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Published: September 11th 2007
Belgium - Backpack Police
Having the unnecessary contents of my backpack filtered out by Rutger... ouch
Lesson 2: Trust nobody, no matter how friendly and caring they seem
Lesson 3: Stick to your plan Yes, now that I am here, I hear that this is a common tourist trap. The guy in the tourist office (Imran is the name), convinced me that I would like to be in Srinagar, that I needed to get away from Delhi asap and I would find peace in Srinagar. Most people he booked want to stay longer than originally booked, he said... Ugh, I do feel like a dummy now. I booked a cheap flight to Srinagar, but the accomodation + food cost me 30 euros a day, while my planned day budget is only 25 euro. The excursions, Imran had so 'honestly' told me, are an extra cost, but I would be free to take the excursions or not. Yeah right. At the airport, all tourists have to sign a paper, saying with whom they are staying. So I wrote down the name of the hotel (The Holy Night Hotel - not so Holy mind you). Now the hotel says they are responsible for me because the government holds them
Belgium - Smurfy
Got to leave my HuggerSmurf here.... look how sad he is ... snif responsible for me during my stay. I have no way of knowing to what degree this is true. In any case, I cannot leave the hotel without a "guide". Yes, it does feel safer to walk on the streets with a bodyguard, and they are friendly, no complaints there. But since I am not allowed to leave the hotel without a guard, I am virtually forced to take the excursions, otherwise I am stuck in the hotel. And the hotel, well, it's not exactly the place to have a good time. The room is absolutely basic (probably worth no more than 300 Rupees a night), the bed is no more than a plench with a cushon on it, the food is ok but nothing to write home about (I am sure it costs them less than 100 Rupees a day). Besides, I am the only tourist at the moment. I wonder if they do this on purpose, to make sure tourists don't talk amongst each other too much. I talked with a Brazilian guy a few days ago, he was not exactly happy either about the way everybody wants money from you. I have a new meaning for the abbreviation
Paris - Gulf Air
hostesses ... The blue scarf attached to the hat doesn't really hide anything.
Waited for 7 hours in this area. This is taken an hour before departure... had nothing better to do. WWW; Walking Wallet Woman.
But I do try to make the best of it, even though I worry about the budget issue now. I am spending double my day budget here. Yesterday I went to the "old city", went into some mosques, talked with some local people, ordered a custom made Kashmir style cotton pyjama. The little streets in the city are full of little shops, each around 4 square meters on average. Some selling western goods, but a lot selling the local food and manually crafted goods. And the crafts people do their work on the streets. I imagined it would have been similar in the middle ages in Europe. The big difference is the location and the culture of course. The surrounding mountains (the locals call them hills, but some are more than 3000m high) are just wonderful, and the valleys look like yellow velvet patchwork carpets. The culture is a mixture of Arabic and Indian and British influences. 90% of the people here are muslim, but I don't get the impression they are as fundamentalistic as we imagine them to be. The people I talked to mostly believe all religions believe in the same God, only
we give our God different names. Surprised to hear that from muslims. Their religion rules their life however, they talk about nothing else (except money and how to get it from stupid tourists). Whatever they try to explain, they explain using Koran verses.
Today I am going to see the Moghul gardens, and tomorrow I am going on a trekking for 3 days (2 nights). They wanted to charge around 300 euro for that, I got it down to 100 euro now, but it still cuts a big hole in my wallet. I am sure all tourists have to learn a lesson like this soon or late, so perhaps I am lucky to learn it in the beginning.
btw: no abnormal bowel movements yet :-)
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anonymous
non-member comment
lol Sabrina, glad you're smoothing the aisle out for me ! I did read somewhere that the first thing you need to do in India is back of the toerist parcours by any means, that untill you succeed at that you ARE a WWW. *big smile*. Glad to hear you didn't get kidnapped so close to the muslim border! I got worried not seeing an entry from you yesterday. No, just kidding, i wish you a lot of fun and trekking will probably be beautifull! xxx Gaëlle