After our first harrowing day in New Delhi, Hannah and I
were anxious to escape the scams, bottleneck traffic, and choking
fumes of the capital city. We only spent one day there, but, to us,
it felt like an eternity, as overnight flights and buses had
prevented us from sleeping since our final night in Mozambique four
days earlier. Despite the stress of that first day, our one day in
Delhi was, nonetheless, an unforgettable experience.
Just walking the streets in a sleep-deprived haze was
enough to take in the scents and sounds of India. As we walked past
the tiny food stalls, my nostrils were enchanted by the smells of
chapatis frying on iron tawas, samosas bubbling in oil, and the
traces of garlic, cumin and anise mingling in a dance of aromatic
curries. It was sensory overload. I walked the streets like a dog,
my eyes and then feet lagging behind my nose which guided me from one
food stall to the next. Meanwhile, my ears were assaulted by the
cacophony of urban India. A symphony of car horns bleated their
tones, while cyclists whizzed by ringing their bells and perilously
avoiding collisions with pedestrians and auto-rickshaws. Bollywood
music blared from the tiny TV sets behind the counters of food
stalls, and arguments broke out between men sipping milk chai from
their miniature glasses.
Between the sounds and smells of Delhi, there was almost
no room to take in any other senses, but looking from left to right,
I saw novelties I couldn't even have dreamed up. First, I saw a
miniature carriage pulled by a bedraggled cyclist over the stones and
potholes of Delhi streets. The carriage wasn't any bigger than a
large trunk, but was enclosed by bars and had no less than about six
toddlers in their school uniforms and Spider-Man backpacks sitting
comfortably and absorbing the bumps on their way to school. Further
along, an enormous and matriarchal cow lay in the middle of a busy
intersection, contentedly flicking flies off of its back with its
tail as auto-rickshaws, buses and taxis swerved to avoid hitting it,
no one thinking to coax the cow out of it's poorly chosen afternoon
nap site. Later on down the road, women pressed their hands into
brown Frisbee-sized cow pies, shaping them into dense discs and
setting them in the sun to dry so that they could be used for fuel.
As we got into our taxi and rode to our first site in
Delhi, the grand India Gate, I noticed something about all of the
cars and taxis in Delhi: none of them had side mirrors. In the
location where the side mirrors would have been now resided a few
broken chunks of plastic and a hole. One car after another passed
us, and I realized that this was not an isolated incident, I
literally didn't see any cars with side mirrors. As we swerved
through the busy streets, narrowly avoiding collisions with cyclists,
auto-rickshaws and pedestrians, sweeping within inches of oncoming
vehicles in perilous passes, I realized why there were no side
mirrors left – either they had all broken off already from cutting
it too close, or privy drivers had removed the mirrors preemptively
in anticipation of losing them soon enough. Amazingly, despite the
complete lack of, or at least driver ignorance to, existing road
signs, stop-lights and lane designations, no one seemed to be hitting
each other. I found this unfathomable. Drivers had a sixth sense as
to when a lane in front of then would open up, and a prescience for
knowing that an auto-rickshaw coming directly at them in the oncoming
lane was going to veer to the left at just the right moment to avoid
a nasty collision. It was a brilliant dance of cars weaving in and
out of lanes, stopping and starting, merging and shouting, but never
colliding.
After the India Gate, our taxi driver took us to
Humayun's tomb, then to the Jains' Lotus Temple, and finally to the
Gandhi Memorial, where we walked through Old Delhi, getting lost in
the labyrinth of famously frenzied street markets and the Jama
Masjid, a historic mosque, before returning to our hotel for a much
deserved night of rest.
The next morning, Hannah and I boarded a train bound for
Agra and the Taj Mahal. We decided that it would be best to visit
the iconic Taj Mahal at sunrise the next morning, so on that first
afternoon we flagged down a cycle rickshaw, intent on getting a
mini-tour of the other interesting sites in Agra. Our driver was a
small and skinny, yet endlessly jolly man, who called himself Ali
Baba. His rickshaw had seen better years and I had my doubts as to
whether his miniature frame could peddle us around the city, but he
had a gritty determination and wasn't afraid to tell us to step out
and walk when we got to an incline, so we agreed on a price and set
off on our adventure.
One of the more interesting, yet disturbing, sitings we
had on our mini-tour of Agra was on a remote road on the way to the
Baby Taj. As Ali Baba strained to peddle us down the road, we
noticed that the road was spotted with feces. I assumed it was from
goats, cows, or some other domestic animal, but then I noticed
children, one after the other, approaching the road, dropping their
drawers and defecating right there on the road. I couldn't believe
it. I'm no stranger to latrines and even popping a squat behind a
bush from time to time, but this all seemed backwards. They were
coming to the road in order
to take care of their business, rather than going away from the road.
This highlighted one general observation I had about India over the
course of my two weeks there – you simply couldn't escape the sight
and stench of bodily fluids. Whether it was a situation like this,
people hacking loogies on the train, or people unabashedly peeing
anywhere they felt the urge to go, India was full of a disturbing
amount of personal waste material.
Despite this, we had an enchanting day with Ali Baba.
At the end of it, he was ready to take us back to our guesthouse, but
pulled aside to ask for one favor from us. He said that he would be
a “vedy, vedy, hoppie mahn” if we only agreed to go into the
textiles emporium to look around. “Jost ten minutes....lookie,
lookie, no buy, just lookie, den we go. You make me hoppie mahn.”
After turning him down a few times, we finally agreed to let him take
us to the craft emporium. It was not uncommon at all in India to
have taxi drivers who, sometimes without even asking you, insisted on
taking you to all of their favorite textile and craft emporiums
because they would get a commission from the store every time they
brought customers in. It can be frustrating when you have places you
want to go, and your driver takes you on a tour of all the highest
paying stores in the city to make a few extra rupees. On this night,
however, we had nowhere else to be, and were happy to help our friend
Ali Baba support his family.
The next morning, we woke up before dawn and braved the
brisk morning air as we stood in line at the gate to the Taj Mahal.
I read somewhere that the Taj Mahal receives as many as 20,000
visitors every day. In a city as small as Agra, I could never figure
out where all those people stayed. Given this quantity, we decided
it would be best to get in and get out early in order to avoid the
crowds. Arriving an hour before sunrise (when the gates are
officially opened) put us behind only two or three other people in
line. Thus, when the gates opened, we ran ahead in what seemed like
a scene out of the Amazing Race and were the first people to get a
picture on the bench centered directly in front of the Taj Mahal,
with the canal and row of trees leading up to the Taj behind us.
The Taj was epic and statuesque. The morning sun
painted the bleached white marble a golden yellow and brushed the
horizon behind it with purple and pink hues. As I approached the
stoic structure, its reflection grew in the emerald waterway leading
up to it. Inside, there were two cenotaphs surrounded by an
intricate marble lattice. One of the raised marble tombs was
perfectly centered in the middle of building. This was the tomb of
Mumtaz, the famous wife of Shah Jahan, for whom he constructed the
building. The other tomb, laid parallel to that of Mumtaz, was the
tomb of the great Shah Jahan, the Mughal King buried next to his wife
some 20 years later.
After visiting the Taj Mahal, we walked across town to
the other great structure credited to the legacy of Shah Jahan, the
Agra Fort. The fort was a massive red stone structure with a dried
up moat running around its vast perimeter and what seemed like miles
of towering walls layered one after the other to protect each
successive level of the huge structure. Inside the fort, there was
room for a whole city. Courtyards and finely crafted marble palaces
populated the interior. While the Fort was originally constructed
years before Shah Jahan came along in the 16th century, he
was credited for designing the vast inner network of palaces and
balconies which looked out over his kingdom. Famously, after his
wife passed away and he built the Taj Mahal in 19 years, he was
deposed and imprisoned by his son and heir. He spent his remaining
years imprisoned in the great palace within the Agra Fort. There he
could only look from the balcony across the river to his life's work
and deceased wife's tomb, the Taj Mahal.
After leaving Agra, we headed to the first of the great
Rajasthani cities in northern India : Jaipur. Over the next 10 days,
we fully toured all of the great forts and palaces of Rajasthan –
first Jaipur, then Udaipur, Jodhpur and Jaisalmer, before heading
back to Delhi and flying out. Each of these cities had its own
unique aesthetic. Jaipur was known as the “pink city” and
boasted a network of interesting Moghul palaces and bustling street
markets within the pink walls of its “old city.” Despite this,
the most memorable day we had in Jaipur was the night I ordered a
Chicken Maharaja Mac at McDonalds (two chicken masala patties with
special curry sauce, mmm....) and we caught a Bollywood movie at a
historic theater in downtown Jaipur.
Udaipur was an eight hour train ride from Jaipur and was
my favorite city in all of India. Like Jaipur, Udaipur had a number
of nicknames including “the city of lakes” as it was build around
a large and beautiful lake, “Venice of the East” or the “City
of Love” as it was widely considered the most romantic city in
India. Any time Hannah and I mentioned to an Indian that we were
planning on going to Udaipur they always told us two things: that
Udaipur is the city of love and romance, and that the James Bond
movie Octopussy was filmed there. I'm not sure if the two were
related, but when we got there it was clear that the city had an
obsession for the movie Octopussy. It seemed like every hostel had a
sign in front that said, “Tonight's Feature Film: James Bond's
Octopussy.” We wondered if they ever showed anything else.
Our hostel in Udaipur was beautiful. Since this was the
“Venice of the East” we decided to go a little ritzier that usual
and found a place in the guide book called “Dream Heaven.” For
something like 1000 Rupees ($20) per night we had our own room with
private bathroom, hot running water (not always included) and a
beautiful balcony overlooking the lake. After trying desperately to
see every site, palace and fort during our first week in India, we
decided to take it a little slower in Udaipur and just sort of take
it all in.
I had a theory about fellow travelers in India. They
seemed to fall into one of two categories, neither of which Hannah
and I felt we melded with terribly well. The first type was the
high-end package tour gang. These were generally populated by
couples in the 50s-70s of Russian, Israeli or European ethnicity. A
double-decker coach bus would pull up to the gate of a historical
site and, two by two, old Russian couples would hobble down the steps
with their khaki shorts, fanny-packs, and ID lanyards, accompanied by
a Russian-speaking Indian. They would gallivant through the gate on
their way to a merry and enchanting tour before getting back on the
bus and heading back to whatever hotel they were staying at. The Taj
Mahal was replete with these tour groups. The other type of
travelers could be identified easily because they were generally in
their 20s, wore genie-style pants or other local Indian clothing,
often sported dreadlocks, smoked hookah at the restaurants, and
tended to give off the general vibe that they were there to “just
take it all in,” as Hannah and I liked to joke. So, that said,
while we didn't particularly identify with either of these social
factions, we decided, in Udaipur, to transition from the Russian
tourist-style of frantically seeing every site in town, to the “just
taking it all in” hippie mind-set.
While we did visit a few beautiful palaces, we spent
most of our three days in Udaipur lounging like maharaja on the floor
pillows and candlelit alcoves of hotel Dream Heaven's velvety rooftop
restaurant.
After Udaipur, we spent two days in the “Blue City”
of Jodhpur. When we toured the massive Mehrengarh Fort of Jodhpur,
our third or fourth fort in Rajasthan, and learned about the bloody
wars between the Rajputs and the Moghuls, and the incest and royal
rivalries, I began to realize something about Indian history – that
here I was after nearly two weeks spent in museums, palaces and
forts, and I knew nothing about the way 99.9% of Indians lived
throughout history. So much of history is devoted to the 0.1% that
live in palaces with 5000 concubines, like the great Akhbar, and
hundreds of thousands of slaves hauling marble and carving pillars in
their names. Touring the palaces of the Maharaja and great Moghul
kings, I would see room after room with only a giant throne or floor
pillow in the center whose sole purpose was for the Maharaja to sit
and be entertained. It seemed like all they did was engage in bloody
wars for greed and glory, and laze in the giant day-beds waiting for
the next war.
Our last stop in India before waving goodbye was the
great desert city of Jaisalmer. Jaisalmer was a city literally built
upon sand. Everything in the city, including the great fort rising
up in the middle of it, shone with the gold-colored sand it was built
from. If it weren't for the bottleneck of tourists and ubiquity of
tourist-oriented restaurants and hotels, it would have been an
enchanting desert getaway. The day we arrived on an overnight train,
we set out on a desert camel safari. It was an overnight safari, and
we envisioned roaming deep into the Thar Desert and sleeping under
the stars miles away from civilization. Well, it didn't quite work
out like that. I didn't even get my own camel.
After driving an hour or so to another town on the edge
of the desert, we waited at our camp for two or three hours while
they prepared the camels. When it was time to mount our beasts,
Hannah was given an ugly and ornery camel with a bottom lip that
flapped in the wind. My camel, named Tiger, was a gentle giant, but
our guide, nonetheless, mounted him as well, and sat behind me for
the ride. Our “desert safari” only lasted about 30 minutes on
the way out. We walked out to some nearby sand dunes, and the whole
time I could only hear the clicking noises that my guide was emitting
in order to control the camel. When we got to the dunes, it became
clear that this was the place to come for a camel safari, because
there were about a hundred other tourists on camels of their own who
had come to the same spot to watch the sunset. The sun fizzled out
behind the smog probably 20 minutes before it would have actually set
on the horizon and we trotted back to our post where we spent the
night in the small tourist huts we were provided.
From Jaisalmer, it was an 18 hour train ride back to
Delhi to catch our flight out of the country. Our final train ride
was a nightmare. Our booking agent had promised us reserved seats on
all of our trains, but we arrived at the station and found out that
we were on the wait list. I was granted a “Reservation Against
Cancellation” ticket (which meant that I would share a seat with
someone, unless there was a cancellation somewhere else in the car),
and Hannah was given a general sleeper class ticket in a different
car. I decided to abandon my seat and join her in the general class
where our windows didn't close (it was cooold), and which were
directly in front of the door. This meant that any time any Indian
man in our car felt the need to hawk a loogie, use the bathroom or
smoke a cigarette, he would do so only a few feet away from us. The
men in the berth across from us decided to drink Boss Whiskey (the
classy kind that is sold in plastic pouches) for the entirety of the
18 hour ride and, at one point, a fist fight broke out between them.
Needless to say, we didn't get much sleep on the 18 hour ride.
Once we arrived in Delhi, we were ready to say goodbye
to India. That's not to say I didn't and don't continue to love
India, but it was time for a more relaxing trip. That evening we
boarded a flight from Delhi to Mumbai, nearly missed our connection
at 2 a.m., and then proceeded towards Bangkok, Thailand.
The moment we arrived in Thailand, we knew that things
were going to be different. There were signs written in English,
clear instructions, and bus schedules. We easily boarded a bus (in
which we had seats all to ourselves, and which left on time,
regardless of whether it was full or not) bound for the seaport we
were headed towards. We found a shared taxi to take us to the dock
and then were helped by a number of English-speaking tourist agents
as we bought tickets to the ferry that would take us out to Koh
Samet, a small island off the Southeastern coast of Thailand.
Koh Samet was beautiful and was everything that India
was not – relaxing, sunny, and clean. We spent three days at a
small beach-side bungalow. By day we read on the beach with our toes
dipped in the gently lapping surf, and in the evenings we ate
delicious Thai curries at the mom and pop restaurants spotting the
beachfront. It was divine.
After three days in Koh Samet, we headed to Bangkok for
some Thai history and culture and the final three days of our
vacation. The restaurants in Bangkok were the highlight. During the
day we visited Buddhist temples – where, among other things, we saw
about 50,000 different varieties of Buddha statues – and in the
evening we ate fragrant green and red curries, pad thai's, and other
sweet and spicy rice and noodle dishes. On our last day in Thailand
we took a train to Ayunthaya, a city of ancient ruins that was once
the center of the largest empire in all of Asia – Siam. We rented
bikes and peddled around to the various ruined temples and, yes, more
statues of Buddha, that were dotted around the city.
The following day it was time to board a plane and begin
a long-awaited homecoming. 27 months of Peace Corps service was
complete, it had been a year since I last touched American soil and
sunk my teeth into a Chipotle burrito, and I was ready to do both.
First, though, we need to fly to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and stop
over in Tokyo before boarding a final flight to Chicago. In Tokyo,
we laid over for 10 hours, and decided to take the train into the
city to pass the time. While we were able to get a feel for the
culture, and walked around a few markets, we were hindered by the
fact that we hadn't planned our wardrobes very assiduously. Tokyo in
December, it turns out, is colder than Thailand in December. Thus,
we were ill-equipped for the below-freezing temperatures that we
found in Tokyo when we stepped off the train. We ended up spending
most of our afternoon huddled in the Starbucks drinking their holiday
peppermint mocha latte.
I said goodbye to Hannah, and boarded my 16 hour flight
to Chicago. Most people on the American Airlines flight were
American and I couldn't remember the last time I was in a place with
so many other Americans all at the same time. I would eavesdrop on
peoples conversations and couldn't stop myself from giggling at their
goofy accents and mannerisms. I wondered, is this why all those
Mozambicans were always laughing at me? The day I landed was
overcast, and, on the plane's descent, it circled above the cloud
line for what seemed like an eternity. The sun was setting and
coating the tops of the clouds with a golden glaze. We were gliding
just feet above the cloud line and I felt like I could have stepped
out of the plane and frolicked on the the bed of marshmallow clouds.
It was like the pilot was giving me one final chance to take in the
beauty of not just those clouds on that day, but everything that I've
seen and done in the past 27 months. Then he dipped the wing and it
sliced through the cloud layer. Underneath Chicago was cold and
gray. The hole in the clouds that we passed through closed up and
the sun disappeared. I was home.
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