India

Yeah, yeah, I know. I never finished telling about India. I never even finished filling in all the days in my travel journal. And now the longer I wait the fewer details I remember.

At the very least, here are all my photos of India. And here are Jeff's.

Y'all have put me under. I'm outta here!

This is not like us. We are ready to come home. We are not travel sissies. I can't believe that India won. We honestly had no IDEA how hard India is. I thought Morocco would have prepared me. It did not. Not at all. It's not the poverty. That, for whatever reason, I can handle. It's just how difficult everything is. You can't take a leisurely stroll ANYWHERE as far as I can tell. There are either no sidewalks or the sidewalk is built over a drainage ditch and is falling apart. Or, the area for strolling is right next to a foul-smelling body of water.

The interesting areas are the ones where we are unwilling to eat or drink or sit or pee or anything, really. The more sterile areas are crawling with tourists and those are the areas that are over-fun with street urchins trying to sell us their dirty drums or men trying to sell us gigantic balloons. I can only handle either area for so long.

India tests how much we are willing to rough it. Are we okay with the non-air-conditioned taxis with the dirty, dirty seats and the drivers who don't speak a word of English? Or would we prefer air-con luxury? Of course we would prefer the latter, but no a/c is okay for short distances.

We are now staying for our last 2 nights at a budget hotel near the Victoria terminus. The cool cabs do not line up outside waiting for the doorman to wave one over. We had it way too easy at the Grand Hyatt. It's not like we ever stay in places like that (except when Jeff's sent somewhere for work). But I have to admit that we got quite comfortable there. Although we really could have been in any country in the world.

The title of this post is from a news item from a month ago about a guy who I believe killed himself publicly and said this right before doing so. Jeff found this very funny and has been saying it over and over, especially these past few days. You have to know Jeff to understand why he finds it funny and why he says it ad nauseum.

Better driven than lost

Today is about a billion times better than yesterday.

I hired a driver for the whole afternoon. I would say it's nice being driven around instead of being frantic and lost, but everywhere we go requires him to ask at least 6 people where it is. These are the major sites listed in my guidebook. Maybe he doesn't recognize their names in English.

He asks me to go over the list with him every 15 mins or so. Each site is next to a bullet and below that is its address, just in case he needed it. He points to the address and asks what it is over and over and over. Maybe he doesn't know the word address.

And then there are the constant suggestions that he take me to an Indian mall to look at rugs. I say no and he says, "but this is India, madam! You must buy rugs!" NO I say. "Okay thank you madam... Just look at rugs maybe..."

I fully expected to spend much of the day in the car. And really it's not so bad because I see a lot from the car and it's not quite as hot in the cool cab as it is outside. Somehow my driver has managed to find the places on my list, including one of the places I had on the list as a lunch option. It was recommended in Lonely Planet and it's part of a hotel, I think, so I feel safe trying Indian again.

I invited my driver to dine with me, but he stayed outside to watch the car. Good karma in asking, though, I think.

Do over

As I mentioned before, we did not plan this trip very well. People kept mentioning Juhu Beach, so after breakfast today I got a nice cool cab to take me there. He offered to drive me all afternoon for not even 3x the price of the ride to the beach. I started to agree, but then said no because I had no idea how long I'd want to stay.

As we drove up to the beach I had a suspicion that there was nothing really there. The driver paused a moment after I got out and then he left me.

Some kids surrounded me as I tried to stroll on the beach and although I have handled this okay in the past I absolutely could not deal today. One brushed my arm and I jerked away. They laughed at me. They giggled more when I spun around and sped back toward the road.

I was stuck.

I had no choice but to take a non-air-conditioned cab. This may seem like no big deal until you've sat in traffic with the honking, oh my god the honking. I asked the driver to take me to a museum. A half hour later I asked how much farther. He said about an hour. Oh no, I said. Grand Hyatt Mumbai, please.

I came back to the room, hot and sweaty, and it was being cleaned. I hit my head on a shelf and burst into tears when I got into the elevator. I think I may have failed Mumbai 101.

Not worth the chicken

Kerala was a bit too touristy for our taste. The Western women were wearing tight tanktops and mini skirts and some of the men wore wife beaters and shorts. The local men wear long wrap-around skirts that they fold up to make half as long and they tuck the ends in at their waists. This to my Western eyes looked a lot like a diaper, but still, men in shorts and tanktops -- not appropriate. We took a boat ride to Ft. Cochin, but there was no fort. Just a lot of tourists milling about and locals trying to get us to buy stuff.

We were tempted to buy a fresh fish to have cooked at a local restaurant, but we suspected that might be dangerous to our health. I'm sick of drinking luke warm drinks with no ice and having to be a snob about the bottled water. Even my Indian coworker had said to only drink the Aquafina. Certainly not the McWilliams with the shrink wrapped seal around the cap and the water filled right to the brim. "You forgot your water!" the waiter called after me. "That's okay, I don't want it" I had to say. What a prissy American.

It is a seaside town, though, and we began to feel some guilt for not having any fish. At dinnertime, back at our hotel, we asked the concierge where he would recommend we eat. "Have you tried our restaurant?" he asked. Yes, we had. We did not add that it was our most disappointing meal yet. The food in the Mumbai domestic airline terminal was better. He offered to get us a taxi to a different hotel. "Where would YOU eat?" I asked. He hesitated. He did not want us to blame him if we didn't like it. "It may not be up to your standards..." he warned. Pah, we said, we were sure it would be fine. See? We are not snooty tourists. We eat where the locals eat.

We shared a veg biryani and a fish curry for all of about $2. At 3am Jeff began the dry heaves. Nearly 24 hours have gone by and he still feels like utter crap. At least we didn't drink the questionable water!

As the sun was coming up and neither of us was able to sleep, we admitted that we were playing chicken. If one of us had said the word, the other would have immediately agreed to leave. We assured ourselves that we are not bad travelers for eating in hotels when there is no middle ground.

Now we're back in Mumbai at a fancy pants hotel. We arrived at 10 pm, and since Jeff was not hungry, I ordered room service. No $2 meals here. My chicken sandwich cost $14.

I need to figure out what I'm doing in Mumbai the rest of the week, especially while Jeff is working.

Sidetrip to Kerala

We're in Kerala now, which is on the southwestern coast. Our hotel here is twice as nice as the one we stayed in in Mumbai, but the same price. It smells a bit like pee on our floor, however. I kind of liked the simplicity of the one in Mumbai, even the fact that there was no barrier between the shower and the rest of the bathroom. The food was also better there.

Today we're going to take a ferry to another island to see an old fort. I admit we didn't do much research (okay, none) about this area, so we are kind of winging it. There is also apparently a bird sanctuary, which we will try to do tomorrow.

So far, there has been toilet paper in all the bathrooms I've gone in. The domestic terminal in Mumbai had a bunch of stalls with Turkish toilets and two in the back with western toilets. The locals were all using the squat ones. I can't imagine preferring those. I also can't imagine preferring to hose off instead of using TP, but all the stalls had a hose as well. Or maybe they do both. I didn't notice if the Turkish toilet stalls had both.

I have yet to try a real Indian mango lassi. But I did have a pomegranate milk shake at breakfast today. It was really just room-temperature pink milk, but I loved the idea of it. It drives me nuts not being able to use ice.

I bought an Indian outfit, but I don't know what it's called. It's not a sari. It's this one where there is a long shirt with slits on the sides and then baggy pants and a scarf. I really only wanted the shirt. Jeff suggested saving the clown pants to wear as maternity pants. I don't know if even then I'd be able to bring myself to wear them. The outfit cost less than $20. I would probably use the scarf, too. It's light blue and brown, one of my favorite color combos.

Although I had cell reception in Mumbai, I don't have it here. Jeff does, though, and he's also on AT&T. I paid $24 to have unlimited texting and internet access, so it better work when we get back to Mumbai tomorrow night. I was even able to text with Jen (who is in Hong Kong), which I wasn't able to do when I was at home. It makes no sense to me why it would work here but not from home.

ps -- Kerala is pronounced CARE uh luh.

No culture shock yet

We arrived in Mumbai last night. We were not at all tired, so we went to the hotel bar/restaurant where we ate the best Indian food I'd ever had: malai kofta: bigger and softer than at home & paneer tikka masala, which for now anyway is my new fave Indian dish.

Our room is by no means luxury,but there is TP. The shower is a faucet next to the toilet. We had a hotel room like that in Brussels, but much bigger.

The cars and the geese honk incessantly.