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Published: November 7th 2008
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Contrasts of india
Lorries mix with Camels india was great. I love it and i hate it all at once. India is never quiet.
India is pretty massive, pretty darn hot and really busy. The people here are mostly friendly but it is hard to tell who is helpful and who is after your money. everything is a scam. The hot water is a scam, the hotels are a scam - i guess it is just Indians trying to make a living.
Hot water comes from gas heaters mounted on the walls. sometimes they work and sometimes they dont. Sometimes you get water and sometimes you don't. Sometimes you get a dungeon with cold floor and grubby beds and sometimes you dont.
They definitely have an eye for opportunity here and make the most of every one. (do you want fries with that- do you want 2 t shirts? Well - ok 4 for 400, i feed my family!).
The persistant touts are full on and are very persuasive. They are all on commission. If you look beyond the beggars and sellers, the forts are beautiful and date back to the 15th century, the mogul emperors built huge palaces. then abandoned them. Go figure.
Hard Yakka
Everything the hard way India is land of plastic bags. The rubbish piles up in the streets till the lowly come and pick it all up in the middle of the night and recycle anything they can. (40% is left in grotty piles on the street. That is the ones the cows don't eat.) There are plenty of bovines and tuk tuks and roosters and pigs and homeless and piles of rubbish all sharing the streets.
There are open sewers and grotty children who scavenge whereever they can and from whomever they can. There are huge phone towers in front of straw huts. There are motorcycles that share the road with rickshaws. There are cow pats drying on corrugated iron rooves and tractors towing BIG wooden overflowing obese looking trailers.
Bright red and gold sarees flutter in the fields of emerald green wheat and saffron turbans pop up from dusty roadside stalls.
Flourescent is popular here. Turbans are flouro pink, sarees flouro yellow and the colours are so bright compared to the dusty and grotty landscape.
There are many wasted bits of land in Incredible India. There are crumbling ruins and holes filled with garbage and small children. The
Magic Man
The scary Holy man cows stroll past them oblivious to the passing rabble of smoke belching motorbikes and tuk tuks. Everyone is busy, doing whatever it is they do here. Some are working in fields, some jostle with the tourists, some drive old noisy smelly tractors and pile bricks high on the trailers they pull.
There is so much poverty here and it feels like the wrong thing to have money. So many are desperate and live on the streets. They tap on our windows as we drive by and motion for food. Many have red stained teeth, which means they are eating chewing tobacco or beetlenut and are addicted to the stuff, that they spit in globs on the roadside.
There is a pecking order on the streets. 1 and 2 lane motorways that are either being constructed or being repaired are turned into accidental 7 lane traffic bottlenecks and the biggest vehicles win. Driving here is not easy. Bicycles give way to rickshaws, rickshaws give way to motorbikes who in turn give way to tuk tuks. Tuk tuks give way to cars and trucks and the busses just push in where ever they want to. And everyone gives way to
Holy Men
The amazing holy men on the Mother Ganges animals. Camels are used for lots of work here. They gingerley pull carts with food, bricks, gravel, people, wheat and other crops, branches, water and animal food. The plod down the main villiage streets and amble down motorways, beside the piles of rubble and sleeping bodies.
Horns are just part of the daily driving and a vehicle without a horn may as well not have brakes. There are different honks depending on just what you are trying to communicate. They vary beteween long honks, short sharp blasts and downright cranky beeeeeps. That one means "get the hell out of the way or i am going to run you over". The lorries have painted, in childish colourful letters on the tailgate. "HORN PLEASE." They actually want to get tooted at!!!!! The incessant honking jangles my nerves - india is never quiet.
Everything looks like it is being constructed or being pulled down. The roads are potholed and rickety and it takes ages to get anywhere. it takes us 6 or so hours to travel 300k and we had a GREAT driver. He who hesitates is stuck in the traffic. The roads are built by hand and the bricks for
The Big T
Taj Mahal Agra, india building and rocks for roads are loaded by hand into the colourful lorries.
Camels and elephants, a snake charmer and pigs that snuffle thru the rubbish. Loos with no paper and great chai tea made from hot milk and spices. Crumbling buildings and shiny offices. Clean suit wearing men and filthy beggars missing limbs. Smog filled valleys and monkeys in trees. Great bananas that cost 10R per hand (30c) and boiling vats of milk frothing and straming over fires.
Bright red sarees and grass and mud huts. Piles of hand shaped dung and roadside stalls by the mile. Sleeping men and children playing cricket. Ruins beside shanties.
These are my images of india.
I have a love hate relationship with this amazing country. I hate the constant touting and hassling for money and I hate the smog that dries out my skin and i hate the constant traffic and the rubbish. But I love the friendly smiles, the fact that every one wants to know you, the shopping and the hard haggling, the huge difference to Australia. I love the smiles combined the the head wobbling just like those things you put on your dashboard.
I
Northern Rajhasthan
Life is really hard here love all the icons of religion here. I love the old temples and the ancient ruins and I love the sense of history here. Every hotel is faulty towers and India is your toilet and your rubbish bin.
All in all, India was an incredible experience that I was not prepared for. (thought I was.) It is not really Asian, not really Middle eastern - it is only Indian. There is nothing i have seen that compares to it anywhere, and it will make me more aware of their hardships understanding our culture.
Had a ball.
Emma
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