The World in 100 Words or Less

My last day in Agra, 4 days ago, was an uneventful one.  I essentially spent the day moping around with a slight sense that I was becomng sick with something akin to the Flu.  This was perhaps the worst time to start feeling sick as it was destined to be a day of travel.  In Agra I had happened to meet two Americans who were heading in the same direction as me, so we decided to roll out together.  Somewhere in the day we ended up adding an older Indian fellow, who had been living in Germany for 40 years, to our group as well.  The americans ended up talking me into taking the train to Jaipur, despite the fact I had already set up a bus ticket, but I was able to cancel it.  Jaipur is considered the shopping Mecca of India, but none of us wanted to spend time there.  It is a congested city of tourists where every is trying to sell you something, which reminds me…

I must say one of the most dissapointing things, or perhaps just the reality of an impoverished country, about India is the way people treat you as a foreigner.  They are not outwardly mean to you or disrespectful in the classical sense, but the majority seek to take advantage of you in some form or another.  I have a hard time bringing myself to make such generalizations, but thus far, it has been my experience that 99% of the Indians I have met are trying to make a buck off of me.  Of the many offers to people’s homes for a “cup of chai” or a “bite to eat” I have been sold on trips to Kashmir, offered rugs and suits, indoctrinated with religion and brought to “cheap, good” restaurants.  Everyone’s generosity comes at a price.  I have found few genuine people. However, I believe that people such as myself are to blame for this.  We are the tourists, we have the money. We are seen as a way to get a step up in life, and why not take it? If I were as poor as some of the people I’ve met I would probably be doing the same thing.  The whole situation makes me sad.  The way a mother will use her child to beg for money to eat, the manner in which an older gentleman will push me out of the way at the train station counter so he can buy a ticket 5 seconds faster, or the worst, the seemingly friendly salesmen wishing to profit from my trust and naivete.  It is truly a change from Thailand, where there are no doubt touts and scam artists, but more of a sense of respect among human beings.  Here it is a battle between the plump cattle (tourists) and the flies seeking to just get a taste off our backs. I dont know whether it makes me a bad person for saying so.  I only hope I can help change it in some way.

Back to the trip: At 6 p.m. that day in Agra the two americans, Bo and Andy, and I boarded the train to Jaipur. Our German friend, Suvir, had decided to head elsewhere.  But, I must also back track for a moment.  Getting a train ticket was not without hassle or frustration.  In fact, it was a struggle up to the minute we stepped on the train.  Everything in India is horribly confusing and messy.  At first we were told there were no tickets to Japur for that train, then there were, then there were not, then there were only general seating (which is all too close to sitting in the trains used to cart jews during the holocaust), then we finally found we could get general seats and upgrade them on the train to a more comfortable sitting class.  So, after almost missing the train due to standing on the wrong platform, and then almost switiching trains because some asshole lied to us, we were finally on our way.  The train to Jaipur was only a 4 hour trip, so it would be easily travelling.  We ended up having full bench seats all to ourselves.  This was my frst real train in India.  I had taken a train to Agra, but it was in an impeccable air conditioned car complete with a meal, newspaper and a bottle of water.  THis train was open window, open door and full of freedom.  The three of us would sit in the doorways, are legs dangling out over the moving ground below taking in the farms, villages and train stations.  I felt like I was seeing the real India for the first time.  Not the huge cities or commercialized sites, but mud huts and villages rising out of fields into existence for no other reason, but that life could manage there.  The sun finally vanished from view, the last sliver dipping into the ground as we passed a mud hut where an old man sat in front of a tiny fire.

After four hours of bliss, my sick feelng from before returned.  We had arrived in the train station in Jaipur.  My original plan was to go to a small city called Pushkar, but Andy and Bo had convinced me to stick with them and go to Jaisalmer, a city far into the Indian desert close to the border with Pakistan.  Getting a ticket once again proved difficult.  Even getting to the appropriate booth was a challenge.  It was an obstacle course of sleeping bodies, people running and piles of trash.  Im sure once or twice I accidentally stepped on someone, but geez, it was hard to maneuver.  Again I had to get a general seating and this time i wasn’t at all clear whether or not I would be able to get a sleeper bed for the 14 hour journey overnght to Jaisalmer.  I had already been awake for 20 hours and my sckness was really starting to take root.  I was coughng up a storm and sweating though it was only 65 degrees or so.  The train arrived two hours after we had arrived in Jaipur, coming in right after 1 am.  A very helpful Indian musician and his wife helped me acquire the proper sleeping car ticket, which for the entire journey, cost a whopping $5.50. So expensive!!!  The sleeping car is the lowest class of the passenger coaches with beds.  It is without air-con and has three bunks stacked on top of each other in every row.  Sleeping is sort of a joke as I got nothing of the sort.  I tossed and turned all night, rising to snoring and bouncing of the car… suffering from fever dreams.  I was miserable.  I had brought no water, a serious mistake, and the pills I had taken dry were burning a hole in my empty stomach.  I had not eaten anything in 8 hours.  I felt that I was the only person awake in all of India and the thought made me jealous of the other 1.25 billion people.  I was tempted to scream and wake the entire country so they could understand my pain.  But I didn’t. As the sun rose 5 hours later, I managed to prop my body up and manage to read a couple of pages of “Kite Runner”, the book Bo had graciously lent me.  He of course slep like a baby, curled up snug as a bug in a rug in his sleeping bag.  I wanted to slap him in the face.

By about 10 am I was in real bad shape.  The tanted water available from taps at the stations we stopped at seemed tempting, but I controlled myself. A Jain couple that saw I was hurting took pity on me and graciously fed me some of their food: nuts, dried fruit, bread, cookies.  It helped to calm my stomach, though I was still dehydrated.  But with their caring gift, my image of India began to change.  There were good people here.  They kept me company, explaining to me the practices of Jain people (strict vegetarians, I suggest you learn a little about their religion, very interesting).  The train finally reached Jaisalmer, Bo and Andy helped me off and we got two rooms at a hotel in town.  I had barely noticed the beauty of the city.  All I wanted to do was drink some water and pass out for eternity. And so I did.

So it’s been awhile since I last updated. I must admit, the north is a very relaxing place to stay and the people are great, so it’s been hard for me to pry myself away from the couches and the markets to write this.

After another wasted day in bangkok, where my only two successes were getting my India Visa process started and booking a ticket to Delhi, I began to head north. My first stop would be Ayutthia, the old capital of Thailand. Ayutthia was sacked in the late 18th century by what is now modern day Myanmar (aka Burma). It was a beautiful city of numerous Wats, Shrines, Palaces, and fine Buddha images. Now what remains are a series of ruins. The Buddha statues have their heads chopped off,the palaces have been burnt to the ground, a few walls made out of brick remaining. But, walking around this once immense city gives you a glimpse into “medieval” and “renaissance” thai culture. In fact, the city was so large, that some estimates place it as the biggest city in the world for its time, both in sheer area and in population. But it suffered the all to common fate of a city that had grown beyond itself, beyond its own control.

For anyone interested in Thai architecture this is a must-see as the Thai buildings are amazing. Many of them made out of red-clay brick, similar in appearance to the town houses of the USA, the Thai kings had huge shrines created for the remains of their relatives and large temples built that housed thousands of monks. One of the most filmed image of thailand is the image of the head of Buddha in the form of a statue with overgrown tree roots partially covering it. It remains as one of the only existing heads of Buddha in all of Ayutthia’s ruins and provides interesting theories of how it got there. Surprisingly though, it was a little dissapointed. I was expecting a huge 6 or 7 ft tall head under a huge tree, when in reality I almost walked right by the damned thing without noticing it.

After a full day in the hot and humid air of modern Ayutthia, I was exhausted. Seemingly so were the skies. No longer able to hold the weight of all the humidity in the clouds, it poured like no other. It was the first time I really saw it rain and thailand, and so far, the only time. Everyone took shelter under whatever they could find, poor motorcyclists arrived at their destinations drenched, and the streets flowed with an interesting shade of brown. I was just happy it cooled off a little bit and I had a place to read. SO I sat back in the train station and waited a whole 4 hours for the train to Chang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city.

Chang Mai:Let me first say, taking the train instead of a bus is a beautiful thing. The train provides those little creature comforts that make an 11 hour journey not so bad. Whereas the train is cramped and almost painful for someone of my height, on the train I get my own bed, complete with all of the fixings. Now of course I pay 3 times as much, but it all adds up to about 13 dollars, so not bad. Well worth it to get a full nights rest, especially after the smoldering day before. I get into Chang Mai in the morning, as the sun is rising over the mountains and onto the rice paddies and through the windows of the train. I decide that I’ll buy the ridiculously over priced breakfast offered by the all-too-eager waiter, so that im fresh for Chang Mai and finding a place to stay. BAD IDEA. For the first time in my life, breakfast does me in. Off all the crazy street food i’ve eaten, from questionable curries to scorpions and grasshoppers, eggs over easy and a little piece of Ham has me puking all morning at an internet cafe. And to think, I paid triple the usual price of breakfast to be sick. I’ve actually been going back to the same internet cafe where I puked because I wanted to give them some business in exchange for the mess I left in the bathroom.

So here I’ve been in CHang Mai, relaxing with fellow travellers, going to night markets, clubs, and watching movies.  And to think, I wasn’t even going to go to this place.  It turns out it’s been one of my most enjoyable stays.

More to follow as usual….

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