The sleep on the train to Delhi was surprisingly good. I only woke a few times despite all the
stops. And we are only 20 minutes late
into Delhi. We actually arrive at Old
Delhi station despite the guy who booked the train for us telling us it would
be New Delhi station. As we have 18
hours until our flight, the extra two stops on the Metro doesn’t really bother
us too much, although as it turns out because the Airport Express is actually a
separate service from New Delhi station we have to queue for tickets twice.
When we get to the airport because we are so early we are
not let into the Departures area and instead have to go to the Arrivals
area. This is a bit confusing but at
least we can sit, read, eat and use the computer to while away the day. We had thought about putting the bags in
storage and heading back into town for the day, but after our earlier draining
experiences in Delhi, we have decided that the airport is our oasis of calm for
the day.
Because this is a quiet day in the airport, I have decided
today to do a Dorota style entry describing my total experiences in India. India uses the logo “Incredible India” as its
tag line in its ads attracting tourists.
However while they use incredible to mean amazing, there are also some
things which can be defined as shocking.
Some are shocking but can’t be helped because after all this is still a
poor country and we come from developed countries, but some things here are
actually very off-putting yet could be changed if there was a will to change
them. Because I have refrained from
using any Cowboy and Indian jokes up until now, I will of course call the rest
of this section “Incredible India: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”.
The Good
The Sights
I think the sights we have seen have mostly been as
impressive as advertised. The Taj Mahal
is amazing, I would say justifiably in the New 7 Wonders of the World, and most
of the other UNESCO World Heritage sites we visited were equally worthy. The Archaeological Survey of India who look
after them all actually do a really good job of maintaining them and the
signage is actually just the right size, enough to inform but not too much to
overwhelm. The only dodgy sight we saw
was CST station in Mumbai, I’m not really sure it qualifies as a World Heritage
site, but as a functioning railway station it is a wonder.
Good – Taj Mahal; Bad – CST (Victoria Station); Ugly – Amber
Palace
The Food
Despite our bouts of Delhi belly in the final few days, I
have to say my overall impression of the food has been quite good. I can’t think of a bad meal we had, maybe one
of two of the hotel meals were average, and the thali that got us in Udaipur
was just never meant to be eaten by tourists.
All of the places set up for tourists, and even a few that were not,
prepared great food. If I had to pick
I’d say my best was the meal in Panaji, Goa, which was a pretty hot pork
sausage curry, a close second was another Goan special, Chicken Xacuti, in
Palolem. The Portuguese influence on Goa
meant I did have a few meat dishes there, but otherwise we were
vegetarian. I didn’t seem to be missing
meat for the first 10 days or so but as I am sitting here in the airport typing
this I am counting down the hours to a visit to McDonalds.
Good – Goan Specials; Bad – Probably our meal in our hotel
in Delhi – nothing wrong, just forgettable; Ugly – The Udaipur thali that made
us sick
The Hotels
Again like the food the hotels were generally quite
good. Considering we never paid more
than £20 per night, we had some really good places. Most hotels were well run and the staff were
friendly and helpful. The hotels we
stayed in tended not to have quite as good restaurants as others, which was
partially reflected in the price, but of course we were able to eat in some of
these restaurants so we didn’t miss out.
The only bad hotel we had was also our joint cheapest, so you get what
you pay for, the hotel in Panaji, Goa, which was just run down and not very
well maintained, but it was close to the bus station and suited our needs. One issue with a number of hotels was the
state of the bathrooms, they were not always the best with broken
fittings. I’m not sure if the fittings
break because they are low quality, or because of the abuse they get.
The worst hotel we stayed in was the one in Delhi, where
they tried some pressure selling on us, and also because of the noise from the
street. However it was the best bathroom
we had, so even it had its good points.
As for the best, I think our last two in Udaipur and Jodhpur stand out
because of the individual décor in the rooms, and the views. If I had to pick our one in Udaipur wins,
because it was slightly cheaper and the food was slightly better.
Good – Dream Heaven, Udaipur; Bad – Hotel Republica, Panaji;
Ugly – Hotel Amax Inn, Delhi
The Trains
The trains here are as good as they say. They run pretty much to timetable, and
although slowish by western standards, they are actually pretty quick compared
to the alternatives. They are also very
comfortable (at the levels we were paying for, 2nd class our of 5
levels) and the service was quite good (food and drink served to your
chair). The Delhi-Agra train stands out
because we got two meals served in a two hour train journey. The only bad thing about the trains seems to
be that because of their success you now have to book them quite a bit in
advance. We were a bit annoyed that we
only got 4 of our 5 trips organised with the few day’s notice we gave, but
after talking to other travellers we seem to be lucky. The advice seems to be in future organise the
trains before getting to India. This
gets past the ugly face of Indian trains, trying to get into the ticket booking
office. More of this will be mentioned
below, but the experience of getting into New Delhi station will live with us
for the rest of our lives.
Good – Delhi-Agra; Bad – Having to book a long way in
advance; Ugly – Getting into New Delhi station (see below)
The Bad
The Pollution
There is no question that pollution, in all its forms,
noise, litter, smells, smog, does impact the tourist’s impressions of
India. However because of the country’s
developing status I can’t really say it’s unexpected (and therefore ugly), just
bad. I could list a dozen examples of
where the litter was bad, but that’s not really the point. We knew it would be like this, and it didn’t
really ruin things for us, probably also because we experienced our worst
smells on day one when we went to the coast in Bandra. However it could be so much better. There are very few places where there are
bins to throw away litter. We walk
around with our empty bottles, cans or banana skins looking for them. When we ask the locals where there is a bin
they just say drop it on the ground.
It’s not right. We have tried to
set an example, but even in the Taj Mahal I saw littering, and that was one of
the few places that had ample bins.
Good – The Archelogical Survey of India, all of their sites
were impeccably maintained; Bad – No bins; Ugly – The smell by the sea in
Bandra, Mumbai.
The Crowds
Again there were many places where there were simply too
many people. This isn’t surprising, we
are in the second most populous country after all, but what really is annoying
is the way the crowds behave. There is
no concept of giving way to other people, whether this manifests itself in
queuing, as mentioned below, or getting in the way of other people’s
photos. Whenever we see people lining up
a shot we pause, let them take it, and carry on. It’s a small courtesy that costs us a few
seconds and makes a memory of a lifetime for the others. This courtesy is not repaid in a lot of
cases, although I will say that once we left Delhi and Agra and got to the
sights in Rajasthan it got a lot better.
The bad point anyway for crowds was the Taj Mahal, but what can you do,
so many people want to see it that you can never get the perfect shot.
Good – Patnem and Mandrem beaches – may they stay
undiscovered; Bad – The Taj Mahal, busy but what can you do, it’s one of the
wonders of the world; Ugly – Commuter trains
The Buses
The buses have been bad, but again my expectations were not
high. The buses in Goa actually were OK,
just quite crowded, and very old. But
they did run on time. And they did have
the best bus as well as the worst bus.
They had shuttles, non-stop expresses, between the major cities which
were brilliant, but they also had the dangerously overcrowded Palolem-Margao
bus. However nothing compares to the bus
ride we had from Jaipur, just finding the bus was a challenge. Once on it we were OK, but the hour leading
up to it aged me a year.
Good – Goa Shuttles; Bad – Palolem-Margao; Ugly – Jaipur-Udaipur
The Communications
The truth is people travelled to India years ago with no
mobiles and survived, but that was then and this is now. I am quite annoyed by the fact that for the
whole month we have been here my phone has only worked intermittently. If I had known that in advance I wouldn’t
have been too worried, but for the last three years in work I’ve been told
India is a high tech country, so I’ve no idea why so many of my texts went
missing. And it can’t be my phone,
because we got a local SIM for Dorota’s iPhone and it lost texts as well. It probably has something to do with all the
spam texts we got instead, if the system is struggling they have to regulate
the spam. The only good point is that
there was more often than not wifi available in the hotels, so once the electricity
was working we could at least use email.
(I’m ignoring the patchy electricity in this blog entry, although we had
power outages at least once every 3 days on average).
Good – Wifi in hotels; Bad – Patchy coverage; Ugly – Spam
Texts
The Ugly
The Scams
First, in case anyone doesn’t know, I’ve been to Thailand
and Egypt so I know scams. So I’m not
having a go specifically at India here, but nonetheless the attempted (and
actual) scams that we experienced do sour our memories of India. By far our worst experience was trying to get
into New Delhi station to get train tickets.
Despite all the warnings from Lonely Planet we still were unprepared by
the sheer volume of lies we were told about the location. We could take the tuk-tuk drivers charging us
a bit more, but sometimes they would go too high and you almost wanted to say
back to them “are you insulting my intelligence”. We are always prepared to pay a tourist price
over a local price (note I’ve left the official tourist prices at monuments out
of the blog, it’s just a fact of life that we can afford the price tags and
most of them cannot), but some of them loose it by being too greedy. On a couple of occasions we even said to
people you were too greedy and walked away.
The one exception to the tourist price tag was my haircut in Delhi. I asked what the price was and was told 250,
which was a local price, but when it finished it had doubled to 500, for no
apparent reason other than I was a foreigner.
What pissed me off was that when I entered there was only one guy
working there, but by the time I finished there were 4, meaning I wasn’t
winning any arguments.
Good – Hotels sending you tuk-tuks to avoid even having to
haggle; Bad – My haircut; Ugly – New Delhi train station
The Cows
OK, we expect to see cows wandering the streets in India, so
this in itself isn’t a problem, but actually from what I can see in the cities
at least they have a miserable existence.
The whole point of the cows roaming the street is, as far as this
uneducated outsider sees it, is because they are revered as reincarnated good
people. However if they are so loved how
come they seem left to eat litter all the time.
The sight of a cow chewing on a plastic bag is distressing, but the
sight of an emaciated cow licking at the shit of another is just heart-breaking
(I will admit I only saw this once, and the cow in question may have had some
sort of illness – but the rubbish eating is everywhere). If these animals are truly loved they should
either be housed in fields out in the countryside, or put down. I don’t see India as a nation of animal
lovers from this. Added to this are of
course the dogs, goats and pigs roaming the street, also eating rubbish, and
then there is the question of the cow shit.
In some places they seem to scoop it up and use it as fuel, but in other
places it is left lying on the streets.
It is no surprise that India is a dirty country, there is no incentive
for humans to not litter when the cows can shit where they want. (I understand that this is a cultural issue,
and that some people will see me as someone who eats cows as a hypocrite, but
it is the way I feel after a month here, so it goes in the blog).
Good – I can’t actually think of a good thing about this
situation; Bad – Cow shit everywhere; Ugly – Cows eating rubbish
The Shopping
I hate shopping at the best of times, but I hate haggling
more. So naturally I hate shopping
here. But to be honest the process of
haggling isn’t the worst part, at least at that stage you have decided to buy
something. It is when you don’t want to
buy that they get annoying. It will be
bad luck if you don’t buy anything, etc. are the things they say. For me I just ignore them, but Dorota didn’t
like the changes to the way she normally shops.
However the worst part is the counterfeit goods and the out of date
goods (food) which they try to pass off to the unsuspecting tourists. It happened a few times, once with a lady in
a shop to whom we had given good business, but the minute she knew it was the last
visit, she slipped in the out of date goods.
Still there was good shopping in a few cases. Some places selling local goods were fixed
price, no haggling or pressure, and because there is no commission to tuk-tuk
drivers (we actually had developed strategies to avoid that type of pressure
from the tuk-tuk drivers) the prices are actually reasonable. This way of shopping is how we liked it, and
even in some local mini-market type shops it made shopping much easier.
Good – Fixed price shops – you know what you are getting;
Bad – Pressure when thy just don’t have things you want; Ugly – Counterfeit and
out of date products.
The Rudeness
Probably the most surprising thing about India, and hence it
being last here, is the behaviour of the people. Now the touts are a class unto themselves,
and therefore their lies won’t be in here, but the general population also
seemed rude. As mentioned above this
includes intruding into photos and other minor rudeness, but it also extends up
to far more serious forms of rudeness.
(And a note here, again I understand that rudeness is effectively a
cultural issue, but there are certain minimum standards which I think we can
expect from any fellow human beings).
There are so many categories of rudeness I will have to do them
separately.
By the way in the interest of fairness I would also like to
say that all of these instances of rudeness are, as far as I can tell, not
aimed at us just because we are foreign, they appear to be just general
behaviour. In fact sometimes there is
rudeness that we don’t even get between Indians, like quite often we have seen
the Indian’s ordering food making fun of the waiter after he has gone away (or
even in his presence). I also am not
really too worried about some of the rudeness of kids, because they haven’t had
the role models to learn from. Similarly
I don’t consider begging to be rude, it is not something someone has control
over. But the rest are cases I think
adults should be able to control themselves over.
The British did a lot to India. One thing they didn’t do is install a sense
of discipline in them when it comes to queuing.
Trying to queue for a train ticket in Mumbai or Delhi is a frustrating
business, because there is always someone who thinks that their time is so
precious that they don’t need to queue.
If they are that important they probably should get a travel card. The queuing issues happen elsewhere, people
not waiting their turn to get a photo opportunity at a sight, people in big
cars cutting off others, and then of course there is the getting on and off
issue.
People getting on and off buses and trains make it almost
impossible to use them in some places.
The people getting on are already trying to get on before the bus stops,
and before anyone can get off (although they are probably trying to get off
before it stops as well). The ensuing
chaos actually delays the bus (although not the trains which run to timetables
but stop long enough to let an orderly queue work).
Probably the worst instances of rudeness in my opinion are
personal behaviours such as spitting, peeing and even shitting in the
street. We only encountered the latter a
couple of times, but it is a couple of times too much. The peeing in the street or on the side of
the road or on the train tracks is a major problem, being a health hazard and
so on. It is so common it is
unreal. It’s not as if the public
toilets are much better though, but really it shouldn’t be acceptable. And as for the spitting, this in some ways is
even worse, not because of the health issues, which are as bad, or the
disgusting mess it makes on the ground, but because of the sound of it. Indian men (and some women) seem to be able
to make the loudest possible sounds when spitting. It can actually be so bad as to put you off your
food.
The final issue in rudeness for me is the sexism that has
been shown towards Dorota on our trip.
As I said before it is no worse than to other women, and in fact it’s
probably a lot better. The fact that the
Metro has to have a women’s only carriage says a lot (I have always said that
any country that needs women only carriages, and that includes Japan, is not a
properly functioning society). But it
was everywhere, the most prevalent was in restaurants where I would be the only
one asked to order. A few places,
evidently well trained to deal with western tourists, did ask separately but it
was few and far between.
It should be noted that the levels of this perceived
rudeness (and I am admitting it is a perception, it may not actually be intended
to be rude) did differ from place to place.
It was at its worst in Delhi, and was actually not as bad in Goa or
Rajasthan. In fact on our first day in
Jaipur, we were shocked when we actually got a polite excuse me from people
trying to get past us.
Good – Getting an excuse me from someone; Bad – Sexism; Ugly
– Spitting (by the way this is not a personal thing, there are actually ads on
TV telling people not to spit, or litter, because it gives the wrong impression
to tourists).
Because of the order this has been written in I do feel that
a reader will come away thinking that we didn’t enjoy ourselves in India. Far from it, it was a great place to visit,
as a holiday destination it has a lot to recommend it, but there still remain a
few difficulties that make it hard for the independent traveller, and a few
things which it could be so much better with a little thought.
Anyway next stop Vietnam, and tomorrow I’ll tell of the trip
that gets us there, even though it actually started 20 minutes before midnight
today.
