india was great. I love it and i hate it all at once. India is never quiet.

India is pretty massive, pretty darn hot and really busy. The people here are mostly friendly but it is hard to tell who is helpful and who is after your money. everything is a scam. The hot water is a scam, the hotels are a scam - i guess it is just Indians trying to make a living.

Hot water comes from gas heaters mounted on the walls. sometimes they work and sometimes they dont. Sometimes you get water and sometimes you don't. Sometimes you get a dungeon with cold floor and grubby beds and sometimes you dont.

They definitely have an eye for opportunity here and make the most of every one. (do you want fries with that- do you want 2 t shirts? Well - ok 4 for 400, i feed my family!).

The persistant touts are full on and are very persuasive. They are all on commission. If you look beyond the beggars and sellers, the forts are beautiful and date back to the 15th century, the mogul emperors built huge palaces. then abandoned them. Go figure.

India is land of plastic bags. The rubbish piles up in the streets till the lowly come and pick it all up in the middle of the night and recycle anything they can. (40% is left in grotty piles on the street. That is the ones the cows don't eat.) There are plenty of bovines and tuk tuks and roosters and pigs and homeless and piles of rubbish all sharing the streets.

There are open sewers and grotty children who scavenge whereever they can and from whomever they can. There are huge phone towers in front of straw huts. There are motorcycles that share the road with rickshaws. There are cow pats drying on corrugated iron rooves and tractors towing BIG wooden overflowing obese looking trailers.

Bright red and gold sarees flutter in the fields of emerald green wheat and saffron turbans pop up from dusty roadside stalls.

Flourescent is popular here. Turbans are flouro pink, sarees flouro yellow and the colours are so bright compared to the dusty and grotty landscape.

There are many wasted bits of land in Incredible India. There are crumbling ruins and holes filled with garbage and small children. The cows stroll past them oblivious to the passing rabble of smoke belching motorbikes and tuk tuks. Everyone is busy, doing whatever it is they do here. Some are working in fields, some jostle with the tourists, some drive old noisy smelly tractors and pile bricks high on the trailers they pull.

There is so much poverty here and it feels like the wrong thing to have money. So many are desperate and live on the streets. They tap on our windows as we drive by and motion for food. Many have red stained teeth, which means they are eating chewing tobacco or beetlenut and are addicted to the stuff, that they spit in globs on the roadside.

There is a pecking order on the streets. 1 and 2 lane motorways that are either being constructed or being repaired are turned into accidental 7 lane traffic bottlenecks and the biggest vehicles win. Driving here is not easy. Bicycles give way to rickshaws, rickshaws give way to motorbikes who in turn give way to tuk tuks. Tuk tuks give way to cars and trucks and the busses just push in where ever they want to. And everyone gives way to animals. Camels are used for lots of work here. They gingerley pull carts with food, bricks, gravel, people, wheat and other crops, branches, water and animal food. The plod down the main villiage streets and amble down motorways, beside the piles of rubble and sleeping bodies.

Horns are just part of the daily driving and a vehicle without a horn may as well not have brakes. There are different honks depending on just what you are trying to communicate. They vary beteween long honks, short sharp blasts and downright cranky beeeeeps. That one means "get the hell out of the way or i am going to run you over". The lorries have painted, in childish colourful letters on the tailgate. "HORN PLEASE." They actually want to get tooted at!!!!! The incessant honking jangles my nerves - india is never quiet.

Everything looks like it is being constructed or being pulled down. The roads are potholed and rickety and it takes ages to get anywhere. it takes us 6 or so hours to travel 300k and we had a GREAT driver. He who hesitates is stuck in the traffic. The roads are built by hand and the bricks for building and rocks for roads are loaded by hand into the colourful lorries.

Camels and elephants, a snake charmer and pigs that snuffle thru the rubbish. Loos with no paper and great chai tea made from hot milk and spices. Crumbling buildings and shiny offices. Clean suit wearing men and filthy beggars missing limbs. Smog filled valleys and monkeys in trees. Great bananas that cost 10R per hand (30c) and boiling vats of milk frothing and straming over fires.
Bright red sarees and grass and mud huts. Piles of hand shaped dung and roadside stalls by the mile. Sleeping men and children playing cricket. Ruins beside shanties.

These are my images of india.

I have a love hate relationship with this amazing country. I hate the constant touting and hassling for money and I hate the smog that dries out my skin and i hate the constant traffic and the rubbish. But I love the friendly smiles, the fact that every one wants to know you, the shopping and the hard haggling, the huge difference to Australia. I love the smiles combined the the head wobbling just like those things you put on your dashboard.

I love all the icons of religion here. I love the old temples and the ancient ruins and I love the sense of history here. Every hotel is faulty towers and India is your toilet and your rubbish bin.

All in all, India was an incredible experience that I was not prepared for. (thought I was.) It is not really Asian, not really Middle eastern - it is only Indian. There is nothing i have seen that compares to it anywhere, and it will make me more aware of their hardships understanding our culture.

Had a ball.
Emma

 

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Wendy Woo has put out a great brochure on India. If you are interested in Indian cities or a Grand Tour of India then this brochure has plenty of information for you.
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Why India? Everyone would ask, even people I met in India. I travelled for two months with my two boys (5 and 8yrs) through Southern India. We arrived into Mumbai and the adventure began. With a backpack each and travel guidebook in hand we set off to find a taxi to take us to our hotel. I had prebooked the first night so we weren't totally lost after the 11 hours of flying. Then we were on our own. Everything is different in India. The people - how they look, the clothes they wear, 'why does she have a red dot on her forehead?', the cars they drive and how they drive, motorbikes, auto rickshaws, bicycles, overcrowded buses and trains, cows on the road....cows on the road? In the middle of the city? People everywhere. Sleeping on the footpath, washing in the river, jumping on and off moving trains. There are no rules in India which is what made this an even more exciting adventure. Our first outing was a trip to Elephanta Island. We travelled by local train, auto rickshaw, public bus, boat and toy train once there. Elephanta Island is home to the World Heritage listed rock cut temples. It wasn't just the impressive sight of the triple headed Shiva sculpture that interested the boys. It was everything along the way. Their first introduction to the local monkeys was while eating some roasted corn on the cob. Suddenly 3 monkeys all eyeing off that piece of corn surrounded us. The Indians were yelling at us...'your food, put away'. It promptly went into our bags and we continued up the 320 steps to see the carvings. Once at the top more monkeys wanting to steal out water bottles or anything that resembled food greeted us. They were too used to tourists here and were dangerous, despite being incredibly cute. The highlight of our visit to Elephanta Island for the boys was probably playing cricket with the local Indian boys. They loved it, especially when a cow came to join in the fun. Next stop Goa. Overnight sleeper bus from Mumbai to Goa took about 12 hours and we all slept quite well. It's a good thing all the windows are curtained because you wouldn't want to see what was coming up in front while half a sleep. Road rules definitely do not apply to anyone, except the bigger you are, the more right of way you have. Goa provided a nice blend of Indian culture and beach life with a distinct Portuguese flavour. The Indian children loved to play with the boys and provided hours of fun on the beach trying to communicate in English and Hindi. I quickly learnt that just playing is a language all of it's own that doesn't need a lot of words. We continued southeast towards Bangalore, this time by train. Overnight sleeper, three tier was the perfect way to travel. We opted for the non-air conditioned carriage as it wasn't too hot and it was much more social. The boys would play gameboy and this time it wasn't the local children who were interested but the adult men. Each one would walk past with many even stopping to sit down and watch. Just outside of Mysore we were finally able to have an elephant ride. Bandipur National Park is located a hundred kilometres from Mysore and is home to jackals, foxes, sambars, barking deer, mouse deer, mongoose, wild dogs, flying squirrels and many common langur. We were lucky enough to see most of these animals during our morning safari. The long awaited elephant ride finally happened and was just as exciting as the boys had anticipated. There was a platform with a ladder to access the elephant's wooden 'saddle'. After rearranging the weight distribution so we didn't cause the elephant to topple over we were on our way. Through the jungle we trekked, spotting deer, monkeys and a variety of bird life such as pheasant and peacock. The baby elephant accompanying us was as cheeky as any child its equivalent age, much to the children's delight. Continuing south we saw palaces and temples, went on horse rides, walked a 1000 steps (down) from a hill top temple, took a toy train through the tea plantations of Tamil Nadu, sat waiting at train stations (and waiting as they are always late), interacted with many of the local Indians. We swam in the Indian Ocean, drank chai tea from the local vendors and ate more naan bread than the average person would in a lifetime. Our adventure took us through Kerala as we explored the waterways and villages on the banks of the water. Bodhi (5) steered us through some of the wider passages of the waterways in the motorboat while Aamon (8) lead us through the more narrow tributaries in a dugout canoe. We saw the tallest coconut trees with men up high cutting down the fresh coconuts and passed other dugout canoes so full of sand, fronds and fruit that there was hardly a gap between the water and the top of the gunnels. We saw the sun rise and set from the same spot in Kunya Kumari, the most southern tip of the continent. The rough sacred waters were filled with Indian pilgrims that had travelled from all parts of India to cleanse themselves of evil. This was particularly intriguing to the boys and they too wanted to swim with them. The boys were a hit and the star of many Indian tourists photos. They received constant attention from the locals wanting to know their names and where they are from. My younger son had his cheek pinched so often I was surprised there was anything left on his cheek. They were able to ride on motorbikes, without helmets, cross the train tracks on the tracks themselves, sit up front with the auto rickshaw driver and steer us to our hotel (couldn't be any worse than the local driving) and even hang out of the train door while it was moving. All the simple pleasures that made this trip so memorable for my children, and me. Travelling with children allows you to see a country through their eyes and what an amazing non-judgemental perception they had of everything they faced. As an adult travelling with children it was a good reminder about living in the moment and enjoying what's here right now. My answer to the question 'Why India?' Why not. Karen Hofman
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