From the journal I kept while in India
Dated 30. December 2009 7:35 a.m. (one full day after arrival)
"It's just been one full day in India and already the experience is overwhelming. From the moment the plane lands on the ground, the smell of smog permeates the cabin. In the airport, customs officers, seemingly delighted at your light eyes, flirt with you as they ask what's required by their job: What are you doing in India?
When I saat on my bed at the YWCA for the first time, I had that exact thought. WHAT AM I DOING IN INDIA?
This country obviously tests your ability to travel. It tests everything you're comfortable with. There are different rules here, culture, and ways of life. Somehow I know this will teach me so much in the coming days it's hard to fathom now. The beginning of this trip was a rough one. I packed for four hours. My luggage has yet to arrive.
The first flight on Air New Zealand was so nice, it reminded me of how stifled service in America is and how rude to one another we can be. If you think about it, Southwest Airlines is like the Wal-Mart of airplines. It's unassigned seating, every man for himself. Women and children first! Who cares if you can't sit next to your family member! It's also why we love it, because it's cheap. The airline staff on our first flight asked me to switch seats so a family could sit together with their two small children. And just a mere day after I left, here I am in the land of the unknown."
So in the usual preparations for India, I got a few immunizations, a few shots, a few sleeping pills for the plane to ward off jet lag, but nothing could prepare me for the sensory overload that happens when you arrive. Our first stop was in Delhi and our flight arrived at 3:30 a.m. You saw that right. A.M. By the time we loaded up on the bus, we spent a couple of hours filling out paperwork for our missing luggage. Of course my one suitcase that I so proudly packed tight with essentials for three weeks naturally was the last to arrive. I did take the advice of a fellow traveler about packing an extra change of clothes in my carry-on in case my luggage was delayed.
Do you know what it's like to turn your clothes inside out at night to sleep in, then turn them right-side-out again to head out for the day? I thought my one suitcase would never arrive, but I kept myself in good spirits anyway.
My roommate Kelly and I trudged up the flight of stairs in the cold, foggy, Delhi morning with visibly thick air that instantly contracted our lungs to our room. After more than 20 hours on planes, a run-for-your-life plane change in London where two of our colleagues missed their flight, we were greeted by our non-warm room.
The region of India we were in is also a desert-weather area, which means the buildings are meant, designed and built to stay as cool as possible during the summer months. When you visit in December/January, be prepared to sleep with some woolen blankets and leave the space heater on all night. If you thought mattresses at the Motel 6 were hard, the beds pictured here are the equivalent of sleeping on the floor. They have no give. Overall, the first night was the hardest when it came to sleeping. After that, your body amazingly adapts and by the end of the trip, I slept very soundly on the hard beds.
The first night was mainly a blur because it was nearly 6 a.m. by the time we got to the room. It was long enough to take a nap and make it downstairs for breakfast. In the beginning, new visitors will notice the smell of the fog/smog in Delhi that's particularly bad during the first few weeks of January, it's a mix of smoke and pollution and trash? is that trash? It's indescribable and gave me what I later came to call the Delhi cough.
The beginning of our three-week trip was pretty light, as our professor knew we were all going to be hit with jet lag by 4 p.m. the day after we arrived. On just a few hours of sleep, I made it through the museum of modern art, took a slew of notes and marveled at our first exposures to India's vibrancy. The road outside our hostel, the YWCA, was on Parliament Street south of Connaught Circle, a shopping plethora and heavy bargaining area. By 8 a.m., the shacks that sold food and snacks outside began to open, the cars began to honk and honk and honk.
So now India's conflicts also include the horn issue because a campaign has also been started to STOP honking. This is complicated by the fact that there's 20 different sized vehicles on the road at any given time. There's rickshaws, scooters, motorcycles, trucks of varying sizes, tourist buses, bicycles and pedestrians all muddled together.
You're likely to see women riding motorcycles side-saddle, balanced completely without using their hands to stay on the back of a bike. Note: Patriarchy at work with the man wearing the helmet, however, his companion is not so fortunate. I also did see a motorcycle just like this loaded up with a girl of about six years old on the front, her father holding her, the mother on the back and carrying an infant-aged child. Seatbelts? Uh, what?
That being said, as chaotic as India's traffic is, they must be some of the best drivers in the world because you don't see nearly as many accidents on the road as you do even here in the Valley. Over the period of three weeks, I saw one overturned truck on the way to Jaipur, but it was likely due to the wet weather that day and no other vehicles were involved in the accident. Additionally, the horns are musical and vary from vehicle to vehicle, so what you hear is not a monotonous horn-blowing non-stop but a veritable symphony of noise all day long. Moving on.
When we were at the museum of art, I noticed immediately that the poverty in Delhi is vastly different from what I have experienced in the past. Regardless of the good sides and bad sides of town, India's poor are just as likely to wander the streets outside the shopping centers as well as the middle class neighborhoods. Construction was ongoing around the city due to the upcoming Commonwealth Games later this year and a number of sidewalks were being repaved. Construction workers don't wear orange vests in India and often children of accompany their mothers to the construction sites, hanging and swinging from the scaffolding just feet from where old cement is being chiseled off the arcade exteriors. Shantytown tents and blue canvases over cardboard crops up at construction sites and it is apparent that the people who are working there are also living there.
It makes me wonder about the curiosity of those living on the streets in such vast amounts. The first day I experienced what would later become imprinted in my mind as one of the quizzical things that I would witness in India that I still cannot make sense of. A few of us decided to venture to walk around Janpath, a bargaining and chaotic shopping experience. On the way, we came to the end of our block, where the corner curved and you cannot tell if a bus or nothing is just around the bed, waiting to plow into you.
It was there, on the crumbling corner, where we slowed down to look both ways and noticed a young boy, between four to five years old, holding his pants in his hand and squatting on the corner. In plain view of those walking on the street, the sidewalk, and the vehicles passing by, his rear nearly on the cold concrete, began to defecate.
At first a sight like this makes you disgusted, as we like to put diapers on our kids, doors on our stalls, and poop is something that is a punchline. I never forgot that sight. We kept on walking, people kept driving past. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to think. Later, it became an example of the puzzling thing that happens in India, for me at least.
The thing is not what happened, but what I didn't know about the situation with the little boy. He did not appear very thin, so I don't know if he was going on the street because he was homeless. He did not appear very dirty, so I don't know if he was poor. He did not appear to have anyone with him, I did not know if he had parents. Over the next few days, we noticed other piles on the corner. I wondered if the corner, like the sign near the YMCA that said "working for a better Delhi!" where men pissed on the brick, was just a place known to poop.
I never got an answer. It was one of the first experiences in India that was like that. Trust me, there were many to follow.
No more blog about India pooping? Too bad. Next up: Obviously a tourist and the mosque experience.
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