Indians; Tony the Camel; and Bollywood

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I spent another week since my last blog at the girls' place in North Delhi and it was definitely a good week. It's been fun to see how they live their day to day life. I've spent a lot of time with the landlords who live downstairs and with the girls' friends from PMI. What great people! I've had such a great time playing guitar with Sabina, cooking butter chicken and nan with Ravinder and Mona, and visiting with everyone from PMI. I feel like I could stay here and settle in quite nicely. I mentioned in my last blog that I was a novice at navigating my way through Delhi and that I was constantly overwhelmed by the life in India, but I can say now that I have a grip on how to do it. Things still take a long time and they are certainly not as easy as it is at home, but at least I have enough of a grasp on life here to get around.

For instance, I had to mail a package. At home this is a fairly quick process...throw the things in the car, drive to the post office, pay, and send off your package. In India it's another story all together. It happened to be raining that day and I decided that I would be ambitious and go out alone. So I take my two big plastic bags of things to send home and walk out in the rain. Cross the busy street... very cautiously because pedestrians by no means have the right of way here. I walked over to a string of rickshaw drivers and had to catch one to the metro station...which is very near the girls' home. Me and my rickshaw driver settled on 10 rupees to get me there. It started pouring down rain. I watched my fashionably faded jeans turn a classic dark blue as the rain dumped on me. On the way there we were driving through a huge puddle and a bus drove by and splashed us with muddy water...like something from a movie really. When we arrived at the metro I realized that a tiny waterfall had been pouring on my head the entire ride from a hole in the top of the rickshaw. So I catch the metro and i was dreading having an open seat next to me because guys tend to gravitate towards the lone foreigner. Thankfully, I set my wet bags down on a seat and once it got crowded I moved them out of the way so someone could sit, but because the seat got all wet, about five men walked over to sit and each one walked away, not wanting to sit on a wet seat. I got to the place where I get my package wrapped and sat on this little stool on a busy walkway and the guy gave me some papers to fill out. Before he wrapped the package, we had to have some chai so that took another ten minutes or so. The he sowed up the package and I lugged all 9 kilograms over to the post office. I had to jump over some minor construction taking place in the post office and butter up to the postman so he would let me send it without having my passport. Finally I sent the package and three hours later I arrived back at Heidi's place.

So that was a long way to say that everything takes a long time here.

Dallas came back to India from Nepal and last week we left for Rajasthan. We took an overnight seventeen hour train to Jaisalmer. It was quite an adventure. People are really fascinated by us. By now I'm used to the fact that Indian guys will stare at me and say things, but they do that to Indian women too...not just foreigners. But I think they're more interested in Dallas than me. They just stare at him. "You have nice hair." "You are very tall!" He hates it, but I think it's great. On the train we were crowded into this tiny compartment and everything we said was monitored by the crowd of Indian men around us. They would laugh when we laughed and whisper things to eachother in hindi...as if we could understand them anyway. Dallas was invited to a wedding and a man told us that we could get off with him and stay at his house. So hilarious! So Dallas told him if he ever comes to Florida he can stay at his house.

When we finally got to Jaisalmur we were covered in a fine coating of dust from the desert train ride there. We walked around the fort and it was absolutely amazing. The fort is like something from Indiana Jones...narrow passage ways, cobblestone streets, laundry blowing off of sandstone balconies. It was such an awesome experience. The problem is that we needed to hurry up and find a camel to ride because we only had one night there and we were set on riding a camel into the sand dunes. So we found adventure travel compay and before we knew it we were driving in a jeep out to the desert to find our camels.

We arrived at a little camp in the desert and I spotted one camel that looked like he had better days. A sore on his neck full of flies, black sweat dripping down his head, and a smell that lingered in my nose. This was Tony...my camel for the night. So I saddled up and soon realized that camel trekking was not comfortable at all. It is a bumpy ride and because Tony refused to run, I had to kick him the whole way to camp. We arrived at camp and had some terrific indian food with another group of tourists that were already out there. After two weeks in Delhi it was refreshing to be able to see the sky and the stars were beautiful. We slept out on the sand and woke up to our camels the next morning. We rode for another couple hours the next morning and visited some villages. The kids in the village looked like something from a World Hunger Fund commercial. The villages where the families allow the tourists to give money and treats are awful because the kids chase you around yelling, "Money! Money!" and trying to get in your pockets. But the ones where they are not allowed to receive money are a little shy and not interested in us because we have money.

That night we loaded the train again for another long night and arrived in Jaipur (the capital of Rajasthan) at around 6am. We made our way to the Jaipur Inn and waited for our friends from south Delhi to arrive because we had planned to hang out with them for the weekend. Che, Ashley and Stephanie (from Florida, Missouri and Georgia) arrived around noon and we decided to walk around the city. We grabbed some delicious Indian food and caught a Bollywood flick that night. This was one of several Bollywood flicks I've seen since I've been in India and I am a big fan. I was always against spontaneous singing and dancing in movies, but now I love it. Traveling to Asia has really changed my tastes in a lot of things. Things I find beautiful and entertaining now are things I never would have liked in the states.

In Jaipur we visited the Monkey Temple...which has been my favorite temple so far. It was more like a circus than a temple. There was a five legged cow, several cobras, goats and pigs climbing on buildings, "holy" men wearing next to nothing and hundreds of vicious monkeys jumping around. The temples weren't so beautiful, but we happened to get there on a holy day so there were tons of people visiting and they were all interested in the lone white people. There were men jumping off a cliff into a pool of water and the entire temple area is built in between these canyons. After that we headed to Amber Palace and Tiger Fort...two amazing buildings on the outskirts of the city.

Unfortunately I ate some bad food on Saturday and got sick sick sick. That was no fun. So I'm still recovering from the chicken buriyani episode. On the train ride from Jaipur to Delhi I met some fantastic little Indian girls and they gave me a bindi to wear (the jewel on the forehead) and even offered some eye liner...to which I politely declined because I've already gotten pink eye and some other mystery eye problem in India. I told them I wasn't feeling good in broken hindi and I layed down then every few minutes I would hear, "Excuse me, Didi (means big sister in hindi)," and then they would have something to say. One time I got up when they called me and they said, "Didi, will you sing us a song?" Uhhh...So on a super crowded train in India I had to sing them a song. The only one that came to mind was an Everybody Duck song. Then we sang Jingle Bells and Happy Birthday together because those were the only English songs they knew.

Now I'm back in Delhi and it is a huge relief to be here. I missed the girls so much and I just love it here in Kingsway Camp. I got a salwar kameez made (it's a traditional Indian outfit) because we are going to Varanasi tonight and we're supposed to be dressed conservatively. Tonight I load the train again and on the way back to Delhi we will go to Taj Mahal then fly to London...leaving behind Asia. It's going to be a weird transition and it really is strange to think that I won't be in Asia anymore. But I'm sure that the Lord will have me back here some day for something.

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Photos

Oh hey Megan
The neighbors came up for a littel feast

View from the Balcony
This is the park where they do Kids Club

Comments

[Eric D]

once again, i'm laughing...
jingle bells on the train, 5-legged cows, and "pigs climbing on buildings..."?!?!? wow sister...wow. please tell me you have pictures of that, please... those must have been some aggro pigs.. -E

[JET]

salmon
You make me laugh. I love Tony and Johnny (was it Johnny???). I wish I could have meet them. I can't wait to see you!!!