India: random thoughts and bizarre facts
Trip Start
Feb 29, 2004
1
17
33
Trip End
Nov 24, 2004
Karnataka,
India
Friday, August 6, 2004
RANDOM 'ONLY IN INDIA' SIGHTS
... a pig licking a whining dog on the street. (Bundi)
... a dog happily running down the street chasing squeeling piglets. The mother pig comes from around the corner, the dog does a 180 degree turn, and the pig then chases the dog down the street. (Bundi)
... a bluetit chases a low-flying butterfly. A yapping corgi-like dog chases the tit. (Bundi)
... a woman dressed in a sari, in the top of a tree cutting off branches. Below here, unnoticed, a group of langur monkeys is sitting in branches munching leaves. She makes grunting noises and throws her flip-flops down at them to get them out of her tree.
(Bhuveshwar)
... a quack, using cut-out porn pictures and basic chemistry tricks to impress local lads that they need to buy his aphrodisiacs
(Mysore)
BUSES
The Indian bus system is madness on wheels. With symbolical driving licenses, decrepit buses and roads, it's like a lottery with your life. But they are also extremely useful in getting you from A to B with no rip-off hassles.
There's a huge difference between states, and between state-owned and private buses. Sometimnes they compete with each other on routes, causing cross-country races to beat the other at picking up clients. The best drivers in India can be found in the north, where they can anticipate (gasp) oncoming traffic on narrow roads by stopping and letting others pass (elsewhere they'll happily drive bumper to bumper and have a nice horn-contest till the other budges).
The best buses were the deluxe Volvos and local buses in Karnataka, the nicest must have been the Keralan buses that have no windows (only metal shutters to stop the rain coming in), and that in the Kodragu region are filled with the smell of fresh flowers in all girls' hair. The grottiest-looking buses carted me around the dangerous roads of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu/Kashmir, but you have to admire the build of these tough machines, that withstand years of battering on awful and very high roads without dying.
One interesting and sometimes irritating aspect of bus travel concerns the driver's choice of music, and the volume it's played at. As India is musically still pretty much unglobalised, it's either the latest Bollywood slush ("It's the time for disco!", "Tere naam" [your name]), religious music (endless renditions of hare Ram hare Ram hare hare hare Ram") or a mix of local music. As the casette players are bad, the tape may be incredibly whiney... I suspect this is a reason that Indian musicians make whiney music - it sounds just as bad if a crap player is used. Indians don't mind whining tapes - it's better than silence, which may lead to (shock horror)... boredom. (In a jeep from Kathgodam to Nainital, I asked the driver to turn off the horribly whiney tape so we could enjoy the silence and views of the mountains... and a passenger asked if I wouldn't get bored without music).
And yes, it's played LOUD. It's in the first three minutes of a bus ride that a few things become clear: 1) the talents and temperament of the driver, and therefore your chance of dying today; 2) the quality of the road; 3) the presence of a radio or casette player and it's mode of use. I haven't taken any nightbuses in India, but I have been assured by many travellers that the wish of these funny foreigners for silence at night is completely ignored. Indeed, most Indians seem to use forms of transport (whether bus, jeep or train) as a bed, and about twenty minutes after leaving the bus station you'll see half of the sleepy heads nodding around.
One useful word to know when on a bus is 'chello', which means 'go!'. It's funny to see that when a driver is hesitating to go as there may be more passengers showing up last-minute, sometimes the passengers on board get fed up and start murmuring, and later shouting chello! The best bit is that they often embarrass the driver into pulling up, leaving everyone feeling very smug indeed.
TRAINS
"The government has brought on us many taxes, but it gives us one good thing - the te-rain that joins friends and unites the anxious. A wonderful thing is the te-rain." (from Kim, by Rudyard Kipling).
Travel by train in India is so wonderful that I could write a book about it, but I won't. In Trichur, Kerala, I visited the Indian Railway stand at the Puram festival, where they were showing a really excellent documentary about IR. Stuff I jotted down about IR:
- 'about' 1,6 million employees, but aprox. 80 mln people (!) dependent on IR salaries.
- 14 mln passengers on 12,000 trains every day, 63,000km of track, 6984 stations
- across the country, there are 100,000 essential 'key men' whose job it is to walk up and down 4 miles of track every day, checking each bolt and nut
- Howrah (Kolkata) is the busiest station in India. Howrah bridge, leading to it, is the busiest bridge in the world.
- Longest platform in the world: Kharagpur; 2,7km
- longest possible trip: 3751km (72 hours): Jammu Tawi (in Jammu % Kasmir, in the Himalayas) to the southernmost tip of India, near Trivandrum0
Here is a list of concessions that are available to Indian citizens when travelling by train:
Article Clerk -> [ARTCLK (50%)]
Artist Lower Class -> [ARTISF (75%)]
Artist Upper Class -> [ARTIUF (50%)]
Award 50% -> [AWD50 (50%)]
Award 75% -> [AWD75 (75%)]
Award 100% -> [AWD100 (100%)]
Bharat Scouts/Guides -> [BSGUDF (50%)]
Bharat Seva Dal -> [BSDALF (25%)]
Blind Concession -> [BLIND (75%)]
Cancer Patient -> (For 3A, SL, CC class) [CANCER (75%)]
Cancer Patient Escort-> (For 3A, SL, CC class) [CNESC (75%)]
Cancer Patient -> (For 1A, 2A class) [CANCEU (50%)]
Cancer Patient Escort-> (For 1A, 2A class) [CNESCU (50%)]
Doctor -> [DOCTOR (10%)]
Public Exam(6-12yrs) -> [PUBEXA (50%)]
Circus Artist Lower Class ->[CIRCLF (75%)]
Circus Artist Upper Class -> [CIRCUF (50%)]
Civil International -> [CVINTF (25%)]
Deaf And Dumb -> [DFDM (50%)]
Handicap Lower Class -> [HNDCAP (75%)]
Handicap 1AC 2AC -> [HNDCUP (50%)]
Heart Patient (for 3A, SL, 2S class)-> [HEART (75%)]
Heart Patient Escort (for 3A, SL, 2S class)-> [HRTESC (75%)]
Heart Patient (for 1A, 2A class)-> [HEARTU (50%)]
Heart Patient Escort (for 1A, 2A class)-> [HRTESU (50%)]
IAFT 1709 Form D -> [I1709A (40%)]
IAFT 1720 Lower Class -> [I1720L (50%)]
IAFT 1720 Upper Class -> [I1720U (50%)]
Industrial Worker -> [WORKER (25%)]
Kidney Patients (for 3A, SL, 2S Class) -> [KIDNEY (75%)]
Kidney Patient Escort (for 3A, SL, 2S Class) -> [KIESC (75%)]
Kidney Patients (for 1A, 2A Class) -> [KIDNEU (50%)]
Kidney Patients Escort (for 1A, 2A Class) -> [KIESCU (50%)]
Kisan Concession -> [KISANF (25%)]
Leprosy Patient -> [LPROSY (75%)]
Mental Patient -> [MNTLPT (75%)]
Nurse -> [NURSE (25%)]
Polo Team -> [POLO (50%)]
Proffessional Artist lower class -> [PARTLF (75%)]
Proffessional Artist Upper class -> [PARTUF (50%)]
PTO Common Wealth Country -> [PTOFOR (50%)]
PTO Indian Railway -> [PTORDR (66.6%)]
Public Examination -> [PUBESC (50%)]
Research Scholar -> [SEARCH (50%)]
Scout Concession -> [SCOUT (50%)]
Senior Citizen -> [SRCTZN (30%)]
Service Civil Inter -> [SCINTL (25%)]
Sports Lower class -> [SPORT (75%)]
Sports Inter N Level FC -> [SPORTI (75%)]
Sports National Level FC -> [SPORTN (50%)]
ST JOHN'S Ambulance -> [STJONF (25%)]
Student Concession -> [STDNT (50%)]
Student SC/ST -> [STDSPS (75%)]
TB Patient -> [TBPAT (75%)]
Teacher -> [TEACHR (25%)]
Thalassemia Patient (for 3A, SL, 2S class)-> [TLSMIA (75%)]
Thalassemia Patient Escort (for 3A, SL, 2S class)-> [THLESC (75%)]
Thalassemia Patient (for 1A, 2A class)-> [TLSMIU (50%)]
Thalassemia Patient Escort (for 1A, 2A class)-> [THLESU (50%)]
War Widow -> [WIDOW (75%)]
Youth Concession -> [YOUTH (25%)]
JEEPS
In the mountains, private entrepreneurs run jeeps between villages and towns to offer an alternative to the less regular and crammed state or private buses. It's slightly more costly (see below) but brilliant solution. All you do is walk to the road that goes towards your destination and get on one of the parked jeeps. As soon as it's full (a flexible term in India... I once counted 23 people crammed in, on and hanging off my Mahindra Maxx jeep) it sets off and races to the final destination, picking up people along the way. On one long day I took 6 consecutive jeeps between Munsyari and Gwaldam in Uttaranchal... getting from one route to the other never took more than ten minutes.
ATMS
Yes, India is not quite the third-world country you learnt about at school. ATMs now can be found everywhere (I laugh at travellers that still spend hours trying to change travellers cheques at unwilling banks). India not only has ATMs that work, but it has some of the highest in the world, as well as the only floating ATM on the planet (on a Kochin ferry, which reaches isolated villages in the backwaters). The best thing about them, however, is that they are all 1) airconditioned and 2) guarded. On a hot day in Rajastan you can't imagine how nice it is to pop in an ATM booth for a few minutes to gulp down the cool cool air. The guards are hilarious too - all sweating and very interested in the proceedings when a foreigner shows up, many of them have ineffective-looking double-barrel shotguns to keep the 'dacoits' at bay.
THE THEORY OF MAXIMUM DISCOMFORT
Having been crammed many, many times in jeeps, buses, rickshaws, taxis etc, I have had plenty of time to ponder the Indian concept of space. It's non-existent. I'm working at a theory that explains the degree of overcrowdedness in buses/trains/jeeps/queues etc using factors such as temperature, humidity, time, urgency, alternate transport options etc.
I read Nobel-prize winner Kushwant Singh's amazing book 'Train to Pakistan', and there he writes: "[Iqbal] would have described the journey as insufferable, except that the limits to which human endurance could be streched in India made the word meaningless".
More to follow.
NEWSPAPERS
Indian English-language newspapers are often so boring, it's funny. Even the prestigious national ones show alarmingly bad journalism. Not just bad spelling mistakes, but also dubious and obviously advertising-related articles, an editorial article that condemns certain cheap behaviour while a few pages later on a journalist does exactly what is so despised, etc.
The Times of India, most respected, has front-page articles about cricketplayers who have similar-looking fingerprints. Their horoscope is written by someone called Shelley von Strunkel... which may sound fine to Indians but sounds pretty ridiculous to us Westerners (although she did once write about scorpios like myself: 'being cool is almost a religion'). The best article heading and subheading I spotted (on the Sahara Times' book review page) must be the following: 'Not so insightful. Nevertheless the book provides some interesting details'.
FROM A ONE-PAGE MENU IN RAKCHAM (H.P.)
Omelite
Omalette
Omelette
Plate's
Plates
Palte's
FROM THE BACK OF A PACKET OF 'WESTERN STYLE CRUNCHY MUESLI'
"Regular use boosts appetite - an orderly healthy routine maintains smart physique, stamina & sexual urge. Avoids dawdy and slacking & keeps me alert, smart, attractive, young, impressive and dominating"
JAIN TEMPLE INSCRIPTION - KHAJURAHO
"I am child innocent
Kunthunath Ji excellent
You are ocean, I am drop
I at bottom, you at top"
ITEMS LOST/DESTROYED ON THE TRIP
Umbrella
- Periyar, Kerala
- Left in a jeep.
Petzl Zipka headlamp
- Madikeri hotel, Karnataka.
- Found and forwarded to me by mail in Rishikesh, but consequently lost by Indian Mail.
One quarter of my Rough Guide to India
- Delhi, stolen by a fellow traveller. May his soul rot.
- The last and yet-to-be-used Himalayan chapters of my split-up guidebook.
Pen
- Bageshwar, Utteranchal
- A really good pen, gift of Marjolijn & Inger (sorry girls).
Sunglasses
- Kausani, Utteranchal
- Left in a restaurant, retreived two days later.
Bottle of shampoo
- Kausani, Utteranchal
- Untouchable - fell into a squat toilet.
Sunglasses
- Martoli, Uttaranchal
- Yes, again. Found by a fellow trekker and handed back a few days later.
KUSHWANT SINGH ON RELIGION IN INDIA
"Ethics, which should be the kernel of a religious code, have been carefully removed. Take yoga, particularly yoga, that excellent earner of dollars! Stand on your head. Sit cross-legged and tickle your navel with your nose. Have perfect control over the senses. Make women come till they cry 'enough!' and you can say 'next, please' without opening your eyes."
SALMAN RUSHDIE ON JAPANESE TOURISTS
"We saw Japanese tourists, who all wore surgical face masks out of politeness, so as not to infect us with their exhaled germs" (from Midnight's Children)
RANAKPUR JAIN TEMPLE ENTRANCE RULES
- Visitors can only go barefooted, or at the most with socks
- Lady tourists should not enter during their menstruation period
AJANTA BUDDHIST CAVES ENTRY TICKET TEXT
"5 Rs lighting fee, towards supply of electricity for 1,5 hours"
ELECTION POSTERS
Depicted on a BJP (right-wing Hindustani party) 2004 election calendar/poster, spotted in Kathi, one day walk from the nearest asphalt:
- the podgy face of PM Vajpayee with the unreliable-looking local BJP candidate
- photos of a motorway flyover, satellite dishes, children at school, soldiers on a Kargil mountain peak with the Indian flag (after chasing the Pakis back out), a western man using a mobile phone, a missile for atomic bombs in a military parade
- a British-era (sic) map of the region on the background
COSTS (55 Rs = €1)
free - Indira Ghandi memorial museum, Delhi
1Rs - guarding your sandals outside a temple
2,5Rs - 10-minute city ferry ride in Cochin
2-5Rs - English-language local newspaper
15Rs - the local version of Time magazine
10Rs - 3-hour intercity ferry ride, Keralan backwaters
10Rs - Bottle of coke/mirinda/7up
12Rs - One hour by bus (usually 25-40km)
1Rs - One kilometre in a shared jeep
150-200Rs - ticket for an A/C berth on an overnight train
50Rs - the bribe needed to get you a overnight berth on the cheap
150-300Rs - A porter/guide for one day in the Himalayas
50-100Rs - cheap basic hotel room
100-300Rs - nice enough hotel room with own bathroom
20-100Rs - cheap meal with drink
25-70Rs - one hour of internet
750Rs - foreigners' entrance fee for the Taj Mahal
$290 - one way flight Cochin - Delhi, via Mumbai
130Rs - prepaid taxi Delhi airport - Old Delhi (un-prepaid: 400-1000Rs)
