The Delhi Taj Experience

The Taj Mahal. India's most popular attraction and the West's most popular name for Indian restaurants. To be honest, I was turned off about even going to the Taj Mahal. I have seen it in a million pictures and it wasn't on my list of things I needed to check off before I died. Traveling works in strange ways however, and after a few strokes of luck, I was making my way to see the Taj Mahal. I won't lie, I can easily get excited about things and after it was final that I was going, my mood on the Taj seemed to do a 180 on itself.

The plan was to meet my previous group of travel buddies which included Jo, Mike and Ygal. We were all Americans which we all found out to be rare in India. None of us had met more than a handful of Americans on our travels. Everyone was off doing their own thing in various parts of India so I needed to get to Delhi to meet all of them. I took a public bus from Rishkesh to Delhi in which I was the only "gora" or white guy on the entire bus. It was a good experience though and the bus ride wasn't that bad compared to the other shitty ones I've been on in India.

I had a small stroke of bad luck on my arrival in Delhi in which I stupidly left my mandolin in the overhead compartment of the bus. I was tired and rushed off the bus without thinking twice and left a beautiful mandolin just sitting there alone. I am very bummed out about it but I have since moved on but have no music instrument to keep me occupied. The night in Delhi was spent alone and I tried to find a bar and meet some people but to my dismay, the backpacker ghetto lacks a good bar. I resorted to drinking beer out of a teacup for some sneaky reason that I cannot explain. I ended up staying at the Hare Rama Guesthouse which had HBO so I watched the Terminator and went to bed.

The next morning I took a good two hours to finish "Shantaram" which took me about a month to read. A very good book and I would highly recommend reading it. Finally, Mike and Ygal arrived and we spent the day smoking hashish and drinking Foster's. So much for sightseeing, huh? That's what many people that have never been to India don't understand. It is so sticky and hot that going out and doing anything seems like a major chore. We sat around, ate some good pakoras (battered and fried vegetables) and waited for Jo to arrive. When she did, we packed up our bags and headed for the train to Agra.

Agra
We arrived in Agra late at night and were immediately swarmed by taxi and hotel touts trying to take us to there specific hotel in which they get a commission. The hotels are usually out of the way and overpriced. It is a huge pain in the ass dealing with these people and can cause serious anxiety if you are taken unaware, not being listened to, tired, confused. Here is the trick we got taken for: We had our Lonely Planet and the book said "Hotel Sheela" was a good, cheap spot close to the Taj Mahal. It being past midnight, the taxi driver took us to another hotel named "Sheela Hotel" which was surprisingly pricey. But hell, we couldn't see the Taj, and were extremely tired.
In the next couple hours when we made our way to the Taj at 5:00a.m. we walked past the real "Sheela Hotel" which looked like a very nice place to stay. We were taken for suckers but you win some and lose some. We had no time to be upset, we were heading to the Taj!!!

Now, the Taj. It is truly a remarkable sight/site. I really enjoyed getting in the doors at 6:00a.m. and watching the sun come up over the grounds. I got some great pictures and the heat was not just yet unbearable (it was getting there though). I found it funny that there are Indian men who hang out at the Taj and tell you things like "You should take a picture here" and then after you take a picture, ask you for money. "Buddy, that is the most pathetic attempt at squeezing money out of me. Absolutely not!"

We had a lot of fun taking all the stupid pictures people take at the Taj. I'll post a few here. Sure, it's beyond touristy but as long as you don't have a stick up your ass about it, you can take it for what it is and enjoy it. I went from not wanting to see the Taj at all ("That's way too touristy, maan.") to being a total geek having a really fun couple of hours at the Taj.

Sure enough, the intense India heat showed it's ugly head and the A/C and HBO sounded really nice. Taj Mahal, check!

Zen and the Joy of Indian Bus Rides

Life is good. Traveling solo is definitely the only way to go. I have been enjoying it a lot. It seems that there is very little time alone when you are constantly meeting travelers and you can always pick the perfect time to part ways and leave on a high note. I have been trying to master the art of "leaving on a high note" actually. It has been awhile since my last post but I must say that this is a good thing. I don't have too much time to sit in a cyber cafe and blog although I really need to. I don't keep a journal or diary or notes so this is all I have. I will try to recap the past two weeks as best I can.

Srinagar to Delhi:
Getting out of Srinagar was a complete hassle. The road was blocked south to Jammu and there was rioting downtown. While I wasn't near any of the fighting, I was stuck. Sure enough I had to take a flight from Srinagar to Delhi. The airport security was tight since it was a war-town city but amazingly, it still was not as bad as the United States. I don't think they have the scanners and sniffers and x-rays that they do back home. The flight was simple and easy and we even had a religious leader on our plane who blessed the flight or something of that nature. I felt good to get out of Kashmir but Delhi is always a headache. Luckily, I only had to bear it for a few hours. I got a bus ticket to Dharamsala and headed off that night.

Delhi to Dharamsala:
Ok, I thought the bus ride from Manali to Leh was bad. This bus trip was worse. What should have been about 11 hours up to Dharamsala turned out to be about 22 hours. The first six hours involved standing on a curb in Delhi and waiting, in monsoon rain, for the bus to even show up. I didn't have a rain cover for my backpack so all my clothes and books got soaked. As the sun started to go down, we decided to move to a covered gas station and continue our wait. I was just about to lose it when the bus showed up. It was full of people and there were not enough seats for all of us. On top of that some of the seats were soaked from the monsoon rains coming through the windows. Since we were the newbies on the bus, this was our only option.

Sitting in a small puddle of water on the bus, I decided to take a Valium. This helped for about an hour and then the heavy rain started. I was sitting in the back so the ride was bumpy and the collected water in the overhead luggage racks (which ended just above my seat) began to rain down on my lap. This was exaggerated every time the bus went up and incline on the road. I was completely soaked since I was sitting on my rain jacket to protect my ass from getting wet. The only option was to open the umbrella. This turned out to be quite humorous for everyone else on the bus, seeing the foreigner with an umbrella just getting dumped on from the water in the luggage rack but I was losing it. It is a strange feeling trying to keep yourself together and not sure what would happen if you actually did snap on the bus. For a good couple hours the umbrella held up and kept me relatively dry but sure enough, the Indian made umbrella started to leak like Chinese water torture on my head. I am suprised that I kept it together for so long.

In these situations, it is best to just sit back and accept your fate. The Indians do it, so I did the same. Everything was wet. Books, soaked. Toiletries, soaked. Everything. We finally made it though and I got a decent room in Bhagsu outside of McLeod Ganj. I just handed my bag to my guesthouse and told them to wash everything. I then slept for about 14 hours in my bathing suit.

Kashmir: War and Boredom

This was the message I got from my mother this morning:

SEAN,
THE BBC HAS SAID THAT KASMIR IS VERY UNSTABLE AND THAT THE FIGHTING HAS INCREASED ALL OVER NORTHERN iNDIA. PLEASE LEAVE. MOM

Well, I have decided to leave but not because of any fear for my safety. I have been staying on a house boat on Nigeen Lake in Srinagar for the past couple days. While the lake is beautiful, peaceful and relaxing, the rest of the town is on curfew and pretty much dead. The food supply has been cut off by Hindu protesters in Jammu and food is getting short. No more eggs for breakfast, or meat for dinner. The tourism here is almost non-existent and the heavy military presence doesn't make walking around town too fun.

You can take small paddle boats to various other houseboats on the lake, bypassing the road. I know a handful of people on the lake but last night my bad luck struck me. It was about 1 a.m. on a fairly large, completely deserted lake. I was on my paddle boat heading home from a friends houseboat when my paddle boat started to take water. "Oh shit, I'm fucking sinking!!" was all I could mutter out (I swear a lot, I know, but I was sinking). Sure enough, I went under with all of my clothes on and no one to hear me call so I didn't. To be honest, I didn't want to be seen as the idiot tourist whose boat sank. Luckily, I know how to swim and my houseboat was in sight. I floated on my back to my houseboat, stripped down, took a shower and decided to leave.

The only way out for me is to fly. The road is closed down south and while I could wait and see if the road opens in the next few days, I have all of India to see and I'm bored out of m mind here. Tomorrow I have a flight to Delhi and will then take a bus back up north to Dharamasala/McLeod Ganj. It should be a long two days but it's the only choice I have. Once I get back up north, I will be back on track. Until then.....

Meeting Gay Irish poets

After arriving in Manali, I took a rickshaw up the road to the Bodh Guesthouse in Vashisht about 5km from Manali. After getting there and sleeping off the long bus ride, I get a knock on the door. Sure enough, my Irish friend Gerry has made it. She is the seasoned veteran having backpacked by herself through Northern India for the past 11 weeks.

That night we went to The Big Fish restaurant to hang out with some Israeli friends. Things were going well until a funny, awkward fat man in a beanie cap came walking in. "Namaste", he greeted the Japanese group sitting at the table over, "may I sit down?" Not to be rude, the Japanese group said OK but I knew the inevitable. The Japanese were obviously speaking, you guessed it, Japanese. This loud, awkward and just plain weird guy wasn't going to stick around for long and we were the only other table of people sitting in the restaurant.

Sure enough, "Namaste" he says timidly, doing the clasp hands thing (called "the wah" in Thai), "may I sit down?" Before anyone could answer either way, he was sitting at our table. All of a sudden I hear Gerry whisper under her breath, "Oh my God, it's him." Following this everything got more awkward with Gerry uncomfortably leaving the table and leaving me and my Israeli friend left talking to this guy. Did Gerry know this guy? Did he do something creepy to her before I got to India? I was clueless. He was no doubt weird, dominating the entire conversation telling us he was from Italy in an obviously Irish accent. He kept touching my friend who was sitting next him (thank god it wasn't me) and telling stories about how "the best time to go over the Rohtang Pass was when the schools got out in the afternoon so you could clap all the students hands as you ride on your motorbike." Tales of working on a Kibbutz, a traveling circus in the States, and an surprising amount of Irish cultural knowledge for a guy from Italy. A very strange conversation indeed.

Now, I don't know who Cathal O'Searcaigh is but as Gerry explained later, it was definitely him and after looking his name up on the Internet, no doubt she was right. Cathal O'Searcaigh is a famous Irish poet who moved to Nepal to teach English. A documentary team went out to film him and his "work" in Nepal and while filming found that he had been sleeping with his 16 and 17 year old male students. Apparently, this a big deal in Ireland and all over the news. Being the ignorant American, I was clueless to this weird fat man but everything seemed to make sense. The fake Italian with a heavy Irish accent telling us the joys of smacking hands with boys as they leave school, all the touching, everything made sense.

So yeah, gay Irish poets who sleep with young boys. Things just keep getting stranger here.

Welcome to India Delhi->Manali

Welcome to India! I guess I should start off by saying that I am amazed at how different Nothern India is from my previous journey in Southern India in 2005. The vibe here is much more relaxed, I find the people friendlier and being in the mountians............man, how I missed living in the mountains, nothing like it.

I flew into India on July 20th, 2008 into Delhi. The plane ride from Hong Kong was excellent because I somehow got bumped up to first class for no apparent reason. It was a bunch of buisness men and a bearded backpacker with smelly clothes on taking full advantage of the non-stop champagne. So I caught a nice buzz and watched the Indian version of "Dancing with the Stars," which was nothing less than amazing. After being in Korea and Vietnam, I must say Indian music is pretty darn good.

Arriving in Delhi at 10:00p.m. at night is scary, if not at least daunting. As soon as you walked out of the airport, you are blasted with the Delhi humidity and swarmed by hawking taxi drivers. After traveling all day (albeit first class) and being buzzed on cheap champagne. It's easy to get overwhelmed and panicky. Luckily, I found a taxi at an overpriced rate but the driver was honest and excellent. I had a pre-arranged hotel just to make it easy for myself but when I got there......

This hotel was a shithole. Hotel BB Palace in Karal Bagh, just in case you ever visit their website, it's not what is advertised. Extremely overpriced, shitty beds, mosquitos, crappy Indian dramas all in Hindi was considered "cable". It was not the best start to India, or maybe it was. Things could only get better. The next day, I got right out of Delhi on a 17 hour bus ride to Manali.

Manali is beautiful and extremely relaxed. The feeling of breathing in fresh mountain air after a year in Korea and six months in Saigon was a welcomed relief. Great to pull out my fleece jacket and hang out in the coffee shops overlooking the Himalayas. Who would have thought that I would ever be here? But I made it and it feels great.

Oh My Shiva!!!

**Editor's Note: This blog had to be postponed until I received the photograph as proof. You will see why after you read**

Well, I have made it to India and am still getting adjusted to this crazy place. I managed to survive a day in Delhi and a 17 hour Bollywood-filled bus ride into the northern city of Vashisht, outside of Manali. It is a beautiful place located in the Kullu Valley completely surrounded by the Himalayas. There are more hippies here than one can imagine, and the lifestyle consists of two things: getting stoned and hanging out. Since I have been working 6 days a week in both Korea and Vietnam, I find it hard to just sit all day smoking chillums. But when in Rome I guess....

So last night I indulged in some serious hanging out and chillum smoking. I met a Indian spiritual leader called a "Ba-Ba." Skinny, turban on his head, long beard, the whole works. When we questioned his holiness he pulled out a "Ba-Ba" certificate verifying that he was the real deal. He spoke very little English and my friends and I figured we could hold a conversation without him understanding most of it. In our "Indian haze" we started laughing and talking about Internet videos where Indian "Ba-Bas" lift large amounts of weight with their "holy members." We were laughing and acknowledging that we have all seen those videos on the Internet when the "Ba-Ba" speaks up.

"I can do."

"What? You can do what?"

"50 kgs my friend, I can do. I can pull Jeep too."

Oh my Shiva!!! No way did this guy just tell us that he can lift 50 kilograms and pull a Jeep with his Vishnu. Everyone just stood there not knowing what to say and awkwardly looking at each other but we all knew the only logical response for such situations.

"I'd pay to see you do it."

"Yes friend, we go now?"

"Uh, OK."

We follow the Ba-Ba out of the restaurant we were at and crossed the street to his temple. I am so giddy and nervous that I can't help but just laugh uncontrollably. Am I really going to witness this? My friends had to calm me down a bit and remind me that we were in a holy place and to get my shit together. I tried to calm down by chewing on my jacket sleeve like a 5 year old while whispering "Oh my god, oh my god" over and over.

Sure enough the Ba-Ba rolls out a huge boulder from the garden, strips down and wraps his skirt around the boulder. (Now, it should be said that this "lifting heavy things with your wiener" technique is used as a sort of meditation, or yoga, or something that is completely over my head.) The Ba-Ba does what looks like a Bowstring knot, takes a deep breath and lifts. I must say that I was fully impressed. I could barely even lift the boulder with my hands and this guy is lifting it with, well ya know. Thank heavens that he was cool with me taking pictures because many at home would not believe me. It's true ladies and gentlemen, it's true.

Unfortunately, we didn't have a spare Jeep lying around so we never got to see that part but thats cool, one can imagine. Oh yeah, this was last night on my third day in India. I have three more months to go. I'll be practicing so get your Jeeps ready!

Zen and the Art of Procrastination

The last time I made a big trip was to Southeast Asia. I had all my clothes laid out, shots taken care of, medicine stacked, Lonely Planet highlighted, all the works. This time is different. Tomorrow I will be heading to Delhi, India and I have done very little preparation. I did buy hiking shoes though. I fixed my ipod too. Two weeks ago, my hard drive was stolen and all my music erased on my ipod. Now I am left with 20 gigs of mostly Indie Rock and drum n' bass from my roommates. I am going to have to get used to Portishead and DJ Rollsalot.

Tomorrow I leave Vietnam for India. I will be flying into Delhi then up to the Himalayan region. I hope to get some good hiking in and not get sick. Those seem like two viable goals, right? So here goes nothing, until my next post.........

Large Doritos please!!

When you are a traveler, you are on vacation. You don't mind if the people try to rip you off a few bucks and don't notice a lot of the shady workings of people that you finally find out when you live in a certain place. Granted, not every country rips you off constantly but this is the developing world and one can see the reasons why poor people do these things. That being said though, it's draining.

One very simple example is to sit down at a restaurant and order food or drinks. While you are waiting and without asking, they will bring you a plate of something. This is usually peanuts or spring rolls. Since you are hungry and think that the restaurant is being generous (who charges for peanuts?) you start to dig in. With the spring rolls, you should know that that this will end up on the bill later but it's really hard to turn it down when you are starving and waiting for your meal. You wait for your food and wait for your food until you just can't resist the aroma, you mouth starts watering and you look at your watch and wonder what is taking so long until you crack and eat the goddamn spring roll. Bla-blam! You're food is magically ready right after that. Another example I encountered is just the lack of logic and/or stubborness, I couldn't figure it out. I went to a restaurant with a friend mid-day to get a few beers and something light to eat. It was a western restaurant but run by all Vietnamese women. The encounter went like this:

Me: "Yes, um, I'll have the small nachos."
Waitress: "Saw-ee, no have. Just big nacho."
Me: "But it says on the menu, small nachos." (The small costs 40,000 dong [$2.50] and the large costs twice that)
W: "Saw-ee, no have small nacho, just big nacho."

::slight pause to try and make sense of the situation::

Me: "So, you are telling me that yes, you have the large nachos but no, you don't have the small nachos"
W: "Uh-huh."
Me: "But that makes no sense"
W: "No have small nacho"
Me: "Ok, why don't make a large nacho, then put half of it on a plate for me then charge me for the small nachos."
W: "Cannot."
Me: "Listen, I've never been here before. I have no idea what the nachos are like. You could give me a 4th of the real portion and I wouldn't notice. I just want the fucking small nachos."
W: "Cannot"
Me: "Ok, bring me the large nachos."

I gave in just to see the results of my order. What do I get? A small cocktail plate of Cool Ranch Doritos with melted cheese over them. Since I haven't eaten Cool Ranch Doritos in quite some time, I happily scarfed them down and they were gone in 2 seconds. Another one of life's annoyances in developing countries.