Indian time

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From what I gathered, Indians are supposed to be pretty good at math. Yet, somehow I found out that 7 + 3 + 20 + 3.5 = 41, which is the number of hours the trip from Pokhara to Mcleod Ganj took me, not including the night I spent in a town on the way.

When I tried to find out how to get here from Pokhara, I found I had a number of options (none of which were too clear, since I got alot of incorrect information about the routes in India while I was in Nepal).
I had a couple of guidelines, according to recommendations and stories I heard from people, and they included:
* Gorakphur is one of the worst places in India (and has nothing of interest for tourists)
* Don't take a train alone
* Try to at least begin the trip in India in touristic places.
So of course I ended up choosing a route that included a night in Gorakphur, taking a 21 hour train (which of course took over 24 hours), and traveling in a very untouristic route.
All in all the trip ended up including 10 different vehicles and 30 hours without seeing a single tourist, but it was really fine, I even enjoyed parts of it (like the snowy mountains glowing in pink from the sunset on the way to Dharamsala).

Luckily there were people with me till Gorakphur and they all ended up having to stay the night. That was actually very lucky because the bus to Gorakphur stopped in the middle of nowhere (it was already dark outside) and suddenly everyone got off and signaled for us to get off as well. No one spoke any English, so it took us awhile to understand there was road construction and to transfer to something between an auto-riksha and a jeep that took us to Gorakphur. If I had been alone that could have been quite frightening. After I got on the train in Gorakphur, though, I didn't see a single tourist till I got to Mcleod.

Once we crossed the border to India I kept waiting for that famous "India Shock" to come, so I kept looking for differences between Nepal and India. Other than the difference in the people's faces and the food, here are the differences I came up with (of course things changed dramatically when I changed countries in India, this is only relevant to the beginning):
* People dress differently, mainly the men - there are many more muslims (and therefore many more muslim outfits, including women that show only their eyes).
* Almost no one knows english, not even basic words.
* The sky was no longer blue, but a brownish yellow.
* When you wash your jands the water comes out black
* Everything is flat!
* Alot of small children wear makeup
* There are many more flies.
* They sell alot of eggs.
But nothing was enough to give me any sort of shock. Some of the people who were with me, even one who had been to India, were in a bit of a shock from Gorakphur, so hopefully I've already been to one of the worst places I'll see and I don't have any major shock waiting for me.

Actually, it was the other way around, I was surprised to fin India better than I thought. It's true that people can be very pushy,but so far there pushiness has been to a limit I can cope with easily (when one guy stared at me in the train I just stared back with a scowl till he turned his eyes away). They can also be very very nice, especially when you're traveling alone:

* I sat in a sweets and breakfast shop in Gorakphur with an english guy and someone took a picture of me buying and then wanted a picture of both of us outside. We posed drinking tea and eating (we thought tye might hang a picture of us on the wall), and didn't really understand why he didn't just take the picture, so we continued talking as usual. Then, when he came to show us the pictures, we saw he had filmed a movie, around 5 minutes! Then they brought us more chai, on the house, as thanks for participating (we found out it was a mistake, he tried to charge us for it, but the story is better in the first version, and they were still nice anyhow).

*On the bus to Dharamsala I found out that the bus wasn't going to stop in Dharamsala but somewhere 10 km from there. Someone told me where to get off and helped me carry my bag to the bus. When we got on he said he wasn't going to Dharamsala but he told the conductor to tell me where to get off (which, of course, he didn't). He paid for my ticket (!) and when he got off he gave me his phone number and said that if I encountered some problem and needed help I could call.

* This morning I drank some chai in a dhaba in Mcleod and chatted a bit with a tibetan guy. He suddenly remembered he had to be somewhere and ran off. When I came to pay I found out he had paid for me and he had already ran so I couldn't even say thanks.

So all in all my first experiences in India were quite good, and the trip I was scared of turned out to be fine. In the end the hard part was the part I wasn't afraid of at all - when I arrived in Mcleod (lugging around a very heavy bag trying to find a place to stay, having the shower turn from wonderful to freezing in the middle and arriving very hungry at a restaurant at nine to find out that's when restaurants close here...).

Valuable lessons I've learned from the trip:
1. You can't know or plan anything in advance - how things will work out, where the tough places will be, you just have to take things as the come. I know, it's kitsch, and it's what alot of people say about trips like this, but it's just true.
2. When you're at the train station don't walk to near to the tracks, you never know when someone might turn and accidentally spit tobacco at you instead of the tracks.

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Comments

[Waderlusting]

hahahaa
After I read your other blog, I had to read more! You're such a funny writer. I especially liked the math comparison, the bit about hands being black after a washing and valuable lesson 2. I'm planning on returning to Nepal through the route you came... I'm not so sure anymore!