I do not love India

I'm not quite sure how to approach a description of my last two weeks in India, but I suppose it could not be ignored. I don't want to be too mean, so I will focus on some highlights:

• Sleeping on the train and getting up in the night and finding a policeman asleep in our cabin using his AK as a pillow, luckily it wasn't really aiming at me. The same train ride spending most of the time squashing cockroaches that were running all over our seats with our Lonely Planet.


• Glasses of chai and amazing food at street side stands.


• Being asked constantly if I would be in a photograph with Indians. If I said yes they would arrange their families around me, or take at least a couple with just them. This happens all the time, everywhere.


• Going into a Hindu temple while several men were playing the haunting sitar, a rythum unknown to Western ears without any sort of regular downbeat. Watching others clap and sing along.


• A typical street in Rajhistan- constant honking of horns, cows, dogs, camels, elephants and more traffic than you could imagine, rickshaws and bicycles, tuk tuk and more honking. A man talking on a cell phone as he sits on a wooden cart pulled by a camel with a heavy load attached to it.


• Finding our Colombian boys to be bodyguards from awful Indian men and the four of us renting a car and driver to negotiate Rajhistan.


• Riding a camel named Mona in the desert.


• Riding the train with no windows, listening to it chug along the tracks, no filter to the outside world, nothing but wind and smells and pure sound. Watching the sun set over unfiltered India as the green rice paddies jostled by.


• Watching a Bollywood movie being filmed, then going to one in the theater, quite the Indian experience!


• The Colombians coming into my room to sing me happy birthday and bring me breakfast in bed.


• Later in the day, exploring an old fort, everyone singing happy birthday to me in the echoing "om" room.


• Seeing the beggars, most notably a man with Leprocy with his nose twisted inside out in a spiral so you could see what should have been on the inside of it.


• Watching Hare Krishna worshipers sing and walk around the lake in Pushkar as I was up at dawn watching the sun rise, hoping for a quiet moment in India.


• Walking through the tented camps of the untouchables, India's lowest caste, seeing how these people live in tiny tents with nothing, absolutely nothing, and the types of society they formed in the rubble.


• Getting our driver drunk the night of my birthday and having him read our palms.


• The Colombians on our last night, the four of us together, with this cute little skit, giving us our bracelets of the Colombian flag and helping us to memorize the Colombian pledge of allegiance, our ticket to visit them in Colombia.


• The rat temple- probably the coolest thing I saw in Rajhistan. The whole temple is dedicated to rats, and it is a virtual playground for them. They have free reign of the place and plenty of food and milk. They have all these little holes to run through and there are thousands of rats all over the temple that run over your feet as you walk through. The happiest rats in the world!

A word about India- I want to be kind, I really do. It is not in my nature to visit a country and dislike it. I don't expect a country I visit to conform to me or my cultural expectations and I think I am usually pretty easy going and accepting. I know that I am a visitor and should adapt to their customs, I am lucky to be able to visit their country and I have no right to complain. But India was hard. Part of the challenge of India is exhilarating. There is a feeling of chaos and that anything can happen. I love that, and the dirt and grime and assaults on reason. All of that is great, but the feeling was overshadowed by constantly feeling violated. This is a country where despite how conservatively you dress, men bump into you in the streets to cop a feel.

Colleen and I were constantly started at by Indian men. It is not a normal staring either. I was stared at a lot in Africa, but it had a feeling of curiosity to it, completely different. In India it is a horrible, creepy, violating, awful, uncomfortable leer that makes me ashamed to be a woman. It never goes away. We got it from old men, young men, boys, men in restauraunts, rickshaw drivers, vendors, taxi drivers, men on buses, men on trains, men in the street. I wrote earlier about the men crowding into our train compartment. This happened constantly. Men would try to force me into stares or corners, grab my crotch or boobs as I passed in the street.

I had a pharmacist completely violate me but I was naive and trusted him because he was a doctor. It was really bad, we are talking under the bra, bad groping. I could feel his disgusting hands for days and wanted to rip off my own skin. I can't convey how violated and horrible I felt all the time in India. The men look at you fully clothed as if you are naked and you want to crawl up inside your skin and die.

Aside from the men, India was hard for me not because of the general chaos or lack of development. It was hard because of the crowds and traffic. I had a hard time because people were always pushing and there is no such thing as a line. Walking down the street with every single car honking at me, coming within a couple centimeters of hitting me and getting hit a few times, was enough to push me over the edge of a nervous breakdown every time I walked on the street. I am a nervous driver to begin with, but I had to take Valium before getting in the car with our driver we came so close to accidents so many times. Not only am I the only person to take imodium in India, but I think I was the only one to wear a seat belt! But all of these things are laughable and part of the adventure. I suppose that is what makes them forgivable, but the men, were not. When it comes down to it, all the developing country stuff is the appeal of difficult travel. But the feeling of being violated should not be a part of that.

In case I sound too harsh without justification, I will end with my final experience in India, my trip to the airport, which I think about sums it all up. I had ordered a taxi because I had a 1am flight out of India. I confirmed this taxi 3 times, but of course it did not show up. My flight time was rapidly approaching, so I had to grab a rickshaw off the street. The Colombian boys helped me flag it down and made a big show of taking down the licence number and all since I was by myself and it was late at night. We had not been driving for 3 minutes when the driver pulled off down a dark ally and tried to force me to kiss him. I took out a pen to stab him in the ear if it because necessary and told him to get driving, loudly and aggressively. It was really scary though and so late at night I could have really been in trouble. He was barely paying attention to the road because he was spending all his time looking at me in the rear-view mirror. His look would change from this intense, probing, sexual, devouring, evil stare to this demented, creepy, violating smile. I was so unbelievably sickened and uncomfortable. I tightened my grip on my pen and wished I had more. I had told him to take me to the international airport over and over and made sure he knew, but of course, he took me to the domestic, despite me telling him where to turn, he would just ignore me. I arrived about 5 minutes before my flight was due to close and barely made it on.

I tried to like India, I really did.

Alien Baby (India)

Lets talk about poop. This is something we tend to shy away from at home, but when traveling, it is inevitable that it will come up (usually in detail and frequently) even with people you have just met. Now India is infamous for Delhi Belly, the runs, diareah, whatever you want to call it. You mention you are going to India and sage travelers tell of their horror stories. Everyone you meet in India has their own tales. It is just assumed that if you go to India, you get sick. It is considered a right of passage.

I am not a cautious when it comes to food. I eat from street vendors, use ice, brush my teeth with tap water, so I was fully prepared to get sick. In fact, I even counted on it to lose the weight I gained in Europe. Unfortunately my plan was foiled. I really do have a stomach of steel because despite my lackadasical nature regarding the sanitariness of my food, I am probably the only person ever to go to India and need laxatives.

Collen had her own battle with India when she first arrived. I met her a week later and was scared to hug her because I thought I might break her. I nicknamed her Skelator and looked at the bones protruding out of her skin with hopeful excitement.

I brushed my teeth with tap water. I ate more from the street than not, I ate at questionable restaurants. The stomach of steel prevailed. Colleen is an adventurous eater too. In Nepal we had our favorite restaurant that was maybe a little dodgy. There were bugs on the walls and the toilet might have been the worst toilet in the world (and I consider myself an expert on horrible toilets after travels in remote Asia and Africa). But the food was cheap and amazing and we ate there twice a day almost every day in Kathmandu.

One night we decided to bring out British boys to our gem of a restaurant. They, being on a bigger budget, had slightly more delicate constitutions. We found this out the next morning on the bus to go rafting. I looked over at one of the boys and he had turned green. Long story short, there was an unscheduled stop for the bus and I have never seen someone duck behind a building and run so quickly when he thought he was out of view. It struck the other boy about an hour down the road. We were already stopped and he got off and went to the nearest "bathroom." He came back, obviously shaken, pale from horror of what he had seen, proceeded to empty half a bottle of hand sanitizer in his palm and refused to talk about it or even joke about it which says a lot for him. I waited anxiously for my turn but nothing came.

It was after rafting that Colleen got sick again. We both got sick at the same time, but with opposite problems. We joked about the alien baby inside of me. If being pregnant feels like 9 months of that, forget it. I have never been so envious in my life as when I watched Colleen or the boys dash off to the toilet at meal times and frequently in between. It was uncanny to continue to be hungry and to eat and have nothing come out.

So I sucked it up and went to the pharmacy and told the pharmacist that I wanted laxatives.

"Imodium." He said wisely.

"No, laxatives." I countered.

"Travelers, diarrhea," the pharmacist nodded, "I know."

"No, no, the opposite. To make you go." Just to make sure there was no mistake I did this with a hand gestured that could be considered a bit lewd but stopped short of sound effects, for which I think the pharmacist was grateful. I took a moment to admire my own tact.

Doubtfully, the pharmacist handed over the laxatives. Apparently what goes in does not have to come out when you are growing an alien baby inside you.

Back in India, I began to tempt fate- homemade ice cream popsicals from the street, a sip of tap water here and there (I drank a lot of this in Kathmandu to no avail), really strange street food, unpeeled fruit, fresh salads, homemade juice. Guess what? Alien babies like that stuff, I think it makes them stay in. So moral of the story is, not everyone gets Delhi Belly, and for me, whether I want it or not, my stomach of steel (maybe refined after years of sketchy travel eating) prevails. Hopefully the alien baby will come out soon and not explode through my belly button as I continue to imagine on long bus rides when I am bored. It's not a pretty sight if it does.