Perhaps we came to India this time round with unrealistic expectations. Nine years ago we spent four months here, mostly in southern India – Kerala, Tamil Nadu – and Rajasthan. We loved India. Yes it was dirty, yes it was crowded, but there was an irresistible charm factor – the colour, the friendliness of the people, the weird and wonderful things we saw every day – that seduced us. It became our ‘favourite country’ – somewhere we had to come back to before our globe-trotting days (and nights) were circumscribed by the realities of (this is hard to acknowledge) age.
This time round we decided we’d go to India after spending a month in Malaysia – hopefully on Tioman Island, the closest thing to paradise we’ve found, a month in Burma (Myanmar to the politically correct), and then three months in India. As our last trip had been to the south, we planned to focus on northern India, to go to Rajasthan again, and to spend some time in Gujurat, which in addition to great food, is renowned for its intricate and colourful traditional embroidered fabrics. We researched Indian festivals – cattle and camel fairs, music festivals, kite festivals – and came up with a tentative ‘itinerary’ for our three months in India.
But our plans were radically changed by
the socially and environmentally irresponsible, characteristically avaricious
and regrettably unchallenged behaviour of a handful of big corporations, which
in their determination to deforest Indonesia and plant palm trees (for palm oil,
a reasonable amount of which is used, once again, by fast food chains such as
Starbucks…), create a smoky haze over the entire SE Asia region for about two
months of every year – and have done so for the last ten years or more. So, much to our surprise (as we had heard
nothing about this apparently well-known phenomenon), we landed in Singapore in
thick haze, and spent three days there without a clear view of the sun, or of
anything more than a few hundred meters away.
Our noses, throats and eyes protested – we blew black snot into our
tissues at the end of the day. It was
hard to enjoy our favourite city, despite its charms – its fabulous
architecture, public gardens and art, and food courts – and all our photos are
muted, greyed and blurred by haze.
Our disappointment with a sooty
Singapore was compounded when we were informed that we would have a difficult
time getting to Tioman Island, on the east coast of Malaysia. In anticipation of the monsoon season all
tourists are advised against going to the east coast, only local buses make the
trip to Mersing, the port from which the fast passenger-only ferries go to
Tioman, and the ferries themselves are often cancelled. Most of the hotels also close down. Not to be defeated, we decided to scuttle up
to Langkawi, an island off the west coast of Malaysia, very near the Thai
border. Lankawi is also known as an
island ‘paradise’, with ‘clean beaches’, calm waters, snorkeling off the beach,
etc. etc. We hoped that Langkawi would
be far enough from Indonesia to relatively smoke-free. We were wrong. Langkawi was no better than Singapore. A thick brown smog enveloped all – the
horizon wasn’t even discernable – the blue-grey sea just melted into the
grey-blue haze.
Quite apart from that, Cenar Beach, the
main tourist beach on Lankawi, was dirty and unkempt, with ugly, shoddy
construction in every stage of development, from great excavations being used
as garbage dumps to wastelands filled with construction materials, to
unfinished buildings already decomposing before ever being used. And the beach itself was nothing special,
certainly no better than many beaches in Mexico, and much dirtier than most of
the Mexican beaches we’ve been to. In
addition, access to the beach was extremely limited. The entire beachfront has been commandeered
by ‘exclusive’ hotels. The one access trail
we found was unmarked, and snaked through construction debris, litter, broken
glass and discarded plastic bottles. We
decided, even sans smog, Langkawi was not somewhere we would happily hang out.
So we were faced with another decision –
would we make our way to Bangkok, get a visa for Burma and go there, risking
that Burma, so close to Malaysia and Thailand, might also be enveloped in
Indonesian smoke, or would we head to India in the hopes that it would be far
enough removed? After hearing that Thailand
was also affected, and that the smoky conditions were not expected to resolve
until the new year at the earliest, and possibly not until March (!), due to
the influence of el Nino weather conditions, we decided to head for India. Fortunately Langkawi has an international
airport, so we were able to fly from there to Chennai (formerly Madras), on the
SE coast India. The flight was
remarkable mostly for the appalling view we had, once airborne, of just how
thick and extensive the smoke that is blanketing SE Asia really was/is. (And what is more appalling is that no one
seems to be the least bit interested in doing anything about it – not even in
reporting on it, except for one reporter whose main question was: ‘why is this
global environmental disaster not making the news – especially when the colour
of the dress worn by the Duchess of York to the latest Royal gala is?). In any event, we did fly out of the smoke,
and landed in Chennai to what appeared to be a clear night.
The next morning we started researching
train schedules to get to Delhi – it is a 2½ day trip. Although we seldom fly once we’re in a
country, we decided to take a look at domestic flights, and found a very cheap
flight (‘last minute tickets’ booked at 7 am for a 10 am departure, which we
could make as our hotel was just 1½ km from the airport) from Chennai to
Delhi.
Delhi was where things really started
falling apart. We were in a seedy hotel
(never mind the glossy photos and the glowing tourist reviews on Trip Advisor)
in an even seedier (or as one Delhi-ite called it ‘dodgy’) part of town. The access road to the hotel was awash in
garbage, filth, animal and human shit, and redolent of fresh and well-seasoned urine
throughout its length. Coming back from
a trip to research options for sending our snorkel gear back to Canada we saw a
dead man by the side of the road. Lying
on his back, mouth agape, eyes open, flies feasting on whatever matter they
could find there, no breathing movements.
Clearly dead, not just drunk, or ‘sleeping’, as our hotel managers
insisted was likely the case. I couldn’t
help but wonder how long he would stay there before someone did something with
his body – would it be swept up by the street cleaners and put in one of their
giant wheel-barrows, to be tipped at some vacant lot? And all I can think, at times such as this, is
‘there but for the grace of… who? some god I don’t believe in? the cosmic
joker? fate?’ – and, of course, how incredibly lucky I am to have been born in
Canada, to a family who could and did see to it that I got an education and had
most of the benefits and opportunities that citizenship in a first world
country offers. Thank-you Dot and
Wilson!
Walking in Delhi, as elsewhere in India,
is hazardous not only in terms of having to avoid the holes in the pavement –
most of which go directly into the filthy sewers underneath – and the piles of
garbage and construction debris, and the cows, and the parked motorbikes, and the
carts and lean-to shelters and blankets of sidewalk sellers of everything you
can imagine, from Indian fried foods (is there anything not deep fried in murky
brown oil of indeterminate age but almost certainly older than one would hope),
but also, and more critically, in terms of safety, having to dodge the legions
of motorcycles, carts, bicycles, cars, camels and, of course, people, all
fighting to establish and maintain their trajectory on street or sidewalk,
whatever that might be. For us, the
worst, as pedestrians, the most dangerous hazard was and is the legions of motorcycles. These are almost always driven by young men
bent on proving their manhood by driving at breakneck speeds, weaving through
the crowds of people, cars and other motorcycles without regard for anyone’s
safety (and of course absolutely certain of their own impunity - and
immortality).
These young motorcycle Maharajahs – aka
maniacs – acknowledge no rules of the road – they drive on the sidewalks, go
the wrong way up one way streets, park wherever they feel like parking,
including, of course, the middle of the road.
True, they beep their horns to warn whoever – people, tuk-tuks, cars,
buses, other motorcycles, cows, dogs – of their intentions, but as there are so
many of them, and all of them are beeping (as are the tuk-tuks and cars and
buses) it is impossible to know which way to look – or jump – before they are
upon you, grazing your shoulder with the boxes and bags they have loaded on
their bikes. According to the Indian
government, two-wheeled vehicles (eg. motorcycles) cause over 25% of all of the
traffic accidents in India. And there is
a person killed every 16 minutes.
Shocking, but hardly surprising.
We felt we were (and are, in most places) taking our lives in our hands every
time we walk anywhere. In Jodhpur it was
so bad that on several occasions we took a tuk-tuk (three-wheeled motorcycle
rickshaw) to a restaurant a few blocks away (ie. within easy walking distance)
just to avoid trying to cross the road.
And added to that, although there was no
longer a pall of heavy smoke from the Indonesian fires, the smog in Delhi was
almost as bad – Delhi now has the dubious distinction of having the worst air
quality in the world – even worse than Beijing.
Unfortunately, so far in our travels throughout northern India and
Rajasthan the air quality has not improved much – most days are hazy, and all
of the photos we’ve taken are remarkable for their lack of clarity – they look
like they’ve been taken in dense fog.
We’ve had maybe two or three relatively clear days, when we could see
sun and there were even shadows, in the month we’ve been here. So – air quality dismal. This may be partly due to crop-burning –
certainly we saw a fair amount of that when we traveled from Delhi up to Simla
(by train, of course), but is likely primarily due to the burning of fossil
fuels by industry and vehicles, possibly compounded by weather systems that
press the smog down – one can almost feel the weight of it. The notion, explained to us by many Indians,
even those who we thought would have known better, that the ‘haze’ is caused by
the firecrackers that were everywhere exploding during Diwali (some of them
more like bombs than ‘crackers’, with no associated light-show or ‘works’) is
laughable, although there is clear evidence that levels of several toxic
chemicals contained in the crackers goes up by factors of at least ten during
Diwali and other Indian festivals, all of which are associated with ‘crackers’.
Now, finally, to the first item in this
diatribe – dirt. (As with all communications
in India, the preamble often takes longer, is more convoluted and serves more
to confuse than enlighten, than the point of the message). The overall poor air quality in India is
compounded, in cities, towns and countryside, by just plain old dirt – well,
maybe not ‘just’ or ‘plain’, at least as we think of it. The dirt in India includes not only the dust,
sand and dirt rendered airborne by trucks, cars, buses and motorbikes, but also
cow, dog, pig, rat, pigeon and human shit that accumulate on all sidewalks and
roads, particles of burned plastic, paper and fabric (burning garbage is a
daily ritual, practiced by everyone, throughout India); the chemicals used in
any number of uncontrolled businesses and unleashed into air, ground or water,
whatever is nearest and cheapest; and the bacteria associated with the decaying
bodies of dead animals (and people), rotting fruits and vegetables.
In an effort to protect myself against
seen and smelled (and not seen or smelled) invaders, I purchased a cotton
scarf, which I use in double thickness to protect my nose and mouth as best I
can – a gas mask would be better, but perhaps a touch over the top…? I now don’t go out without wrapping my head
and face in my scarf – so just my sun-glasses are showing. Apart from protection from pollutants, this
head-gear has the added advantage of providing me with a wonderful degree of
anonymity – no one can see whether I’m smiling or scowling, or where I’m
looking. I do get some giggles and
stares from a few Indians, although they are more accustomed to the look than
we Westerners are, but the ones who really can’t figure it out are the other tourists
who, I imagine, have no idea what they’re breathing in on a regular basis. I feel particular concern for the babies and
children we see being towed around by groovy Western ‘hippy’ tourists,
breathing that crap into their little pink lungs… . But as many of these tourist parents are also
smoking (why do the French and Israelis still continue to puff away on their
ulta-strong galoises? – no public education? or just too cool to be smart?),
perhaps it’s not any worse than what they’re exposed to day in and day
out. Poor little pumpkins. Ah well, que sera…
In the nine years we’ve been away, the
problem of accumulated filth and garbage has grown in magnitude to the extent
that it threatens to overwhelm whole streets, lots, parks and cities –
veritable lakes and rivers of garbage – waiting for monsoon rains to
redistribute them elsewhere. In Pushkar
we went walking in a very large (as wide as a street and about 10 feet high) concrete
channel that’s been constructed to manage the flooding that occurs during the
monsoon season. Twice we saw dead dogs
that had been dragged to the edge and thrown in (which seemed odd as it surely
would have been easier, given the sandy soils, to just bury them…?). The monsoon waters will carry these dead
carcasses right into the sacred Pushkar Lake, where pilgrims routinely pray and
do ritual baths to cleanse themselves of all impurities.
Even without the dead dogs (or at least
these particular dead dogs – of course there have been countless others), the lake,
and all waterbodies we have seen so far, is grey and grimy, and filled with
floating debris. Walking along a road I
watched a dog, standing in a roadside ditch cum sewer, tousling with a
particularly large piece of meat. Taking
a somewhat closer look (but not too close!) I recognized it as a human
placenta. It was likely tossed out,
perhaps with the baby, perhaps not, but certainly along with all of the rest of
the refuse of the day, into street or gutter, where the expectation is that it
will be taken away, to someone else’s doorstep.
Almost everyone one in this country throws their empty food containers,
packaging, used Kleenex – whatever they have no further need of – into the
street. The problem is likely compounded
by the still-prevalent observance of caste – most Indians consider themselves
to be above cleaning up after themselves.
That is for lower castes to do.
But they don’t have their servants with them at all times, and there
just aren’t enough cleaner-uppers to handle the tidal wave of garbage thrown on
the streets of every city we’ve been in, every day. It is wonderful to watch the street sweeping
women (and yes, it is mostly women we see sweeping the streets, bent over
double with their short-handled brooms) as they sweep the debris across or down
the road, or gather it into a dustpan and dump it in the nearest pot-hole or
ditch.
Filth is ubiquitous: almost everything
we see or touch in India is greasy, grimy, sooty, spotty, streaked and/or
smelly. Menus in restaurants are often
so dirty one hesitates to pick them up – only the brave or foolhardy actually
ventures into a restaurant kitchen (which of course, I have, and even
photographed, for the record, as it were).
The ceilings and walls of buildings are streaked and splotched with
stains, the source of which one doesn’t want to imagine. In hotels the sheets (when you get them,
which is not often – at most you get a bottom sheet and a well-used and likely
unwashed blanket), blankets and towels are grungy enough that we can relax only
in the comfort of having brought our own sleep-sacks and pillow-cases. Indian filth is everywhere. Nowhere is pristine – not the grandest castle
or fort, the walls of which are frequently stained yellow or orange from steady
use by Indian men as pissoires; not the more expensive hotels, where once grand
rooms and furniture have been let go to seed, broken and spattered with who
knows what.
It occurs to me, as I step around and
through the rivers and lakes of refuse, that no self-respecting person would
put up with living in conditions such as this, and no self-respecting country
would allow the majority of its people to live in a stinking, rotting garbage
dump. But Indian politicians, infamously
corrupt, are both blind and uncaring when it comes to the appalling realities
of the lives of their fellow citizens.
They are several cuts above, and live in fantasy worlds, on the largesse
of the Indian people. When they have to
travel by land, they ride in private cars, or special luxury trains, not on the
public conveyances the majority of their countrymen – and most of us tourists –
are forced to use.
Public conveyances – trains and buses,
and their stations – are perhaps the filthiest places of all. Train and bus stations are where legions of
Indians on the move bunk down on concrete floors, wrapped like mummies in
blankets and saris, surrounded by cloth-wrapped parcels and boxes, perhaps all
of their worldly possessions. These
nomads – or temporary nomads – use the tracks or the station building’s walls
as their latrines and spittoons (pan chewing and spitting is still routinely
practiced by many men, and a few women, in India). The stench is at times overwhelming. But if my only other choice of toilet was to
use the ‘public convenience’ in the station, which is almost always so
disgusting that only a starving pig would be tempted to enter, I might be
inclined to do the same. There is of
course litter everywhere, and dirt, and boxes, plastic bags and bottles, food
scraps, dogs and cows (often diseased), rats and pigeons, and their associated
droppings – in short everything one finds on the streets of India.
The trains and buses themselves look
filthy and decrepit as they lurch into the station. Mud-caked and splattered, scratched and
dented, windows smeared with gelatinous goo of dubious, better unknown,
origins: their exteriors foretell what’s in store when you board. Apart from the generalized grime, dirt and
decrepitude, there is the ever-present stench, at least on the trains, of the
latrines. There’s usually one ‘western’
toilet – too dirty to use – and one ‘Indian’ (ie. squatter) toilet per
car. Both empty directly onto the
tracks. Both have hopeless flushing
action, so whatever goes in sticks around (as it were). It’s all I can do to lower my backside within
shooting distance. And thank whoever
that I always carry my own TP, because that’s almost never provided, even by
hotels. (Only in India have I seen
mini-rolls of toilet paper – all cardboard roll, almost no paper – that hotels
give you on your first night. It’s gone
by morning, at which point you’ve got to either buy your own or go native and
use your left hand…. .)
This leads
into the topic of dysfunction – in this case a pain of dysfunctional habits, or
customs, from time ‘out of mind’ as north American Indians refer to traditions
so old no one can say when they arose – of using one’s left hand to clean
oneself after using the toilet, and using hands (right only) rather than
utensils for eating. So the left hand
becomes the ‘unclean’ hand – the hand one would never use when eating, would
never use to shake hands with anyone except, perhaps, an enemy who didn’t catch
the insult (I’ve seen both Hindus and Muslims offer left hands to particularly
annoying foreigners…), would never use for any holy activity. That this habit remains is underlined by the
lack of toilet paper in most hotels frequented by locals/nationals in India –
instead buckets and cups are provided for cleaning with water, and by the
fastidious avoidance, by most Indians, of using their left hands while
eating. As spoons and forks are seldom
provided (and knives almost never, as they are considered barbaric), Indians do
use their right hands to eat everything, regardless how mushy, goopy or runny
(almost everything is served swimming in spicy sauce). They have mastered the art, as yet eluding my
skill, of ripping apart tough nan breads, pakoras and parathas with one
hand. But even for them eating is a
messy business, and every restaurant has a sink in the corner for hand-washing,
both before and after eating.
It’s interesting – and somewhat disturbing – to watch the local approach to handwashing: often the left hand is not washed at all, and only the tips of the fingers of the right hand are dabbled under the running, usually cold, water tap, to clean them. There is seldom any soap. After this perfunctory rinse, the hand or hands are shaken, rather than dried, as almost never are towels, paper or otherwise, provided. (Some locals carry a cotton hanky in their pockets which they use for this – and other? – purpose. I think of the focus on handwashing at the hospitals in which I work – I am required to take a course in proper handwashing every 2 years, and believe me, it’s a complex series of manoeuvres, which must be undertaken in the right order, and definitely require soap.
I suspect the mostly men who work in the restaurant kitchen, who prepare the food, who handle the utensils and who serve it all to us, are no more fastidious with their hand hygiene than the general population. Not that it would make a lot of difference, as the washing of plates, bowls, cups, glasses and cutlery is not much more sophisticated than the washing of hands, although usually soap seems to be used: everything is dumped or dipped in buckets of cold somewhat soapy and usually greasy water, sometimes given a cursory swipe with a grungy rag, then stacked in a pile. The incidence of ‘Delhi belly’among tourists is of course extremely high, likely as not just as often caused by the crockery and utensils and the hands of those who handle them, and the food, as the food itself. The best food hygiene I’ve seen so far has been by street stall vendors, who also use disposable plates and utensils, thus cutting down on one major source of contamination.
Given how long it’s been that toilet paper and eating utensils have been around, it’s interesting to observe how little uptake there has been of either in India. The upper classes may well use them, in the privacy of their homes, but the vast majority of Indians, the ones who cook and clean for you and serve you in hotels and restaurants do not. This may have its advantages, in terms of a lighter environmental footprint (less burden on the sewer system, less use of metals, less use of water to wash them), but what about the public health trade-offs – if the myriad costs associated with the diseases spread as a result of these practices were factored in, would they still make as much sense as Indians appear to feel they do? Or are they just clinging to doing things the way they’ve always done them? Or, most likely, is there just no appetite or energy for change?
Another significant threat to personal and public hygiene, increasingly dysfunctional but strongly rooted in spiritual beliefs, is the practice of removing your shoes when you enter any holy space. This is not such a problem in the case of Muslim mosques, which are generally clean and cow-less (and usually dog-less), but it’s a real issue in Hindu temples and ‘holy’ places – which may be indoor temples or large outdoor complexes frequented by dogs, cows, and monkeys, many of whom are diseased, with open oozing sores, and littered with all the accumulated debris caste off by the thousands of pilgrims who come to pray each day – is that they are no cleaner than the streets. And despite the half-hearted swipes of a wispy broom by women and men who would clearly rather be sleeping, the cleanliness of the walking surface is not just in question, but almost certainly hazardous to your health. However as you are hounded and chased by temple guards to ‘remove your shoes’, you must walk barefoot in this filth, and hope to catch nothing more serious than ‘blackbottom foot’, which anyway invades past sandals (the only real defense is socks and shoes). To the eyes of a non-believer this continued adherence to a spiritual tradition that may have made sense in the days of yore, when there were fewer of everything, and nowhere near the amount of garbage everywhere, is clearly dysfunctional. But it is impossible to imagine, given the tenacity with which Hindus, like most religious groups, cling to their distinguishing beliefs.
Moving on with dysfunction. There seems to be more here in India that doesn’t work than that does. Of course almost all of the buildings and infrastructures built by the British have not been maintained, so they are in hopeless states of disrepair and will likely never be functional again. The once probably wonderful zoo in Jodhpur, now a tangled jungle of bricks, iron fences and jungly vines, the cages that once held bears, lions, wolves and crocodiles now empty. The grand hotels with non-functional lifts, windows that no longer open, promising-looking, even once grand, staircases that end in a pile of rubble. The escalators at train stations, offering the possibility of not having to lug one’s baggage up endless stairs, but not functioning now, and likely not for a long time. The ATM machines so battered and bruised that one hesitates to trust one’s card to them, and having done so is unlikely to get anything out as the machine is either not working or has no money. The very most you can get out of most ATMs here in India, even when using a foreign bank card, is 10,000 rupees, or $200 – a ridiculously small amount for anyone who’s traveling. And of course you’re charged a fee for having used the machine – your $200 ends up costing you more like $210 by the time both the ATM and your own bank have finished gouging you for the privilege of accessing your own money.
Given how dirty you get when you go anywhere in India – blackened feet, dusty skin and hair, and grime all over – it’s hard not to look forward to a shower (forget about a bath) . Showers are not a traditional form of bathing here – rather the bucket and cup method where you sit on a very low stool and pour water over your body, then soap up, and then pour more water over – is the accepted and most widely used method. Hot water is also not widely available – when needed it is heated, and lugged in bucket to the bathroom. Most tourist hotels have installed showers, and most even have ‘hot water’. But the ‘hot water’ systems seldom produce water any warmer than tepid, or at least not at times that one might want to shower. And when one does take a shower – hot, warm, lukewarm or cold – another significant dysfunction which at least in the hotels we frequent is omnipresent, is that there is no separate shower stall, or even a curtain, far less a door, to separate the shower from the rest of the bathroom. There is no well or depression in the floor that would maybe keep the water confined to the shower area. So the entire bathroom floor gets drenched – and often stays wet for the rest of the day/night. Added to this the drain is often in the opposite corner of the bathroom to the shower, and may not work particularly efficiently, or at all, so the floor is frequently an unappetizing lake of dirty water and accumulated bathroom grunge. In some hotels the shower is sensibly located in the far corner of the bathroom, but in many cases it’s located right between the bathroom door and the toilet, so you’ve got to ford the lake every time you need to take a wee. And because your feet are always blackened by street dirt, you emerge, and finding no bathroom mat (what is that?), leave a trail of wet black footprints everywhere, including, of course, on your own sheets when you climb back into bed.
And then there are the dysfunctional systems – systems that don’t work, or work only sporadically, possibly just for those who have the knack of holding their tongue right, or reciting an appropriate puja (prayer). The most famous of dysfunctional systems in India is the queue – usually referred to here as the ‘Q’. The British attempted to introduce the concept of queuing for service to a country where waiting one’s turn is viewed as tantamount to never getting anything or anywhere. Anyone who considers themselves to be ‘upper class’ ignores the signs about queuing – they just push their way through to the front. Women are also likely to ignore the queue – they get preferential treatment, as do disabled people, senior citizens – and often, foreigners, so why not take advantage? The problem is, it’s often hard to distinguish who is a senior citizen, or disabled, as when challenged, they simply aver that they are buying the ticket for someone who is disabled, or senior, or whatever. Smiling and waggling their head the entire time so that it’s difficult not to believe that they’re having one over on you. But what can you do? Nothing.
The train station is where we have had our most frequent exposure to the Indian queuing system. Despite signs indicating which wickets can be used (eg. one for seniors, women and foreigners), everyone approaches the wickets en masse, all jabbering and thrusting their papers at the person behind the wicket (who is effectively protected by solid grills and what looks like bullet-proof glass, with just a tiny aperture for the passing back and forth of money and tickets. Instead of dealing with each customer in turn, the attendant accepts papers and money and listens to the pleas of multiple customers at once, which of course leads to the commission of multiple mistakes. And this leads to more, and more excited, jabbering – sometimes even shouting – and pushing and confusion.
In a bid to avoid this production every time we want to buy a ticket (we travel mostly by rail), we decided to try to access India’s computerized rail reservation system. This is the largest computerized reservation system in the world, and most of the time it works, at least in as far as finding out where and when the trains are. But so far the promise of us being able to access the system to purchase tickets has proven elusive. There is a complicated series of steps that have to be taken, one of which requires that one has an Indian mobile number, but there is an equally complicated way around that, that eventually enables one to purchase rail tickets using foreign credit cards. Well, not yet… . On the other hand, the trains do run on time, and so far we have had no problems with our reservations, once made. Given the age of the computers the rail system is using (they look like the first old desk-top Mac with monitor I owned, in 1975 or so), this is truly amazing.
We ran into a similar situation when trying to purchase tickets for a wildlife safari at Ranthambore Park – one of the places in India where, according to the promotional materials, one is almost guaranteed to see a tiger. There is a website where one can reserve and purchase tickets. The website includes a fairly lengthy tribute to the creators of the website, who it is claimed worked 16 hour days to create this fantastic website that enables anyone anywhere to purchase tickets for several wildlife reserves. It tantalizes by letting one find the park, and the safari, one wants, confirm the availability of spaces, enter relevant names and passport numbers, proceed to payment, enter credit card numbers and secure numbers, and then, ta-da, informs you that the transaction has ‘failed’, and/but if you find that your account has been billed in error you have only to contact this same fantastic team of dedicated workers who will make sure that your account is refunded. But… don’t expect this to happen for about 10-14 days, because that’s how long it may take for whatever has been billed to be refunded. And of course by then you’ll likely no longer be in India, and trying to communicate over the internet with Indian businesses is, well, almost impossible.
Now finally, to dishonesty, Indian style. We are accustomed, in India, to being told that things cost more than they do, to having to pay a premium for being ‘foreign’. And to a certain extent, that’s fair enough. It’s when the person you’re dealing with feigns innocence, or denies that you’re being taken when it’s obvious – to both him and you – that you are. I use the pronoun ‘him’ because in most cases, at least in Rajasthan, we have been dealing with young men. Rajasthani men don’t ‘allow’ their women/wives/sisters to work outside the home because they either don’t trust them, or don’t trust other men. Regardless, all of the hotels are run by young men who do it all, from taking the money to cooking in the restaurant, to cleaning (sort of) the rooms (at which women would be much better, having had more experience and thinking to clean not just obvious surfaces, but perhaps around and under furniture, or maybe empty the garbage can, or provide clean towels after four or five days…).
This is not to say that women don’t pull the same kind of tricks – asking outrageous prices for a piece of fruit – but we deal with them so much less frequently, and over amounts so much smaller that it doesn’t matter as much. Three recent experiences highlight the issue of dishonesty. The first two involved hotel bookings. We do many of our bookings online, through Booking.com or TripAdvisor or, here in India, ClearTrip. Mostly we pay in advance by credit card. We made a booking for a hotel for one night in Ajmer, near Pushkar. A few days before we were to arrive in Ajmer we got a message from ClearTrip advising us that ‘due to a change in hotel room nonavailability there were no rooms available’ (did you get that?) and that they had made an alternate arrangement at another hotel for us. We took a look at the alternate hotel and decided it was not okay. The reviews were awful, and the photos not much better. We also went online and found that the hotel was still advertising rooms available – just not at the price we had paid. So it was pretty clear that the hotel simply didn’t want to honour the booking – they found they could book the room at a higher price, and that’s what they did. Never mind previous commitments. We complained to ClearTrip and TripAdvisor, which got us nowhere, of course. Typical of India, they both passed the buck and said they were just the ‘booking agents’ and that we would have to deal directly with the hotel – good luck with that.
So we booked another room, through Booking.com, at a different hotel. When we arrived there the three young guys at the desk stated that they did not have any ‘standard’ rooms, which is what we had booked, but only ‘deluxe’ rooms for an additional 300 rupees ($6). It wasn’t about the money – after all what is $6? – but it was about the deceitfulness. We argued the point with the three young men, all of whom clearly thought it was all a big joke, and who held their ground that they didn’t have the room we wanted available, so we would have to pay more. We left in ‘a huff’ and found another hotel with a room for around the same price – not as good a room, but at least not with a bunch of immature boys who were having a lark putting one over on a couple of Western rubes.
The third example occurred on our first night in Sawai Madhopur, near Ranthambore Park, where we hoped to do a wildlife safari, and maybe see a tiger. The nominal price of the safari is 1500 Indian rupees ($30) each. Our hotel manager offered to get us tickets for 2000 rupees each ($40). As it turns out, the tickets are worth 1500 rupees, so he pockets 500 rupees, or $10 a piece for his ‘troubles’. As we learned that we could go to the ticket booth ourselves, we decided not to take him up on his offer, but to consider making the trek (around 2 km) to the ticket booth ourselves. We’re just about to go for dinner when a young man knocks and introduces himself as the hotel’s safari booking agent. He asks if he can come in. We invite him in – he sits on the bed – there is no other furniture in the room. There is a considerable amount of confusion about when we want to go on the safaris (no, not tomorrow, the day after; no not morning, afternoon; no not tomorrow, no, not today, let’s try dates shall we?). Once we get the dates and times more or less settled, he informs us that the cost of the safari is 2500 rupees. When we say that our hotel manager quoted us 2000 rupees he responds with the typical Indian smile and head waggle and says ‘no, it is 2500 rupees.’ We demur, telling him we’ll have to think about it (and deciding if anyone gets a ticket for us it will be our hotel manager, not this dude). But before he leaves we ask him how much it would cost to go just to the fort, which is in the park, but not on a safari. We are thinking we might do this the next morning. He tells us it will cost 1800 rupees, and for that we’ll be going in a jeep, with a driver. We thank him for his time and invite him to leave. He leaves, saying he’ll be back the next night to take our booking.
The next morning I mentioned this visit to our hotel ‘manager’. He said he didn’t know this person and asked for a description. He said no one should be coming into the hotel and no one should be bothering their guests or offering to act as an agent for them (the hotel has its own agent, and he’s not it). He confirmed that they would arrange a safari for us for 2000 rupees. I decided to walk down to the booking office to see if, by some remote chance, it was possible to book a safari for the next day. It was not. But as I was walking back a jeep driver offered me a ride. We got to talking, and he suggested that he would be willing to take us to the fort for 1000 rupees – 800 rupees ($16) less than last night’s mystery man/sheister.
The thing about Indian dishonesty,
compared to say, Chinese dishonesty, which would qualify more for the term
‘lying’ or ‘cheating’, is that Indians have such a pleasant, smiling, ‘I’m
doing this for you, just for you’ way of approaching the issue that you can
almost believe that they believe that they are not being dishonest (whereas the
Chinese are more blatant, and frankly don’t care what you think or
believe). And of course the problem of
Indian dishonesty is exacerbated by the number of tourists who are taken in,
and who pay the exorbitant rates they are quoted without thinking. So what we do, and when and if we refuse to
be taken in, doesn’t matter in the overall scheme of things, or even, often, in
the individual instance: there is always someone else who will be happy to pay
– whatever.
So… where does this leave us? Are we disenchanted enough with India that
we’re ready to cut and run now? Or shall
we continue on to Gujurat and see if a less-heavily touristed state improves
our traveling experience? Stay tuned –
it’s a day to day, moment by moment roller-coaster ride. We have no idea where we’ll be in the next
few days, and certainly not in the next few weeks. Except – not in Canada, where it may be
clean, relatively functional and mostly honest, but where it’s also cold and
wet and grey and dismal. Hmmm….
Post-script: now here in Gujurat we
yesterday visited the Shree Swaminarayen temple, a massive fairy-tale structure
of white marble, every surface, every column, every spire carved in the most
beautiful detail. Floors with beautiful
designs in inlaid stones. Crystal chandeliers. Golden doors and altars. This temple was built after the earthquake,
at a cost of 1 billion rupees (200 million dollars). Its grand opening was attended by dignitaries
from all over the world, presumably invited, and lavishly housed and fed at the
expense of the Indian people. We saw
almost no one there – it is a Hindu temple, so not for everyone, and it is in
the middle of a large expanse of paved courtyards and gardens, so not ‘handy’
like the roadside temples used by so many Indian people, rich and poor
alike. The inner temple areas where
people might pray were also firmly closed behind great stainless steel doors,
so all visitors can do is gaze in awe at the majesty of the temple – rather
like the Taj Mahal. It’s stark
whiteness, its beauty, its serenity and its cleanliness stand in stark contrast
to the filth of the roads and buildings just outside its golden gates.
It’s hard not to imagine how 1 billion
rupees could have been spent on improvements to infrastructure, on garbage and
sewage systems, on housing, feeding and educating the poor. But this is India, where ‘spirituality’
trumps practicality. Around 1:30 pm we
were shooed away from the temple by a guard with a baton who informed us – and
the handful of Indian tourists who had just arrived – that ‘the temple is
closed now until 2:30’. When we asked
why the temple was closed (this is not a common occurrence at other temples),
the response was: ‘the temple is closed because god is sleeping’. As far as I can see, India’s god, gods and
goddesses, have been sleeping for a long time – surely any waking god would …
but there I falter. Would what? Exhort the people to do something about their
environment, about the living conditions of the majority of people? I’m afraid it’s an impossible task, even for
a god. Indian people are just too
apathetic – and lazy really – when it comes to doing anything beyond
self-interest. No, it looks like India
and its people are destined to sink under the weight of their own waste and
excrement.
A woman we met recently who spends six
months of the year in India and six in England commented: “if the women of
India stop wearing saris there will be no reason to come here. They are such bright butterflies and so
beautiful. Without them, India would be
just an ugly, stinking garbage dump.”
We've had lots of discussions with other travellers about what's going on in India and why India is destined to languish, in terms of development, and lag far behind China. In a word (or two), it comes down to the difference between indolence and industry. Where the Chinese are willing to work, and work hard, the Indian people are far more inclined to take naps, go to festivals that run on for weeks, or to three-day weddings, or to family events (birthdays, graduations, etc.) that are more important than any job. Unfortunately getting to these events often takes several days. At several hotels we've been at the managers have complained that their cook (to call them 'chefs' would be going way too far), or their cleaner, or their 'boy' just up and left to visit family or friends, with no notice and no intention of coming back.
We continue to ruminate on why India is the way it is, and whether it will ever change. There is a lackadaisical attitude here that is very ingrained. Most of the 'workers' we see are either lying down, or sitting gazing into space. They don't take initiative to do things that clearly need to be done (eg. waiters hanging about doing nothing when the menus are so grimy we don't want to touch them). Anyone who considers themselves a 'manager' (which is quite a high proportion of workers) would not consider doing anything manual, so if they have no one below them to order to do it, or if the person they order to do it doesn't do it, then it just doesn't get done. I could go on, but you get the gist.
India is certainly a different world, with many charming and interesting characteristics, but burdened with some of the worst pollution (air, land and water), impossible and inefficient systems, and dangerous traffic of anywhere in the world. Lucky we're young and resilient (LOL)!
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