Cyclic Reality

Pushkar

Brahma dropped a lotus flower on the earth and a shitload of people decided to have a camel fair in Pushkar. This camel fair was nuts. There are thousands of camels, hundreds of thousands of people in this tiny town for this crazy thing that lasts 10 days. I had to come after watching Michael Wood’s BBC documentary on the history of India. It looked mad and awesome. The madness was easy to find. The awesomeness took a bit. I was already a bit frazzled and tired of getting hassled. The first day people were grabbing my arm in the streets, asking me to take pictures and then trying to charge me and just bugging the piss out of me. It was hot and crowded on the fairgrounds and I felt overwhelmed. There were very few places to retreat to.

2010: 01/04
CATEGORY: Uncategorized
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Jodhpur

In Jodhpur I had a really great cup of cappucino.

…

That’s it. That’s pretty much all I could come up with to write about Jodhpur. It’s a great city to visit. It has a nice fort with a good audio guide, a palace with a hotel in it, a beautiful mausoleum and an atmospheric old city. Unfortunately, so does every other city I’ve visited in Rajasthan and north India, it seems.
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2010: 01/04
CATEGORY: Locations
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Dreams and the desert of reality

As I sleep in the upper berth on the twenty hour train ride to Jaisalmer, I wake to a massive cacophony of English language wasted energy. Two English women, a mother and daughter team, are trying to fit three massive bags into the smallish compartment area while shouting and complaining at each other at high volume. The lane into the train is blocked for minutes while the beds are critiqued, flea spray is sprayed everywhere, including onto all the other passengers, lights are switched on and bags are shoved around. Eventually they decide they don’t want the blankets on their berths, so they shove them onto the upper berth. The mom continues to try to push them up, seeming not to understand what the strange person shaped lump is that is blocking them from balancing. Finally I grab them with one arm and say “I’ll hold them til you get settled.” She says “Oh. I didn’t know you were there” and goes back to bustling and disturbing everyone. I think it’s evidence that some people get a little out of their element when they travel. They should have stuck to airplanes.
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2010: 01/04
CATEGORY: Activities
Locations
Musings
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Delhi Diwali

In Delhi for Diwali, I walk down the street as the chaotic launch of fireworks continues for hours from every direction. One of the most popular directions seems to be “five feet from the foreigner’s leg.” After the first hundred or so, I cease to stop, drop and roll at each explosion. But I do wonder if Bush ever considered calling the “Shock and Awe” campaign “A Beautiful Fireworks Display for the Liberation of Iraq From The Oppressor Saddam Hussein” I think that this must sound and feel exactly like Baghdad at the beginning of the invasion and also that I would possibly be a great White House Press Secretary.
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2010: 01/04
CATEGORY: Uncategorized
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The World is Flat Out Creepy

As the touts and tourist prices of Agra fade with my anger into memory, I find myself on a government bus to Jaipur crammed into a seat next to a skinny young Indian man. He is on his way to take a test to become a police commander and he has questions for a white man like me. These questions include:

“Can you get your female friends to e-mail me from America?” Unfortunately, I forgot to write down his address, ladies.

“How many women have you had intercourse with in the last year?” I wondered if he got this question from the Sexual Repression section of the Indian Census.

“In your country, women have sex in train stations and the street?” Gee, I’ll have to ask my mom and sister about that…

Good times. Eventually, I just said “This is the part where I stop talking to you.”

2010: 01/04
CATEGORY: Uncategorized
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The Tourist Tax in Agra

Sorry for the lack of posts. I’m trying to get caught up while hanging out on the beach in Goa. Some of these posts have been sitting around my laptop for a long while.

The most famous sight in India is the Taj Mahal. Every tourist visits it. It’s one of the wonders of the world. Made out of translucent white marble, it’s a fantastically beautiful memorial to Shah Jahan’s third wife, Mumtaz. It was also absurdly expensive. Marble and precious stones were transported from across India and Asia to build it. At the time, the Mughal empire in India was the richest empire in the world. Perhaps Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal due to his pure love for his wife and a willingness to accept any cost to build the perfect tomb. Or maybe he was investing in the future of india, knowing that someday foreign tourists would pay a lot of money to visit this monument.

The Taj Mahal admission fee is the perfect example of the tourist tax that frustrates many foreign visitors to India. The fee to enter the Taj Mahal is 750 rupees for foreign tourists (about 15 dollars) and 20 rupees for Indian citizens. The per capita income of the average Indian is about 1068 USD, whereas the per capita income of the average American is about 44 times that at 47000 USD. So, the entrance fee is about right if you compare per capita incomes. But is this moral or fair? Should foreigners pay 32 times what locals pay? It certainly makes sense that the poor of India should be able to visit their own monuments, so I can’t really begrudge the 20 rupee price tag. That’s still a lot for the average Indian.
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2009: 12/08
CATEGORY: Locations
Musings
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The Planned City

The final Le Courbosier plan for Chandigarh

After partition in 1947, the former capital of Punjab, Lahore, became a part of Pakistan. This meant that Punjab in India needed a new capital. The government decided that none of the existing cities were suitable. So, the first prime minister of India, Jawarhal Nehru decided to have a new city built to represent the new modern spirit of India. Initially, he commissioned two Americans to design it, Mayer and Nowicki, but when one was killed in a plane crash, he was forced to find a new architect/city planner. He chose Le Corbusier, who is responsible for most of the grid design of the city of Chandigarh today as well as the concrete architecture of its major buildings.

2009: 10/27
CATEGORY: Locations
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Amritsar

When the bus pulled into Amritsar, I could see that I was finally back in India. I had left the mist-capped mountain retreats, the hummus-peddling tourist restaurants and I was back in the land of cycle rickshaws and dhabas. Also, I had been traveling with people since Leh, so I was on my own again, which felt right after all the foreign tourists in the mountains.

Amritsar has some amazing sights and some of the most important history in India. The jewel of Amritsar is the Golden Temple, the most holy place to all members of the Sikh religion. You can generally recognize Sikhs due to their traditional turbans, dark beards and the ceremonial knife they carry. This is a fundamental part of their culture, so they continue to wear these things in England and the United States, making their small group instantly recognizable around the world.

2009: 10/03
CATEGORY: Activities
Events
Locations
Sights
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The Dalai Lama’s Home in Exile

I spent one week in the city of McLeod Ganj near Dharamsala in the state of Himachal Pradesh. The primary draw of this place is that it is the home of the Tibetan government in exile and contains the monastery of the Dalai Lama.

In 1950, China invaded Tibet with 30,000 troops, overwhelming its meagre defenses. Until then, Tibet (like Kashmir) was an independent nation which had maintained its autonomy until this invasion. After China invaded, Tibet signed the 17 points agreement, basically ceding all of its autonomy to China. Since then the occupation has produced brutality, which the tibetans estimate has resulted in the deaths of 1.2 million Tibetans and which has definitely caused many Tibetans to make the ridiculously arduous journey into exile in India across the frozen Himalayas.
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2009: 10/03
CATEGORY: Activities
Locations
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Paragliding over Manali

I spent about a week in Manali. This is quite a great place to get caught up. I stayed in the Dharma Guesthouse in a room with a private balcony and the views in the morning and evening over the valley were breathtaking.

I was completely lazy here. My one major event was the day I went paragliding and zorbing. This all took place at Solang Nalla, a winter ski area where they are currently building a ski lift. Students were learning to paraglide on the beginner slope, which was also the launch point for very short paragliding experiences.

2009: 09/23
CATEGORY: Activities
Locations
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