Noise from Peter:

I originally thought this blog entry would be about our experience with our guides in India, starting when our guide in Jaipur City jumped in our car and asked “What’s your program?” I had this pretty good rant going in my head centered around this guy—I never got his name—who wore a leather jacket and hairstyle like Bobby Sherman on Shindig. He had his agenda and kind of made ours fit his. But it didn’t set to well with me, this cheap shot I was going to take and I couldn’t see it getting anything but more negative. What I’ve been thinking about since about our second day in India has a bit more substance. I think I finally have begun to process India in my tiny brain.

India is world of contrasts and contradictions. Soaring architecture built on civilizations thousands of years old; Five star hotels next to squatters’ villages; camel drawn carts hauling high tech goods to market; industry and entrepreneurism adjacent to unspeakable poverty; rickshaws navigating streets with Mercedes; beautiful colors and pervasive layer of dust on what seems like everything; business people with graduate degrees relying on illiterate taxi drivers to get them around town; beggar children with faces of cherubs and hands of pick pockets; it’s mud and masala. There seems to be unbridled opportunity and poverty. This is the world’s largest democracy with a government that seems most adept at managing scandal. Infrastructure seems as fantastic a concept as drivers who obey traffic laws.

So I don’t begrudge our Hindi Eddie Haskell (how Laura & I refer to our Jaipur guide) from setting us up at all the usual tourist traps. He survives, I’ll bet even prospers. Like India he uses modern technology building on an ancient foundation to navigate the 21^st century, another lotus blooming in the mud.

Namaste.

7. Hallo Madam: Dueling Economies in India

I had a vague concept of poverty (or individual entrepreneurism if you want to look at it in a positive light) in India before going there but I didn’t really understand the reality of it until we became the target of every peddler, beggar, tour guide and huckster within view whenever we stepped outside of our bubble. By the end of our trip, we had become hardened to the constant haranguing and just made our way through to our destination without making eye contact. When visiting the Taj Mahal in Agra, our driver had to leave us at the edge of the “green zone”, a mile-wide radius that prohibits cars in order to protect the white marble of the Taj and at this point in the trip, we had become old hands at steeling ourselves to the constant entreaties and “Hallo Madam’s”, briskly walking past all the pleading rickshaw drivers directly to the gate.
At every museum and historical site there are separate tickets for visitors (usually around 250 INR’s, or $6) and Indians (usually 20 rupies, or about 40 cents). At the Taj Mahal the entry is 750 rupies for visitors and I think it was over 50 rupies for Indians, which explained why not many natives were inside the gates. I can understand the dual pricing system for tourist site and certainly we can afford it but the dual system wears a bit thin over time.

At our first rest stop on the way to Jaipur, our guide and driver disappeared for about a half an hour and Peter and I were left locked out of the car, wondering where they had gone. It was after the second stop that we realized that they head to the “crew members” section and we were expected to go to the tourist restaurant or the gift shop and spend money for things at highly inflated prices. We also learned from our friends in Agra that our guides took us to shops where they get a cut of the proceeds …sometimes up to 40 percent! If you understand that this just the way tourist business is done in India then I guess it shouldn’t be bothersome… but it bothered me to have an engaging conversation with our driver (Jantin spoke very good English because he had gone to a catholic school in Kerela) and then have him disappear down below while we were ushered up to the clip joints with all the other tourist sheep. We were the masters and they were the servants… but they were taking a good piece out of us at the same time.


I picked up a copy of the book “The White Tiger” by Aravind Adiga at the airport on the way home and found it hard to put down. It won the Booker prize in 2008 and it doesn’t pull any punches in talking about the underbelly of the Indian economy and the vast underclass who is struggling to survive and, at times, move up and out of oppression. The main character comes from “the darkness” --rural and impoverished India-- and becomes a driver to an upper class family in Delhi. I could picture the drivers in the novel as our drivers, waiting for hours on end as we did our site seeing and shopping. The class system is alive and well in India and Adiga makes the case that it’s a self-imposed oppression that keeps everyone in line and willing to put up with the system… so there’s not a need for a dictatorship-type government like in China to keep the peace. Not surprisingly, “The White Tiger” created quite a bit of negative press in India when it first came out.

6. Is it paining?? aka root canal in Jaipur

We flew from Goa back to Delhi again on SpiceJet (this time the flight was pretty much on schedule and uneventful) and a hotel driver met us at the airport to take us to the Park Plaza Hotel in Gurgaon, suburb of Delhi that looks like most U.S. Office Parks with high rises and malls... except for the shanties and makeshift slums nestled in between. The Park Plaza was a very sleek, efficient business hotel full of accidental tourists with a nice restaurant where we had no choice but to go that evening for dinner. We had wanted to go into Delhi but it would have taken about an hour in the endless traffic and we weren't sure where we would have gone once we got there. That was the drawback of this trip... remaining inside the bubble meant eating at the hotel, and while the food was very good, it didn't feel like we were really experiencing our surroundings. The Lonely Planet suggestions were all for those who were willing to get their feet wet and more-than-likely to get sick.

The next morning at our usual breakfast buffet while chewing on a piece of roti, I felt and heard a crack as half of my molar broke off. I looked at Peter with such a stunned expression, I am sure he thought I must be having a stroke and my mind raced as I tried to comprehend what had just happened. With a gaping hole in my mouth and half of a tooth in my hand I knew this wasn't just going to go away. Our guide, Lalit, and driver, Jantin, were coming to pick us up that morning (it was Sunday) to drive to Jaipur, a four hour drive from Delhi. When Lalit arrived, I anxiously told him of my predicament, thinking that it would make sense to look for a dentist in Delhi, a city of 13 million people vs. Jaipur, pop. 2 million, but he wanted to get going to Jaipur saying that he had family there who could give us recommendations.

The drive to Jaipur on the "National Highway" is only about 125 miles but it takes 4 hours because for most of the time the Highway is a parking lot of cars, trucks, rickshaws, mototaxis, camel and buffalo carts, mopeds, motorbikes and people...more on traffic in an upcoming post!

We arrive in Jaipur at our last Carlson stay, the Country Inn and Suites, an 8-story high rise looming above the "pink city". After passing through a rigorous security check, I ask the lovely sari-clad women at the front desk if they can recommend a dentist and they tell they will research it and give me an answer later that day. We do a bit of preliminary sight seeing with our Jaipur guide, an Eddie Haskell-ish, smarmy character with pointy shoes and badly colored hair, and then return to the hotel to find out about dentists. They tell us they have found one right around the corner and we can go there now. So all four of us, Lalit, Jantin, Peter and me, drive around the corner to a sketchy-looking store front with a bright neon sign flashing "Gupta's Dental Care".

We proceed to the waiting room and an older woman tells us that the Doctor will be with us shortly. I look around at the walls and wonder if we are in the right place. It is clearly a waiting room for a medical doctor: are they one and the same in India?? Neither Lalit or Jantin seem to know either: I don't think they frequent these establishments very often. (we later find out that Gupta Sr. is the MD and Jr. is the DDS... as in most of India, it's all in the family.) After about an hour the woman comes out to tell us we can see Dr. Gupta now and instructs Peter and me to head up some stairs on the outside of the building to the Dental office. Dr. Basant Gupta, who looks about 17, greets us with a very confident and brisk manner and asks me to sit in his dental chair. It is a bare bones office, with one florescent light, a dental chair and sink, a desk and a TV turned to music videos (Beyonce is pictured here).

Dr. Gupta blasts a jet of air into my cracked tooth and I practically jump out of the chair. "We have to do a root canal" he pronounces. I protest and ask why we can't just do a temporary fix but he insists I will be in serious pain soon if I don't do anything and I can't really argue with that. He calls his endodontist friend who comes over in less than 15 minutes and they begin working on me for the next four hours. Peter stays with me, taking pictures and chatting with the two dentists, who are clearly happy to have a challenging case and a paying patient. As far as root canals go, this was really not too painful...although I did have to insist on another shot of Novocaine and the endodontist (a very serious fellow whose name I never got) kept asking me "is it paining?" as he stuck the needles further into the roots of my tooth. By 10:30 that evening (This is Sunday night but I have a feeling Dr. Gupta doesn't keep regular hours) I have a neatly cemented root canal and impressions of my tooth have been sent out for a crown to be implanted the next day...all for 34,000 INR's or about $600, which explains the burgeoning medical/dental tourism in this country. Although Dr. Gupta's specialty is cosmetic dentistry, he spends most of his time pulling teeth of his Indian patients because they can't afford anything else. No wonder he pulls out all the stops when he gets a willing and desperate American!

Postscript on my dental drama: after three weeks, my tooth is just fine; Dr. Gupta did an excellent job. The only residual effect is a very sore jaw joint from having held my jaw open for over four hours without the assistance of a dental block to allow the joint to rest. I guess that's a small price to pay for an adventure definitely worth writing home about!

5. Relaaaahx.... yoga in India

As a devoted yogini and yoga instructor, one of my objectives for this trip was to experience yoga in India. I think most yoga practitioners in the U.S. have a romanticized notion about yoga and India (something perpetuated by the official India travel website "Incredible India") but I had been disabused of that notion before heading out by Desiree Rumbaugh, a leading Anusara Yoga teacher, who told me that she had been disappointed by the level of yoga practiced in India and believes that we have gone so much further with the practice here. There is "health club yoga" available at most western hotels and, of course, numerous ashrams that cater to westerners who want the whole spiritual experience. But like most things that we take for granted here, my guess is that majority of people in India are just trying to survive on a daily basis and while they may worship their Hindu gods religiously, asanas are probably not part of a daily routine. There was an interesting pro/con opinion piece in the India Times about whether or not yoga is a spiritual practice: one side claiming it is just for health and excercise and the other saying it is spiritual. This was in response to extremist Muslims in Indonesia who want to crack down on the practice there.

So my one yoga opportunity was on our last morning at the White Sands resort. Peter and I signed up for an hour class (about $14/person) and we headed out to the yoga lawn, a circle of close-cut grass under some cashew trees near the beach. Truly an idyllic setting! Our instructor, who had spent four years at a Shivaananda ashram in Kerala, was very pleasant and serene and dressed in white tunic and baggy pants. Another staff person accompanied us ... he was dressed like a gardener or a maintenance person. After a brief Sanskrit chant, we ran through a number of sun salutations and a few elementary poses (never once did he use a Sanskrit term for a pose; all was in heavily-accented English). Towards the end of the practice he asked us (it was just Peter and me and the gardener) to lie down on our mats face up and he began to chant relaaaahhhx in a om-like chant, focusing on body parts, starting from the head and moving towards our toes: "relaaaahhx the face", etc... listening to his well-meaning but somewhat tedious drone, I was finding it hard to relaaaahhhx and I pretty much lost it when he said "relaaahhhx the buttocks", trying hard not to giggle out loud. Peter said he enjoyed the hour and was really relaxed. I enjoyed the experience for different reasons. I make no claims to be an expert on yoga in India and we could have found an "Eat, Pray, Love" ashram and really experience it fully if time and circumstances had permitted. ...well...at least I can say I did practice yoga on the beach in Goa! That's good enough for me for now!

4. Goa for a day --not long enough!

Our decision (rather my decision) to take an economy flight (the aforementioned SpiceJet) for the one hour flight from Mumbai to Goa was a bad one as we ended up spending the entire day at the Mumbai domestic airport for our plane to come in from Delhi. An expensive meal at the airport restaurant and conversations with fellow stranded passengers from Germany and Russia kept us from going stir crazy. Astrid had flown from Berlin via Helsinki (it's actually closer...look on a globe) to Mumbai the night before and had been waiting at the gate since early that morning. She was still alert and talkative, unlike the Russian couple next to her who were comatose and wrapped around each other, and eager to practice her English. When we asked if she had been to the U.S., she said "no, only to New York and California", which perhaps means she considers the midsection of the country to be the "real America"? ...hmmm she didn't look like a Palin supporter.

We finally made it to our hotel, the Radisson White Sands Resort in south Goa, by about 7 p.m. that evening after dropping Astrid off at a small town on the way. She was meeting up with friends and then off to an ashram for 10 days. This resort was absolutely beautiful and a welcome retreat from our days in Delhi and Mumbai. I felt a momentary pang of guilt about not getting out and seeing the countryside but given that we only had a day and it was unbelievably hot, we just spent our time in and at the pool. I think we were one of only about 20-30 guests at the resort at the high season... another victim of the hard economic times and terrorism fears. The few other guests were mainly Russians, including one loud, boorish drunk fellow who shouted orders to the staff in Russian. We learned later from our Indian friends that Goa is the retreat destination for the Russian Mafia and I think some of them were at the White Sands. At any rate... nice Americans like us were very warmly received and appreciated! We had dinner down at the beach that night and had the waiters and chef all to ourselves. Our waiter loved posing us for pictures and took some really nice ones using no flash at night:


We had wonderful fresh grilled tiger prawns and fish that had been caught that day and many good memories of our short beach stay. Govind, our waiter and talented photographer:

3. Slumdog is a hot dog everywhere except in India

Slumdog Millionaire opened at theaters across India the week we arrived and there was much discussion in the Indian papers about it...most not too positive. It was seen as derivative and not a real picture of India and much of the commentary centered on the fact that it had been directed by a Brit so of course it was biased. Towards the end of our trip, I read a news item saying that the film had disappointed at the Indian box office (there were English and Hindi versions), not doing nearly as well as the usual Bollywood fare. But it makes sense that the escapist Bollywood musical would do much better in a country where the median wage is less than $2 a day and half are illiterate. They don't want to see their lives portrayed on the screen when they plunk down their precious rupies, no matter how redeeming it might be at the end!

Our day in Mumbai started with long drive from our hotel far north of the city in Aarey Milk Colony (an area of dairies and forests with high rises scattered about at random, some unfinished and abandoned --it felt a bit like Corpus Christie after the 80's S&L bust). The area might have been pretty if hadn't been littered with trash and slum shacks and populated with feral dogs and pigs and roaming cows, which we came to learn was part of the landscape everywhere we went. There are some Bollywood studios in the area and, similar to L.A., you can see them from a distance, like walled citadels not inviting or welcoming to their surroundings.

We negotiated with the hotel concierge for a driver to take us into the city, which we found was really the only way green westerners like us could get around. I kept thinking that we could take a train as directed in the Lonely Planet Guide, but that was just not possible, given our lack of knowledge of the area and inability to cope with the crowds. And drivers are very cheap by western standards: to have a driver take us all around Mumbai and back to the hotel for a day was about $40. The only drawback is that they usually speak little or no English (our driver from Agra to Delhi was illiterate --he had a cellphone but he couldn't write his phone number down for us) and they really can't act as a reliable tour guide. You have to know what you want to see and where you want to go and be clear about it. Which means you have to read up on the subcontinent before ever setting foot on it: we read the suggested books and watched the films listed in the Lonely Planet beforehand and it was a great help.

Ok on to Mumbai: the first stop was the Dhobi Ghat, Mumbai's 136 year-old laundry where every day thousands of pounds of laundry are pounded by hand in 1026 open air troughs. We then made our way to the tip of the peninsula and to the India Gate (where the terrorists landed on November 26 2008) and the Taj hotel (pictured above), which is open but still has boarded up floors. We went through the tight security into the hotel and it was a calm oasis from all the noise, peddlers and heat outside. As we noted all throughout India, the hotel staff were always very gracious and happy to see us as tourism has dropped precipitously since the terrorist attacks and financial crises. This was evident at the Taj where we felt quite welcome to sit in the lobby even though we weren't hotel guests. After a lunch at the Leopold Cafe, which still has bullet holes in the window, we found our driver and told him we wanted to go a market mentioned in the Lonely Planet. It was lost in translation as we ended up in a section of the city were we were definitely the only palefaces for miles around and our car was surrounded by a mass of humanity going about their daily business. The beautiful, colorful saris that adorn all the women from every caste were floating on storefront hooks, along with household products, machinery, food stalls and produce of all varieties but we were stuck in our car --our bubble-- unable to get out and see or touch anything due to the crush of people.

Desperately seeking a respite we headed for Nehru Park with a view of the city and Marine Drive with a final stop at Ghandi's residence while he lived in Bombay, which was serene. Views from Ghandi's balcony and Nehru Park:

2. Delhi to Mumbai, Kingfisher is the only way to fly

Day 2. Flight from Delhi to Mumbai on Kingfisher Airlines. A wonderful experience! ...Like flying Western Airlines way back when and Peter couldn't stop ogling the young "stews" who served us warm meals and chocolates. This is the entrepreneurial India... Kingfisher's owner comes on the in-seat video and you know he's in charge. Oh ...if only all of our intra India travel were to be like that first flight...but Spice Air, the discount airline that we took from Mumbai to Goa and then back to Delhi, was more like Easy Jet with a little bit of Northwest apathy/surliness thrown in. We were delayed at the Mumbai airport for 5 1/2 hours for our one hour flight to Goa which cut into our woefully short time there. And those flights were the ususal cattle calls that we are so used to in the U.S. We were very glad we weren't on the Spice Air flight from Goa to Delhi two days later when a passenger went berserk and held eveyone hostage for 6 hours on the tarmac in Delhi!

Before tackeling Mumbai, a little background on this trip might be helpful to some of you. Last June (pre-financial apocolypse) we bought an auction item at a Minnesota International Center Benefit: 9 consecutive nights at Carlson (Radisson, Park Plaza, Country Inn) properties in India. We had choices all over India and narrowed it down to Delhi, Mumbai, Goa (I knew the beaches were worth seeing) and the Golden Triangle, ending up in Agra to stay with the family of our friends Ghopal and Angeli Khanna. The rest of the trip was up to us to plan...I asked the Carlson company for a travel agent in their network who really knew India and we got Kat Parker, based in Boise Idaho, who was a tremendous help. Through her friend Ravi, we made arrangements for air travel in India as well as ground transportation and guides in the Golden triangle before going, which I am very glad we did. Hense the whirlwind tour and the 5-star accommodations, which would not necessarily be our travel mode when not on business. The properties, with the exception of the Mumbai hotel, were wonderful and we were grateful for a clean, western and quiet room each night after the sensory overload of the day.




Peter here, I feel it necessary to explain my stupified look in the above photo. You see, India has not yet moved beyond the "Coffee, tea, or me?" era of airline accommodation. They don't realize that we in the enlightened west prefer our flight attendants to be more prison-matron like in demeanor and appearance. As an interesting historical note, Ann Montgomery tells me that this photo is an example of "cupping", which was first demonstrated on network television by Mary Tyler Moore in "The Dick Van Dyke Show". You can learn something new every day!

1. Republic Day means never having to say you're sorry

January 26, 2009

Our first day in India. Delhi on Republic Day. We have tickets to the Republic Day parade --primo seats in a viewing stand at the intersection of Janpath and Rajpath thanks to our friend Ravi Shankar. We get a cab to take us to the drop off point in the city center for 300 INRs (about $6) and we walk about a mile through numerous security checks with thousands of parade goers, passing hundreds of military police with submachine guns who bark at the crowd to move one direction or the other. We finally arrive at the final gate to our seats only to be told we can't bring in a backpack, camera or cell phone. After several attempts at redistributing our gear and telling the checkers that our i-phones are only calculators, we realize that we aren't going to make it through. One less-than-helpful guard says "can't you read the sign??" and points to the back side of the gate that lists the prohibited items. We stand to the side and don't feel so bad as we watch self-important diplomats get turned away as well and we can see glimpses of the parade through the tanks and military personal. ...a lot of precision marching by soldiers with fancy hats (not sure that precision reflects the rest of the Indian military or police from what we've seen...) and a brass band on camels! (too bad Peter couldn't get a shot of that --we weren't supposed to be taking any pictures...most were surreptitiously taken with his "calculator" and were the backs of people's heads)

So that was our first introduction to India... after some whirlwind sight seeing with our guide to the QUTB Minar (highlighted in the PBS show "Story of India" --a tower constructed in 1193 at the onset of Islamic rule) and Huymayun's tomb --the precursor to the Taj Mahal, we were off to Mumbai the next day.