Holy, Urban Cow!!!

Days 159-189: Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, Northern India

India. We had heard the rumors; warnings from other travelers about the trains, con men, etc. We expected some dirt, some noise, some shady haggling. But man, India dropped on us HARD. Masochistic busdrivers, constant "hullo!, where you from? Holland?!!? Deutsch?!!," trash and cowshit, carhorns. AH! The HORNS! WHY DO THEY HONK AT EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME?!?!? DON'T THEY REALIZE THAT BY HONKING AT EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME THAT THE HORN NO LONGER MEANS ANYTHING!?!?! . . . deep breath . . . ok now . . . . . Within a week, we stopped applying our rules of logic and just sat back. The ride had some bumps. Some days, we HATED India (like when we got robbed on an overnight train). But, most of the time, we LOVED it, for it is a land of deep, colorful beauty and crazy cultural quirks (most of them lovable), set amidst layers of history, religion, culture, and ethnicity and all jumbled together into a crowded, frenetic mix of 1.2 billion people (predicted to surpass China within 25 years).

A fitting symbol of the travel "experience" that is INDIA, is the rightly infamous Indian "head bobble," something that takes most Westerners a bit getting used to. Say, you are walking through the crowded, churning madness of Old Delhi, not a perpendicular intersection in sight, and, desperate to find the way to the Red Fort, you decide to ask a local Indian man for guidance: "Pardon me, is this the way to the Red Fort?" And here it comes: the man's head, centered on his trimmed black mustache (a required badge of Indian manhood), begins to gyrate: first, a 30-degree tilt to the left, an equal but opposite tilt to the right, a shoulder pops up, next the other shoulder, followed by a chin raise, a chin dip, and perhaps, for good measure, a few more right-left tilts, finished with a side-to-side neck rotation, AND, if he's really feeling spicy, a sort of in-and-out head pump very much like a casual hip hopster just chilling in his '64. WHAT?!?! Meanwhile, (this strangely being the one (and only) time an Indian keeps silent) his lips stay sealed, his face blank. The Indian Head Bobble. About as clear as discerning the correct rickshaw price in Jaipur or swimming through tar with your eyes open. Does it mean Yes? No? Maybe? Step into my shop? Watch out for the taxi that is about to run you over? What do they ever mean?!?!! And there it is. The beginning of a long list of inexplicable wonders that we experienced while traveling in northern India. Take something simple, like a head shake for "No," and the energetic Indian will turn into (from our point of view) a perplexing, game-like puzzle.

Another example: going to the train station to buy a train ticket. Sounds sımple enough, rıght? Guess again. We arrive, and 10 Indians, all just standing around of course (there are so many people in this country, there are always dozens standing around), instantly surround us, wanting to know where we are from, how old we are, what our professions are, if we are married, if we have children (no children! WHAT!?!), where we have been in India, if we play cricket, if we want to buy a "marble" chess set, where we are going, and, of course, if we can please come to my house for chai tea RIGHT NOW. . . and all with a lot of laughing, yelling, perhaps some touching (but only men touching men, which is very standard practice in public, while the women are rarely in sight, except, of course, when doing back-breaking manual labor) . . . and this is just after we have crossed the street! Once inside the ticket office, though, it's alllll business, and I do mean full-contact WWF business. To Indians, even more than Laotians, Thais and Cambodians, waiting in an orderly line (or any sort of line) is a completely alien concept. Rather, the train ticket "line" is a throbbing moshpit of Indian men, in a smelly, heated fit that they are not closer to the ticket window. So, with Al watching the packs (women are relegated to the sidelines in India), I dive in, with elbows sharp and money belt safely stashed beneath the drawers. Men try to out maneuver from the side - BAM! - taste the sting of my whitey forearm. Two start squeezing from behind (at this moment, I am loathing the acceptability of public male touching), but, as they are all 2-feet shorter than I am, a quick knee swipe sends a firm warning shot to their privates. More yelling. The BO becomes overwhelming - why didn't we just pay the travel agent commission!?!. Another side-swipe. I might have to crowdsurf it . . . but then, thank God, thank you Ganesh and all Hindu deities . . . I am at the window. "Two AC 3rd-class sleepers for Jaisalmer, kind sir." Tragedy strikes. He points to a blank form, which I was meant to fill out before appearing at the window. Indian bureacracy. If the masses don't get you, the forms will. The mob shows no remorse; I am tossed out. Everyone is elated to have one less person in line. 1.2 billion people will do it, I guess. Once again, the chaos of India crushes our souls.

And so, it is simply like traveling no where else. But the frustrations are off-set. We look out from our train window, and in 2 seconds, we see 5 AMAZING things: a kaleidascope of women ın sari's re-paving a highway (women do most of the hard work, from our observations); a dog eating cow shit falling from a cow eating from a trash heap from which a starving family scavenges for food; well-dressed business men huddled in low stools sipping chai teas; children skipping through a carved palace wall; monkeys fighting on an electric wire. People, cows, buses, chickens, rickshaws, colors, patterns, spices, Bollywood posters, cell phone covers with bright Hindu representations . . . EVERYTHING . . . constant, fast, chaos, everywhere, people all the time, thıs is INDIA.

Arriving in Delhi, within an hour, we see an elephant walking down one of the main highways in the city, a cow walk INTO a restaurant (and, let it be known, that no one even batted an eye, except the one tourist who looked like she had just seen an alien. Fair enough.), and nearly got ran over by a horse-cart, a bicycle taxi, a jeep, a fruit peddler, AND a herd of urban cows! Avoiding our despicably dingy 2-dollar-a-night hole of a room, we bounced between the city's amazing monuments, grand promenades and squares, and tasty tandoori and curry shops. The chapatis and spiced dahl flowed and flowed. Yes!

We got a glimpse of Indian ex-pat life with a great night of booze and food with Althea's old college mate, Virginia (internatıonal extraordinaire - Buenos Aires to Delhi, and traveling everywhere in between) and her French boyfriend, Christophe. When you see that colored-glass and silver hanging candle lantern at Anthropologie for $59.99, think of Christophe; he bought in Delhi for much much less (you don't want to know) and figured out how to get it to your shopping basket ın Chicago. Smart guy.

An insanely crowded train ride later, we arrive in filthy Agra, home to the Taj Mahal. It requires no introduction, which of course worried us. Something so hyped and photographed might easily disappoint. But no, the Taj is all that and more. With the sun setting, we walked around its marbled walls and round minarets - everything perfectly placed and balanced. Intricate inlaid stone patterns. Gorgeous Islamic calligraphy. The marble changing colors as the sun dipped lower through the polluted sky. We will never forget it.

We then train-hopped on a whirlwind tour of Rajasthan, starting in Jaipur, the supposed "pink city" of former Maharajah glory and now home to about 3 million people (a "medium"-sized cıty). Despite a glorious meal and a lovely hilltop fort enjoyed at sunset, we struggled to see much of the "pink" beauty that the guidebook promised. It was mostly noise, dirt and, strangely (sad for Al), INDIAN PUKE. Day 1, walking down a crowded street, I am trailing Al as we pass a chai shop with a mix of men standing around. I am a few feet behind her and, all of a sudden, a short, normally-dressed Indian man walks quickly in front of me with a milky chai in his hand. Before I can even mentally process the event, he squeezes up close to Al's back and proceeds to BARF UP a sizeable amount of his chai on her t-shirt, like a baby turning down dinner. He darts off before I can calm my shock enough to, say, shake and/or punch his tiny frame, and am left to break the news to Al that a random Indian man just puked all over her new t-shirt and skirt. Even stranger, at least some of the men standing around had to notice the incident (Al enjoys a 1-KM radius of staring Indian men wherever she walks), and yet, everyone was silent and unbothered. The stealthiest crowd-barf in history. I am still ashamed for failing to catch him. We left Jaipur shortly after that.

Udaipur, however, definitely did not disappoint--a lakeside village, with beautiful havelis (old Rajput mansions), narrow cobbled streets, a palace on the lake, and a wonderful old palace that allowed for hours of exploration. Tre romantic for sure. Oh, and one must not forget that much of Octopussy (you know, the one where Bond flies a jet through a pair of closing hangar doors and machine gun fire) was filmed there. (Hotels made sure that you did not forget, as many offered a free Octopussy screening at 7:00PM). So, Al became "Money Penny" and I became a dangerous but sexy killing machine. Like Bond, we got custom clothes made from fıne Indian fabrics as we sipped chai. When not role-playing, we drank more chai by the lake, taking in the mysterious floating palace, watched traditional Rajput dance (women twirling quite impressively, some even with 9 pots stacked on their head), and took a few days to just relax from the Indian hustle. And we had an incredible day of architecture and countryside, visiting an intricately-carved Jain (pre-Hindu) temple of massive marble columns followed by a mind-blowing hilltop Rajput fort ith the second-longest wall in the world, after China's Great Wall.

We then headed west to the Thar desert, where Rajisthan's landscape becomes even more barren and villages become much more sparse. We landed ın Jaisalmer, a golden, sandstone fort town rising from the Thar just mıles from the Pakistani border. It is a remarkable city, particualrly because the fort is still a village, making it a living museum of sorts. Within the fort walls, merchants sell goods to tourists and locals alike, living in small houses above their shops, connected by narrow streets dotted with cows and children on bicycles.

A trip to Jaiselmer is not complete without a camel safari into the Thar Desert, and, despite warnings of sore sore bums, we saddled up on top of Charlie (Jacob's ornery camel) and Moira and headed out into the desert. We were joined by Carl and Stephy, two French travelers, and our camel driver Osman. And of course, the camels. Having never seen a camel so up close and personal, we soon learned that they are incredibly smelly (both theır burps and farts smell like cooked cauliflower), and they eat by devourıng a large amount of food at once, store it in their stomachs, only to throw it back up into their mouths to chew on it all day long. No wonder their burps were nasty. Nasty. But despite their smelly ways and the fact that sittıng on a camel for three days definitely left our bums so sore it was difficult to walk, camels are nonetheless loveable creatures. They have a constant sheepish grin, friendly eyes, tons of personality. Plus, they lower you to the ground by folding their legs in seemingly impossible and bizarre ways, Transformer-style.

Riding on top of a camel with nothing ahead of you but desert is a pretty incredible experience. We would set up camp in the dunes under the desert sky, with absolutely no one around. One night, sitting in dunes to watch the sunset, we see a blue speck in the distance, soon recognızeable as a local. Indeed, as the man grew closer, we saw that he was walking towards us, and was carrying something in his arms. When he approached, I kid you not, this man was carrying beer (we had, in fact, just said that this sunset would only be more perfect with a cold beer). Well, his beer wasn't exactly cold. After all, he had walked for hours from his village to sell it to us. But that's India for you. They will find a way to sell you something, even in the middle of the desert, miles away from the nearest village. But to top it off, after we were set up with our beers, the dunes, and the magnificent sunset, two other men seemingly "beam up" like Star Trek, with huge grins and turbans, plus a flute and, for lack of a better word, a small metal mouth 'boinger' (you know, those instruments that go boi oi oi oi oi oi oing). So not only did we now have the wonderful sunset over the dunes, and somewhat cool (ok, kind of warm) beers, we now were being seranaded by a man in a turban and his sıde-kick boinger. Does it get any better (and more surreal) than this?

Our last major stop is Varanasi, one of India's most ancient and holiest cities, as it is built along the Ganges River. Most Indians quite devoutly believe that by both bathing in the Ganges and being cremated in its waters at one of Varansi's "ghats" (giant riverside steps and pavilions), a direct trip to their version of "heaven" and a prosperous after-life is guaranteed. The city lives and dies along the Ganges, making Varanasi one of the most incredible stops on our trip and our favorite for all of India. We walked through the city . . . under construction (!)