Traveling India: A tale of 9 cities

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There is no limit to the number of versions the same story can be told. As is my audience, and as I have chosen to tell, here is one of them. I dedicate this letter to the expecting Simon because he will best understand it, because we shared the entire story, because it would have been completely different without him, and because he is my best friend.



Maybe 4 Weeks in India: A Tale of 9 Cities


It was the second time we crossed the Indo-Nepal border, though this time we walked across. I've done it a third and fourth time since, and will do it twice more in the months to come, for a total of four visits to India, and three to Nepal. Simon said goodbye Nepal, I said see you later. We were back in India. There is so much commotion at the border, a constant human traffic of criss-crossing Indians and Nepalis. India: The difference is immediately apparent. All of a sudden, there are more people and they are less attractive, the air is dirtier, the noise is louder, and you are the most popular person within a 50 meter radius as everyone wants to introduce themselves to you and your money. Good to be back...



We made our way down to Gorakhpur, the closest Indian major city to Nepal, where we would be able to find a railway station to begin our second, more extensive journey through India. We traveled two hours south in an old, experienced jeep, meant to hold 5-7 people: I think there were 12 of us. Any mode of transportation in these countries will only move if they have anywhere between double and 10x the maximum carrying capacity of the vehicle. On my way back to Nepal after Simon left, along the same but opposite route, I played the rich Westerner and paid for two seats so that I would be more comfortable, but only because I was sick and nauseous. Gorakhpur is very different from our previous experiences in Indian cities: Delhi and Agra. It is a city that has resisted the adaptation to an invasion of the tourism industry and western culture, and we felt we were visiting a real Indian city. At first we didn't like the place much, then we became content in our place, though not so happy to soon after miss our train out, stranding ourselves for another day, riding the constant oscillation of our love-hate relationship with India. This city is not on any itineraries for a visit to India. It serves only as a point of transience due to its major railway station acting as an important node in the Indian railway network (wow-urban planning jargon...).



There is a row of hotels directly opposite the station, all catering to locals staying for one night only, and therefore minimally hospitable. You really have to use the toilet but you hesitate when you see it. You want to lie down but the sheets have too many signs of previous visitors. You want to take off your shoes but your filthy feet are not as dirty as the floor. Turn on the television? First you might have to go downstairs and ask someone for a remote. Once you have one, you have to figure out which wires and cables connect to where in order to activate your television. And then of course, there’s Indian television.



We had no destinations, unlike other cities which have a long list of monuments, forts, temples, museums, tombs, and natural scenery to take in. In Gorakhpur, we could only walk, and walk we did. Until we found a decent restaurant, all we ate were samosas. Anything else would have angered our stomachs or was swarmed with bees. We very well might have been the only white people in the city. Though other foreigners similarly stop in Gorakhpur on their way to or from Nepal, their organization only settles them here for a few minutes. We, of course, had no train tickets.


Everyone stopped whatever they were doing when we walked by, fixated by our presence, snapped us with their camera phones; we even caused a minor traffic accident as we're so distracting. Nobody spoke English. Asking for directions or for suggested sights to see and visit, we ended up in some very strange places. We asked for a book store, and we ended up at Gita Press (I know Simon is laughing). One night, one of us, I promised I wouldn’t say who, forgot our backpack, with money, passports, and other valuables, in a cyber café and only realized when we and our rickshaw driver were 15 minutes and a million turns along dark, winding roads away. Map Quest wouldn't stand a chance. The game began when we had to explain to our very sweaty rickshaw driver that we had to go back to the point where he picked us up. "This is an emergency!". We had no idea where we were, then or before. We had just navigated through a labyrinth, each street like any other, a typical Indian urban environment, and we had no idea how to get back to our internet place. Our only chance was that our rickshaw driver would take us back to where we first met. But of course, he didn’t understand. We asked everyone if they spoke English, but no one did. After 5 minutes of talking with the patiently confused man, all kinds of hand signals, drawing maps and diagrams, we had attracted a crowd of 30 Indians, all eager to help, or more likely, join the entertainment scene. Finally, someone understood, translated the situation to our driver, and we ended up back at the internet and collected our bag with all its contents.



After two days, we were eager to get out of Gorakhpur. We finally got a train ticket out. Waiting in any queue in India is a real struggle of push, pull, and shove. Spending time here really toughens you, and makes you forget the respectful laws of human interaction. It now seems perfectly normal to grab a man by the shoulder and forcefully push him aside. One man on one side of the glass, accessible only through a small window big enough for a hand, and a maximum density half circle, definitely not a line, on the other side. As soon as one collects his ticket through the little opening, another 10 hands shoot in. As we have become more experienced, and unforgiving, Simon and his backpack create an impenetrable fortress while my fearless hand moves in before anyone else even has a chance. We learned how to play the game by their rules. Tickets in hand, we proudly went to the train station, truly believing that we would not miss a train for the third time in India. But we did. We were at the right place, at the right time, and on the right day. We were happy to meet a group of Nepali boys also going to Delhi, for university. At exactly the time as written on our tickets, a train arrived at the platform, and the Nepalis assured us that it wasn’t ours. It was a local train. We relaxed and watched the entertaining scene of 100 Indians trying to make it through a single door, before the train even came to a full stop. It left shortly after. Fifteen minutes later, another train stopped, also going to Delhi. We boarded, and as common, there was a family sleeping on our beds. We had gotten on the wrong train. Ours had left fifteen minutes ago. We walked back to our hotel, trying to laugh at our shame, and managed to leave the next night, arriving in Delhi the following morning. Oh yeah, at the train station, a pigeon shat on Simon's ear, which dripped down to his neck and shoulder.



We left Delhi as quickly as possible. I was supposed to meet someone there but I didn't. Our next train took us to Rishikesh, yoga and mediation capital of the world. Situated on the Ganges, it serves as a way point for pilgrims on their way up into the Himalayas and its holiest shrines. Pilgrims continue to rest in this holy city as they have for thousands of years. The city is full of sadhus (the real ones, not the fakes who dress up and ask tourists for money in Delhi) walking the streets during the day, and sleeping the streets at night.



Today, Rishikesh is also a center for all manner of New Age activity and attracts a wide range of devotees and followers of all sorts of weird and wonderful gurus. We settled in our hotel, paying a mere Rs150/night, for a room as basic as it gets, but clean and comfortable. I don't know why they don't believe in having rooms with two single beds. If you're two people, you get a double bed. We basically slept in the same bed every night throughout our month in India, except when we sleep on trains, or floors, or deserts. We were here for 10 days so we made a lot of friends whose names we don’t remember or never asked so we named them as follows: Swami G, Hard Boiled Egg Guy, French Connection Woman, Laughing Nepali, Nepali #1, Nepali #2, Really Good English Guy, Foreign Sadhu Guy, Shanti Reiki Woman, Hash Smoking Guy, and Sex Monkeys.



Feeling inspired by my setting, I spent my time reading, studying the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, learning Hindi, and writing. Simon joined sessions on meditation, yoga, and reiki. We were also around for a grand temple celebration of Krishna's birthday and India's Independence Day. We spent lots of time trying to figure out our itinerary for the next few weeks, Simon’s last in India. We had to let go of our plans to go to northern India, to Kashmir and Ladakh, where we will some day ride motorcycles along the scenic, second highest road in the world, winding the great foothills of the Himalayas of northern India. Unfed by trains and too far by bus, these fairytale regions in the north will only be a dream until the next time Simon and I come back to India. So we made a whole new plan which we never regretted. Buying your train ticket online is no easy task, first checking "trains between important stations", then scrolling lists of possible trains and classes, finding most, or all of them, overbooked, and then finally comprehending the tatkal system. India may have the most extensive railway network in the world, but it also has the most people, all seemingly big fans of train riding. After many hours, discussions and realizations, we each booked six train tickets. Traveling by nights, arriving in new cities in the mornings, we had our transport figured out, but nothing else.



Then we went to Amristar, spiritual and cultural center of the Sikh religion, where we slept, ate, and passed the time in the Golden Temple. It’s so neat and clean, for a change, and you walk everywhere barefoot. After the souls of our naked feet became accustomed to the ground, and discomforted by sandals, we decided them unnecessary for our exploratory journey out into the city, at night, for a walk, a restaurant and a post office. Garbage, broken roads, no sidewalks, cow poop, relentless drivers, all the urban filth you can imagine. No problem.


Back at the temple, everybody sleeps scattered throughout the complex. Anybody and everybody, seemingly from all over India. There is a small dormitory where tourists are invited to sleep on donation, but it was full so we slept outside with the countless numbers of Indians. With people coming and going all night, random undecipherable announcements from a loudspeaker every a hour, and a 5 in the morning general wake-up, telling us 'sleep finish', we carried ourselves to the tourists' dorm and collapsed on the first resemblance of a bed: a shredded blanket right by the door. The temple also serves free food and anyone is welcome, really exemplifying the openness of the Sikh religion, reaching out to anybody, no matter what creed, color, age, caste or gender, we all sit on the floor, side by side, and hold our plates up as volunteers pass through the endless rows of pilgrims and visitors dumping food on our plates. They serve 350,000 (3.5 lakh as their numerical system here calls it) people a day. The kitchen is enormous, with dozens of people rolling chapattis all day and others stirring massive cauldrons of rice, daal and tea.



One evening we traveled one hour west to the Pakistani border and witnessed one of the most ridiculous “political” demonstrations I have ever seen. The crossing point at the border, protected by elaborate gates and security posts, rests on the main road between the two countries, one of the very few entry points along the Indo-Paskistan delicate, impermeable border. Every evening, I believe intended as a means of promoting peace between the two nations, soldiers organize a kind of army dance with synchronized speed marching and ridiculous mustaches, and then these representatives from each side of the border briefly meet at the gate, salute and acknowledge each other through a series of bows and karate kicks, while a crowd of a thousand Indians on one side and a thousand Pakistanis on the other side cheer on. Reminded me of a scene from Monty Python.



Our night train to Pathankot was scheduled to depart very late, and rescheduled to depart even later. We waited and waited at the train station until it finally arrived at one in the morning and departed at two. Our main concern was that it would stop, and only briefly, at our destined station (hence the word: destination) at four in the morning, and we would have to get off, then and there. We had no alarm clock, and almost no ability to stay awake, and we knew if we fell asleep, we would wake much later and we wouldn't know where. Once on the train, Simon fell asleep instantly. I failed after one hour. Miraculously, thank you Simon, he woke up, woke me up, and we moved like Indians. We hit our backpacks against sleeping passengers, Simon dropped our bag of fruits on one of them, we forgot nothing, and we dashed off the train. Yay we made it. Now all we have to do is some how stay awake and find a bus that will take us to Dharamsala, three hours away, which probably doesn't leave for a couple of hours. We passed the time drinking tea in a rickshaw outside the train station, and went for our bus at 5am.



Dharamsala, a town locked within the rollings hills of the north, characterized a strong presence of Tibetan Buddhism, now acting as a safe residence where the many, many Tibetans who were oppressed in their home to the point of exile can find some measure of peace and try to maintain their original way of life. Dharamsala is also houses the Tibetan government in exile and the Dalai Lama himself, though I did not get to meet him this time. We stayed in the village of McLeod Ganj. Tibetans galore! The most adorable people on the planet. Even the salespeople have such a humble way of trying to sell you their arts and crafts. They are so peaceful and spiritual despite such troubled pasts and realities of their endangered Tibetan culture.


The scenery was gorgeous and nostalgic as we trekked to a distant river/waterfall (and climbed it!), reminiscing on our treks in the Himalayas. India really covers every type of landscape, and over night, you're in a whole new world, a new fantastic point of view. From the urban chaos of capital cities, to spiritual communities along the Ganges, golden desert villages (see below), and for now, quiet villages engraved into the mountains. Along our waterfall trek, our main obstacles where those plants that with the slightest encounter will immediately cast upon you a painful and irresistible itch and giant rocks that were too far apart to jump, with a dark abyss below between the two, which we eventually came across one that could not be crossed.

Just as we were walking towards our hotel, a school of Tibetan children was just finishing and to see them all walking out, with their little back packs and their little faces and their little feet, I almost cried 4 times. I want to go back there to teach. And on our eight hour, sleepless night bus to Chandigarh, I just happened to have met an absolutely lovely and beautiful Tibetan girl named Tenzin. With two two reasons to go back to Dharamsala, I realize that every place I go has reasons to stay or come back: the infinity of traveling Nepal and India.



Chandigarh: Four in the morning is a pretty inconvenient time to arrive in a new city, even if it is Le Corbusier's great, modern planned city of Chandigarh. Our new friend Tenzin was only in Chandigarh for the day, for university applications at 9am, so there was no way we were going to let her sit in the bus station waiting the break of dawn because an Indian bus station is not a safe place to be. Being the gentlemen we are, we invited her to stay in our hotel room where we all immediately passed out.


Chandigarh is not the grand Utopian city that we expected. Feebly glorified as a modern capital in a country eagerly depending on fresh urban design principles, it was built from a plan entirely dependent on a way of life alien to that of India, with a self-indulgent emphasis on architectural style rather than quality, adaptive urban design. For some reason referred to as the City Beautiful, it is divided into a chessboard layout of sectors, each one acting as a self-sufficient neighborhood entity, with more prominent sectors acting as civic centers containing grand, architecturally magnificent buildings such as the Assembly, the secretariat, and the high court, and some museums and a university, each one a unique design of Le Corbusier. A day tour of the city, on the Hop On-Hop Off tourist bus, took us to museums, the garden of roses, and a visit to the grand civic buildings. Our tour of the government complexes was more of a parade through the senseless beurocracy that governs much of India, with too many unnecessary encounters of "give me your passport, fill this form". The rest of the city, though it might work in already more developed countries, is very un-Indian, in a country with an unnatural ability to populate and complete disregard for healthy urban living. Our hotel was in sector 17, the supposed central and happening sector, was not where it's at. The directions we asked for were misdirected. Where is the McDonald's? Varying answers: Sector 17, Sector 22, Sector 35, or our favorite: Yes. anyways Chandigarh bla bla bla Sector's in the Sector of make believe sector wars,



Most entertaining was Chandigarh's Rock Garden, built by a little man named Nek Chand, an garden oasis of recycled urban trash creatively created into art and displayed within and forming a winding labyrinth of caves and waterfalls. Simon and I were particularly popular in the rock garden. Our first encounter was with a group of eight or ten teenage girls who all wanted a photo with us, followed by more and more "Hello, what is your good name?" as introductions, and "please, one snap" and then a bustle of excitement as the photo shoot was organized.



We also visited Punjab University, school of the rich, modern, and educated students of India. We were taken there by a rickshaw driver who insisted on waiting for us, his logic being that he would have little chance of earning his rupees elsewhere. We told him that it really was not worth his while waiting, because we had no idea how long we would explore the university, or if we would desire a rickshaw when leaving. We had lunch at the cafeteria, soaking in the bustle and hustle of student life, perhaps slightly comparable to my own university, but not really. A large green campus, with rivers and bridges, sprinklers and trees, and beautifully designed academic buildings and a library, where we spent our time after lunch. We could have been students, but didn't quite blend in. I don't think we even exited the same way we came in, but sure enough, our rickshaw driver, with his enhanced rickshaw driver extrasensory perceptions, came out of nowhere and cycled himself to our wandering selves. "How did you find us?? Okay, you're patient, dedicated, and awesome. You can take us to our hotel".



Jaipur: our entrance into the state of Rajasthan, the desert, the land of kings. Coming out of the train station was the usual: sleep deprived, hungry, hot, lost and at the mercy of this crazy country. We're only here for a day. Our next train leaves this very night. We were welcomed by a city like all others in India: heavy traffic, dust above, garbage below, dense crowds, and a rickshaw mafia desperate to be our friends. It's hard to say if we found him or he found us, but either way, we decided to put the fate of our day in the hands of a our new friend: the auto-rickshaw driver. He promised us a cheap hotel room where we could shower and keep our bags for the day, and he delivered. Gratefully, we were not spending the night (see photo of hotel room - notice the bed sheets - please note we have slept in worst conditions).


We went to meet our rickshaw only to find a different driver, the "brother" of the previous driver with whom we had developed a very minimal Indian trust. It wasn't the first time a "driver switch" was played on us, obviously some reputable rickshaw scheme among the many. The two young boys, our new guides, flattered us with compliments and good English, they even showed us a diary they had kept in which previous foreigners had commented on what kind, helpful, and honest our two friends were: a very clever, seductive little ploy to earn our trust and money. For a much lower than average price, we were driven and guided to all the sites of Jaipur: the temples, mosques, forts, museums: the whole "to do" list of the Lonely Planet. Too easy. Nothing in India is too easy. Simon and I can be pretty independent, borderline self-centered, unmanipulatable, but we've never been to India, and to survive this country, you need some time to develop a whole new set of survival skills that no one from the western world has any experience with. We were taken to many shops by our drivers, all of which would provide them with a sweet commission if we bought anything: shops outside the tourist area, belonging to his relatives, and of course, "good price". Entering a shop, this is the greeting you get: chairs are set just for you, tea is delivered, and you are welcomed as a gift from God. It's all sweet and understandable. There are two ways of looking at this common scene as a tourist in India: 1. these people are struggling to survive and tourists are their primary, if not only, source of income. They really do respect you and love you because you might potentially be helping them feed their family; 2. they are extortionists and you are a victim. Cheating is in their nature, developed as a survival tactic to manipulate foreigners and cheating them for anything they can get with no regard for human compassion. As for our own means of survival, one must never disregard the second possibility, but the first compassionate outlook is more important to understand, and accept as a tragic truth. What happens in Jaipur, stays in Jaipur. Due to our pride, some stories will remain confidential, but the worst that happens is your wallet becomes a little thinner or your credit card suffers, but in return, you walk out with beautiful gifts to bring home to those you love (i.e. elephant wall hanging). The real tragedy is that each day in India, you realize more and more that your independence is your most reliable quality, though it would be unfair to misplace this distrust. People can be trusted, but don't trust anyone. Probably the safest advice to anyone backpacking through India, not to be applied to life in general.


After our gloriously wonderful day in Jaipur, we packed up our bags and made our midnight walk to the train station towards what we expected to be our most undesirable train ride yet. We were traveling over night on sleeper class through the desert of Rajasthan, the hottest endroit in the country, facing a common expectation in India: a long and difficult night. On our way to the train station, we heard an introduction from a local that made it to the top of our list (the title actually) of Indian introductory opening statements: "Please talk me". Other honorable mentions: 1. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Sit down. Sit down. Sit down. Sit down. Sit down. Sit down. Sit down. Sit down. Sit down. Sit down. (rickshaw driver) 2. You are healthy and wealthy. Please come and spend your money. And of course, the classics: good price, looking is free, first you seeing, yes please, hello friend, I am honest man, what is your good name?, what is your country? Having trouble introducing yourself to a stranger is often difficult, and though these Indians are never much successful, they are most certainly not shy or hesitant. We got on our train. Seeing the amount of people on the platform, we knew we were going to have trouble getting to our beds. Sure enough, the train arrived, the doors opened, and all hell broke lose. We just watched helplessly as people piled on top of each other trying to get into the train. We looked at our assigned places through the train window, and there were at least 20 people in a compartment for 6. There was some festival in a city between Jaipur and our destination: Jaisalmer, and everyone was trying to get there, ticket or no ticket. We toughened up and made our way into the train, Indian style. It took a long time to get to our place, and eventually, the crowds settled, with some kicked off the train. It was not as hot as we thought it would be on the trans-desert train ride, but we did have an unexpected surprise: an in-train sandstorm. When I woke up, I was covered in sand, my bed was a beach, even my mouth had collected. For reasons that nobody understood, the train kept stopping in the middle of the desert for extended periods, delaying our arrival in Jaisalmer by many hours. Our only entertainment was watching the sandstorm sweep the corridor of the train as was we watched safely from our upper bunks.


Jaisalmer: Before we even got off the train, we were welcomed by the most notorious and persistent group of touts we had yet encountered, apparently renowned in India for their persistence. Added security guards at the train station create a safe zone within confines of the station, blocking the mob of touts ready to ambush the tired, vulnerable tourists, though once you cross their line of protection, you're on your own. Though some of the more persistent managed, as they always do, to board the train before it even came to a full stop. Strapping our backpacks, Simon always taking 5 times longer then I do because every strap has to be meticulously secured, we already had 10 people around, desperately publicizing their hotel pamphlets. Strong and resistant, like a shampoo-conditioner, we stormed past them, inconsiderate of our larger than life backpacks and their smaller than life bodies. As usual, as cool as we think we are, we are actually hopeless, in a new city with no idea where to go. Refusing a long, walking journey to find a hotel, we settled for a driver who would take us to his hotel. We know their lies and we know their scams, and we know what we are getting into, we approve, and we play along.


Jaisalmer, the Golden City, with its sand yellow buildings, really is a quintessential desert down. We ate delicious Rajasthani food on the roof of our hotel, on cushions and carpets and ankle high tables. We visited the depths of the city, truly having emerged from the desert itself. We walked narrow roads with buildings almost arching over the street, visited havelis, and chatted with each other. We explored the Jaisalmer Fort, terrifically immense, and a survivor of many battles. It doesn't expect to be attacked again, and now it is lived in! Families actually live in the many nooks and crevices of the fort, now with full flowing water and electricity, as well as hotels and tourists and countless shops. We had dinner on another rooftop restaurant outside the fort. I don't think I ever ate dinner with such a view. Though probably. Every day in the ashram I eat on the floor surrounded by small children stuffing their food into their mouth with their hands, making me laugh, and then laughing. A comparable view. I'm pretty sure I took a lovely photo but Simon didn't send me the picture. So you will never see. I could send you a google image of the fort, but that would be cheating. You could always Google image it yourself. That is what I would do. Being the little adventure explorers we are, we walked, climbed, and jumped, the unrestricted sections of the fort: the outer layer, offering the best panoramic views. Children called us from their windows, taking great interest in what we were doing. Some of the kids joined us and gave us their own version of a tour, showing us how to cross and what climb when we thought it wasn't possible to go any further. Eventually, we arrived at an endpoint, and we had two choices as to how to get down on to the road. Option 1: traversing really thorny bushes on a slippery slope that leads to a jump which due our angle of perception, it was impossible to see our landing ground, having to rely on another man's guiding arms. option 2: climbing down steps (slabs?) hundreds of years old poking out the side of a wall. It took us 10 minutes to decide to do it, though we disagreed trajectories. I took option 1. Simon took option 2.


We organized our camel safari for the next day. A jeep drove us out into the desert, which really wasn't far from the city, since it is itself settled within the desert. We met our guide, Babu, his little brother, Akhbar, and our camels whose names I don't remember despite being dearer to us than our guides. Camels are much bigger than I expected. I thought it would be rather awkward to sit on his hump, but there is so much luggage between you and the camel, that you don't feel its giant backbone thingy. Our camels were carrying blankets, cooking materials, liters and liters of drinking water, and wow did we need it. I thought Delhi was an inferno. Our good camels carried us across the desert, stopping for lunch, watering holes, and some villages. How people live in these remote little desert villages is beyond me. I mean just imagine how many amenities are accessible when you are surrounded by infinite sand.


At one point, my camel carried me unmercifully through a tree of thorns, while Simon's allowed his leg to caress a giant cactus. We rode like desert kings and we full enjoyed*. Nothing felt better than collapsing with the setting sun at our destined dunes. We cooked and ate by a bush: tea, rice, and vegetables, the usual, and retired to our choice dune with our blankets, bottle of desert whiskey and our new friend Rafael, a fellow camel rider who joined us. Choosing the right dune, or the right crevice between two dunes was an important choice. We wanted to be able to see the rising sun in the morning, avoid the light sandstorms, and we had to be a certain distance from any bush due to the presence of scorpions and snakes. We watched an epic sunset, sang songs, and listened to the sound of the wind and the scurrying of nearby dung beetles, under an infinite constellation of stars. It was a difficult to sleep, but the reality that we were spending the night in a desert made nothing else matter. The constant invasion of dung beetles into our sleeping headquarters was all in good humor. The middle of the night choir of barking dogs, in some kind of conversational unison, was oddly frightening but made us feel less alone, and in the presence of some mystical secret canine ritual. In a state of morning delirium, I'm not sure if I actually saw the sunset, or I don't remember. Anyways, I prefer sunsets. They bring me the night rather than the morning. If I could teleport, I would follow sunsets. The second day we were more comfortable with our camels, and I think they liked us more. We engaged in some camel racing. Overall, it was very larruping*. For our last train ride in India, though not mine, we decided we would go deluxe. We payed a staggering $20 each for a 15 hour overnight train from Jaisalmer to Delhi. We had a whole compartment to ourselves and were quite comfortable, for once. We deserved it.


*as best and/or only understood by Simon



Delhi: Back in Delhi for Simon's last two days in this ridiculous country. After visiting so many cities, each one a horse of a different color, it was good to come back to a more familiar environment. Once you know where the train station is, your source of orientation, and your experienced face expressing traveler's confidence repelling undesired attention, the city becomes easier to handle. You know where your budget hotel is, even though everything looks the same, and your comfortable in it, you have a favorite local restaurant and they all know you there because you're the only white person to set foot inside, the city becomes a comfortable playground, rather than a survival training camp. Delhi, the "symbol of old and new... even the stones here whisper to our ears of the ages of long ago and the air we breathe is full of the dust and fragrances of the past, as also of the fresh and piercing winds of the present". It is the site of eight successive cities. You're walking through history as it exists in the present. Last minute shopping and then poof!: Simon left and I was alone but not lonely.



Agra: Seen it, done it, bought the postcards. This time around, my second time, I would be the only foreigner to visit Agra and not see the Taj Mahal. I was here only to visit my friends Ravi (manager of hotel), and Deepak and Rajkumari (managers of the cyber cafe), thus free sleeping and free internet. As a foreigner, you have an unfair advantage in friendship making with Indias. No matter what, they will love you because you are so rare, rich, and wonderful, and it is an absolute honor for them to meet you. Anyways these three from Agra, once past the dreaded Indian businessman- foreigner relationship, it was nice to meet friendly, familiar faces again. Ravi is the one that would teach me many of the realities of Indian life, culture, and society, and some Hindi on the side. Spending time at the hotel, I even became like the locals, looking at foreigners and almost laughing inside at how much they were overpaying for their guided tours through Agra. I've been here too long.



India, each day a new scene in a different play, misunderstandings, expectations gone wrong , the shimmering, glimmering waves of colorful saris, fortune tellers predicting your misfortunes and salvation with the purchase of their stones, smells of urine and scurrying cockroaches in trains that left or never came, the crowds, mobs, and heightened use of all your senses, the random festival or parades, marriage ceremonies and dances, and giant statues of Ganesh carried down the streets, the fans barely clinging to your hotel room ceiling, peeling fruits on doorsteps, releasing your camera to take a picture and then hiding it again when a dozen people gather to have their picture taken, ridiculous hotel names like Yes Boss and Don't Pass By Me Restaurant, Hinduism and temples, Buddhism and monasteries, Islam and mosques, the architecture of old and new, rich and poor, the street children collecting empty water bottles to be sold and filled with tap water and resold as pure, drinking water, the people and the dogs sharing the streets to sleep at night, the schemes to part you from your money, hanging out the sides of rickshaws and busses, the heat, the pollution, the absence of sidewalks or any kind of barrier between pedestrian and motor vehicle, cow and fruit vendor, the 30 rupee thalis at roadside shacks where your spoon is cleaned with your waiter's fingertips, the 10 cups of tea in a single day, the familes of 25 people living in a single home, the invitations and blessings, the stares and the glares, the offerings of "for you - good price", and the I dunno what else. I love India.

I went back to Nepal around September 7. Every time I go back, I feel more and more as though I belong there. I have more friends and friendships are strengthened, I am familiar with the more remote corners of the country and my friends' villages and families, I celebrate their marriages and mourn the death of a family member, I happily live with over 100 most wonderful people, I understand ways of life that are completely foreign to any I have ever known, I have adapted the customs and am understanding the societal and political instabilities that plague the country. I am friends with the rich and I am friends with the poor, and I am aware of the projects going on and the opportunities present in knowing and working with the people who dedicate their lives to humanity, and I am developing nothing but compassion and humility.

Anyways, Nepal is a whole other chapter.

Now I am in Udaipur and am slowly making my way down to the south of India, and then going back to Nepal after 5 weeks.

Love,
Martin

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