Where's Grayleen?

what we did: We spent two weeks in the North of India right in the middle of the hot season, decidedly the wrong time of the year to visit. We visited Delhi and took a day trip over the Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Then we headed west into the desert state of Rajasthan to visit Jaisalmer and Jodhpur. We wrapped things up with a trip north to Rishikesh, a holy city situated in the foothills of the Himalayan mountains and on the Ganges River.

The street is mine

exchange rate: 1 USD = 44 Indian Rupees.

relative cost: India can be one of the cheapest places in the world to travel. But, if you want to do it in style, there are ways to spend a lot of money on lodging and food. We almost exclusively chose the budget route, paying $5-10/night for budget hotels and found that we could have delicious meals for just a couple of dollars. Train rides of 20+ hours in modern air conditioned cars were about $10.

our love/hate relationship with India: India is a country of extremes. It is impossible to visit India for the first time and not have it make an impression. There was immense beauty everywhere we looked. But it was so exhausting, sapping us of every last bit of energy we had. Indeed, we found ourselves see-sawing between falling head-over-heels in love on the one hand and feeling a deep loathing that made us want to escape as fast as possible on the other. It seems impossible to provide our usual overall impression for India (our guide book says, “bamboozling”). Here are some of our impressions:

Love: The food. Curries so delicious you want to cry. Masala chai so tasty you wonder why anyone drinks anything else. And the mangoes. Oh, sweet lord, the mangoes!

Hate: The food. Inevitable and most likely violent gastrointestinal problems result.

Love: The rich colors. Vermillion turbans, saris of magenta, turquoise, garnet. India is ground zero for color, and everywhere else seems dull and desaturated by comparison. It appears that they invented color here, and in fact, they kinda did.

Hate: The disgusting filth. There is trash absolutely everywhere. You have to stay constantly alert lest you step in feces. The air is so polluted, our eyes and throats burned and wiping our grimy faces with a wet-wipe after a couple of hours outside turned the wipe dark gray.

Love: The smells. Rich spices, freshly baked naan, deep fried street food, incense.

Hate: The smells. Open sewers, rotting garbage, human and animal excrement.

Love: The warmth of the people. They were eager to help us and share tips about their country. Time and time again, we found ourselves in fascinating conversations with about Indian culture.

Hate: The continuous honking. This drove Aileen so nuts that she feared Gray would have to drop her off at the loony bin and continue the trip on his own.

Love: The constant flurry of activity. This is a country that is quickly modernizing, with an economy that is growing at break-neck speed, and it is easy to see why when you look around.

Hate: Lines. It’s near-impossible to make forward progress with the line cutters and elbow-throwing grannies.

Love: The smiling faces and outstretched hands that greeted us wherever we went. Check some out here.

Hate: The heart-wrenching poverty and how the Hindu religion seems to say that people shouldn’t even try to change it.

Love: The cows everywhere.

And so much more!

One of a sea of beautiful faces

we recommend:

- Eating amazing cuisines local to distant parts of India right in the heart of New Delhi

Aileen stumbled upon a New York Times article that tells of eating in the cafeterias of the government workers who represent the different Indian states in Delhi, the national capital. It’s like learning that the U.S. House of Representatives has a different restaurant, for the workers from each of the 50 states, with imported chefs and subsidized prices no less. We only had time to eat at one, the Southern state of Andhra Pradesh, home of Hyderabad. The all-you-can eat thali cost us next to nothing and was some of the best food we tried in all of India.

- Visiting Jaisalmer and taking a camel safari with Ba

We had an amazing time in Jaisalmer. The ancient, but still living, fort and surrounding city were beautiful and fun at the same time. We visited in the low (read: hot) season and it felt like we had the entire town to ourselves. Your mileage may vary if you’re visiting during the peak season. If you’re heading to Jaisalmer, drop us a line and we’ll point you with the best of our ability to Ba’s hotel.

- Eating lunch at the Umaid Bhawan Palace in Jodhpur, if your budget allows

If you have $80-100 to drop on a mediocre lunch, I guarantee there is no place better in the world. We had an absolute blast and would highly recommend it.

- Taking the train rather than using a driver, and book trains via cleartrip.com.

Many visitors to India hire drivers to take them on tours across the country. Unless you grew up in India, driving yourself would be simply insane. Lacking a clear better option, we traveled with a driver on our overnight jaunt to Agra. The pollution, constant honking, and idiotic drivers drove us bonkers. We used the train to travel throughout Rajasthan and to Rishikesh, and found it to be way more pleasant (and super-cheap to boot!). Book tickets online with ClearTrip.com and take a bit of time searching around IndiaMike.com to learn the intricacies of getting a reservation (e.g. on one trip we actually purchased four tickets each and then canceled three once we received a confirmation of our preferred spots).

Every now and then on this trip we’ve had a simple experience that somehow just seems to capture the essence of a place.  In Cartagena, Colombia it was listening to live creole music in the street late at night with spicy street food in hand.  In Buenos Aires it was sipping wine at packed tables set up in neighborhood square watching everyday Argentinians tango the night away.  These moments in time could never explain a people or a culture of course, but they sure do seem to do a good job getting at the heart of things.  Well, this is India…

After two weeks of traveling around India, we arrived late at night at the Old Delhi train station.  An Iranian girl we’d befriended on the train said that she wanted to use the prepay taxi stand instead of negotiating with one of the many drivers that were sure to hassle us at the exit of the station.  Liking her thinking, we decided we’d follow suit.  For those that don’t know, prepay taxi systems are set up in areas frequented by tourists in order to avoid taxi drivers taking advantage.  It’s pretty simple: you go to an official window where you tell the attendant your destination and fork over some cash in exchange for a voucher.  You give the voucher to the driver and you’re all set. We’ve had great experiences with this system in Colombia, Chile, and elsewhere.  But nothing in India is ever so simple.

The prepay window turned out to be surprisingly hard to find.  The swarming rickshaw drivers certainly weren’t any help, and everyone else we asked either had never heard of this prepay thing or else pointed us in a seemingly random direction.  After six or eight queries, I struck gold with a gun-toting security guard who indicated a decrepit stone shack across the parking lot.  We strolled up and I got into a line of about ten people, mercifully short.  At this point I’d been in a line or two in India (though, to be honest, I’d never before made it to the front of one) so I knew what would ensue.    As I stood there, several men walked up one after the other and put a hand on the shoulder of someone a bit ahead of me, acting like they knew the person (they didn’t) and joining them in line.  I knew this trick and I pointedly told them they were behind me in line.  Directly confronted, they moved behind me.  Then there were the tiny elderly women.  They walked right up to the front of the line and bent their slight frames with the skill of linebackers to the task of shoving the head of the line out of their way.  Again, I was ready.  Along with others near me, I assumed a classic basketball stance and “boxed them out”.  A couple made it through; most did not.  Finally at the front of the line, I handed over my 80 rupees (~$2) and received my prepaid voucher.  Success!

Or so I thought.

I asked the first rickshaw driver I saw and he said that in order to use the prepaid voucher I would need to catch a rickshaw just outside of the gates of the train station.  We followed his pointed finger and hailed ourselves a driver.  Very politely, this new driver informed us that we would need to seek out a rickshaw driver within the gates of the train station.  Great.  Back inside, we saw another line of rickshaws within an inner parking lot.  They helpfully pointed us back where we started.  We tried several drivers there, each one mumbling some slightly different suggestion of where else we should try.  We were not alone in this: there were eight or ten Indians also in the same pickle and looking pretty exasperated.  We noticed that they were starting congregate around a different gun-toting security guard and were having a bunch of heated exchanges with him in Hindi.

I marched up to the security guard and, in my best “you need to listen to me” voice, demanded that he help tame these rickshaw drivers so that I can get the ride for which I’ve already paid.  He gave me the universal “just one minute” sign and proceeded to pull out his phone and start chatting with someone.  He walked right away from me and the rest of the hoard of angry voucher-holders and went inside the voucher booth.  He then fully ignored everyone.  This was when I finally had my “Ah-ha!” moment.  Why would a rickshaw driver ever want to give anyone a ride for the official fare when he can extort more money out of his clients?  It’s not like other countries where there is that pesky “rule of law” and associated civil or criminal penalties.  Not for this sort of thing anyway.  I finally knew what to do.

I walked back over to the first rickshaw driver we’d talked to who had so kindly offered us the advice to head outside the gate and asked, “I have this voucher, how much more do I need to pay?”  After studying the address on the voucher, told us 40 more rupees (~$1) would cut it as a “nighttime fee”.  The deal struck, Aileen and I hopped into the back of the rickshaw.  The driver revved the engine and then turned around and confirmed, “You will give me an extra 50 rupees with the voucher.”  I had to stop Aileen from protesting – I was not willing to lost this ride over 25 cents.  I agreed, 50 rupees, and we were finally off (well, after he pulled over to buy himself some cigarettes and something to eat, and pulled over again to chat with another rickshaw driver a while, but close enough).

The ride itself was pretty normal for India – lots of pollution, horns blaring, kids begging, running red lights, seemingly random turns – except it turned out that our driver had absolutely no idea where he was going.  He kept stopping and asking random people on the side of the street where to go – again and again.  When we were finally in the right neighborhood, but hadn’t yet found where we needed to go, he pulled over and suggested that we had arrived at our destination and asked us to pay.  Uhm, no thanks!  He then said that he expected us to pay him a “tip” on top of the our original agreement.  Not really having much of an option, we agreed.  After two more stops for directions and some helpful suggestions from the back seat, we finally arrived at our hotel and forked over the voucher for 80 rupees, the “night fee” of 50, and a “tip” of 20.

During the ride Aileen and I had been surprised and amused to see that the rickshaw was actually equipped with a meter.  The final listed fare?  63 rupees.

Rishikesh is one of the sites where Hindu pilgrims come to bathe in the sacred Ganga.  Many Hindus believe that life is incomplete without taking a bath in the Ganga at least once, which is purported to cleanse the soul of sins and the body of ills.  It was fun to watch everyone, especially the kids, splash around.

More photos from Rishikesh here.