Madeleine’s Travel Blog

April 30th - Delhi, India

We’re back at Lucie’s in Delhi, which is pretty sweet. Her boyfriend’s here at the moment, which is cool, but he leaves in a couple of days as well so everyone has that feeling of imminent departure.
It’s hot here. 41º hot. It is rather difficult to sleep sans air conditioning, we also have very little energy during the day. I think we’re both kind of glad we’re only here for a couple of days. I’ve just had enough of everything – I can’t wait for a week at a Thailand beach. It’s also kind of sad to be leaving India completely though, hard to believe that our time here (for this trip at least) is over.

April 6, 2008 – Delhi, India

So Delhi is kind of fabulous.
I think once again our impression of it is skewed from typical backpackper impressions because we’re staying with current residents, but who knows for sure.

9 years ago, probably almost to the day, I met my friend Jan while we were both on separate Canada-Germany exchanges – he from Ottawa to Berlin, me from Vancouver to Berlin. Somehow we’ve kept in touch with sporadic emails & visits, and now, so many years later, Evy & I are staying with a fantastic girl from France, Lucie, who happened to room with a girlfriend of Jan’s while she was on a university exchange in Montreal, and became friends with him there… Make sense?! Either way, we were put in contact with one another, & without having ever met us Lucie kindly offered us free couch space – always an exciting thing for the backpacker!

What we didn’t realize prior to arrival was that the offer of couch space was in reality an offer of what is practically yet another home away from home. People have been so nice to use here!
The apartment in which Lucie lives with 3 other roommates is massive, all with marble floors & bathrooms attached to each bedroom (3 – a couple lives in one of them). A comfortable porch looks out over some greenery, there’s an additional back porch, and there’s a decent sized kitchen & dining area. Did I mention that they split a rent of approximately $630 between them for this place?! Apparently that’s cheap by Delhi standards too, but for us it’s kind of insane. Couch space in this case is actually two comfy separate mattresses that can be taken off their stands and brought into Lucie’s room, which has air conditioning. But have we needed the air-conditioning?! You might think so, given the 40º weather we’d been experiencing in Jhodpur and Jaisalmer, but I think part of the appeal of Delhi for us at the moment (and apparently this is very unusual for the city) is that it actually feels like spring. It rained! It’s cool! Cool but warm, as in the perfect Vancouver early summer temperatures of low to mid-twenties. As the days go by it’s already starting to get warmer, but there’s also a general feeling of greenery here. I suppose due to coming from the desert-like dusty scrub region we particularly notice it, but to be surrounded by huge healthy trees and low-lying greenery again is kind of nice.

The awesomeness of the apartment and Lucie and her roommates aside (all have experience with backpacking and totally get our appreciation for things like a hot shower and to have the use of items such as a fridge and stove), I’m somewhat ashamed to say that perhaps one of the largest parts of Delhi’s appeal for me is in it’s much more western feel. It feels like an international city, Indian style. It still has auto-rickshaws and bicycle rickshaws and beggars and everything, but it also has areas with large paved roads with greenery and clean buildings, areas with shops & restaurants that could be transplanted to North America no problem, and best of all, mini grocery-style stores which sell varieties of cheeses, yogurts, breads, and other such western-style foods. (I hadn’t seen a block of cheddar cheese since I left, this is the first approximately good bread we’ve had since January, and we have the ability to buy different types of peanut butter, mayonnaise, lunch meats, nutella – products that in general are a real hassle to find if they exist at all – they’re all here! They even had things like Rittersport & Lindt chocolate, Haribo gummy bears… Evy and I were held mesmerized in a store for a good fifteen minutes, wandering around looking at all our options. I realize that sounds rather sad but it was so much fun! Even if you don’t want everything it’s nice to know the option’s there, thanks in particular to the European ex-pats! I couldn’t resist buying the Boursin cheese and we’ll probably be buying some high-end chocolate for Nepal!).

We did the required Agra Taj Mahal/Fort visit – ultra expensive but interesting nonetheless. My favourite, as it seems it is with some others, was actually the Baby Taj. Other than that it’s just been nice just to relax in Delhi, especially since we fly to Nepal tomorrow and then leave on what should be a rather grueling trek on Tuesday. Always a new destination in the world of Mad & Ev!
{Our trek has been advanced by a couple of days due to the impending elections in Nepal – hopefully this will not prevent us from completing it! We’re a little worried about it, physically and politically, but we’ll play it by ear…there should be some interesting posts when we get back!}

April 2, 2008 - Delhi, India

I’m writing this on the train to Delhi, hoping that in this move from camel-safari fort town to capital city I’ll find a higher quality internet café or even a WiFi connection and then I’ll be able to post everything at last. {For those who were excited by the camel prospect (Nimisha!) we did end up going on a pleasantly brief sunset camel safari in Jaisalmer – as we’d thankfully foreseen, the novelty of camel-back riding wears off quickly!}

Apologies for the delays in posting, and for the vast quantities of writing I’m now putting up! We got sick – as described later, and then internet access since then has been sketchy. Here are the past couple of weeks – 5 more days and we leave India for Nepal! Crazy how time flies. We’re spending the last time we have in Delhi, which should make for a nice conclusion to this trip’s travels through India (I’m already planning on coming back!).

A mouse just scurried across the train car and under our bags. As we’re not currently looking for another travel companion I’m hoping that this was just a thoroughfare and it’s gone to find food somewhere further along…

March 28, 2008 – Jaisalmer, India

Arrived at 6 this morning in Jaisalmer (fort town in the middle of camel filled deserts) to search for the promised hotel driver with the sign reading ‘Madey’ (Evy didn’t figure he’d heard the name correctly on the phone last night) or at least a basic hotel sign reading ‘Hotel Golden City & Swimming Pool’, ‘Swimming Pool’ being the operative words that had led us to making a reservation at this place
{Note: It’s 39ºC and counting. Last town we were in, Jodhpur, it was minimum $15.00 to swim in the pool, more commonly going up to $30. In India that kind of money gets you food & accommodation for at least a couple of days, if not longer. To get access to a nice pool included in our rightly accommodation fee of approximately $4.50 each a night here is a pretty sweet deal!}
At the train station, as usual, we were preyed upon immediately from our disembarkation point onward, and just as resolutely we turned these unrelenting rickshaw drivers away. ‘We’re being picked up, we have a place to stay’ we repeated time & again. No sign of our pick-up though… hmmm… suddenly a guy in a red shirt appears.
‘Golden City?’ he says.
We smile at him, is this our driver?
‘You called last night, right?’ he mimes holding a phone as we agree happily.
‘Follow me’.
We follow him to a jeep and he starts saying something about how there’s no longer any room at the hotel, which is why he didn’t come with his sign. We may have to pay more. ‘Excuse me?’ we turn to look at him, having already loaded our stuff and clambered into the jeep.
‘We had a big group of German tourists come in at 3am yesterday’ he says. ‘They filled up the hotel, I’ll take you to a hotel next door, it’ll be Rs 200, 250, not too bad’.
‘No’ says Evy, more up on the ball than I am, even though I’d been the one to actually wake up for our train stop. ‘Take us to the hotel anyway’.
‘What, so you can sleep on the rooftop?’ says the guy. ‘There’s no room, except on the roof. It’s my hotel, I apologize very much but there’s no room.’
Something seems odd about all this though, so we stand fast.
‘No, we wish to be taken to the hotel anyway.’
He doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with us. I look out as suddenly two new guys arrive about 20 feet away from us, carrying signs. ‘Golden City Hotel’. If that’s legit, this guy’s a fraud. It seems he is. Scamming red-shirt dude disappears literally in the blink of an eye as we hurriedly remove our stuff from the jeep and make our way over to the new one. Here they don’t seem in the least surprised by our treatment at the hands of their fellows. ‘Sorry we’re late’ says one. I wonder if they would engage in the same or similar practices if one of the other hotel drivers had been late. These guys seem nice enough though, I hope not.
A short drive later we arrive in front of the hotel, no word about German tourists or over-fullness. The back door of the jeep is opened, and, being closest, I attempt to get out first, backpack with computer in hand. I trip over the little metal step to get out. Bag lands with a whack, computer side down, and as for me, it’s a full faceplant into the ground (à la ass-girl 48hr film shoot for those who recall). Welcome to Jaisalmer…
Then we realize that we do indeed have a room, and we do indeed have access to the ‘ice cold’ swimming pool. I may be bleeding and awake at an ungodly hour, but the world is still a good place!

March 27, 2008 – Jodhpur India

It is hot.
Hot as in a small river of sweat trickles down my calf the moment one leg so much as thinks of lying crossed on the other.
Hot as in articles of clothing insistently bunch up and stick to your body at the creases – knees, armpits and elbows being prime favourites – and the small of your back can only vaguely remember what it was like not having a shirt permanently stuck to it by an ever-expanding pool of sweat.
Hot as in shops are closed through midday because even heat-loving Indians find it too much.
Hot as in having energy is a thing of the past
It is hot.

March 26, 2008 - Udaipur, India

Current favourite quotes from local males:

To both of us:
‘What country is suffering without you?’

To me:
‘If I could rearrange the alphabet I’d put I together with U’

To Evy:
‘Are you a virgin?’

March 22, 2008 - Udaipur, India

Have arrived in Udaipur, host to the film shooting of the James Bond film ‘Octopussy’ - as everyone has been eager to tell us since the minute we left the train. There are nightly screenings all over town, and apparently there are some places that just play it continuously… We may end up watching it this afternoon, thereby amusing ourselves and avoiding the heat of the sun at the same time…

March 20, 2008 - Bodhgaya, Varanasi, Jaipur – India
(have kind of slept our way through all 3 places, unfortunately)

I just ate a lovely meal of Farfalle with Tomato sauce, a mixed mango & orange juice, and fresh salad*. This sounds ridiculously bland and uninteresting, especially for India, but it was extremely special for me because it is the first real meal I’ve ingested since about 6 days ago. The cast iron stomach is no longer, the flag has fallen, the white flag is up, and dis white girl ain’t eatin’ no more of dem foreign foods (or at least until I get tempted beyond bearing!).

How did this happen? I’m not quite sure. Getting hooked up to an IV at the lone tiny hole-in-the-ground medical clinic in Bodhgaya, India, after having collapsed in the local internet café and been driven by the café owner’s son by motorcycle to the doctor’s home (he wasn’t at work at the time, a little plastic sign on his door said so) makes for a good story though, I suppose. Better in retrospect than living through it at the time.
Also still not sure of the cause, but whatever it was, it made for a very painful evening of ‘food exorcism’, shall we say (it’s consistently amazing to me how easy it is to read about someone else being sick and briefly thinking to yourself how unfortunate it is, compared with the agony when it’s actually you lying next to the toilet at 3am and wondering how it’s possible to continue retching even when there’s nothing left to vomit and all you want is to be able to lie down in peace for a couple of minutes - preferably not on the cement bathroom floor. Anyway…).

Evy was feeling faint the day after my night at the toilet (the only thing worse about being sick is both being sick) so I was elected to go to the internet café to attempt to book our train ticket (we’d already postponed by one day, we couldn’t do another due to other bookings we’d made prior to being sick). This expedition to the internet, as I mentioned, led to me collapsing with severe chest pains and lack of circulation to my arms (no one’s been able to explain that one to me yet) which led to the motorcycle trip, the doctor’s house, the tourist booking office, and then the medical clinic with the IV.

Why, one might ask, did I go to the tourist booking office between the doctor’s and the medical clinic? As far as I can tell, this was purely so the Internet café owner’s son, aka motorcycle guy, could get a commission by getting me to buy my train tickets through this place that was on the way back from the doctor’s. I was a little too out of it to argue, and in the end we really did need the tickets, extra payment or not. I would’ve been more angry if motorcycle guy hadn’t been so kind to me, taking me everywhere, from café to clinic, clinic to doctor’s, doctor’s to clinic, picking up Ev to come visit and then dropping her back off, and even eventually helping me pick up plain rice at a late night restaurant and dropping me back off at night at the hotel (long after any other type of transportation I might have used was running). If he was a little over-attentive at times, I was appreciative enough that I didn’t say anything. Even when he brought his friend so they could both sit and chat at me while I was held captive by the IV. White girls are fascinating to most Indians, but especially for wannabe-cool teenaged boys, it seems.

The next day, while I was having a check-up with the Doctor, Ev fainted in the Doctor’s bathroom. 10 minutes later she was hooked up to an IV. Oh Bodhgaya. Somehow we have no interest in ever coming back.

*(Corey, if you’re reading this, I apologize for the detailed description of food. As I wrote this I thought of our conversation about how excruciatingly boring it is to hear people’s blow-by-blow food consumption in blog format… never again!)

March 16, 2008 – Kolkata, India

We missed our train connection from Kolkata to Bodhgaya. We were at the train station 45 minutes prior to departure, but due to completely misleading signs and unknowledgeable officials we were sent to wait at the wrong platform and by the time it had all been sorted out, the train was gone. Two hours of being sent back and forth, complete with vigorous argument on my part later, we were still only able to get half the money back and buy 2nd class seating on the final train of the evening. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into.
The 2nd class women’s only car began as the women’s only car, but a couple of stops in it was a free-for-all. No one spoke English, no one came to check the tickets, and the door that should’ve led to the next compartment was welded shut – 2nd class is not welcome to move around the train. I suppose we should’ve been grateful for the fact that it was a sleeper, not just seats, but the wooden slats which were to make up the sleeper portion were often missing, meaning as the night wore on (we were traveling from 11:30 pm until 6:30 am) various articles, not to mention limbs, kept falling from above to below. The windows had no glass, meaning it got progressively colder (we actually had to dig out our fleeces as the night wore on) and also permitted for what appears to be an amusing sport for some passers by – attempt to throw rocks through the windows of the moving train.
Upon finally arriving in Bodhgaya, we were treated to our first impression of what northern India touts can be like. Very, very difficult. The guys here can be extremely difficult to deal with. There has been consistent, persistent harassment on all fronts. Immediately upon emerging from the train, Rickshaw drivers, Taxi drivers, food sellers, everyone crowds around wanting your attention. No is not enough and they will follow you for blocks if they think they have the remotest chance.
In Bodhgaya, on the streets, there was a constant refrain of ‘Hello, Madam. Where are you from, Madam? Come into my shop Madam. Let me take you to this temple, Madam. Beautiful postcards Madam. Only 10 Rupees Madam. To look is free, just come into my shop Madam.’ On and on and on, which you just try to tune out after a while but doesn’t really have much effect.
In the train station outside of Varanasi we were surrounded by a crowd of Rickshaw drivers, at least 15 to 20 guys, who moved like a pack with us until we forced our way through to the cheaper shared jeeps, all the while insisting that we continue arguing with them about how ‘no, we do not want a rickshaw’, ‘no, we do not want to pay just 80 Rupees, just 40 Rupees, just 20 Rupees’ (this last only when we were actually on the jeep with out stuff loaded – they literally will not give up until all hope is gone). Then after all of that, the jeep driver having loaded us in for Rs 20 each (as explained we would be by the Lonely Planet), when we arrived at the main Varanasi junction the jeep driver tried to claim we now owed him 30 Rs each. It wasn’t even about the money at that point, it’s just the plain irritation of constantly feeling like they’re trying to screw you. We went up to a traffic cop and he waved us along, leaving the jeep driver and surrounding bevy of men who’d come for the show to keep arguing.

March 14, 2008 – Kolkata, India

Please, join us for another episode of Lemming One and Lemming Two… I have nothing to say in our defense. I don’t know how we could have been so stupid. All it would have taken is an extra minute of thought. They have it down to an art form though. Divide & conquer. Evy & I fell for it. Fortunately for Faisal, he was a little smarter. I don’t know if that made me feel more or less stupid – does1/3 of the group’s being smarter soften or emphasize the individual stupidity of the remaining 2/3?!
We were going to the Kali Temple, a temple known in the Lonely Planet for it’s goat sacrifices. As soon as we so much as approached the perimeter we had all sorts of wannabe tour-guides approach us. Worse than usual, it was beyond annoying. After wandering around the outside of the temple, shaking off our ‘guides’ as best we could, Faisal felt it unnecessary to go inside. Being eternally curious, and the true daughter of my mother (who can’t leave a single sign unread or object unseen once arrived at a tourist destination), I felt it important to at least briefly check out the inside. Evy & I would end up paying ‘through the nose’, as they say in German, for this supposedly simple desire.
We found ourselves a guide who seemed at least a little more legit, dressed in the full white of people who work at the temple. He rushed us through from one area to another – shoes off here, flowers for puja(offerings) there, push through crowd here, quick glimpse of 3-eyed goddess there, kitchens cooking food for poor people here, and of course, the goat sacrifice (as the goat was held above a suspiciously stained stone slab and got (sacrificial?!) paint rubbed onto it’s unwilling forehead, Evy & I were desperately hoping to avoid having to watch it’s imminent slaughter. Fortunately for us we were rushed along to the sin-washing pool before the actual event occurred – Faisal was disappointed).
At the sin-washing pool we were given wreaths of flowers, obviously used before, and were then brought one at a time to the statue near the centre of the poolside to offer them. Faisal went up first, Evy and I waited and discussed how much we ought to pay the guide. We weren’t sure. We decided that we’d discuss it with Faisal once we reconvened after. I was up next, once again rushed through the proceedings – now you put the flowers around the statue’s neck, now you hang earrings on it’s ears, now you pray for your family, now you pray for yourself & your friends, now you write down how much you want to donate to the poor people the temple takes care of… He hands me a little book. Hmmm. I wonder what a reasonable amount is. I look at the numbers in the book. It seems everyone has been donating amounts in the thousands. I see Rs 2500, Rs 4000, even Rs 5000. There’s the odd Rs 2000 and Rs1500. Still seems like a lot, thank god Faisal went before me, I can copy him. The guide stands on one side, his assistant stands on my other. Have to decide, have to decide. Faisal wrote down Rs 1000. Alright, I guess that seems decent. I’d been wanting to give some money to a charity here so the equivalent of approximately $30 isn’t too bad. I write down my name, give the money, and go to sit by Faisal. There is an Indian woman half-naked as she washes herself in the grungy looking water, and several boys are jumping in from the edge nearby.
Evy’s up. Faisal and I wait quietly, I still haven’t totally clued in to my stupidity until she comes back and asks me, in German, if I just donated a ridiculous amount of money ‘cause she just did and now she feels really stupid about it. Hmmm. We return to pick up our shoes, the guide asks for a donation. Faisal tells him that we’ve already donated a lot, the guide claims it was to charity. Faisal shrugs knowingly. We leave. ‘That was expensive’ he says as we depart.
‘I know, Rs 1000 is a lot!’.
‘What?!’ Faisal turns to look at us. ‘How much did you pay?!’
‘Rs 1000 each, which is what you were listed as paying!’. We all look at each other.
‘I put down Rs 100’ he says, ‘they must have added a zero’.
It turns out he’d seen the numbers too but realized that chances were high people weren’t ‘donating’ quite such hefty amounts. He’d thought about it and decided Rs 100 was expensive (typical temple offerings/guides would run you up anywhere between Rs10-30) and more than sufficient. Evy and I hadn’t thought about it enough, or when we did we thought about it in terms of Canadian money rather than Indian funds – always a mistake.
In retrospect, I really hope some of the money we ‘donated’ (equivalent of $60 between us) went to the poverty stricken people we saw around the area and that it was meant for. Whether it did or didn’t, Evy and I continue to wear the little red string they tied around our wrists at the temple as a little reminder of stupidity. Always think about what you’re doing.