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Published: April 18th 2008
While traveling through India I learnt a lot about myself. It is often stated that travel has this effect but from all of the countries that I have been to, India has been the biggest "test" to put it bluntly. 😊 I found myself in situations that I had never experienced before, and sometimes discovered that I reacted to these situations in a very different way to what I would have expected. Put simply traveling in India reveals your limits, or perhaps a better explanation is that it stretches you in new ways. How much frustration and physical discomfort are you willing to accept to get to a certain place, how low your standards for a place to sleep can fall, how much shouting and pushing from a group of touts you can take, how long you are able to stand in line with people constantly pushing in in front of you... etc...
Although backpacking in India can be a test of your physial and mental limits the reward is well worth the effort. It is one of the most diverse, chaotic, interesting and exciting places that I have ever been to. At the time some of the experiences are
unpleasant but when you emerge on the other side knowing something more about how to react if the same situation occurs again you get a satisfied feeling. I was only in India for a month but in that time I feel that I learnt a lot. By the end I felt that I was far better equipped to deal with the numerous everyday hassles that are the joy of travel in India. Looking back I feel like my month can be broken into three different phases or approaches that I progressed through.
For the first week I tried the approach of being friendly to everyone, always shaking people's hands and answering questions, which by the way are almost identical no matter where you are or who is asking! (By the end of the trip I wished I had a tape recording which I could play each time someone sat down next to me. It would go something like this. "My good name is Joel. I am 22. I come from Australia. Yes I like cricket. Yes I know of Ricky Ponting. No I don't work. I am a student. I study Engineering. No I'm not married. No I don't
Small rat at Karni Mata
There were holes all over the place with rats dashing in and out!have a girlfriend. Because they are too expensive. Yes I love India. Yes Indian people are very friendly" :P) This friendly approach however was doomed to failure from the start. It's far too energy-intensive to sustain for any substantial period of time and I found myself exhausted at the end of every day.
In my second week I resorted to ignoring most of the people who called out to me and walking straight past people who wanted to shake my hand. This approach, though far less tiring, meant that I had nowhere near as many interesting experiences through interactions with people and generally didn't enjoy myself as much as before.
Finally, albeit two weeks late, I followed Michael's advice (Cheers Boss!) and started to use humour as much as possible. Once I started joking around with people I changed from being just a dollar sign walking around and they normally stopped trying to sell me stuff and we just chatted. For example when I was in Agra I traded my bicycle with a rickshaw driver for a while and rode his rickshaw around the Taj Mahal calling out to Indians "50 Rupees, 50 Rupees!". It was awesome watching
people glance up at me as I passed and then do a double take and their jaws drop! :P This approach made traveling all the more fun and interesting for the last two weeks. Thus in a nutshell my advice for traveling in India can be condensed into being CONFIDENT and having a sense of HUMOUR about everything! I would also recommend reading a book called "Are you experienced?" by William Sutcliffe. It is a really fun easy read but is also very insightful, in my opinion, about the experiences that backpackers face in India.
Obviously it is impossible to fit into one blog all of the places that I have been to over the last month so I decided to only include the highlights of my trip! Sorry if this blog is much longer than previous ones but as anyone who has been to India can tell you describing her with brevity is nigh impossible!
MAHARASHTRA Mumbai While I was traveling in New Zealand I had picked up a second hand book called "Shantaram" at a small service station and loved every 930 pages of it! It is about an Austrailan criminal who escapes from a
Slum kids in Mumbai
Behind them is the bonfire that the slum built to celebrate the night before Holi. maximum security prison in Australia and makes his way to Mumbai where he spends the next few years of his life. He lives in a slum, works for the Bombay mafia, spends time in Indian prisons, travels to Afghanistan and fights with the Mujahedin and generally has some pretty crazy experiences! Thus my sightseeing in Mumbai centred around visiting some of the places that he mentions in the book which really brought his experiences to life in my mind. For example when I arrived I checked into the Salvation Army Guesthouse where he had stayed when he first arrived. It is by far the cheapest accommodation in Mumbai and there are good reasons for this. My dorm had about 20 guys in it, there was one shower, the water was turned off most of the time and there were bed bugs! Thus the limit stretching started fairly early on! :P
I was lucky enough to celebrate Holi while I was in Mumbai at a Buddhist slum near the Victoria Terminus. I stumbled upon the slum one day and was very warmly received by the people there. I was given chai, pann and lots of food as well! I spent
a few hours there meeting lots of people and looking around the slum being invited into different houses (rooms). Thus when Holi was celebrated a few days later I decided to go back to the slum to enjoy the festivities. I bought a new white shirt and trousers in preparation for our water and paint fight. I tried to buy a water gun from a shop nearby but after chatting with the man there for a while he wouldn't take any money and said it was a gift! I encountered this kind of generosity in India more than once and was always very humbled by it. At first I felt a bit reticent about shooting paint at the kids but someone obviously realised that I needed some encouragement and hit me right in the back with a big water bomb! After that all hell broke loose and within a few mintues I was covered from head to toe in red, green, blue, gold and pink paint! Even the old women got into it and kept putting paint all over my face, with blobs on my forehead and streaks on my cheeks. On the way back to my guesthouse I got
quite a few appraising stares from Indians and looks of shock from Westerners! :P
While I was in Mumbai I was also asked a few times if I wanted to be an extra in a Bollywood movie so one day when I didn't have much else to do I agreed. I arrived at the meeting point at 8am and was told that one of the shoots for the day had been cancelled. Instead of 30 people they only needed 5... Luckily I was picked in those 5 and we headed off to the film studio. 😊 The shoot was a fashion show in a movie and we had to sit and watch the models (one of which, Amrita Arora, was semi-famous I was told) walk up and down the catwalk. Tough job... :P I was given a note pad and pen and told to pretend I was making notes on the models clothes but instead I wrote down my impressions of the whole experience and kept the book at the end. Below is some of what I wrote.
"In the changing room I was given a poo brown suit to wear which was several sizes too big with
the trousers swallowing my thong clad feet (the clothing department was severely underfunded...). I was given a sickly yellow shirt which was far too small for me, accompanied by an equally hideous polkerdot tie choking my neck.
I was ushered into the studio and deposited on a seat right in front of the catwalk. I sat there for the next hour listening to the director give directions and then say "very good, very nice" in a thick Indian accent. The other Indian extras took their jobs very seriously and if you accidentally sat in their assigned seats you were told in no uncertain terms that you should move immediately. You would have thought that they were the stars of the show! At the last minute there was a heated discussion about our thongs and we were asked to move to the second row of seats, to the glee of several gloating Indian extras... :P"
It was great fun though and I am so happy that I got to do it. We had a few food and drinks breaks and I ended up chatting to the main actors quite a bit. They were all really cool and down to
earth and not snobby like I would have expected them to be. They asked me about my travels and even gave me tips on some places to go. All in all it was a great day! The movie is going to be called "Careful, my life (love)" but won't come out for quite a while so don't hold your breath!
Aurangabad From Mumbai I took a bus to Aurangabad to visit the famous Ellora caves. These caves are extremely intricately carved temples that were literally cut out of the mountainside. There are three main areas which have Buddhist, Hindu and Jain Temples respectively. The most impressive temple is the Kailasis which is a massive Hindu Temple that is 1.5 times as big as the Parthenon in Anthens and cut completely out of the mountain side. Scaffolding was not needed as they just started at the top and slowly made their way down chissling and cutting at the rock. The Jain temples are extremly intricate with some very impressive and lifelike figures. It is rumoured that the craftsmen were paid according to the amount of dust that they created from their carving, thus encouraging them to carve ever more intricate
figures.
I also visited the hilltop fortress of Daulatabad which was surprisingly interesting and impressive. These ruins of a once powerful fort have seven wall systems surrounding an impenetrable fortress on a granite outcrop. The final entrance to the fort is a spiralling staircase cut into the granite rock itself with small openings coming off it. These openings were used to pour hot tar on invaders and also stones were sometimes rolled down the stairs to crush soldiers trying to make their way up.
RAJASTHAN Udaipur My first stop in Rajasthan was the extremely relaxed city of Udaipur. This chilled out town is situated on the edge of a lake which has two beautiful palaces (hotels) in the middle of it. There wasn't a lot of sight seeing to do here but it was a great place to unwind after the craziness of Mumbai and the frantic sightseeing around Aurangabad. Most of the time I just wandered along the narrow streets looking into different shops and watching the everyday life on the streets. On the main streets you had to keep your wits about you and most of the time I was dodging either a car, motorbike,
autorickshaw, bike, dog, cow or even an elephant as I crossed the street! I also took a boat ride on the lake with a few other tourists had met and got close to the exclusive "island hotels" which were strictly off limits to non-guests. Then after a couple of days relaxing in Udaipur I took a night bus to Jodhpur but didn't like it too much so headed off the next day to Jaisalmer.
Jaisalmer Jaisalmer was one of my favourite towns during my travels in India. The fort is like a living museum and I spent a good amount of my time there just wandering the alleyways watching people going about their everyday business. The town is also quite small so it is easy to walk around and it is not very busy like every other place in India. Most people come here to do a camel safari in the Thar Desert but after my experience of camel riding in Tunisia I opted for hiring a motorbike instead. This worked out really well and I got to see lots of different places around Jaisalmer including the famous sand dunes of Sam and Khuri. I also visited lots of
little villages along the way and ended up doing over 200km that day.
Bikaner I made a short detour to the town of Bikaner to visit the famous, or infamous, Karni Mata which is a Hindu temple dedicated to rats. The rats have free rein and there are 20,000 of them so they pretty much take over the place! It was really surreal to walk around the temple with rats scurrying everywhere on the floor and their airborne counterparts (pigeons) keeping the airspace equally busy. You had to be careful that you didn't step on any of the rats as you were walking around as they frequently ran into your feet and scurried away. The reason for the temple is that the people there believe that they are reincarnated as rats so they like to look after them and protect and feed them. Very interesting place but I don't think it would be everyone's cup of tea... :P
UTTAR PRADESH Agra No trip to India is complete without visiting the Taj Mahal so there was no way I was going to miss it out! I found a great little guesthouse with an awesome rooftop view of the
Taj and spent 3 days there. Every morning I would get up early and as the sun rose watch the Taj change from a deep blue, to light blue, to orange, to yellow and finally to a piercing and brilliant white! The cost of Rs700 meant that I only actually went to the Taj once but the morning I went I got there just after 6am and spent the next few hours walking around it, trying to memorize every little detail. True to the hype, the Taj Mahal is a breathtaking sight!
Khajuraho (
MADHYA PRADESH From Agra I took a train and then a bus to the small town of Khajuraho, home of the famous "kama sutra" temples. There are about 20 or 30 temples scattered around this small town, most depicting quite explicit sex positions. They are thought to be linked to the Tantric belief that gratification of the baser instincts is one way to trancend the evils of the world and achieve enlightenment. It was quite bizzare to walk around these holy temples looking at the delicately carved figures in various positions... The attached video probably describes it far better than I ever could. The temples also
include a few examples of beastiality, with a man and a horse and a woman with a dog, which was quite shocking considering these temples are over 1000 years old.
It was also in Khajurano that the inevitable happened and I got sick. I'll spare you the details but let's just say I had very bad diarrhea and it wasn't pleasant... :P I had wanted to go to Varanasi that night and didn't want to waste time so decided to continue on with my plan and see how I went. I got a local bus to Mahoba which is only about 80km away but the bumpy ride took 4 hours! The whole trip I sat there with a look of complete concentraion on my face as I focussed on controlling all of my muscles below the waist. :P To make matters worse the bus was packed, the road was filled with potholes and people kept asking me the "typical Indian questions". Quite a test on the nerves!
Finally four hours later I made it to Mahoba and found a toilet and then waited for the train. About an hour before the train arrived I started vomitting quite a
Desert Flower
Sand dunes near Sam. bit and decided that a 12 hour train ride wasn't the best option right then. I got a retiring room (great service offered by some train stations) and that was my refuge for the next 24 hours! I came out every now and then to buy water and a few biscuits once but otherwise stayed in the room the whole time drinking rehydration salts and reading my book.
The next morning I felt a bit better so decided to get the train to Varanasi that night. Hopping onto my train at 1am I discovered someone already in my sleeper. I located the ticket guy and it turned out that the ticket officer in the trainstation had sold me an invalid ticket. Due to the fact that the train was meant to arrive in Mohoba at 12 midnight he had accidentally sold me a ticket for the previous day! Anyway it was invalid and there were no spare sleepers. Not only were there no spare sleepers but every available inch of floor space was taken up by someone. Eventually I found a small space near the toilets and pushed my way in between two old men. The smell from the
Lizard in the Thar Desert
I also saw wild peacocks, some type of desert antelope and Indian vultures drinking at a water hole on my bike ride. toilets was terrible and the noise from the train was intense because it was right next to the end of the carriage. The man on my left generally ignored me but I had to put up with his feet about 10cm from my face most of the time. The guy on my right however wasn't happy at all that I had encroached on his little space and kept shouting at me in Hindi and feabily kicking at me. He must have suffered from leprosy, polio, frostbight, gangrene or more likely a combination of them all because his feet where basically stumps with a hint of a misshapen toe here and there. By now I couldn't have cared less so I just ignored him and eventually he stopped. Later on he tried to move me by pulling me but was so weak it had no effect whatsoever. So for the next 3 hours I sat there reading my book and trying to ignore the evil stares I kept getting from the old man every time he was woken from his peaceful slumber by someone standing on him as they made their way to the toilet. At about 4am I was getting
really tired when a man came up who had seen all this happening and said that he was getting off the train at the next stop and I could have his sleeper! I could have kissed him! 😊
Varanasi Varanasi definitely made it onto the highlights list alongside Jaisalmer! If felt like someone had tried to condense all of India into one city, putting in all the craziness, colour and personality of this diverse country, and succeeded exceedingly well! I didn't visit any temples while I was there, mainly because I was quite templed out, but instead spent my time wandering along the Ganges and people watching. I think the ghats along the Ganges in Varanasi are one of the best places on earth to people watch! :P One morning I took a boat ride along the river and watched the people washing in the water as the sun rose. We also passed two burning ghats where bodies are cremated 24 hours a day. At the busiest burning ghat they cremate 300 bodies a day! It is quite surreal to see feet and heads protruding from the flames and dropping off as the heat incinerates the bodies! The ashes
Leaving Sam
My little beast that got me all around the Jaisalmer area. from these fires are then thrown in the river or sometimes the sadhus will come and cover themselves in the ashes. This makes them look even more freaky than normal! It's not just cremation ashes that go into the river in Varanasi though; there are 30 large raw sewage outlets along the cities edge and dead animals are dropped in tied to large stones which are meant to keep them submerged but don't always work. I saw quite a few dogs floating past me in the boat! All of this is quite macabre but the most shocking part is that people still wash in this river! I even saw one man washing his mouth out with the water and drinking the water! The Lonely Planet has this blurb in the Varanasi section. "The Ganges River is so heavily polluted at Varanasi that the water is septic - do dissloved oxygen exists. The statistics get worse. Samples from the river show the water has 1.5 million faecal coliform bacteria per 100mL of water. In water that is safe for bathing this fugure should be less than 500!"
One night I went down to one of the busiest ghats to watch
Jaisalmer Fort
The gate system to slow invaders down. a ceremony involving music and dancing. The ceremony wasn't actually that good but just before it was due to start there was an interesting incident. Two bulls started fighting right in the middle of the crowded ghat! The crowd parted and the bulls kept charging each other smashing their heads together! Suddenly an old man came flying out of the crowd armed with a long stick and started smacking the bulls! After a few well placed whacks the bulls separated and one charged off into the crowd. People scattered in all directions as it thundered past. I felt like I was back in Pamplona at the San Fermin Festival! :P Luckily no one was hurt and the ceremony continued on as if nothing had happened at all.
DELHI My final stop in India was the capital, Delhi. The only thing that I really enjoyed seeing in Delhi was the Lotus Temple. It is a Bahai Temple of Worship and as the name suggests is built in the form of a Lotus Flower. It looks remarkably like the Sydney Opera House but is symetric all the way around. As I am studying Civil Engineering and have a keen interest in
Biomimicry I was really impressed by its elegantly simple design with underlying structural complexity. I hope that one day I can be involved in a similar construction project somewhere!
Next blog: Trekking with my Mum in Nepal! 😊
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Sharon
non-member comment
And your good name?...
Stumbled across your blog. It's a good sum up of your feelings as a backpacker when in India - a mixture of frustration, fascination, and sheer hilarity! I'd also recommend reading "Holy Cow" as it does a good job of describing the transition of feelings towards India as your time there progresses. Funny, too. I head to India for the third time soon, with a mixture of dread and excitement!!!