We feel a pressure from travel writers to find charm in everything: Lonely Planet on the Jaipur bazaars: "...a sensual overload with a mixture of urine and spices..." well, it's just a giant outdoor Gent's toilet and I’m not going to romanticize things that aren’t romantic. Nevertheless we have tried hard to see past our own cultural prejudices and to view the places we are visiting with an open and sympathetic mind. Christine and I have challenged one another to find fault with our own Western Culture when seen through they eyes of the people of these various countries and it's not easy to do. We speculate that they would find our culture to be boring (at least what they can see). In Egypt, India and SE Asia (I am writing this while already in Cambodia) a great deal of life is played out amongst the crowded social scene at ground level on the street where food is cooked, sold and eaten right on the pavement (sidewalk). Hookah pipes and tea add to the mix and help pass the many hours of each day that everyone spends there amongst their friends.
We had understood that a great many people visiting India struggle to see past the filth and squalor of this greatly overcrowded country and we too have found this hard. But it seems to me that everyone here is working hard and wants to get ahead. Anyway, there is no social net, if you don’t work then you don’t eat. (I asked my Sikh guide how they regard begging (I had just been approached) and he explained to me that they don’t support it (“ïf you can work you should work- you can harm such people with charity, we support only those who cannot work”).
An Australian couple that we met while in Egypt told us that they had inspired three other couples to visit India for a 6 week trip (they themselves had stayed in India 6 months and loved it). They saw their friends on the day of arrival, all excited to head out to dinner and to start their long visit. The next morning all their friends were in the Hotel lobby with bags packed and about to leave the country. They apparently couldn’t take India, had changed their minds and were heading elsewhere.
India can frustrate. Nothing is finished or done right. Hotels charging US$150-$200/night are in need of a good clean and some paint, half the light bulbs in the hotel room are burnt out or deliberately left that way. Hot water is wasted for the want of a new $5 shower head and flow restrictor. A US$200/night Indian hotel doesn’t even come close to the US standard but in Vietnam I can pay US$30 for a hotel that beats a $150/night US hotel and I don’t understand that. Perhaps it’s the corruption in India, which is widespread. India is poor but much more could be done within their current means. I’m not sure that they always see the need of going beyond the current standard but the task of improving the infrastructure and living conditions for so many people must also be daunting. A lot of road construction is taking place but some of it looks as though it’s been going on for years but never completed. The roads are jammed and there are no road rules, or non that are obeyed anyway, but there is no road-rage at all. Two-strokes dominate and the pollution is terrible and backs up the entire continent all the way to the Himalayas. Litter is picked up but never completely so there is not a single moment when any place is clean.
63% vote ("The World's Largest Democracy") but the peasant's votes are often bought by the poor being bused to the vote station and told what symbols to press on the vote machine (they are illiterate), paid 100 rupees and trucked back. They seem somewhat nervous about the 200m or so Muslims in the country and road construction is often, inconveniently, navigated around Muslim areas for fear of upsetting them.
All of that said, India excites wonder like no other place I have visited. It’s an onslaught of noise, color, smells and the sight of a billion people sharing a space too small for them all. It is better than we expected or had come to expect. Even the women road workers carrying buckets of gravel trays on their heads (no wheelbarrows in sight, it’s just as if they hadn’t been invented yet) are wearing bright red, beautiful and clean (how?) Saris. Indians are an Industrious lot: ambitious, and, for the most part, they seem happy. (I was approached several times, occasionally aggressively, by young men wanting me to help them get out of India). There seems to be enough food for most. The North seems more prosperous and cleaner but perhaps that’s just a less dense population. Birth control is encouraged. The business people I have talked to all over India are optimistic of the next ten years.
Religion is everywhere (India is a mystical, superstitious place), and it has a friendly and happy face, anyway Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism. Egypt was also mystical and superstitious with their worship of many gods but Islam has wiped that out now with its own rule-book and structures and strictures. India is ready to move on and to take it's religion with it while Egypt is stuck - like all Arab countries.
Well, it takes years to understand another culture, but those are my thoughts after five weeks in India and Christine and I both would like to come back to this magical, frustrating place.
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