle, running the length of the train instead of across the car like the 6-packs). 

The train we were on was a narrow-gauge train, so the cars were much narrower and the bunks smaller.  (There aren’t many narrow-gauge trains left in india, but we managed to find one).  The result was that when I lay in the top bunk with my head touching the side of the train, my feet only stuck out slightly from the end of the bunk.  However, my left shoulder jutted out slightly into space, and between my face and the ceiling one would be hard pressed to stuff much more than a small computer monitor.  Oh, and they were grimy with dirt and I don’t wish to know what else.  We were both a bit surprised at the conditions, but settled in as amiably as possible for the night. 

It turns out that a train with no glass on the windows hurtling through the night in the cool season can actually get quite cold.  Cold enough in fact that I put on my thermal top, gave the rest of my warm clothes to Geraldine, and shivered violently in and attempt to keep warm until morning.

It also turns out that in Sleeper class, it is perfectly acceptable to fart loudly and long as often as one wishes, as many Indian men took great advantage of. 

We arrived in the morning a sorry couple, and took a rickshaw to one of the nicer sounding hotels in our guidebook.  It turned out to be great, nice rooms with lake views, a terrace to eat on, and very clean and relaxingly white.  It being early, we decided to nap, and tackle Udaipur at a later time.  

I left Buenos Aires at 1:00 in the afternoon, after a long and semi-panicked journey through Argentine bureaucracy.  I’d overstayed my visa, which wouldn’t have been a problem except that to get the small fine taken care of, I had to retrace my steps back out past the long line for customs and the longer line for security, to visit 3 seperate desks (with accompanying lines) before I received the all clear to go back up and wait through security and customs again.  All of this luckily fit into the 2 and a half hours I had left before my flight but just barely.

My flight had a stopover in London for 3.5 hours, where I am not ashamed to admit I thoroughly enjoyed a tall mocha from Starbucks (argentine coffee is sub-par in my book, and I missed the literally infinite variety available in any Seattle coffeeshop).  I then paid entirely too much to fire off two short emails letting relevant people know where I was, and then caught the next leg of my 26 hour+ journey to Mumbai (formeryly Bombay).

I arrived into Mumbai at 1 in the morning, and after a laughably easy time passing ‘customs’, I set up shop in the terminal to wait until daylight to head into town and get a hotel.  I spent most of the night trying to figure out how I was going to go about doing that, as 1. I had no guidebook nor map nor any idea of the layout of the city other than which two districts were the touristy ones, and 2. was practically hallucinating from having a disgustingly small amount of sleep in the previous 36 hours.  I finally gave in and went to the hotel reservations desk and booked a hotel that provided free transport.  The price was higher than I wanted, but after deducting the 350-400 rupees I would have had to pay for a taxi into the city anyway, wasn’t horrible.

The ride into the city in the early morning light was like a giant chaotic punch to the face, albeit a pleasant one.  Mumbai has Asia’s largest slum, and the driver was careening crazily through it while giving it more or less his best to avoid the other cars, buses, trucks, people, bicycles, and indeed cows that seemed to follow no real rules or regulations when it came to using the public roadways.  The poverty there really is quite astonishing, like nothing I’ve ever seen (even in the backwoods of Bolivia).  Small shacks line the roads, sometimes two or three high, looking more like swallows nests on a cliffside than where whole families resided. Half-clothed indians stood on the edges of the busy street, washing themselves, walking, buying, selling, pushing, yelling, waving, living, all the while cars rushed by mere inches away.  The cacaphony of noise is incredible.  I must assume that the carn horn repair business is flourishing in india as well, because every car must wear out at least 2 of them a year with all the incessant honking at every car, person, cow, and material object that the car passes.  (”Horn OK Please” is frequently painted on the bumper of trucks.  I don’t know what exactly it means, but I can guess.)

As we drove down one particularly long street lined with these hovels, one after the other, the driver suddenly stopped.  “Yes Sir, Hotel Sea Lord Sir.”  Sea Lord was indeed the name of the hotel I’d chosen, but I saw nothing resembling the Sea, nor any Lord thereof.  Instead, there was a narrow building in a gap in the shantys with a narrow alleyway beside it.  I assumed there was some mistake, but in fact I had indeed arrived at my hotel.

While no self-respecting Lord of the Sea would ever stay at this place, it wasn’t terribly bad once you actually got inside.  Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t what I’d call good either, but there was a bed and the room was large.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was clean, but it was tidy, and that must count for something.  The major problem is the location, and that in order to walk into the more touristy areas of town, one must pass perhaps 1000m of hovels, all of whom apparently use the edge of the road as their personal bathroom.  Lovely.

I spent most of the first day recovering, before timidly poking my head out and going for a short trip into town.  Culture shock is a semi-new experience for me, as the only time previously I can lay claim to it was upon my return to the US after spending an extended time in South America.  Indian culture shock is something else entirely, and must be eased into like a 106 degree hottub.

So that is exactly what I’m doing, easing in.  Tomorrow evening I will head to the airport to pick up Geraldine, who flies in at 10, and we’ll head to our new, more expensive and better located hotel so that she can decompress from her flight.

And then, it’s her turn to adjust…