Category: India

Hello Again!

Since we last talked, Josh and Phil have been from Rajasthan in the North-West, back to smoggy-foggy Delhi, to Kerala at the southernmost tip of the continent, back to Roslindale.

Our story resumes in Jodhpur, where we attempted to get some custom bespoke clothes made. Despite the assurances of our hotel-keepers who insisted they could make it happen in only a day, it was a last minute scramble. As our departure drew nearer and nearer, the promised clothes were still not ready or didn’t quite fit. After getting all of Phil’s “identical” shirts to fit, our hoteliers called in some emergency reinforcements to sew the buttons on Josh’s shirts. The fill-in tailor wistfully asked if zippers would be an acceptable substitute, but we held out for the real thing.  At dawn, a pile of almost-fitting shirts awaited us as we checked out of our Adrian Brody suite for an early-morning bus to Jaipur.

Jaipur was the biggest city we’d experienced up to that point, with lots of traffic, endless touting, and more smog than we’d yet breathed. As usual, we didn’t “read” as American to the locals, and people would approach us speaking spanish, italian, and french. Phil had one hilarious encounter with a tout who greeted her in french and asked where she was from – Paris? Marseille? Toulouse?  She replied, in french, “the United States”, to which he wondered, “Oh, is that near Paris?”

While in Jaipur we were impressed by the ecological business practices of the city’s celebrated lassi-wallah. They serve a tasty version of the yogurt drink in cone-shaped, terra-cotta glasses. When you’re done with your lassi, you just smash your cup on the street! Truly biodegradeable packaging.

We loved our visit to the Raj Mandir cinema.  To experience the latest Bollywood spectacle, we had to purchase our tickets a day in advance. Every seat in the palatial theater was full, and the rowdily appreciative audience kept up a dull roar throughout the whole movie, cheering on the actors, answering their phones, and playing with their two year olds in the aisles. Although we could only understand a few words of dialogue, the broad comedy and wild musical numbers were plenty entertaining.

We also had a very enjoyable day outside of Jaipur in the village of Sanganer, which is known for its textiles. As the village was waking up, we wandered its back streets, discovering lots of factories and workshops. We toured a paper factory, a cloth bleaching and dying yard with rows and rows of flowing banners of fabric drying on multi-story bamboo racks, numerous wood block carving shops, and their sister workshops where workers hand-printed multicolored textile patterns, carefully aligning each layer with the last.

From Jaipur we returned to Delhi, where our cavalier approach to street food (or was it the overpriced tourist restaurant we went to?) inevitably caught up with us in the form of tummy sickness. We were very lucky to be taken in during our moment of weakness by the excellent hospitality of the Thrukals, a retired professor and his wife who are friends of friends of friends. We felt blessed to be included in their family and comfortable home, as they showered us with parental nurturing, healthy food, and sage advice.

Unfortunately, we spent one feverish night while our antibiotics battled it out with the bugs. After erupting from both ends, Phil fell into a delirious sleep that was interrupted by a horrifying incident which may or may not have occurred. Dreaming of a dog licking her face, she awoke violently with the sensation of a rat nesting in her sweater. She screamed and tore off her clothes and swears she saw a shadowy apparition retreating into the bathroom. But when Josh went to look, there were no rodents to be found… Needless to say, we spent the next few nights sleeping with the light on.

Thoroughly recovered and recharged by our delightful visit with Dr. and Mrs.  Thrukal, we departed freezing cold Delhi for steamy Kerala.  It’s a whole different world – palm trees, Christians, and a generally more laid-back and hassle-free vibe.  Our first stop, was Cochi, a region kind of like the Bay Area in that it’s made up of several islands and peninsulas linked by bridges and ferries.  In Fort Cochin, the touristy old section, we did the “paying guesthouse scheme” and stayed with Beena, the local health inspector, and her helpful husband.  The sweet couple made us feel very welcome, fed us delicious Keralan home cookin’ until we begged them to stop, and even bade us a teary farewell when we left.

At Beena’s we spent a fair amount of time reading Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.  Much of the novel is set amidst India’s contentious religious history — language riots, partition, and ethnic cleansing.  This history stood in sharp contrast to the world we were experiencing.  At Beena’s, for example, Christ and Krishna coexisted next to each other on her mantle.  In general, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, and Christians seemed to have found an Oaklandesque peaceful coexistence, and several people told us that they enjoyed celebrating everyone’s major religious holidays.

After Delhi’s chills, we were so ready for a trip to the beach that we took a ferry, lengthy bus ride, and walked 2 kilometers.  The water was warm and it was fun to watch the Indian families and school kids swimming fully clothed in their saris and uniforms.  Phil was even more of a spectacle than usual despite wearing her modest (and quite ugly) paisley, Morrocan, one-piece, bathing suit.  At the beach, we plopped our stuff next to a cheerful and somewhat odd young Serbian guy.  A mask-maker at home, this queeny chap was so excited about his newly acquired pink, psychedelic, gauzy pants.  (For some reason tourists in India really love to buy the “MC Hammer” low-hanging butt pants.)  He had bought two pairs just in case something happened to the first one and told us that he was seriously considering going back for more.  He also was really into the kathakali show he’d been to the night before and kept muttering “kathakali, kathakali” while dreamily bobbing his head from left to right.

It was clear we had to experience a kathakali show for ourselves.  This traditional form of theater includes elaborate facial make-up, and focuses lots of attention on very small, exaggerated movements.  Elaborate eye-rolls and mouth twitches express emotion, while the story’s dialogue is communicated through a system of hand sign language. The piece we saw told a story that basically consisted of a demon, disguised as a beautiful woman, repeatedly making sexual advances to a prince who spurned her attentions and eventually killed her.

From Cochi it was off to Munnar, another entirely new landscape.  A long winding bus ride led us into lush, green mountains.   At dawn, we watched the sunrise while “trekking” up a foggy mountain and spent the afternoon wandering through Munnar’s famous rolling tea fields.   At one point, our hike had a soundtrack, at first pleasant but then oddly loud and repetitive for such a deserted landscape.  Crossing a rickety wooden bridge, we came upon a small Hindu temple with large speaker horns blasting from the trees and realized we had found the source of the devotional broadcast.

The next morning we wound down the mountain before dawn where the ferry in Kottayam was waiting to bring us to our next exotic locale– the Keralan backwaters.   Described by some as the Venice of India, Alleppey is a jungley region where life takes place along the banks of palm tree lined canals and rice fields, and the waters are plied by elaborate thatched houseboats.  An upscale attraction for many tourists, Indian and Foreign alike, these boats come in a range of size and oppulence and offer all the conveniences of modern life, including television, air-conditioning, and a personal chef.  We opted not to take one, but enjoyed lazing about on the banks of the canal in the hammocks, deck chairs, and chilling platforms of our hotel while waving to the passing tourists and listening to the nightly cacophony of crows nesting in the palm trees over our heads.

A “short” bus ride away, Varkala offered us yet another stunning landscape with a cliff dramatically overlooking a pristine, Euro-doppled beach.  There were more white people than we’d seen in our entire trip.  As it was our last few nights, we opted to splurge and for $20 bucks we stayed at the ayurvedic dental spa at the edge of the cliff.  After a day spent alternating dips in the waves with intense sessions trying to finish our 500 page Rushdie epic, we finally made it to a cooking class.  Although we think of ourselves as pretty good cooks, our biggest challenge was learning to make parathas.  The dough has to be flapped just so before being twisted, rolled, and fried.  What was blindingly obvious to any Keralan who grew up making this daily staple turned out to be incredibly difficult to teach to the hilariously clumsy tourists.  We were reduced to practicing with a dirty dishrag after Phil slammed the dough down a little too vigorously.  In the end, she got the the wrist flap, finger pull, hand-twist motion down and we ate our own delicious meal under the full moon.

Although we’re finishing this travelogue 8,000 miles and 24 hour hours later, our last day (today) began before dawn once again as we flew back to Delhi.  Since we’d been sick the first time we were there, we felt like we had to make up for the attractions we’d missed so our first stop after landing was the International Toilet Museum.  Although Phil is obsessed with shitting, we were even more inspired than we expected.  After enjoying the historical toilet memorabilia, we were given a guided tour of a variety of composting, eco-friendly latrine models designed for India’s many poor rural areas.  With just two pits and one-liter of water per “flush,” these toilets produced safe “humanure,” which doesn’t smell and is excellent for agriculture and burning for heat.  In addition to environmental engineering, there was also social engineering at work.  While some of the toilets were simple squatters, one roofless, doorless model had been specially designed to satisfy old people who were accustomed to the pleasures of shitting in the open air.   The center also ran a public toilet facility used by 1,000 people per day, from which they harvested filtered water and methane gas that they used to fuel lamps, heaters, cook stoves, and even a power generator.  We met the man who had just built a similar facility to Kabul and was preparing to build more in Ethiopia.

From there, we headed to the Gandhi memorial at the home where the saintly leader spent his final 144 days.  We were eager to learn the history of Gandhi’s political evolution and enjoyed reading about his early non-violent struggles in South Africa.  We were less thrilled with the multimedia exhibit.  Although beautifully designed and conceived, the show’s innovative interactive input devices were lorded over by bored docents who forbade visitors from touching or manipulating anything.  Very frustrating for a former museum employee/interactive multimedia professor like Josh!

After a lovely dinner, we made our way back to Indira Gandhi International airport where it took the intervention of a Continental flunky to get us past the soldiers at the door.  Security has been greatly ramped up in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks and we marvelled at the way that Indian people’s seemingly compulsive need to cut in line and rush ahead clashed with endless queing, punctuated by answering questions about our baggage, being patted down, getting tags and tickets stamped, and having our luggage x-rayed.  We thought we were finally boarding our plane when, at the end of the gangway, the whole process was repeated all over again.  After 15 hours of flying, 4 on the bus, and a quick stop for lunch in Chinatown we are home safe, sound, and exhausted. It’s been the longest three weeks of our lives, a great introduction to India’s many wonders, and the best honeymoon anyone could wish for.

Namaste! Namaskar!  Hello!  Hi!  We’ve taken the Josh and Phil  Show back on the road.  This dispatch comes to you from Jodphur, India.  We’ve been traveling for exactly one week, and we have so much to share.

After narrowly escaping the blizzard in New York, we arrived in Delhi at 1 a.m. last Saturday  and were immediately subjected to one of the city’s best-loved scams– well, kind of a botched version. After the overwhelming experience we had on our first day in Bamako two years ago, our new philosophy is to get out of the big city as fast as possible upon arriving  in a new country.  Because our plane landed in Delhi three hours late, we decided to  go directly to the train station to wait for our early morning train.  Our taxi driver, however, insisted that the train station was closed and, in spite of our protestations, refused to take us to the entrance.  Normally at this point in the scam, the driver is supposed to take you somewhere where he gets paid a commission, but our driver had only lived in Delhi for 6 weeks and didn’t seem to have the routine down.  He floundered and didn’t really know what to do with us.  After much hassling and a pointless trip to a travel agent who assured us that all trains were delayed for 5 hours due to “fog,” we finally got him to take us to our original hotel where we dozed on the couch for a few hours and then walked to the train station, which is, of course, open 24-7.  At the train station, we were treated to Delhi’s second most popular scam where a nicely dressed man tried to insist that we needed to pay $96 to get a special stamp on our tickets.  Off to a great start!

Our first stop was Agra– best known for the Taj Mahal.  After a 5 hour bus ride, 15 hour flight, and 3 hour train ride, we were really excited to walk around town.  But a very old bicyle rickshaw driver had other ideas.   We tried to put him off as we walked to the Fort (home of the Maharajah and his 5,000 concubines), but the rickshaw driver would not be dissuaded.  He had a charming smile  and succeeded in getting us to agree to let him take us to the Taj.   We gamely boarded his vehicle but our American physiques proved to be too much for his scrawny Indian one.  Watching him strain to go down the hill, we considered offering to pedal.  Eventually our driver got off and pushed for a while before giving up and asking us to walk next to him.

December is prime Indian vacation time and the Taj sees about 40,000 visitors a day.  The lines were impressively long and slow moving, but many Indians seem to have an almost comical disregard for waiting their turn.  Even with fiercely whistling mustachioed police officers attempting to maintain order, hordes of people kept leap frogging their way into line as soon as their backs were turned.   In spite of the chaos, we somehow managed to find our old friend and frequent travelling companion Steve B in the crowd.

While the Taj was unbelievably impressive, we were tickled to realize that we were just as much of an attraction as the monument.  Teenage boys especially wanted to have their pictures taken with Phil, and an entire soccer team screamed with delight when we consented to join their photo.  We were also struck by the number of elderly gentlemen with shockingly orange henna-ed hair– apparently a popular way to cover your gray.  In the opposite age bracket, we’ve been intrigued by the babies sporting eye liner.

Joining forces with Steve and his affable driver Krish, we drove through many bustling villages and luminously yellow mustard fields on our way to Ranthambore and Bundi.  Driving in India is very reminiscent of a video game.   Beginner level obstacles include slow-moving cows and “diversion” signs.  Intermediate obstacles can be motorcycle rickshaws or camel drawn carts piled high with goods, while advanced obstacles include motorcycles driving the wrong way through traffic or small children leaping into the road.  The best strategy, it appears, is to drive down the center of the road so that you are well-positioned to dodge in any direction.  Good horning is also essential.  Trucks even have signs painted on the back requesting you to “honk please” and drivers honk before passing, honk to get another vehicle or animal to move out of the way, or honk just to say “hi”.  People even have custom honks– kind of like custom cell phone rings. Today we heard a car honking “Jingle Bells.”  Pretty weird in a country with so few Christians around.

As usual, we’ve been enjoying being somewhat of a spectacle and have made many friends along the way.   In Udaipur, we happened upon a band practicing in the bazaar.  After learning that Josh is a musician, they produced a guitar and we improvised a cross-cultural rendition of the bollywood classic “Dum Maro Dum.”   We also met an incredibly knowledgeable samosa-wallah who introduced us to the pleasures of  the Kachori– kind of a like a samosa stuffed with falafel instead of potatoes– and showed us pictures of hot bollywood babes on his cell phone while expressing his love of Arnold Schwarzenegger.    In Bundi, we  stayed with a delightful family and enjoyed playing with their kids as well as their home cooked meal.  After whispering to us to pay her directly and NOT her mother-in-law, the mom of the family thrust her baby son onto Josh’s lap as we were driving away, leaving us wondering if we were unwitting foster parents or just a better car seat than the baby’s daddy who climbed in up front a few minutes later.

Over the past few days, we’ve also visited many interesting places.  In Bundi, we spent the afternoon exploring the labyrinthine passageways of a ruined palace built into the side of a mountain while avoiding the bands of cranky monkeys who were pissed to have so many tourists invading their home.  Our access was amazingly unrestricted, and we climbed over ramparts, through towers, and into countless secret passageways.  We also admired murals with hundreds of miniature figures whose arched eyebrows and pointy beards  made them all look a little like Josh.  In Udaipur we visited the crystal gallery.  In the Victorian era, the reigning  Maharajah was fascinated with cut crystal glass and placed a massive order for hundreds of pieces including a bed, several couches, dozens of fly-swatters, and lots and lots of dishware.  Unfortunately, he didn’t live long enough to enjoy his shipment, which remained unpacked in boxes until the current Maharajah unearthed it.

After this palatial opulence our fortune took a turn for the worse when we took our first “sleeper” bus last night.  Imagine a Greyhound bus where the luggage racks have been lowered and replaced by tiny berths just big enough for two.  Now imagine no blankets, cold air streaming in through windows that won’t stay shut, and bone-rattling roads.   Needless to say, we did not get much sleep and were overjoyed to check into our guesthouse this morning.  This  slightly dusty but very funky 500 year old house is run by a delightful family, and we have enjoyed chatting with them, and playing cars and ring around the rosy with their 3-year old son.  We are the only guests at the moment and are staying in the same room that Adrien Brody slept in while trying to escape the paparazzi at his 5-star hotel when he was in town filming Darjeeling Limited.

We hope all is well with you and that you have enjoyed your Christmas/Chanukah/Solstice celebrations.  We’d love to hear from you, so please post us a comment or shoot us an e-mail to say hey!

xoxoxo -Phil and Josh