17 Days in India: Part One - Days One to Three

To celebrate Cambodia’s biggest holiday, Khmer New Year, I went to India. Hey, at least they’re in the same neighborhood!

Seventeen glorious, stressful, lovaria*-filled days. Just me and fellow Peace Corps Volunteer Diana and more than 1.2 million square kilometers of country.

We didn’t cover even a quarter of that territory, but we still got around. We made it to six cities: New Delhi, Varanasi, Khajuraho, Agra, Jaipur and Jaisalmer.

In these spots we saw enormous malls and mosques, holy burial rivers, sexy temples, the world’s most famous mausoleum, desert palaces and lots of sand dunes and scrubby bushes.

The sites were varied, but the people the same. Women were few, but men were everywhere, inviting us for chai, lassis, dinner, guru readings,  into their shops, for whatever they could get.

Love is everything in India, we were told, but of course none of the guys we met were like that about love. They all already had foreign girlfriends, and certainly didn’t want money or sex from other foreign women. 

These men called each other playboys. Archana, my female Indian friend, calls them Roadside Romeos.

Other men were more focused on business, and constantly called us into their shops, where they sold clothes, kashmir, knick knacks. A mere glance in a shopkeeper’s direction was cause for harassment.

The men and shopkeeper hassles soon grew old, but India rose above these annoyances. My 17 days spent on the sprawling subcontinent were vibrant and fun-filled, and too short! I can’t wait to go back.

* More about this later.

Glossary:

44 rupees = $1

Chai = sweet tea

Namaste = hello and goodbye

Chapatis and parathas = flat bread, thinner than naan.

The first part of this journey — days one through three — is documented below. Much more to come!

* Thanks to Diana for taking some awesome photos. Some are hers. Some are mine.

Day One: April 5 - Bangkok to Delhi

And we’re off! We want to leave my house at 6 a.m.  I wake at 4:30, but somehow, we’re still not ready until 7.

A minivan takes us to the Bangkok airport. These vans are usually crammed with at least 20 people, but there are only six this time around. Diana and I each have an entire row to ourselves. 

We get to the airport with only six hours to spare before our flight.

I come with a backpack loaded with liquids I plan to check. But for a $17 fee? No thanks.

The plane is Air Asia, the fun and games, wigs and costumes airline, if the in-flight magazine is true. It’s not. The only entertainment is listening to passengers slurp pop they had to pay for.

Delhi is plenty entertaining though. And a mere three and a half hours from Bangkok. We arrive to a city ablaze with… well, ablaze with fire.

OK, so maybe it’s a bit of an exaggeration to say the whole city is ablaze. Maybe it’s only one block that’s ablaze — or one building. But this building is in our path.

The fiery obstacle is pointed out by a man pounding on our taxi window. Our driver backs around the block to our hotel, but not without taking us closer to the blaze.

“Look!” he says.

A small “Delhi Police” jeep is coming our way. No other emergency vehicles are in sight.

Inside the guesthouse, a bed wide enough for six sumo wrestlers fills our room. It would take two sets of my gorilla arms to reach the other side, but my ostrich legs dangle off the end.

Day Two: April 6 - Delhi

After a complimentary breakfast of cornflakes, bananas, toast, sweet coffee and mango juice, we check into another guesthouse nearby. Our last one is booked for the night.

A white haired man with a matching flared moustache is behind the check-in desk. He’s yelling in rat-a-tat Hindi.

Diana laughs. “I want to know what you’re saying!”

“Today is a very bad day,” he says.

Bad because of lazy staffers who were supposed to be working at 7:30 but are still asleep at 9. And he, at 61, is working hard. Japanese workers are good, he says. His workers are not good.

Both joints are in Old Delhi, a dingier, worn-out version of its younger brother.

We’re tailed to our new guesthouse by a mother and three girls with dirty faces and hair that looks like it’s been washed with gasoline and honey. One of the girls hooks her talons around my arm, wanting a wad of cash crammed into her beak. 

We catch a bicycle rickshaw (a cart towed by a bicyclist) to the Red Fort. (A local tells me India also has human rickshaws, which are carts of people towed by people. But these, he says, are only in Calcutta.)

A policeman carrying a switch butts into our bargaining, swatting our driver on the side, assumedly to ensure he complies with the 30-rupees fare.  

Apparently 30 rupees can’t get us to the Red Fort. Our rickshawist drops us at the other end of a paved bridge that looks like a freeway ramp. Nothing red or fortlike is in sight.

So we hoof it. Or rather ski it. Walking in Delhi is like slalom skiing. People are everywhere. They are either walking, or packed in cars, rusty bicycle rickshaws, green and yellow motorcycled cars called auto rickshaws, white taxis, or atop motorcycles or carts.

Delhi’s humans are as varied as their modes of transportation. As in the other Indian cities we see, it’s mostly men on the streets. The few women we see are either draped in black cloth with only their eyes peeping out or in glittering folds of brightness that cover everything except swaths of side and back. Men are dressed mostly Western style, although plenty are robed, and some wear turbans or round flat-topped caps.

We weave through the people, past the endless “Licensed Refrigerated Water” trolleys — metal carts stacked with short clear glasses and one glassful of limes — and food holes whose concrete exteriors are painted with “Veg/Non Veg” signs. Outside these food holes frying pans sizzle with breads and curries.

We also pass several sidewalk dentists — men squatting next to blankets laden with metal teeth plates, syringes and scrapers. Next to each blanket is a small painted sign of a row of smiling white teeth. I watch as one of these dentists empties a syringe into a man’s mouth a couple times. After each time, the patient stands and spits onto the sidewalk.

Our first inquiry tells us the Red Fort is only half a kilometer away, but by the time we stop and ask again, it’s two kilometers farther.

We stop for lunch at a place with a chandelier, tablecloths and napkins blooming from wine glasses. We’re the only customers.

Our waiter doesn’t mesh with the finery. “He looks like Snoop Dogg!” Diana whispers. And she’s right, although Snoop has more teeth, both have horsey faces and ratty moustache-and-beard combos.

The meal starts with curry and sweet lassis and ends with a mouthful of sugar boulders and aniseed that are good for digestion.

After the meal, another waiter approaches and asks if I’m Japanese. Apparently this question is simply a segue into a spiel about how the restaurant is popular with the Japanese.

Many magazine clippings later, we find out the eatery is also popular with John F. Kennedy, or was the one time he ate there. Another famous name associated with the joint is Gordon Ramsey, a British chef I’ve never heard of, who was part of a great cook-off against the restaurant’s chef. Ramsey lost, of course.

In addition to its famous associations, the restaurant boasts staffers from almost all of India’s religions. They’ve got a Christian, Hindu, Muslim and a Sikh. Now they’ve just got to recruit a Buddhist and a Jain.  

Not long after lunch, we finally spot the looming sandstone of the Red Fort. But the $5 to $6 entry fee dissuades us from entering. We’ve still got The Taj Mahal and its nearly $20 entry fee ahead of us.

Outside the fort, an Indian guy hands me his camera and says “Please.” I think he wants me to take a picture of he and his assumed girlfriend, but no, he wants a picture of his girlfriend and me! Because I’m a perfect specimen of tall whiteness? Or because my picnic-tablecloth plaid hat and flowered shirt make me look like a mismatched crazy who should be mumbling outside a grocery store?

“You should charge,” Diana says.

Next up is Jama Masjid, India’s largest, but hardly most decorative, mosque. The street leading to the holy building is lined with junk stands. Purses, scarves, dishes and thousands of other knick knacks no one needs.  

At the base of the stairs to the mosque, a grubby boy with crusted yellow nostrils grabs my arm. He points to his mouth and says “rupees.”

“No,” I say. “Go away.” And he does.

“Lonely Planet” says we’ll “be awestruck” by the mosque. Sure, the place is huge, big enough for 25,000, but not so awe inspiring. Much of the square space is a tiled courtyard, bordered by narrow passages for praying. Squat onion domes and lean cucumber towers sprout from the mosque.

We take off our shoes and tie on ankle-length pink flowered smocks. I keep my head covered with my hat. Many women are bare headed.  

The Allah worshipers wash their feet in a rectangular bath before entering the mosque’s passages. Inside these passages, men with round white caps are kneeling in prayer and other men and women are splayed in sleep.

I buy another ticket that allows me to climb one of the cucumber towers – the south minaret. I wind up the narrow stone staircase and come to a platform with a good view of the city. I snap some photos and am about to head down when I see a couple people emerge from another tower stretching still higher.

More stairs to climb. Up and up, past people squeezed against the curved brick walls. I climb to a circular cage packed with Indians. I feel a forest of eyes on me and my obnoxious hat. It seems like all cameras are pointed at me. I’m so vain… All the floor space is sat upon and people line the cage’s perimeter. More people are coming up. I snap some photos and go down.

After watching a woman surrender her yogurt to a demanding tabby, Diana and I leave the mosque and board the subway for Connaught Place in New Delhi. A metal detector and bag scan are prerequisites for boarding the train. There’s no pat-down, but men and women form separate lines. Granted clean scans, we wait on a strip of cement under pink signs that read: “Women Only.” The train arrives gleaming and silver. Inside, most riders have their faces pressed to high-tech gadgets I’ve never seen.

An outdoor mall done in white, Connaught Place reminds me of a less-populated version of London's Convent Gardens. Adidas, Reebok and Lee rub shoulders with grotty holes offering cards and medicine.

Outside the shops, hawkers sell beads and paan, a natural breath-freshener and get-you-high combination of areca nut and betel leaves. The red splotches staining every corner of the building are proof of paan’s popularity.

Dogs cover the pavement like drooling blankets. Always asleep, India’s portly canines look like AKC showdogs compared to Cambodia’s scrawny, sore-covered slumdogs.

Dinner is at a South Indian fast food joint. A flat triangle of bread stuffed with veggie curry, then coffee and an assortment of treats sweet enough to give you dentures.

A rickshaw takes us back to our guesthouse. The cyclist is determined to give us a show. He swerves in and out of traffic, holding his cell phone overhead as it blasts Indian club bangers. He jumps from his bike as a snarling dog bites at his tires, and a bus nearly runs us down before he can remount the rickshaw. Quite the show, but I still give him only the agreed-upon 40 rupees. He makes a face and asks for 50, even grabs my arm.

“No,” I say. “Bye bye!” 

Day Three: April 7 - More Delhi and night train to Varanasi

We start the day at the train station, buying tickets leaving the next day for Agra and Varanasi that we will return in a few short hours when we find out the Taj Mahal (Agra’s main attraction) is closed tomorrow.

Breakfast is at one of the Veg/Non Veg holes lining the main street. I point to the veggie curry and parathas on the tin plate in front of the Indian guy next to me.

“I want what he has,” I say.

Instead, I get only a flat disc of bread. When I ask if that’s all I’m getting, the waiter holds up two fingers, like “Wait two minutes.” Wait two minutes, it turns out, not for food, but for someone who speaks better English. I end up with what I want: parathas, curry and chai.

After my afternoon nap I run into my first (but certainly not last) Roadside Romeo. He’s lounging on a motorcycle in the alley outside our guesthouse.

“Where’s your Chinese friend?” he asks. (Diana’s parents are from China, she’s from America.)

The usual questions follow. Where am I from, how long am I in India and Delhi, where am I visiting in India.

Vicky, this young guy with a beaky face, seems to already know a lot of the answers to these questions. He knows I came to Delhi two days ago, on the night of the fire.

He also knows a lot of things about the United States that I’ve never heard of. He knows about the bloody river near New York where a serial killer dumped his bodies, and about the biggest bank robbery ever, about five years ago, in some town he doesn’t remember the name of.

He asks me about Burning Man. He wants to know what it is and if he should go. I’ve never been, I say, but I hear it’s a big hippie music and drug fest, with lots of costumes.

“I don’t do drugs,” the guy tells me. “Maybe it’s not for me?”

I can’t answer him. 

He asks me if I’m in a hurry. “No,” I say.

He then asks me to have chai with him.

“Oh, no, I’m in a hurry,” I say.

“Maybe later?” he asks.

“Maybe,” I say.

He’s not on the motorcycle when I come back, so I go back to the main street, where a tabletop shrine is set up for the Hindu festival Ram Navami. Music blares as believers approach in prayer. Sitting crosslegged atop the table is a man whose head is covered by a white kerchief.

I take a picture of a guy wearing a misogynistic T-shirt and he takes a picture of me and his friend. Another guy approaches and asks if I want a taxi, then asks the usual questions.

“What’s your name?”

“Mary,” I say.

“Mary, marry me?”

“No!” I yell.

He asks me to go somewhere more quiet to talk. I turn him down. I’m already tiring of India’s chattery 

playboys.

I run into Vicky, the original beaky playboy, on the way back to the guesthouse. I take him up on that chai and 

he pays a young boy to buy me a bunch of bananas.

Vicky tells me the Taj is closed tomorrow, and takes me next door to show me Internet pictures of where we should go instead. His friends regale me with stories of their foreign girlfriends — a Swedish bird in 

Bangalore and a Brit somewhere in England.

Diana and I change our train tickets, then auto rickshaw it to another Indian fast food eatery, which has eateries throughout the world. We order bread puffs exploding with saucy vegetables, plus daal, yogurt , sweet lassis, chai and sweets.

Half the food’s still uneaten when we finally leave the restaurant four hours later. I take it with us on the rickshaw back to the train station, where we have a couple more hours before our night train.

We wait on the plush couches of the International Tourist Bureau near a sign that reads: “WAITING IS NOT ALLOWED, AFTER BUYING THE TRAIN TICKET PLEASE PROCEED TO THE WAITING ROOM ON PLATFORM NO. 1.”  

A band of 15 Japanese tourists invades the room while we’re waiting. Nearly all sport owlish black plastic glasses the same size as the ones my parents wore in the ‘80s.

The bureau kicks us out at 8 p.m., and we go to wait with the natives on the train platform. People sit and lay on the dirty concrete floor, others cross the tracks with suitcases atop their heads. Women in saris pass with huge boxes balanced on their heads. They take the place of luggage carts.

We finally board the night train to Varanasi around 8:30 p.m., after six hours of waiting. I’m on the top bunk of our three-bunked sleeper section. The bunks are grimy slabs of blue vinyl, and the top two have only enough head clearance for sleeping.

My only view from the top bunk is of the flabby gut of the man sleeping on his side on a bunk across the aisle.

We’re in the cheap, non-air conditioned section of the train. This means ceiling fans that start off inept against the scorching heat and then, when the cool night air moves in, become too adept, whirring up a constant, freezing gale.

I wear virtually my whole backpack of clothes, including socks on my hands and feet, but I’m still cold.

The lights switch off and on and off and on the entire night. Another constant is the cries for money from beggars, some crawling, others singing, and the vendor calls of “Chai… chai…”