around the world in 180 days

Yes, again.

Yesterday, we left Shimla by a very slow train, and, after changing to a much nicer train in Kalka and nearly 12 hours later, we traveled to Delhi. Being somewhat in the swing of this traveling thing, we knew that we wouldn’t want to wander around Delhi at 10 pm (when our train arrived) and so we had the foresight to call ahead. Unfortuantly for us, the hotel we made reservations at didn’t have to foresight to actually save us a damn room. It took us another hour to find a suitable place in the area we were in, and we ended up paying quite a bit more. Oh well.

Before we left Shimla, though, I had a night of dashing to the toilet. It was a sketchy train ride and I ate almost nothing all day. Anna’s had some lingering stomach trouble as well, so we decided to visit a clinic and find out what is going on while we’re in Delhi. It’s a good thing, too, because sometime during the night, Anna took a turn for the worse. We’re both in rough shape.

This morning found us at General Williams Masonic Polyclinic, about three blocks from our hostel, where we were the only non-Indians in the whole building.  Like the rest of India, the place was a madhouse, with people everywhere, long lines and an exhausting amount of activity. We saw a homeopathic doctor who gave us matching vials of tiny white pills, which she’d drizzled with some kind of, well, homeopathic medicine, I guess.

She also authorized us to get blood, urine and stool analysis done, which is what we wanted. We’re going back tonight to pick up the results, but hopefully they’ll clear things up for us and we’ll be able to get rid of this nonesense before we start hiking the Annapurna.

The best part of the clinic experience was the price: Rs 50 for both of us to see the doctor, and Rs 190 for both of us to have all our tests done. That works out to about eight bucks, US. We didn’t even claim it on insurance. Wasn’t worth the effort.

Yeah. Other than that, we haven’t been up to much. We didn’t do much of anything in Shimla except watch a lot of TV. We’re both about ready to be out of India. It’s too hectic, there’s too many people and it’s hard to know who you can trust. Coupled with being sick almost the whole time, it makes India very exhausting.

I can’t get my little gadget hooked up to the computer, but I wanted to post to let everyone know we’re alive and a bit of what we’ve been up to in India. I’ll post the rest when I can. but in India, internet, like everything else, is sketchy.

We did a tour of the so-called Golden Triangle (Delhi, Jaipur and Agra) with Anna’s Mom and we arrived back in Delhi yesterday. We saw a bunch of Mughal architecture and, of course, the Taj Mahal, which I gushed about in one of the posts that I can’t post right now. The Mughals were the Muslim rulers of Northwestern India from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, when they were displaced by the British. The tour was great and we had many adventures that I’ll detail later.

Anna’s mom flies home tomorrow morning and Anna and I are flying to Sringar, in Kashmir, on the fringes of the Himalaya. Everyone we’ve talked to has said that Sringar is beautiful, maybe the most beautiful place in India, but it’s hard to know if they’re telling the truth or not.

It sometimes seems like everyone in India has something to sell. The Indian people are warm and welcoming, but sometimes it’s difficult to know if they’re being so nice because they want you to buy something from them (or through them) or if they’re genuinely being nice. We’ve met touts on the street who will walk us to the places we’re looking for, asking us all sorts of friendly questions, and then when we arrive, they try to get us to book our onward travel through their agency, so they can get a commission. I can’t blame a person for trying, everyone’s got to make a living, but it’s frustrating when you don’t know who you can trust.

The other thing that is difficult about India is the intense, brutal poverty that much of the population lives in. We had the same driver for our whole tour and, while he wasn’t fluent in english, he could speak enough so we could converse and we grew fond of him. He was 28 years old and basically lived in the car he drove, sleeping in it each night as he took us from Delhi to Jaipur, Jaipur to Agra and Agra to Delhi. He made 2000 rupees a month, which works out to about $50 or $600 a year. He was about average as far as income goes, I’d guess, maybe a bit on the low side.

He really is one of the lucky ones, though, because at most stoplights beggars weave their way through the throngs of cars, knocking on windows, showing their infant children and generally looking very pathetic and sad. Some of them are horribly disfigured, with limbs that were broken years ago that never healed properly or other stomach-turning medical issues. It’s difficult to say no, because I want to help, but quite honestly, any amount of money we give them wouldn’t be enough to get them off the streets and only insures that they’ll still be beggars tomorrow. Still, I can’t visit here and do nothing, so Anna and I have decided to donate to a charity in India that works specifically with the poor. I think whatever money we have will be put to much better use there and will go much farther. In the mean time, though, it’s difficult to be constantly turning away beggars.

That being said, all three of us have loved India. It is a beautiful (if hot) country that has a rich cultural history that is fun to learn about.  Anna and I will be here for another two weeks or so and we’ll barely scratch the surface of the country. We won’t see anything south and east of here, but we’ve learned that you can often see more if you see less.

Stay tuned for future updates, which will appear below this entry.

24 hours ago, our plane was landing at the Delhi airport and we've already experienced so much that I'm not even sure where to begin. We were greeted at the airport last night by a man holding that always-comforting placard with ... [Continue reading this entry]