The Burning Ghats

The city of Udaipur sits on gentle hills overlooking a sprawling lake, and its big claim to fame is that the James Bond movie Octopussy was filmed here. The hills and winding streets reminded me of San Francisco, and the narrow alleys and relationship to the water reminded me of Venice, which when added to the distinctly Indian flare, made for a nice combination. Like in most Indian cities, the streets were dotted with people, rickshaws, goats, trucks, cows, cars, dogs, and even the occasional elephant. My hotel had a radical rooftop from which I ate superb home cooked meals and watch the sunset over the lake every night. It's also a stone's throw away from almost every area where they shot Octopussy, a movie which was filmed in Udiapur, in case you forgot to read that earlier.

Laundry and the lake palace:


Lal Ghat, the area where my hotel was:


Taking a break from the fort-temple-temple-fort-fort-temple routine, I decided to enroll in a few classes while in Udaipur. My two hour Indian cooking class was great, and I learned how to make some phenomenal vegetarian food including spicy paneer butter masala and everyone's flatbread favorite tandoori naan.



I also took a tabla drum lesson, which wasn't quite as good as the cooking class — my creepy instructor Krishna kept trying to sell me drums the whole time and informed me that I "play the tablas like a child." A one hour lesson only set me back about four dollars and I learned the basics, so I tolerated the humiliation.

My favorite sight in the city was definitely the Udaipur Maharana's collection of classic cars, which has been converted into a small indoor/outdoor museum for visitors. Unlike most guys, I'm not really crazy about cars, but I guess the Maharaja had good taste and he amassed what I thought was an amazing collection. There were more than 50 cars total including a flawless Model T Ford, some curvy Cadillacs from the '60s, and a couple of 1930s-era cars made by Rolls Royce. They even had the shiny black Rolls Royce Phantom III that bad guy Kamal Kahn drove around in Octopussy. Did I mention they filmed that movie here? The ticket price even came with an oddly-named "antique cold drink" which was a Coke which tasted like it too had been preserved since the '30s.



One of the dominating features in the area near the lake is the intricately carved Jagdish Temple, which was built in 1651. It can be seen in a few scenes of the James Bond movie Octopussy, which was filmed in Udaipur. Did you know that? The temple was great, but I enjoyed the courtyard outside more, which was full of some great photo ops of sunbaked saddhus.



On my third day, I finally broke down and took part in my hotel's awkwardly named "Nightly Octopussy Show" — hearing about the movie from shop owners all the time and not having seen it was driving me nuts. A word to the wise: don't ever watch Octopussy. It was easily one of the most ridiculous and awful movies I've ever seen, and I like almost everything — I even liked Highlander Endgame and the Super Mario Brothers Movie. This was that bad, folks. It was kind of fun to see Udaipur in the movie, and I was amazed at how little the city has changed in the last 30 years, but it was still excruciating to sit through all two hours of the awful film. And the funny part is that they refer to Udiapur as "Delhi" in the movie. Ouch! How do you like that, Udaipur!? Not so famous now, are you?

My last stop in peaceful Udaipur was the Bagore-Ki Haveli, which has been recently converted into a museum full of hit-and-miss local contemporary art, and some pretty interesting recreations of what the mansion might have been like in its heyday. The most shocking thing to me was the complete segregation of men and women in the house — separate bedrooms, separate sitting rooms, separate bathrooms, and separate game rooms. Men and women couldn't even play chess with each other in those days. Unfortunately, not much appears to have changed in modern India. The haveli is also home to the world's largest turban, which was about five wide, even though it doesn't look like it in this picture:



I left Udaipur headed for Agra on an overnight sleeper bus, which is probably my favorite way of getting around India. It only costs around a dollar or two more than a seat and you get your own tiny compartment which hovers just inches above the heads of the people sitting below.

In 1997, when the Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao was finished, the city transformed from a gritty industrial hub into a modern, world-class city virtually overnight. The city-changing quality the building had on the Spanish town was dubbed "The Bilbao Effect," and cities today strive for the same thing to happen to them. The Indian city of Agra is the reason why it's not called "The Agra Effect." Sure, it's got a great building. Possibly the greatest building on earth: The Taj Mahal. But the rest of the city is a total dump. Even the locals seemed to think so — when I told people I was staying for two days, they said it was one day too long. Yikes.

My first night in Agra, I headed across the river for views of the back of the Taj at sunset. In some odd fluke of city planning, there's nothing on the other side of the river except muddy banks covered in dilapidated villages, water buffaloes, stray dogs, and a handful of five-year-olds selling postcards. The capitalist American in me couldn't believe that land with million-dollar views had remained undeveloped, but it was neat to see a rural village in such close proximity to a city.



The next morning, I woke up well before sunrise and was third in line for the Taj. Travelers all around India complain about the excessive ticket price to get in — about 16 dollars. Word on the traveler rumor-mill is that Bill Clinton visited a few years back when the price was only a couple bucks, and mentioned that they could make a killing if they raised the ticket prices, so they increased it by a thousand percent. First Monica Lewinsky and now this. Way to go, Bill.

After forking over the cash, I finally made it inside and caught my first closeup glimpse of the stunning Taj Mahal. Completed in 1653, the building was commissioned by Emperor Shah Jahan to memorialize his second wife, who died during childbirth. His first wife received nothing but divorce papers. Probably because it's the most photographed building on earth, the Taj is one of the few places I've seen that looks exactly like I had pictured. With that said, it still was incredibly impressive, and I spent a few hours just hanging out staring at it as the sun came up and made the white marble glow.



Sick of sightseeing, I didn't accomplish much else in Agra before my long night train eastward to the holy city of Varanasi. The city is the major religious center of Hindu India, and it sits famously along the holy water of the Ganges River (pronounced gone-guh), which Hindus believe has healing powers. The reality of the river is probably the opposite, however, because the water is some of the most polluted on earth. Travelers like to quote the most awful statistic: the amount of fecal matter in the river is nearly 2000 times higher than safe levels for bathing. Still, that doesn't keep the holy from diving in and the locals from playing in the dangerously septic water. And you thought the rat temple was gross.




Except for the occasional nasty whiff of the river, walking along the ghats of Varanasi is an incredible experience. There are more than 50 ghats—the name for the sets of steps leading down into a river—and each one has its own personality. Some are specifically for bathing, some are used for doing laundry, some are infested with water buffaloes, some serve as home to stray dogs, some are calm and vacant, some and some are full of travelers and beggars. And two—known as the burning ghats—are where bodies are carefully submerged into the river's holy water before they are placed on logs and burned into ashes.

At first, you see the smoke. Then, along the stairs leading down into the river, you see piles and piles of logs. Then you see the workers, whose faces are covered in sooty rags. Then you see the mourning families. Then, the burning bodies.

I watched one woman—completely covered in fabric and flowers—placed upon sandalwood logs. Her son took a torch and ceremonially made a circle around his dead mother five times until he finally stuck the torch at the bottom of the bed of logs. The fabric around her began to turn black, and the outline of her body—once clearly recognizable as a person—started to erode as it burned. The family walked away and did their best to hold back their tears because crying is seen as bad luck and disrespect to the dead. Along the rest of the ghat, the same process was being played out a dozen times over. It's hard for me to accurately describe or analyze the experience, but I will say that I was surprised at how emotional I got watching all of that take place. Witnessing death in the form of human bodies burning was something that affected me and deeply resonated with me as a sight I'll not soon forget.

Away from the ghats, Varanasi is equally amazing. In the old city, the maze-like alleyways are the most narrow and confusing yet, and at night they turn into a lively market of souvenirs, open-air restaurants, paan wallahs, colorful bangle shops, and more. You have to watch your step, however — poorly-lit areas are like a cow shit minefield and one misplaced step could spell disaster. The traffic in Varanasi is definitely the most intense I've seen so far. The air in the streets vibrates with the clanging of hundreds of cycle rickshaw bells, covered in an earsplitting layer of motorcycle and car horns. Crossing the street is an act reserved for the stupid or the brave. A few quick videos of typical street scenes:




On my last morning, I went on an early morning boat ride along the Ganges with Sam and Brad, a delightful American couple that I kept bumping into the previous week. We lit candles, put them in banana leaf boats and put them into the water to float down the holy river. The city looked spectacular in the pre-dawn light, and the three of us all loved the hour-long trip.



I left Varanasi mid-afternoon on my last Indian train bound for Calcutta. I met some really cool Japanese and Korean guys on the train — one guy has spent the last five years snowboarding, traveling, and working short-term jobs as he follows winter around the globe in search of the world's best snowboarding runs. I arrived in Calcutta—currently known as Kolkata—and hopped on a 5-cent commuter ferry across the Hoolighy River, where I checked into Hotel Paragon, a fantastic guesthouse where mostly Korean and Japanese travelers had epic hangout sessions in the courtyard, playing guitars and singing Beatles songs. The main traveler area along Sudder Street has the distinct feel of a highly detailed movie set. Old-fashioned, bright yellow cabs move down streets lined with British-era buildings. Out of all the "traveler ghettos" in India, Sudder Street was definitely my favorite.



I spent my three days in Calcutta going to museums and art galleries. Museums in the city—and throughout the rest of India—are unbelievably sketchy and look like they were built, but never maintained, cleaned, or updated. I kept thinking of them as "museum museums," exploring the quirks and oddities of Indian exhibit design throughout the last century.

The first stop on my run-down museum tour was the Indian Museum, which was the city's version of the Museum of Nature and Science in Denver. My favorite room was the dusty "Plants in Service of Man" exhibit, which documented all the uses for plants in society. Did you know plants can grow things called vegetables, which we humans can eat? Or, did you know that trees produce something called wood, which we can use to build things like rickshaws or huts? I know, I was amazed too. In a different part of the museum, I was impressed with the lifelike sound effects of an aviary diorama, but then I realized it was just because real birds had actually made a nest there. Huh.

Somehow, the science museum was even more sketchy. It was meant to be an interactive and fun place for kids to learn about science, but thanks to India's thou-shalt-not-maintain-anything policy, many of the exhibits were broken. The ones that were working were often weird, or occasionally downright creepy. Take this exhibit called "Try to Touch the Doll's Head!," which demonstrated motion sensor technology. Kids are challenged to touch this doll's head before the motion sensor goes off and it drops down into a hole. I didn't know science was supposed to give kids nightmares.



In addition to the weird museums, I also made it to some great sights in Kolkata. The CIMA Gallery, although small, had a phenomenal contemporary painting and sculpture exhibition with several pieces by five local artists. All of the art revolved in some way around the theme of Bengal's mixed Anglo-Indian culture, and I left the exhibit inspired. I also visited the Park Street Cemetery was also an interesting look at the monumental gravestones of long-gone leaders of the East India Company, which dominated these parts during colonial India.

My last full day in India, I headed to the biggest theatre I could find to watch Dhoom 2, the action-packed Bollywood blockbuster that's out right now. One of the few things I knew about Bollywood is that they release the songs from the movie well before the movies hit theatres so that people can sing along and get really into the movies as they're watching them. Sure enough, I somehow knew a few of the songs just because I've been in India for a few months. The whole movie was in Hindi, so it was a little bit confusing, but I understood most of what was going on. Actually, I guess you could say the movie was in Hinglish, the weird Hindi-English crossover language spoken by the Indian upper middle class. Dialogue went something like this:

Oh my god! Hindi hindi hindi hindi hindi hindi. That's so cool, man! Hindi hindi hindi hindi hindi hindi hindi hindi hindi hindi hindi hindi hindi is all that I've ever wanted. Hindi hindi hindi hindi hindi. Oh, I know darling! Hindi hindi hindi.

Dhoom 2 is extremely controversial right now in India, because it features a kiss between respectable actors Aishwarya Rai and Hrithik Roshan — apparently it is the first actual kiss in a major Hindi movie. Scandalous! Anyway, the movie was silly and over the top, but a really fun cultural experience.

My two-month India tour complete, I parted with the chaos and boarded an airplane last night headed for Thailand. I'm in Bangkok right now, looking out the window of an Internet cafe as the afternoon rain pummels the streets. I got here this morning, and I'm loving it so far. Tomorrow morning I'm off to the airport to pick up my friend Gerni, who will be traveling with me for the next few months around Southeast Asia. Thanks for reading this whopper of a post.

Ryan!

Photos (finally) updated: Bikaner, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Agra, Varanasi. I also added the short street party video to the last post.

Deep in the heart of Rajasthan

On my last day in Delhi, I thought I'd be a good little traveler and squeeze in one more sight before I left town, so I made my way to the large and looming Jama Masjid mosque in the heart of Old Delhi. The mosque dates from 1644, and to this day it remains an important center for India's huge Muslim population—the largest on earth. My favorite part was climbing to the top of one of the minarets which was packed wall-to-wall with people desperately pushing themselves toward the outside edges so they wouldn't accidentally fall down the spiral stairwell for a long tumble down the tower. The views of smoggy Old Delhi from the top were worth the danger:



After surviving the minaret mosh pit, I came back down to leave only to find that my shoes were no longer where I put them. I asked every official-looking person I could find about my shoes and they all just laughed at me and told me to go ask someone else. As the mosque shut its doors for the day, I came to grips with the fact that my shoes were gone for good, so I focused on the new problem at hand: finding a shoe store. With the help of a few very nice kids, I only had to go a few barefoot blocks through the filthy streets of Old Delhi before finding an 75-cent pair of flip-flops. Oh well.

To whoever stole my shoes:
1) You are a bastard.
2) There is a $20 bill hidden under one of the soles. Don't spend it all in once place.
3) I stepped in poop several times in those, so technically you are also a poop thief. How do you like them apples?

The next morning, I was up at the crack of dawn to get on my 12-hour daytime train to Bikaner. Seated near me in the train car was this poor Italian guy who was having an absolutely miserable experience in India. During the entire ride, he got hassled like crazy by relentless beggars, little kids wanting to polish his shoes, and people trying to sell him food. Sitting only a few feet away, I was almost completely passed up by all of these people. I don't know exactly what causes it, but the same phenomenon happens to almost everyone I've talked to — after a while of being in India, people just don't hassle you quite as much as they used to.

During the long trip, we passed through gritty cities and the stark Rajasthan countryside, punctuated by women in ultra bright saris, squatting mustachioed men, and kids excitedly waving to the passing train. On the outskirts of most cities lied cluttered, poverty-stricken shantytowns, which were simultaneously intriguing and disgusting, beautiful and horrific.



My first stop in Bikaner was to check out the Karni Mata temple located about 20 miles south of town. The temple is famously known as the place where a small sect of Hindus believes that they will be reincarnated as rats. As a result, the whole temple is swarming with a few hundred of the little rodents, which they regard as their ancestors. These weren't your typical New York City getting-fat-eating-your-delicious-sushi-leftovers-from-the-trash-can rats. These were sickly, scabby rats. Freaky rats. Indian rats. The kind of rats you had nightmares about as a kid. To make a gross thing even more disgusting were that pigeons and flies were everywhere as well, possibly in greater numbers than the rats. Karni Mata had clearly made it a mission to blur the line between Temple and Filthy Creatures Museum.



Despite the temple being completely disgusting, I really enjoyed the strangeness and absurdity of a place where rats are worshipped. A few local kids followed me around the whole time I was there, and insisted I took pictures of them with the rats. During one of my photo shoots, one of the rats pissed all over this kid's shoulder after which he pointed at the pee-stain, laughed and said, "mouse toilet!" Normally I'm pretty tolerant of people's faiths, but if your beliefs push you to the point where you proudly declare yourself a mouse toilet, you've gone off the kooky religious deep-end.



I spent the rest of my time in Bikaner checking out the cool city fort and accompanying museum, which had a surprisingly interesting account of the local British and Indian cultural mixture. My favorite part of the museum were the recreated table settings complete with placards describing the day's meal — from course-to-course was an odd mix of British, French and Indian cuisine. Also in the museum were photos of Indians donning gaudy colonial garb, and Brits dressed in ceremonial Indian costumes, with equally ridiculous-looking results.

One afternoon was spent walking around with a local kid who showed me all of the old havelis (beautiful historic mansions), the wild aromas of the local spice market, and the city's excellent Jain Buddhist Temple. The whole city is fairly tourist-free, which made it easier to meet local people without the fear of being scammed or harassed. Through the traveler grapevine I had heard really negative reviews of Bikaner, but I really liked it there, possibly because I wasn't expecting much. My hostel added to my enjoyment, and was a wonderful change of pace from the awful dump that served as my home in Delhi. Each morning over breakfast, I was treated to phenomenal discussions about global politics with the wise and worldly owner. After long days of sightseeing, I came back for a midnight trifecta of Seinfeld, Friends, and the Simpsons on the tiny TV in my room.

One of the compulsory activities for a traveler in Rajasthan is to go on a camel safari. To avoid sand dunes full of French tour groups and stoned Israeli backpackers, I decided to leave from Bikaner instead of the popular starting point in Jaisalmer. For only 15 dollars per day I was able to hire two huge camels, two guides, cooking supplies and food, a cart to carry everything. My guides were villagers from Deshnok and only spoke a few words of English each, which added to the adventure.

For two days, I rode atop my camel through rural Rajasthan's Thar Desert, past small villages in the barren brush, an amazing array of thatched-roof huts crafted out of the pale mud, and fields of dry looking crops making hearty attempts to grow in the desert climate. In addition to the many domesticated farm animals along the way, the route was also scattered with graceful antelope and fluttering white butterflies. People along the way seemed genuinely surprised to see a white guy in their neighborhood, and they often excitedly ran alongside me as I rode past.



Riding on a camel is not terribly comfortable. In fact, it is a lot like uncontrollably and aggressively humping—in all senses of the word—a big, farting blob on legs. By the time we got to the end of the first day, both the camel and I were exhausted from the days hump-a-thon.



My camel guides cooked our dinner as the sun went down over the dunes. Meals during the journey were a pretty elaborate production, and were surprisingly good. The guys would build a fire from sticks they gathered along the way, and cook up meal of spicy curried vegetables and potatoes over rice. They would add dried camel crap to the fire in order to make the chapati bread, which I did my best to stomach despite it tasting pretty horrible. We'd start and finish each meal with spiced chai tea, which they made out of fresh goats milk. And by fresh, I mean really fresh: whenever we passed a herd along the way we would stop, barter with the herder, and one of the guides would walk over and milk one of the goats.



Under a couple of thick blankets, I fell asleep under the bright desert stars, and woke up before dawn to the sounds of my guides already hard at work on breakfast.




After a long second day on the camel, we made it back to Deshnok where I tipped the guys big and then hopped on the bus back to Bikaner for my night bus headed westbound to Jaisalmer.

Jaisalmer is known in Rajasthan as "the golden city" and when I arrived it became clear why: the entire city is one color. One. No more, no less. The monochromatic golden hue spreads from the houses and havelis in old town, and sweeps up the hill where an awesome sandcastle-like fort sits proudly as it has for almost 900 years.



The fort and the rest of the old city are plagued with massive numbers of tourists, more than I've seen in any other Indian city. And while I'm not particularly against tourists (I am one, after all), it does make me uncomfortable to be a part of something that has such a massive effect on a local economy and culture. At the same time, I couldn't help but think that the city is certainly better off now as a tourist trap than it was as a military center when the fort was built — a fort full of tourists is better than a fort full of guns. Despite all the whiteys everywhere, the fort remains a really charming and wonderful place mostly because almost a quarter of the old city's population lives within its walls. I loved wandering its quiet alleyways, browsing its antique stores, and grabbing dinner and a beer looking out over the fort's impressive walls.

Jaisalmer's fort also boasts an awesome group of seven Jain Buddhist temples which were a maze of dusty, dark and intricately carved rooms. When I found myself alone in some of the dimly lit spaces, there was a distinctly Indiana Jones feel about the temples that I really loved.

On the last of my two days in Jaisalmer, I was given a tour around town by a delightful Brahman guy named Madhu, who gave me an insider's look into some of the best parts of the old city, a tour into the city's best havelis, and the city's serene lake. Along the way, we talked about both Indian and American politics, as well as lighter topics like Bollywood. Seeing a Bollywood movie is still on my list of things to do before I leave the country, but his description finally gave me an understanding of what it's all about. Your movie Titanic is Bollywood, sir. Titanic is wonderful. It is about love, heartbreak, passion, caste systems, struggle — everything you could want. If it had singing, it would be the greatest movie ever made. For months, I've been trying to understand the appeal of Bollywood films, and the Titanic-plus-singing comparison was as close as I think I'm going to get.

I left golden Jaisalmer on a bumpy night bus to the significantly larger city of Jodhpur. After some much-needed sleep in the guest house, I wandered outside to check out the city for the first time, and ran right into a parade celebrating a Muslim wedding. Right after I shot the video below, I was dragged into the middle of the circle and became the star of the show. Lucky for me, Indians seem to aspire to dance like nerdy white guys, so it didn't take much to impress the socks off of everyone with my dancing. For the next two days, random people on the street would recognize me and come up to compliment me on my dancing abilities. I've said it before: India is a strange and wonderul place.



Over the course of my two days in Jodhpur, I fell in love with the place. Many of the city's old buildings are painted a bright periwinkle blue shade which live up to its "blue city" name. It's easy to get off the tourist track here, and I spent a lot of time just wandering around checking out the little muslim butcher shops, seeing people weaving baskets or hammering tin pots, and enjoying the overwhelming smell as I walked past Jodhpur's many spice shops. The city also has the most delicious saffron lassis—a thick, spiced yoghurt drink—I've ever tasted.

The highlight of Jodhpur—and the dominating force of the city—is Meherangarh, the mother of all forts. Throughout India, there are a lot of impressive forts. Each city seems to have one. The one in Jodhpur stands as a big middle finger to all the other forts in India. I can imagine enemy soldiers approaching the fort hundreds of years ago getting close to the massive building and saying, well guys, should we... uhhh.... go home now, or what? This thing is that big.




The fort is probably the best preserved building in Asia, and the ticket price comes along with a phenomenal audio guide complete with sounds, music, fascinating descriptions, and interviews with key historians and people involved with the fort's history. After my long day yesterday wandering the complex, I made the long walk beneath its walls where I ended up by myself on the city wall overlooking the old blue town. I sat and watched shadows grow longer and colors brighter listening to the Sigur Ros parenthesis album on my iPod, which perfectly accompanied the breathtaking view. At one point, I just burst out laughing for no reason, just because I felt so amazing being in such an incredible place. It is times that like that which make me travel.



I'm currently in the lake city of Udaipur, which has been great so far. I'm taking a cooking class tomorrow, and I plan on taking a painting class as well, so I've got a few days rest before I resume finish up my whirlwind tour of India in Agra, Varanasi and Calcutta. Thanks for reading, and I'll leave you with the results of my adventures in bovine portraiture:



Ryan!

Photos updated: none this time, I only had time to upload the photos in the blog. Sorry!

Also, sorry about the two week wait from the last post. If you are truly desperate to read more travel stories, check out How Conor is Spending All His Money, which gives me serious blog-envy. If you're struggling to wade through his couple hundred posts over the last few years, you could start with this hilarious entry about nuts on an airplane.

Desert Camels & City Streets

About a year ago, I watched an episode of my favorite adventure travel show Globetrekker about the world-famous Pushkar Camel Fair, where camel herders from around India come once a year to buy, sell, and trade camels. For me, it was one of two must-sees during my time in India (the other being the Taj Mahal, where I’ll be in a few weeks), so I made the trip over to Pushkar to check it out.

The first time I walked out onto the fairgrounds, I was totally blown away. Spread out into the distance, over sandy dunes thinly covered in spiky brush, were thousands upon thousands of groomed and decorated camels. Like wandering through an epic movie set, it was hard to believe that the whole thing was real. To make it even more movie-like, professional photographers and documentary filmmakers from all around the world weaved through the crowds.



Considering how many people and camels were camped out in the field the scene was strangely quiet, barring the bizarre screaming noise camels make, which sounds like a cross between a Wookie roaring and a baby crying. They’re not really wild about animal rights in the third world, and many of the camels were getting pretty seriously abused if they got out of line. Here’s a shot of some young herders laughing like crazy while they poked and prodded their poor screaming camel:



The fair’s main street area was buzzing with activity, and seemed to be more targeted toward the camel herders than it did toward foreign tourists. Brightly colored camel decorations hung from shop fronts alongside medieval-looking camel maintenance tools. Sketchy food stalls lined the small street, and snake charmers kept their cobras mesmerized as they poked their heads out of bamboo baskets. One snake charmer caught me off guard and heaved a snake basket up at me and the cobra inside lunged out at me and almost struck. Ha ha, not poisonous sir! Not poisonous! Ha ha ha ha. If he didn’t still have a cobra in his hand, I would have punched the guy in the face. Here’s some footage of the main street of the fair, with the snake charmer’s music in the background:



The actual town of Pushkar, about a fifteen minute walk from the fairgrounds, was a relaxing and wonderful place. With so many people coming into town for the fair, my hotel—a family-owned place strangely named Milkman—was packed to the gills. My room was hilarious: it was just a curtained-off area of the hotel’s rooftop restaurant which, despite the lack of privacy, had one huge advantage: free room service! All I’d have to do was stick my head around the corner of the curtain and order myself some cheap and delicious breakfast. A few minutes later, they’d bring the food right to my bed. It was delightful. I had a nice view from my bed too:



The awesome staff at Milkman organized an sunrise Camel ride through the fairgrounds, which I loved. My camel was absolutely nuts, and was the only one in the group that wanted to run everywhere we went, which made the ride genuinely exciting.

A few days after I got to town, the fair officially started. On the schedule were camel races, football and cricket games, camels and horses dancing, longest moustache competitions (!), and more. All the while, unofficial events took place around town like little kids perilously walking tightropes, folk musicians strumming guitars and singing, and street magicians captivating crowds of kids. The people watching at the fair was unparalleled — it was a bizarre mix of Japanese tourists with enormous cameras, stoned and barefoot saddhus, dreadlocked hippie Israelis, just-off-the-tour-bus Americans, camel herders in bright turbans, and green-eyed gypsies.




Unfortunately, the tooth pain that I talked about in my last update was only getting worse, so I had to miss out on some of the official events of the fair. After some serious internet research and advice from people on health message boards, I was left more confused about what to do than ever. Some said I had an abscess, some said I just had stuff stuck in my teeth, some said I needed a root canal, and some went so far as to declare that I had a neurological problem which could potentially lead to MS. On the night of Halloween, I decided enough was enough, and decided to head back to Delhi in search of a good western-trained dentist. Ten years earlier, I was gleefully dumping bags of candy on the floor examining the year’s loot, stuffing as many pieces of chocolate into my mouth as possible. And now, I was buying a ticket on a 10-hour bus on an emergency trip to the dentist. Sweet, sweet, irony.

Back in Delhi a few days later, my teeth were feeling much better by the time my appointment came with Dr. Kumar, a young American-born dentist who was trained in both India and the States. She did a thorough examination and didn’t see anything major wrong with my teeth — she thought that the pain might have stemmed from clenching my teeth at night, caused by high stress levels. Tomorrow I’m heading back to pick up my mouth-guards which I’ll have to wear at night. I know all of you sitting there at work reading this are thinking: High stress levels? You’ve been on vacation for 4 months! Apparently traveling in India is more stressful than I thought.

Since I’ve been stuck in Delhi for a little while, I’ve been trying to hit the sights that I missed the first time around. I visited the massive Red Fort, which formerly served as the throne for India’s maharajas before British rule, but is now a tourist attraction and central focus of India's annual independence celebration. The old spirit of the fort is kept alive by the armed guards who sit behind sandbags and have their guns pointed at you as you walk in.



I splurged on a guided tour, which was excellent despite my quirky elderly guide insisting on art directing my photos. No! Picture look bad from there! Come here sir. Here! Yes! Now take picture! Now! Better from here! I also visited the fort’s museum which was small but had a handful of really great expertly-letterpressed historic newspapers and letters during British rule and some stunning examples of calligraphy at its cultural high point. Outside the fort, I enjoyed wandering through Old Delhi, which is jam packed full of chaotic and overwhelming bazaars selling just about anything imaginable. The crowds are a little much for me in Old Delhi, but it’s definitely fun in small doses.



I’ve been hanging out quite a bit in New Delhi, which is more spread out, and more my speed. I went to the enormous India Gate, the country’s version of the Arc de Triomphe, where I chatted with a group of MBA students studying in Delhi for a little while. One of the girls—a super-hot girl, by the way—bashfully asked if she could get her picture taken with me. Because of India’s weird gender issues, it was the first time in more than a month in the country that a non-married female had said something to me. As we stood next to each other for the photo, I was feeling sassy so I threw my arm around her and pulled her close. The crowd of about 75 onlookers went absolutely bananas — people were laughing, hooting and hollering like they’d never seen anything like it. You’d get the same reaction from second graders in the States, not MBA students. Instantly, I was the king of India Gate. I was shaking everybody’s hand, taking dozens of photos, and being treated like a celebrity, just for being a white guy who put his arm around a girl for a photo. India is a strange and wonderful place.

The food scene in New Delhi is better than anywhere I’ve been since all the way back in Hong Kong, so I’ve been splurging almost every night on nice meals at classy restaurants. I’ve had some phenomenal Indian, Thai, Chinese and European dishes served in designer restaurants alongside Delhi’s young and hip.

It’s fascinating for me to see how Western and Eastern are coming together in new ways as the world becomes more and more globalized. At a not-so-classy meal at KFC (hey, give me a break, it’s delicious), I experienced my most globalized moment yet. In a European-style building built by the British colonists, I was served a spicy Chicken Tikka Wrap with a Pepsi by a multilingual employee. Next to me were a few Chinese tourists who headed to KFC eager for the tastes of home. On the stereo played the hot international single by Shakira (from Columbia) and Wyclef Jean (from Haiti). On the other side of me sat some ethnic Tibetans, and photos of Coloniel Sanders smiled down from the wall. The weirdest thing is that the unlikely cultural mix seemed, well, downright normal.

I’ve got a few more days in Delhi, then I’m headed West to Bikaner to continue my loop around Rajasthan. I’ll then make my way back East to Calcutta where I’ve got a flight booked to Thailand on November 29th. Thanks for reading another long post, and I hope you are all well.

Ryan!

Photos updated: Pushkar, Delhi