It’s 6:02am, on April 6th (Happy Birthday mom!). I don’t know if it is Monday or Tuesday or some other day currently, but I’ll probably look that up some time. I fell asleep at around 5:30pm last night when I got on the sleeper train (more about this awesome train with super yummy food later), and I woke up about 3 hours ago. So I suppose my mental time clock is still having serious issues. I have no idea how I would have been able to adjust in just one day, but it is making me so glad to have planned a week of travel before work just for the acclimation.
So here’s my highlights for the last two days…
April 3rd. Land in New Delhi, slept through almost all of my flights. I suppose med school makes one tired, and the exhaustion kicked in on the planes. Good timing, flying around the world was fast and easy that way. Arrive around 8pm local time. Customs actually super easy. Mo and I talked about buying a bottle of alcohol duty free to celebrate, but neither one of us really wanted to drink so we didn’t. Walked out to the front of the airport where I realized I had forgotten to print out the reservation confirmation for our hotel, including details of where we were getting picked up by the driver. No driver holding my name in sight at the international terminal. Damn. Mo asked a tourist company for our hotel address and phone number, and we were given it with only a slightly snarky comment about how we could fly here with no reservation information. Yup, I felt stupid. Mo wandered outside to look around, found driver, and then was not allowed back in the airport to get me. She finally convinced the guard to let her in a few feet, and got my attention. During that time, I had found a new friend. So the three of us hoofed off with the driver (who walked amazingly fast), we all got in the cab, and he immediately asked if Mo was going to tip him. Funny stuff. Since then, this has become common practice, but it was totally unexpected right then. So we were off, until the gas station at least, where we all had to get out of the car and stand there while they poured fuel into the front of the car. We all thought he was going to ask us to pay for gas too, but luckily that got avoided as well.
Hostel was located down a very tiny, very cramped and busy and dirty and highly signed alley with lots of people and stray dogs and rickshaws (people biking with seats holding passengers) and motorcycles moving around. Initially the driver pointed down a tiny alley off the alley and said our hotel was down there, but Mo was super smart and said we’d tip after he took us to the hotel itself. It seriously looked like a place you could be killed and no one would really notice what was going on with all of the ruckus. So he took us there, and it ended up being a very nice hostel down the end of the little alley. That was a relief. Checked in, got room, laughed at shower just chilling in the middle of the bathroom, and then went out to find the train station that we would need to be at 5 hours later. Only went down one wrong alley on the way back, so all was good. 12:30am bedtime, India time.
4:30am India time. I hate mornings. On the train to Agra. Asleep right away for Mo, reading for me until I fell asleep too.
9am – in Agra, tour with KK, amazing day! Mo and I were star attractions today, and everyone wanted pictures with the tall and blond tourists. Read Mo’s blog for further details on awesome Agra.
4/5/11
2:00am. The lights and fan turned on full blast. Out of nowhere. Perhaps we left them on when we fell asleep and the power goes out and back on sporadically at night?
7am. No hot water in the shower in the middle of the bathroom. Refreshing in the most freezing cold sense of the word.
So breakfast began at 8, and was run by a man that required a voucher, and you to be sat down, before he would even talk to you about breakfast. And by talk, I mean he pointed, said “sign”, and then took the voucher. A few minutes later a mango juice box (my new favorite!), a piece of toast (Mo’s tasted like cleaning acid), a piece of toast coated in egg (I think), and some jelly, milk, and a tiny banana arrived. Pretty tasty breakfast. So we went to the internet café, found a hostel in Mumbai (Bombay, very expensive), checked email, set up a tour for the two of us and our Austrian friend, and then checked out of the hostel.
Tour begins: Us: “Where are we going?” Head nod. Takes us to an amazing red and white temple that says something about being an active temple, and has a sign out front saying Buddhist something or another. Other than that, we have no idea what we are seeing, and the guide doesn’t speak enough English to detail what exactly we are being dropped off at. So we walk in, look around, see amazing statues that I believe look like Hindu gods/goddesses but I don’t know enough to really have any idea, and then see people getting red smudges on their foreheads and throwing flowers. Found out by girls later on in day that the red smudges are bhindi, but I still have no idea what was going on with the flowers. And I still really don’t know about the type of temple I was at, because the guidebook mentions one that sounded identical but called it a Hindu temple. So, yeah, internet research when we get home I supposed. Then we drove by parliament (they had elephant shaped bushes out front!), and were dropped off at the Ghandi Shirti (sp?, I don’t know, I’m on a train and Mo is reading the guidebook). Anyway, it was where Ghandi was living and was assassinated while going to prayer. It was so quiet, and we met this volunteer there who was so friendly and good to us. So we tried to tip him, as everyone else had been wanting tips, but he said he couldn’t take them and it may have been very rude to have tried. I don’t understand this system, where everyone wants to rip off the foreigners, but the one person who deserves it for being helpful isn’t part of that system. I probably will never understand, but I really hope he knows that we didn’t mean it as an insult.
On to the B’hai lotus temple and a shopping center, with other places thrown in but I can’t really remember right now because it has been a really busy last two days. And then on to our amazing, air conditioned, curtain hanging, food being served every hour train that feels like luxury in a sardine can. I have been taking pictures of all sorts of food I have been eating, and the train is no different. We get indian snacks and dinner and breakfast and coffee and tea and people are oh so very nice to us on this train. Then Mo and I go to sleep (again), Mo around 5:30pm and me around 6pm. And other than my adventure in the indian style toilet (hole in ground) on a moving train, neither one of us moved until I woke up at 3:30am and Mo work up around 6am. Life is pretty sweet here.
9:19am. First disagreement that actually became verbal. It’s amazing how little things turn into big things when they really don’t matter in the first place. Perhaps we are both right, or wrong, or perhaps we are both emotional, but traveling is as exhausting as it is exhilarating and that is hard to remember throughout the process. So the 16th hour of sitting/laying on a bunk in a train rolls on, and so does life.
Heather
