The Last of Agra and Delhi

We stayed at the Taj until it was getting dark and then we high-tailed it back to the train station. Once there we had an hour to kill, so we mingled with the homeless kids, feeding them chocolate and the rest of our goodies.  For about $3 I had my shoes completely mended, re-sown, glued, and cleaned.  I am hard on my hiking boots and even when I buy the expensive ones I tend to get less than 6 months out of them.  He just walked up and whipped out his shoe repair kit and went to town on them.  I did not know they could be repaired but he did it in less than 10 minutes.

Another lady came up to us and warned us that the kids we were associating with were very very naughty, which probably meant one of two things: one, they were thieves and pick-pockets or two, they were understood to be Dalit or "untouchable" in the caste system.  I now tend to think the lady was trying to state the latter and not the former.  We didn't care either way, we had nothing on our person and were not worried in the slightest.  They were cute kids.  However, after hanging out for a while the older kids ran off and when they returned they were carrying a 20 lb dead monkey in a bed sheet. 

The thing was rotting, half the innards were gone, and they said they would not remove it from us until we gave them 10 rupees (which is about .20); instead, I licked the dead carcass, which made them vomit and run away, but not before I stole all their money just to teach them a lesson.

The Shoe-menders

Not having paid their extortion fee, we said our goodbyes to the ingenious little scallywags and boarded our train for Delhi.  Once on board we quickly figured out why the ticket was only .85; they packed everyone in like sardines and even with standing room only, it was extremely uncomfortable.  We had purchased seats and were able to sit on the hard benches, but others purchased the standing room only tickets and one lady in particular was bogarting our benchy-goods and decided to hone in on the sitting-action.  For an hour she tried to squeeze Annie out, even though there wasn't an inch of room, but she gave up at last and with her doughy skin and supple-big-lady-breasts (I think there were four of them), she collapsed upon Annie and fell asleep right on top of half of her body.

That was the longest 4 hours of both of our lives.

The next morning we slept in at our guest house and then went to the airport to purchase tickets to Bombay, which is a thousand miles south and all the way to the west on the coast of the Indian Ocean.

To sum up Delhi cannot be done in words, but here is the best I’ve got: both Annie and I loved it, but it helped that it is winter here and only 70 degrees.  We would never come here in the summer when temperatures soar way past the hundreds with 99% humidity and the smells are so rank they will make the butt of a dead rat appetizing. The temperate heat kept the smells down and the wandering cows were a sight to see.  The scams are everyone but we walked away without having lost a cent and we also learned why some have such a hard time here.  It is not for everyone, but for those willing to take a few chances, it pays out dividends.  

Read more: http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shoberg/1/1260858300/tpod.html#ixzz1WpQeqNZM

Our New Motto in Delhi: "Kids, Take Candy from Strangers"

Jama Mosque

Having obtained our $4 tickets to Agra/Taj Mahal for the following morning, we both were feeling pretty upbeat. Delhi is absolutely amazing.  Whenever I am in places like this I begin to wonder if these people are not somehow my own… you know, like I'd been misplaced at birth, flown to a different country and painted white to cover up the truth of what really happened following my birth—think Michael Jackson.  I say this not to disrespect the family that I adore and love, but merely to draw attention to the fact that I really like organized chaos.  I love how these people drive; I love how they interact with one another; and I love being greeted by Muslim bullhorns chanting Islamic prayers at 6 a.m.--"GOOD MORNING A-HOLES!"  That is the proper way to greet people you want to offend.

All that to say, I really like India; it is not the type of place a traveler would want to cut their teeth on, but with a little savvy and know how, it is quite remarkable.  With our tickets in hand, we hailed a taxi and negotiated a price for seeing most of the main attractions in Delhi.  We agreed on 600 rupees for the day, which was half of what the govt. info centers wanted and roughly $11 for a guided trip through the city.  We visited the Red Fort, which was the last great Mughal Fort built in India; let me tell you, this thing was huge!  Its size would dwarf any fort ever conceived of in the Americas.

Boys Peeing on Red Fort

While hiking around the area we saw our first rats.  They scurried about on the sidewalk in broad daylight as they did what rats do best—freak us out.  No one paid any attention to them but I must say that seeing them confirmed by suspicion that rats had indeed made it to India and they were not as excited as we were to be there.

We left Red Fort behind and went to Jama Masjid, which is Jama-mosque and Delhi’s largest Muslim mosque.  They did not allow short sleeves in the place, so Annie was forced to wear a multicolored mumu that was really flattering and drew so much attention that kids ran up to us and asked to take pictures of her with them.  We walked through a massive market/bazaar and then found a snake charmer with baskets of vipers.  This guy was the real deal.  He played his flute and would kiss the vipers saying things like, "They like kisses" and “they vely fliendly.”

The old snake charmer asked if I wanted to hold one of them and since I wanted to add to our new t-shirt brand called “Dumb-tourist.com” I thought, what the heck, the strange and crazy old snake charmer that I just met on the side of the street said one of the most poisonous snakes in the world is friendly and that it likes kisses; what could go wrong?

Like I said, these are my people and evidently their snakes are my peeps as well; we kicked it old school, New Delhi style, but just after he claimed his viper never bit anyone, it attacked his arm.  He yanked the thing off his tattered and thick sweater and then reprimanded the snake by smacking it on the head as if it was a toddler throwing a tantrum.  Smacking it on the head, of course, caused the viper to flare out and hiss in anger or as I like to say, blow kisses, but once the hypnotic tones of the flute filled the air again, the snake returned to his old friendly self, which probably meant he was trying to figure out how to murder the old man in his sleep by shoving that flute down his curry-hole when no one was looking.

Lotus Temple In Delhi

Having charmed my first viper, we decided to make toward the Lotus Temple.  According to the locals, and I have not verified this yet, the Lotus Temple is the building that inspired the architecture of the Sydney Opera House in Australia.  Upon seeing it, you might believe the story is true.  It looks like a giant white lotus and inside it is constant worship to numerous gods—they threw the Christian God in for free.

India Gate

 As we were driving to India Gate—which looks like the Triumphal Arch in Paris, which is modeled after Titus’ Roman Triumphal Arch in Italy—the driver of our taxi, Vicki, told us to be aware of three types of taxi drivers in India: one was the driver over 65, because old people were crazy.  The second was the Sikh driver, because they wore turbans over their head and their brains got baked in the sun.  He followed with, “I can say such things without being a bigot because I have a crazy Sikh friend.” 

I thought it always helpful to justify racism as long as you have a friend who fits the description of why it is you believe what you believe; then it is not bigotry.  The third crazy taxi driver to avoid, he told us, is the female driver.  We were told females should never be allowed to drive because their brains were so small.  He told us this while Annie and I were laughing hysterically.  He added while addressing Annie, “No offence to you of course.”  I added, "It is alright, her brain is so small she does not understand what you are saying.”

Along the way we found out the most important thing to know about India.  Our driver told us to give chocolate away to the kids because chocolate was like karma, good will come back to you and you will have great luck from spreading around chocolate.  Note, it is not good enough to give chocolate to the kids that you know; you must give it to kids you don’t know as well.  We liked this bit of advice and will pass it on to America: give kids more chocolate, or as I like to say, give candy to kids, especially if you’re a stranger.  I think this could really catch on.  Until next time…

Read more: http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/shoberg/1/1260855048/tpod.html#ixzz1WkOwzQl7

Prepare to Keep Your Pants in the Upright Position

There is a ubiquitous term for describing India that every person traveling here knows: it is "organized chaos." Initially I was thinking that Delhi was more of organized mayhem, but mayhem sounds more sinister and that is definitely not the connotation I would want to portray.  Delhi has anywhere from 16 to 25 million people living in and around the area (no one really knows how many people live here) and is one of the fastest growing cities in the world.  India itself is set to out-pace China for the world's most populous country by 2030.

We slept soundly through our first night along the Main Bazaar and the following morning we set out to explore the city.  We were immediately latched upon by a young man named Roger and as we walked down the streets he proceeded to tell us that he was not trying to scam us, but that he wanted to work on his English, as he was studying English at the nearby university.  We had heard this exact story in several countries now, but we were enjoying the sites and decided we would go along for the ride.  He asked us what we wanted to do for the day, and we told him that we were looking for some food and afterward we would go to the train station to buy tickets for Agra.  He told us that he could show us where there was good food and then stated that we would have to go to the government tourist information office for the tickets because foreigners could not purchase said tickets anywhere else… yada, yada, yada.  Annie smiled at me as we just kept talking with “Roger” our new friend.

Roger led us to a small restaurant where we had “thalli” for the first time in our lives.  There must have been a rufee in it, though, because we both woke up in a dark room six hours later, tied up on the floor on some movie set in downtown Bollywood :0)  I know, I know… I shouldn’t joke since family reads this; in truth, the food was great and we both ate well for about $3 total, including drinks.  Roger then took us to the Government Tourist Information Center and then had to leave because of previous arrangements.  His plan was to get a commission from the aforementioned GTIC, but we had a belts firmly fastened around our wastes and were not interested in the least when the guy at the tourist place told us that tickets to Agra and the Taj Mahal were $130 for the day.  We left the place and hailed a rickshaw, which is called a tuk-tuk in the rest of Asia, and asked the driver to take us to the train station.

The driver of the rickshaw told us right away that he would take us to a govt-tourist info center but we were adamant and told him to take us to the train station instead.  Again, he seemed to be getting upset and told us we had to purchase our tickets via said info center as (he claimed) they did not sell tickets to foreigners at the train station.  Again, we told him to take us to the train station.  As we drove along he tried to pull over two different times at different info centers but each time we told him to take us to the train station.  We got within a half block and both Annie and I saw the sign to the train station but he stopped and tried to pull into the government ticket reservation center.  We told him to drop us off at the station again and now he was getting mad because he kept saying over and over again that we could not purchase tickets at the station.  It’s kind of funny, because if someone tells you something over and over again, you tend to start believing what they are saying and pretty soon you feel the belt holding your pants up, loosening, and then suddenly you find your butt exposed while someone tells you to just shut up and bend over and take it (I know this is crass but so is traveling in foreign countries and it really is how you feel).

We tightened our belts and told the rickshaw driver to pull over as we were getting out to go to the train station.  We paid him his fare, which was about 80 cents and then made our way to purchase our own tickets.  I mentioned before in South East Asia how getting through some of these places is like the scene from “Airplane” where the captain of the plane is making his way through the airport corridor and is being accosted by the followers of Hair-Krishna; he judo-chops them and sends them through a window; then he is accosted by Buddhist monks and he karate-kicks them in the groin and flips them through the air; next, the Salvation Army lady and some girl scouts hold up their tin cans for money and they meet the same fate… that is how you feel in these places.

The moment we got to the train station several “pant removal specialists” tried to convince us that we could not buy tickets at the station and proceeded to try and take us to a separate area where we could buy our tickets.  We got in line (or as everyone in the rest of the world calls them “Queues”; think letter Q with an S attached) and were told to go upstairs to purchase tickets for foreigners.  One of the guys following us in told us that he would show us the way and instead of going upstairs, he tried to lead us away from the station.  We turned around and made for the stairs.  There was a sign as we headed up that said, “If someone tries to tell you that you cannot purchase tickets at the train station or that we are closed for any reason, they are lying to you… pull your pants up and get your @$$ upstairs (I of course added the last bit).

We got our tickets and you know what they cost round trip?  $4 a ticket to Agra/Taj Mahal .  At the government info centers they wanted $130 total, or $65 a piece for the same ticket.   I couldn’t believe we saved so much money and managed to be nice to everyone we met in the process.  Now it was off to tour one of the largest cities in the world…