Welcome to India
India
I am a social worker and a seasoned traveler. I am female and I have been backpacking off and on for 13 years. I have hit 35 countries along the way. I recently traveled to southeast Asia, originally was headed to Vietnam but due to the SARS and the war, I decided to tuck my tail between my legs and return to the States. My friend, Terri, and I researched the trip well. This nifty little website came in handy as well. But nothing prepared me for the Indian experience. I work in an emergency room and have seen lots of shit. Nothing really gets to me. Then I went to India. (The day before we arrived in New Delhi, Osama’s #1 man was arrested in Islamabad, 125 miles away.)
We are overwhelmed just getting off the plane in New Delhi. There are no Americans traveling right now and people in the immigration line tell us horror stories.
We buy a taxi voucher to get into town. They send a guy with us to walk to the “taxi,” which is a rotation of regular guys in their cars running trips to hotels, with no real organization. The guy walks us 50 feet to show us where to wait. When the taxi comes, he demands a tip. We hardly have any rupees so we blow him off. He rolls his eyes and cusses us in Hindi. The sneaky driver takes us to this shady back alley – a “government travel agency” and tries to force us to book the rest of our trip there, obviously getting kickbacks. I locked my car door so when they swarm us, they can not get us out of the car. We get to the hotel two hours after we left the airport.
The next morning we go to a legitimate agency to book our tickets to Agra and to get a guide/driver for the day. The driver comes. It takes an hour to find an ATM currency exchange. We go to the Red Fort. The driver has to pay to get into this one area to park. He must stay and wait in the parking lot and we have to take another rickshaw to get to the entrance. There is no place to park in the front and the complex is huge.
There are no other westerners and all the villagers are visiting the fort. They are taking pictures of us like we are a freak show. Irritating. The rickshaw driver waits for us and then takes us back to our other driver. He tries three times to get us to go to the markets and to convince us that the temple is closed. After haggling, we finally get back to the car. Everything is a struggle.
The driver then gets a ticket for not wearing a taxi uniform. This is a scam by the driver and the police. We argue with him and he becomes frustrated. He then claims he speaks no English after we have been speaking with him as our guide for the last four hours. They finally give up because we refuse to pay. It is annoying but becomes pretty comical because there is nothing you can do about it. It will happen 20 times in some way shape or form so you cannot let it interfere with your day. But it does wear you down.
The scams are organized and everyone is in on it. You can’t trust anyone, not even the hotel staff. When you hire a driver/guide, you try to negotiate a price in advance. They say, “As you like.” But after services are rendered, they fight with you about how much money they want. One guy wanted 110 rupees tip on a bill that was 150 rupees.
The people are rude and discriminatory against westerners. They will do anything to rip you off. It is taxing because you have to be on red alert even to go to the bathroom, where someone will be waiting outside the hole in the ground for a tip because they happen to be there when you get out of the stall.
We don’t go out after dark because it is creepy and unsafe. The next morning we board a train for Agra. We find an owner of a travel agency who has a driver outside. He takes us to the hotel and is the first one that does not try to rip us off. Terri and I are glad he speaks English, so we set up a system for whoever has the best English. Our chosen one is explaining to us that the Vice Prime Minister of India is on our train which was why the station is crowded. While he is telling us this, I look out the window and see the sight I came to India for – a person taking a shit on the side of the road. His ass was facing me so I got a really good camera shot of it coming out. Sounds gross folks. Welcome to India.
After settling in the hotel, we drive to the Taj Mahal for the sunset view – magnificent, mesmerizing and surreal. Sunrise at the Taj is great too. It is best to get there early to avoid the crowds. We catch a rickshaw to a market that is closed. There are cows, camels, pigs and water buffalo roaming in the alleys along with the people. Everyone is staring at us and touching us – like getting swarmed by bees.
We get a taxi to the hotel to reload on film when we start feeling ill. We stay at the hotel and find out that there was a bombing on a train only a few hundred miles away – about 11 deaths and 40 injuries.
Terri and I are walking around the market again to get some black and white photos of daily life. We are in a public area, only 200 feet from the hotel. Out of nowhere, this dog comes out and bites the back part of Terri’s arm while she is putting her camera away. We stroll a little further so that she can take her jacket off to see if the skin is broken. It’s 95 degrees but she is wearing a jacket so that the lecherous men will not stare at her chest. Luckily, she is not bleeding, the wound is not open but her arm is badly bruised.
We rush back to the hotel. I call my father, an infectious disease doctor. Terri is an emergency room physician and has dealt with hundreds of dog bites but we are not in Texas. My dad says that she is very lucky the skin was not broken. However, the bite can compromise the integrity of the skin and it is best to use Bactine on the skin surface. It is the only anti-bacterial medication that kills rabies on contact due to the active ingredient, Zephryn. We have five other kinds of anti-bacterial agents in the travel kit – neither of us had used Bactine since we were kids! Add that to your travel kit.
Terri is about to vomit from stress. We debate changing our tickets. Rabies is very dangerous because you must get treated within 24-48 hours. If not and clinical symptoms arise within the next 30-60 days, you are dead. There is no cure and it is 100% fatal. You must get the vaccine within that window of time.
I head to the concierge to research the incidence of rabies while Terri loads up on Xanax and showers like a rape victim. I find out that rabies is the number one killer in India and nine out of ten dogs are rabid. I tell Terri what I have found and I take the liberty of getting the manager to send a doctor with a vaccine.
The doctor has been working on call for the five-star hotels for 27 years. Terri gets the first of five rounds of the vaccine. We buy the rest of the shots from him. The next challenge is keeping the vials refrigerated. Obtaining ice is an ongoing challenge for the rest of the trip. The grand total for the doctor’s visit and the shots is $40 U.S. We then proceed to finish several bottles of wine and many packs of cigarettes. It is not every day you become that in touch with your own mortality.
The following morning our driver picks us up for a seven-hour drive to Jaipur, the pink city. We are on the only two-lane paved interstate-type road in India – paved four years ago for the Prime Minister of Pakistan’s visit to see the Taj Mahal. It is weird to be driving in the middle of nowhere with people everywhere. The population is out of control. Imagine taking a seven-hour drive in west Texas, seeing nothing but dead grass, no trees for miles, and in the distance, are people talking by themselves sprinkled around the land like pepper. Where are they going? What are they doing? There is no place that you can go without someone being in your field of vision, even at four in the morning.
We arrive in Delhi, wander markets, more sights and head to a place to get water. The Anti-American sentiment is growing. I stop at three places before they serve us bottled water or a coke. “No, not for you, go somewhere else.” We do. We go to McDonald’s. The menu is a trip. No beef. There are veggie options – the Paneer Wrap – Indian cottage cheese wrapped in naan with ketchup, lettuce and tomato. Looks heinous.
On the way back to Bangkok, we meet a guy in the airport bar. He is in a wheelchair with broken limbs and nose. This man has been in the hospital for five days. He is from Milan on business. His driver fell asleep at the wheel and hit a tree. Two of his coworkers were killed; another had a leg amputated and is facing gangrene. He said he was quitting his job if he ever had to come back to India.
The rabies did not seem so bad.
