India Is Like No Place Else in the World
For Better and Worse.
Into India, with Trepidation
No one has ever accused India of being easy to visit. Fascinating, diverse, exotic, amazing, yes. But it has a repudation of being a difficult place to travel, between food poisoning, poverty, dirt, scams, etc. So, before we launch into the specifics of our trip, we need to first share what it’s like to travel in India. If you don’t understand this, nothing else will make much sense.
India is Like No Place Else in the World.
Now, Scott has been to India several times, travelling “business class” in the country. it was Kathy’s first time. So neither of us had really “experienced” the real India. We’ve been to many developing countries before, but as we were to repeat to ourselves many times during the trip, “India is like no place else in the world”.
Many of the first impressions of India aren’t particularly positive – and thus give an unfair slant to what is really a wonderful country – but you need to get over these things in order to truly appreciate it.
The first thing I noticed was the smoggy air – makes LA look like a cleanroom. Trucks and tuk tuks and buses all spewing out dark smelly fumes, the air with a dirty brown color. I had a bad cough by the second day – and so did many of the rest in our travel group. They’re working on the pollution – many tuk tuks and buses have been converted to LP gas. And they’ve got the city dug up for a new subway that should provide significant relief. They’ve managed to clean up Bankok’s air signficantly, maybe it will work here too.
Traffic in India is crazy, even by developing country standards. Besides the normal contingent of motor vehicles, there are cycle rickshaws, ox- and horse-drawn carts, various hand-pushed carts and wheelbarrows, people carrying loads on their back, market vendors overflowing the sidewalks into the street. Oh, I forgot to mention the cows. Yes, there really are cows everywhere, and they are perfectly content to find a sunny spot in the middle of a street a
nd park themselves there, forcing traffic to divert around them. Sounds hectic, right? Now, imagine that the only traffic rule is that you can go as fast as you want, on whatever part of the road you want, as long as you honk to let people know you’re coming. In case of ties, the larger vehicle gets right of way. After several terrifying trips through the streets of Delhi, you realize that in fact this chaotic bedlam actually does have an underlying system to it that allows things to move along effectively, if you don’t die of fright on the way.
India is full of people. A billion plus of them. And they are everywhere – the sidewalks are full of people, the streets are full of people, the markets are full of people, the buses are full of people. People in western dress, women in saris, men in dhotis (the loose cotton loincloth like Gandhi wore), Sikhs in turbans, urchins in rags, tribal women with armlengths of bangles, businessmen in suits. Everything is crowded, everything is extotic. .
Everything is dirty – the buildings have layers of grime and pollution streaked down their fronts, seemingly never painted or washed. The streets are full of litter and spittle and cow patties. Men urinate against any handy wall. Open sewage gutters line the sides of most streets. The markets stalls are layered with dirt. There is grime everywhere; you come back to the hotel with dirty hands and feet and clothes. You need to endlessly wash your hands.
Scams and pressure to give up your money are everywhere. Newcomers are viewed like raw meat – charged 5x the going rate for a taxi, diverted to a different hotel harangued women and children 
continually and from all sides by people wanting to sell you something, talk with you about something, take you somewhere, provide where the driver gets a commission, stopped during a tour at a rug store to buy (commission-inflated) carpets. Walking down the street, one is ha some service. All are loud and very persistent. Whatever it is, you are sure to be taken advantage of – maybe by a lot, maybe by a little. And then there are the beggars who trail after you like ducklings to a mother duck, asking for baksheesh. To the left, Scott is accosted by two shoeshine terrorists and a vendor, with another vendor dashing up from behind.
In a country with so many people and so little money, many things one takes for granted just don’t work. Expect hot water when you turn on the tap? Maybe, or maybe cold water, or maybe no water at all. Electricity is problematical. There are few women’s restrooms of any sort (women should be at home). Food safety is always suspect.
OK, so now put this all together – walking through choking air down a littered, grimy street with crazy traffic ricocheting through the streets, horns blaring at 90+ decibels,and being assaulted by an onslaught of humanity every step you take. You can see why India might make a bad first impression on some people.
What the Real India Experience is Like
Now, there are a couple of ways to deal with this. An approach preferred by many is to create a little first world bubble where ever they go – stay in international hotels with generators and backup water supplies and order beef hamburgers from room service. Take expensive a/c private cars to see the sights, returning at the end of the day for a dip in the hotel pool, a nice glass of French wine, and pick up some classy souvenirs at the gift shop. It’s easy, it’s comfortable, you see wonderful things, you get around most of the hassles listed above – but you miss 95% of what India is all about.
This isn’t the way we traveled.
The second approach is to jump right in and experience the country, traveling as a middle-class Indian might – on the trains and cycle rickshaws, staying in the guest houses, eating at the local restaurants. It’s an amazing kaleidoscope of a country – more like dozens of countries – with an amazing history still visible in the temples and palaces and forts from the last 1000 years. People are universally warm and friendly, even when they’re out to scam you – you’re a rich tourist, it’s part of the gig, you know it and they know it and you don’t really get scammed very much after the first few days. Traffic and everything else is chaotic, but the system is adapted to make do and work around the chaos. We were told many times during the trip, “In India, anything is possible” – and it almost always is. It’s fascinating, diverse, and very very inexpensive. The food is plentiful and tasty. It is a religious, family-oriented, non-materialistic, and generally very conservative country. People don’t have much, but most have the basics – food, water, shelter, education, access to basic medical care. If you can let yourself get over the noise and dirt and chaos , India is fabulous and truly like no place else in the world.