around the world in 180 days

Today we went trekking in the Himalayas for the first time. Or walking, anyway. The manager of the houseboat we’re on said we’d hike to a glacier that was so beautiful that we wouldn’t believe it. No glacier. A very nice hike, but nothing spectacular. The manager is less than honest.

For example: we paid something like $40 each for a tour of the city and a tour of the lakes in Srinagar, which Mr. Manager said would last all day. The city tour had us back at the boat by 2:30 and the boat tour had us back by 1. All day. Hmpf.

We were supposed to leave Srinagar and stupid Mr. Manager tomorrow, but when we got back from our walk today, we found out that there won’t be any busses tomorrow. Turns out there was a landslide on the road between Srinagar and Jammu (the next big town) and so traffic can only go in one direction until the road is fixed. Tomorrow traffic goes towards Srinagar and not away, so we’re stuck here for another day. The thing is, is that true, or just a scam to get us to pay for another night on the boat? The guy who told us, Mushtaq, has been very honest and seems like just a very nice guy, but who knows? I hate it that I’m even questioning this, but we get lied to so often, about everything . . .

For example: yesterday, we took a taxi into town to hit up an ATM before we left Srinagar, as there ae none at our next stop. The ATM was out of money, so we went inside the bank to find out if they could do anything for us. We talked to the ATM officer, told him the ATM was out of cash and he said, “No, it isn’t.” “Yes it is, we just tried to use it.” “It was just filled.” “In the last five minutes?” “Yes.” See, this was a lie. We went back out to the ATM, tried it again, and hey, guess what? Still out of money. Imagine that. Why couldn’t he just tell us he didn’t want to help us? Why lie? I guess this is one of those cultural differences that makes traveling so interesting, right? Anna and I are waffling on whether or not to call out Mr. Manager on his lies/exaggerations about the tours we signed up for. We haven’t paid yet, so we do have some leverage, but it seems like it will be more difficult than pulling teeth to get him to admit to anything. We also have to work out payment for tomorrow night’s stay. There are plenty of beds available in Srinagar, so if he won’t be reasonable, we’ll pack up and leave. It’s our only bargaining tool. We just need to make sure to take care of things early in the day, so that is still an option.

I will be happy to leave here. I feel like we were suckered into a tourist trap, where we paid a lot more than we should have for what we got and I want to put it behind us. We should have learned this lesson in Fiji, when we got hauled out to that crappy island and prepaid, but we didn’t. Don’t book ahead, unless absolutely necessary. Salesmen will say anything to get your cash, even if it isn’t true (except Josh).

I didn’t mean to go off on another rant about this stuff, but it really is just a huge down point that makes it difficult to enjoy an otherwise beautiful place. At the very least, maybe our mistakes can help someone else avoid them.

As I lay in bed last night around 8 pm, feverish and exhausted, listening to the prayer calls from a dozen different mosques ring our across Lake Nageen, where our houseboat is moored, I felt like I was in a movie and this was the scene where I died. I’d been feeling progressively awful throughout the day and by the time we ate dinner, my body ached and I had no appetite. Anna took my temp and I had a fever, so I took some tylenol and went to bed, sleeping for almost 12 hours before getting up, feeling refreshed and ready for the day.
As I got better, Anna got worse. She has the same stomach troubles I had a few days ago and is not very happy right now. We were supposed to go on a boat tour of the lakes in Srinagar today, but she just wasn’t up to it. It’s not looking good for tomorrow, either. I hope that a decent night’s sleeep will help, but, even with antibiotics, these things seem to take a day or two to run their course.
The stomach bugs are one of the worst things about traveling. Being sick is not much fun at home, but when you’re on the other side of the world, it’s particularly unpleasant. We’re lucky, in that our sicknesses hit when we didn’t have to do any long bus rides, but it sucks to lie here in Kashmir, surrounded by beautiful mountians, too sick to do anything.
Since I’ve been complaining, I’ll stick with it. I’m sure that traveling around the world seems like all peaches and sunshine to all of you back home, but sometimes, I’d rather have the house and job and everything else ad just be at home.
For instance: the salesmen/touts/whatever here in Kashmir are intolerable. I wrote bit about our argument with the houseboat manager when we arrived about our activities for our time here. Yesterday, a friend of Mustak, our tour guide/cook/housekeeper stopped in to sell us shawls. He was relentless, even after we told him we weren’t interested in buying. It’s tough, because they look at us as enormously rich and many of the people who stay here are enourmously rich, so when we say no, they take it as a personal slight against the quality of their merchandise. We bent over backwards assuring him that his shawls were beautiful, but we just couldn’t afford them. That was a mistake. In the future, we’re just going to say no, politely but firmly and not think about it any more. They use guilt as a sales tactic and we’ve got to stop falling into their trap.
Another mistake we’ve made is believing people when they tell us something. One of the hardest things about India is that people lie to you all the time, even people that you think should be trustworthy, like officials at the train station. We’d read in the Lonely Planet that you shouldn’t believe anyone who tells you that the tourist office in the New Delhi train station is closed or burned down or under renovation, but when we went to the station looking for that office, one of the officials there told us exactly that (we made the mistake of believing him because he looked, well, official) and hustled us into a cab that dropped us off at a travel agent where I’m sure he got a nice commission. That’s where we booked the trip we’re on. The official at the train station said that the agent was a government endorsed agent, but he was actually just government recognized, which is slightly different. Now we’re stuck on a houseboat that’s outside of Srinagar and can’t do anything without paying the owner/manager an arm and a leg. It was stupid not to remember what we’d read. What’s the point of a guidebook if you don’t take their guidance?
We’re looking forward to getting back to independent travel. There are a lot mre headaches, but you are in charge of your own fate. If a hotel is no good, you don’t stay there. If a cabbie wants too much to take you somewhere, you wait for the next one. Independence has its downsides too (nobody holding a sign with your name on it at the airport), but we’ve more or less been on tours for the last 3 weeks. It’s time to see India on our own terns.
Well, time to let Anna get some rest. Goodnight!

We flew from Delhi to Srinagar, in Kashmir, which in the not-so-distant past has played host to a few skirmishes between India and Pakistan. After the Soviet Union imploded and pulled its troops out of Afghanistan, many of the mujahadeen ... [Continue reading this entry]