We interrupt your regular travelog...
I'm sitting on the wide window sill of my room on the ramparts of Jaisalmer fort, watching the sinking sun light up the "Golden City", with a cold Kingfisher beer beside me, and feel like writing something different -- about the general rather than the particular, about traveling in India, about India. Perhaps not shoes or ships, but I did encounter sealing wax at the post office when I mailed some heavy clothes back to the U.S. After I filled in the customs declaration form (after I found someone to give me one), a man in the lobby sewed my parcel up in coarse cloth, and then applied copious amounts of sealing wax, and a seal, along the seams. He folded the form up really small, and sewed it to the parcel. Then I stood in line to pay a lot of money to mail it. Just one of the ways India is different
It's been a while since I've had a hotel room with a TV. I check CNN, the N.Y. Times and occasionally even the Raleigh News and Observer online to see what's happening, and sometimes I buy an Indian newspaper. The front page of the "Times of India" for Nov. 8th:
I still think that Amex dollar travelers' checks are the best way to carry money -- many hotels, most banks and all money changers take them. But I didn't want to carry a five month supply -- makes the money belt too bulky. I acquired an Amex card and arranged for it to back checks on my Wachovia bank account. In Kolkata, I tested the system. The Amex office had moved way across town, and was crammed with people ahead of the Durga Puja holiday, but, yes, they'd accept the check, for a maximum of $1,000. Since I only wanted to do this once, I wrote a check for $1,000. "No, you can't have it in dollar TCs". Not unless you're going to leave the country in the next 24 hours. "No, you can't have it in rupee TCs". I could have the 47,000+ rupees in 500/- notes instead of 100/-. Over lunch I tried to figure out why I couldn't get rupee TCs. Turns out that only the State Bank of India can issue them, and it was closed until Saturday. So, I stuck the money in the not-very-safe-looking safe at the Fairlawn and waited. A Bengali gentleman, long resident in Manchester, and his English wife were staying at the Fairlawn. He was impressed that on Saturday it took me only 50 minutes and visits to three windows to convert the rupees to TCs. Initially they said 1,000/- checks, but when I didn't go away they found some 5,000/- ones instead -- but didn't reduce the commission.
The Indian banking system seems incredibly inefficient to me. Getting the TCs was only the first hurdle. Then there was cashing them. No, my hotel in Jaipur wouldn't take them. The State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur? Opens at 10:00 a.m.. Customer service actually starts at 10:10 a.m.. The man I need to see arrives at 10:20 a.m.. No, I have to take them to the State Bank of India. No, he can't show me on the map where that is. In Jaipur, the SBI was relatively fast, but in Jodhpur it took 30 minutes, three windows, my passport number and three signatures to get one TC cashed.
Want to live cheaply? Come to India. Want to spend money? Come to India. In Udaipur, according to Lonely Planet, a dorm bed is 50/-, a single with shared bath is 80/-, a deluxe double with lake view is 1195/-. Or you can spend $290 on up for a room with a view at the Lake Palace Hotel -- the one on all the posters. My room at Jaisalmer -- 350/-. My splurge at Jodhpur -- 1900/-. The topflight Umaid Bhawan Palace at Jodhpur -- $325-750 for a suite. Hotel rooms aren't really the problem, basically you get what you pay for, but splurging on a hotel puts your other costs up. At the Ajit Bhawan in Jodhpur -- which had a wonderful swimming pool, complete with waterfall, a lassi (a yoghurt drink) was 75/-. In the heart of the bazaar a delicious, thick, Rajasthani-style lassi was 12/-. So-so dinner buffer at the Ajit -- 350/-. Pretty good dinner at my backpacker hotel in Varanasi -- less than 100/-. Adequate if boring veg. thali on the trains -- 25/-. And give a high-end address to a rickshaw driver and I'm sure the price goes up.
The real problem in India is that it often seems that almost everyone you encounter is just interested in making money from tourists. Even priests and temples want money -- for guiding, for puja, just for existing. If you don't bargain, and bargain hard, you'll pay over the odds. (Although I do it occasionally when I feel someone deserves it.) If the guy (it's always a guy) smiles when you pay, or, worse, touches the money to his forehead, you know you've overpaid. If you've driven a good bargain with a rickshaw driver he'll try for more at the destination -- the super-slow count with the change, or a direct request if you have the exact amount. Take a ride in a rickshaw and the driver wants to take you on a tour. Buy something, and the vendor wants to sell you something else. I'm pretty good at ignoring street vendors, at saying "no", at resisting demands for more, but the constant pressure is wearing -- and bad for my disposition. And of course, my costs are higher, for hotels and rickshaws, because I'm traveling solo.
So, what do you do about the old man lying in the sun, missing half an arm? What do you about the little girl with the big dark eyes in a dirty face, pulling at your sleeve? The woman in the ragged sari with the baby in her arms? India has more beggars, and more aggressive beggars, than anywhere else I've been, although in general they seem to be in reasonable health, and not starving.
If you give, they'll likely ask for more. (It turns out that Hindi has no word for "thank you". The sensible rationale is that you give because you want to, because it meets your needs to give.) If you give, especially to kids, more beggars will appear. If you give, maybe the child will eat better for a couple of days -- or maybe the money will go to the local "Mafia." I believe that really worthwhile charitable action is work for systemic change. Sure, the poor need to eat, but if all you do is feed them, you'll have to do the same tomorrow. It's not just teaching a woman to fish, it's changing the system that didn't teach her how to fish in the first place -- or, more likely, made it impossible for her to fish even though she knew how. So, in general I'm not giving to individual beggars, but I am looking for a secular organization, run by Indians, involved in child education.
Someone told me about an American who was so upset by the poverty in India that he converted all his money into dollar bills and gave one to every beggar he saw. I can't help wondering what he did about poverty in the U.S. All he achieved in India was a temporary improvement in the lot of a few people, and to make life more difficult for the tourists who followed him. And I can't help wondering about the Indian response to poverty. Indians appear to be willing to live with filthy streets and importunate beggars. Ashok told me that only 2% of the population pay income taxes, and that the agricultural sector is totally exempt from taxes. But it may be more basic. The Indian-born, Western-educated author of "Pilgrimage to India" writes: "In India, karma and its translation into caste allows the educated elite and wealthy to believe that they have earned the right to privilege, while the poor have earned the right to nothing". If it is your karma to be poor in this life, nothing will be achieved by interfering...
The little girl begging in the Botanical Gardens is working. The children picking cotton with their mothers are working. The ten-year old live-in maid is working . The six-year-old boy dancing with the troupe of folk musicians is working. All over India children are working: all over India children are not going to school. The man who drove me through the Shekawati area -- married, three kids, hoping to go to Florida -- never went to school. Truancy officer? Forget it. There are parts of India with female literacy rates of 20% Remember -- this is the world's largest democracy. If I'm going to be born poor in India or China next time -- very likely, after all -- I'll take China and never mind the human rights issues. I'll be too far down Maslow's hierarchy of needs to care.
In China, so I'm told, it can take days to buy a railway ticket. In India, it can take hours. I made my train reservations from abroad, when I bought my Indrail pass. I confirmed the Eastern Region set in Kolkata, and the remainder in Delhi. There is an International Tourist Reservation office at New Delhi station, although various touts (for travel agencies) will tell you that it's closed, or moved, or has a second location because of a festival. The day I was there it opened at 8:00 a.m., as usual, but the computer system didn't come up until 10:00 a.m.. The Indrail pass section didn't open until 10:00 a.m., either. The Indian Railways web site is great, but all the details of my trip were entered in longhand in a big ledger it took five minutes to locate. (The West Bengal tourist Office also used big ledgers to track bookings for its tours, despite a long line of silent monitors.)
The top class on Indian trains, 1AC, gives you plenty of room, but the seats are no softer, and the company less fun, than in 2AC. The best class between Jodhpur and Jaisalmer is 3AC -- three tiers of bunks. I think the extra for 2AC is worth it -- there's a lot less headroom than on Chinese three tier. What I really miss on Indian trains, though, is the boiling water available in China -- useful for washing, cooking and making tea. I haven't checked out second class -- three tier and no AC, although a lot of people like it because the view is better (windows in AC are closed and tinted).
Indian train stations are pretty grim. Waiting for the Tourist Office to open in Delhi I watched the floor being washed. The water was dirtier than the floor. With a 02:45 a.m. departure from Jaipur (the state capital of Rajasthan), I rented a retiring room -- 150/- for a single with bathroom. The only successful method of cleaning the ingrained dirt on the bathroom floor would be to replace the tiles -- but I did appreciate the security and privacy, and the bed was no harder than the bunks on the train (the silk sleep sack I'm carrying is more than worth its weight). At first the International Tourists' Waiting Room at Jodhpur seemed a notable exception to the general grunge -- nice arm chairs and a blue carpet (take your shoes off), but the toilet was filthy. Unfortunately it was also western -- if the bathroom is dirty a squatter is much better, although it may require some contortions to keep your clothes off the floor. The left luggage offices (cloakrooms in Indian English) are also of variable quality. At Delhi, the cloakroom was closed from 8:00 to 8:30 a.m.. The resulting line snaked down the platform and looked like it would take an hour to clear. At Jaisalmer, at least for Diwali, the office was closed during the day, stranding me with my pack. Amritsar, in contrast, was fine.
Still, the trains leave their originating stations on time (usually), and move immense numbers of people every day. Aside from my very first trip, all the reservations I made via London, back in August, resulted in my name duly showing up on the seating chart (posted somewhere on the platform, and pasted to the side of the relevant carriage). And the trains are much more comfortable, and safer, than buses.
Do I sound like Paul Theroux? He's always going to wonderful places and then complaining. I'm feeling tired and my left leg hurts. I think I need to slow down a little.
The travelog will resume shortly...
Sent from Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India, Nov. 17
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