4 Months in India...

5027 miles as the crow flies!

Spending 4 months in India was definitely an experience. For a while I have been in love with the country and the culture and still find it amazing, there is never a dull moment! However, at times it nearly broke us and definitely has its challenges.

On our last night in India we sat down in a cheap restaurant and made a list of things we would and wouldn’t miss about the country. Here it is for your entertainment!

Will miss

• Chai- sweet, beautiful chai! This is generally in a shot sized cup and is the sugariest milkiest tea you will ever taste. If you are flagging while in the middle of a crazy hectic city, finding a chai shop is your savior, giving you a place to rest for half an hour and also the energy to carry on. It is best served by the chaiwallahs on trains who at every stop, jump on the train and in a very gravelly voice repeat ‘chai, chai, chai’, serve out as many as they can from an urn they carry, before jumping off the train as it is pulling out of the station

There is always time for chai!

• Low Prices- It is definitely a good country for travelling on a budget if you put any hygiene standards you have to one side. The cheapest room we got was 200 rupees (£2) which was basically a cave with a rock, and other people we spoke to who have been on their own have paid half that for a single room. They will never clean it though and the walls will be stained and your feet will be black if you put a bare foot on the floor. You can also get an extremely cheap meal for somewhere between 40 and 60p called a Thali, which is a dish with some rice, daal (lentil soup), vegetables and chapatti and depending on the place you can get unlimited refills on daal and chapatti. It’s great!

One of the cheap restaurants in Mumbai

• Momos- while technically Tibetan, many places in the north of India have adopted this food too. Vegetables, potato or paneer (cheese) in dough and shaped into small parcels, and can be boiled or deep fried. They generally also come with a hot chilli sauce, and are pretty cheap and nice as a snack (5 momos) or as a meal (10)
• Dosas- Another food which is south Indian and also cheap, dosas are very thin crispy pancakes and can be eaten plain with a dip or have a filling. The one that seems to be most popular with travellers, myself included, is masala dosa which has a potato based filling. And did I mention it is cheap!
• The Colours- India is full of colours, some houses are painted in blues and pinks and signify caste or background, there is colourful artwork drawn in chalks and powders on the pavement, the temples and the statues of the gods, even the trucks are painted and decorated. And the women- in sarees and salwar kameez of every colour and always looking beautiful and vibrant. It makes you realise how dull and grey London is, with most of the population wearing black or dark clothing.

An Indian wedding- so colourful!

• Bangles! For Diana anyway. Colourful, sparkly and they make pretty jangly noises, what more do you need?
• The head wobble- As mystifying as it is entertaining, no person Indian or otherwise has really been able to describe it completely. It generally means yes or I understand, but can also mean I have no clue what you are talking about but I do not want to turn away business. So when you ask a rickshaw driver if he knows where your hotel is and receive a head wobble, it could mean that he will spend the next 45 minutes stopping at various places and asking other people where it might be, but never admitting this to you. It is also very cute to watch a class of children all simultaneously wobble their heads when a teacher has given an explanation to them!
• Cows- In India, the cows rule. They wander wherever they fancy, sometimes choosing to have a rest in the middle of a busy highway and watch the chaos ensue of cars, bikes and rickshaws all swerving around it. Apparently some families even feed the cows the chapattis they have made before the rest of the family can eat! It definitely changes your perspective on these animals anyway, and we have missed them being part of a regular street scene now we have left India.

Won’t miss

• The train booking system- Whoever invented this system for booking trains is really sick and sadistic. You can basically either book a journey 2 months in advance, or the day before at 10am where you have to race to get the small allocation of ‘Tatkal’ tickets. If you try and book in between these times, you are pretty much guaranteed to be put on a waitlist which means if anyone cancels their ticket you are next in line but this might only be confirmed an hour before the journey so you can’t really base any plans on it. As we chose to not book our journeys 2 months in advance as we wanted more freedom, we had to play the Tatkal game. To be fair, it is great they have this emergency allocation otherwise we would have come a bit unstuck, but it meant only really having a journey confirmed the day before and also the booking website does not accept foreign card payments, so we had to go and find travel agents for every journey. There is one last option for train travel- unreserved class, which you can just book at the station the day of travel but it does mean no guarantee of even getting a seat and having to squash yourself into the smallest space, sometimes even perching on the luggage rack. Bearable for shorter journeys- the longest we did in unreserved was 10 hours and luckily we had somewhere to sit but that was still a challenge!

• Bangles! And other shopping- For Jonno. For some reason I really struggle to understand, Jonno does not seem to want to spend hours poring over the long line of bangle stalls and helping me look for the perfect kurta (long top). I’m sure with time he will come to love it!
• Spirituality- For Jonno. Jonno likes maths, science and evidence. And India can be a spiritual country, including the traveler community. There is nothing that irritates Jonno more than having to sit in a discussion about Auras or Horoscopes. Typical of a Capricorn…
• Random hippy travellers boasting about how spiritual they are or walking around with an instrument that they can’t really play but they do it anyway in public places- There are a lot of these type of people in India, and it’s pretty embarrassing to listen to them pretend to be something they are not to fit in with the ‘hippy vibe’ of India. Just stop!!
• Being a woman- For Diana obviously. India is a country that is dominated by men. Women are expected to be submissive, and even after the publicity that came from the Delhi Gang Rape case in 2013, there are still far too many reports of rape in the newspapers. We have met quite a few females who are travelling on their own who say they feel completely safe, but there are times I have felt uneasy even with Jonno with me (group of boys surrounding us on a train late at night- they were harmless but it still made me wary) and I have been groped in crowds before. Also that as a woman you have to constantly cover up and not wear anything showing your legs or shoulders, you get used to it but it does restrict your freedom.
• The dirt, dust and rubbish- India is not a clean country. People seem to take care of their own living space but anywhere else doesn’t matter- litter just gets thrown out of train windows and on the street- we have had some very funny looks by saving our rubbish and trying to find a bin. Also, public buildings, corridors and stairwells have a thick lining of dirt and stains where people have spat out their paan (chewing tobacco which comes out a dark red colour) down the walls. And I can’t even begin to describe some of the toilets we have had to use. As well as being dirty, it is also a very dry country and the air is pretty thick with dust in most places. The effect on its population is evident by the constant hacking and phlegm production noises you tend to hear.

The water in the river Ganges- 'Its clean underneath!' said the guide

• The noise- As well as being dirty and dusty, India is also noisy. This is mostly due to the unrelenting beeping of horns from the traffic- apparently there is an Indian law that if your vehicle collides with another vehicle and you did not beep your horn to warn them that you were there then the accident is your fault- a practice which has now been taken to the extreme of every driver pretty much constantly having the horn pressed throughout the journey. This can become very irritating, especially if you are not feeling too well and have a headache or if you are trying to sleep. Also, the daily tasks and conversations of the Indian population don’t seem to be done quietly, and the hacking coughs as I have mentioned, door opening and closing and conversations can reach the same noise level as a jet plane at around 2 or 3am.
• The smells- As well as being dirty, dusty and noisy India can also be very smelly. There are occasional wafts of lovely fragrant curries or samosas in the air but these are then quickly replaced with the smell of raw sewage and human waste which can often run in open sewers in the streets. You become an expert at not breathing through your nose for a large amount of time.
• The poverty and treatment of animals- A large part of India’s population lives below the poverty line, and it is heartbreaking to see families who have to live on the streets and have no toilet to use so have to go in the open. There are also lots of street children and disabled people who resort to begging, and some people who are in need of wheelchairs having to drag themselves along the floor. All of this can happen right outside of a five star hotel, and the inequality of wealth distribution is evident. Indian people have no benefit system to support them, and older people have to continue working if their family cannot support them as they do not get a pension. It really shows how lucky we are in the Western world as even though poverty exists it is nowhere on the scale it is in India. And even though the cows are sacred, they are not treated well by everyone and other animals such as dogs, cats and pigs get an even tougher time- with not many dogs being neutered the population of wild dogs is out of control, and they have to survive by going through rubbish and getting scraps. A lot of them are malnourished and often infested with fleas and get mange. It is not uncommon to see people kicking dogs, beating horses or throwing stones at pigs. India is a ruthless place for many people and animals.

 

People and animals both have to go through the rubbish to survive

We also decided on our best and worst places that we visited

Best

• Rishikesh, Laxman Jula- A fairly calm place around the banks of the river Ganges and surrounded by mountains, towards the north of India. It is visited by both foreign and Indian tourists as it is a holy place. It is also one of the biggest places for yoga and we ended up returning for a month so I could do a 200 hour yoga teacher training course there. Even if you are not into yoga, there are a large amount of cafes and restaurants along the river where you can spend most of the day relaxing with a chai and a book.

The river Ganges is a lot cleaner in Rishikesh!

• Dharamsala, McLeod Gange- Similar to Rishikesh in its laid back nature but further up north, McLeod Gange is also the residence of the Dali Lama and many Tibetans who came as refugees. There is a definite Tibetan influence and you can see Tibetan monasteries and monks, and eat Tibetan food. There are also some beautiful walks and treks, and afterwards you can treat yourselves to some amazing cakes from the cake stalls (the magic bar is the best by far!!)

• Udaipur- Another laid back place near the ‘golden triangle’ area of India, the town is built around a lake and has some beautiful views and buildings. You can easily spend most of the day in a café overlooking the river, and the traditional dance performance every night at the Bagore-Ki-Haveli is worth going to.

• Bundi- Worth a visit for a couple of days. Not too touristy and fairly quiet, a nice walk up to the ruins of the fort and you can spend evenings in the great company of Krishna at Krishna’s chai shop- a great character!

Krishna- the best chai wallah in India!

Worst

• Jaipur- It might not have been so bad if we had not booked 6 nights there and been there around Holi festival but by day 6 we had definitely had enough of this place! Apart from the Amber Fort there was not much else of interest and the city is full of people who try and pretend to just want to have a friendly conversation but really only want to sell you something. And Holi festival here was too chaotic and it felt like more of a violation with coloured powder rather than a celebration.
• Gokarna- We met a lot of people who were in love with this place on the south coast in Karnataka and spent months here, but we weren’t at all taken with it. There are two main beach areas with beach huts but not much else, and a town area with some temples but foreigners cannot go into most of them. There were a lot of the try hard hippy types I mentioned previously, who were too busy posing in their hippy clothes to be real people. But like I said, other people had different opinions of it. We only visited Om beach however, some people said that Kudli beach was a lot better.

Another thing that might be worth mentioning is how much we spent whilst in India- our average spending was ~£30 per day but this included a £500 yoga course and a £400 laptop (and losing money with Jonno being indecisive!). Most of our meals cost us £2-3 for both of us, our accommodation ranged from £2 (Gokarna) to £15 (Mumbai) but was mostly about £5 or £6 for a double room with private bathroom and fan but generally not very clean. We mostly travelled by train, but took two internal flights and a few buses. Trains were overall better, especially for overnight journeys but buses were more on time.

And that was our four months. There are still places we didn’t get to see and would have liked to, such as Kashmir and Darjeeling, they have to wait until the next trip. The main thing is that I still love India- and Jonno can still tolerate it too (just)! But also after four months we were ready to leave and have some new experiences. India is a crazy and beautiful country but it’s not for everyone and it does test your tolerance levels for pretty much every sense. I am glad for the experiences and the stories though, it’s a place like no other! 

Rishikesh (via Haridwar)

So we boarded the ten hour train to Haridwar with our unreserved tickets, hoping for the best but expecting the worst. The good thing was that we did manage to find somewhere to sit, although it was very tightly squeezed, generally with five people sitting on a bench meant for three, with others sitting on the luggage rack overhead. This is definitely one thing that never ceases to amaze us- how Indian people seem to be able to squeeze in to the smallest gaps and how resourceful they are with space- I guess there isn’t much choice when you live with 1.2 billion people. If something looks full then it’s really only at half its capacity. Anyway, we contorted ourselves on the benches with our bags stuffed at our feet, and settled in as best we could for the next ten hours. The seating also had zero padding, so after only half an hour and already with numb bums it wasn’t looking great. At least there was no shortage of people watching. I managed to befriend a local retired teacher who was travelling with her husband of forty years who was an arranged marriage, and had some interesting conversations about the differences between arranged and love marriages and the differences between India and England in general. It always interests me how people always romanticise other lifestyles; I was saying how sad it was in England that families often don’t live with each other and can be on different ends of the country, and she said she lived with her two sons and their families but she would prefer it if they lived separately. Also on the train journey on one of my trips to the toilet I had to walk past a group of children who were obviously a gang of street children. They were using the flooring around the toilet as a hangout area and were also carrying around cloths with something that smelled like white spirit to get high with. Some of them looked as young as seven or eight. I gave them a packet of biscuits and they all then wanted to shake my hand and were giggling (mostly from being off their face), but I felt so sad for them. I’m sure all of those children had been through some horrible times to end up in that situation, and there probably wasn’t much hope for their future either. We are so lucky in the western world that we have the government to support us and this happening to children would be unheard of, but in India this is quite a common occurrence.

So after the uncomfortable but thought provoking train journey we finally arrived in Haridwar. We were heading for Rishikesh which was about one hours drive away, but it was already 9.30pm and we had both had enough of travelling for the day, so arranged for a night in a hotel in Haridwar. This hotel, which online had given promises of a hot shower, free toiletries and breakfast provided, turned out to be in the non touristy area of Haridwar but with some gesturing we managed to check in for the night and went straight to sleep.

The next morning we were so ready for the hot shower and breakfast. I went downstairs armed with a hindi phrasebook to ask about these amenities, and was met by a dwarf (Luke and Mum- I didn’t get close enough to smell the mothballs!) who shook his head to breakfast but did turn on a switch for the hot water. I got back to the room and turned on the shower, but only ice cold water came out from the shower. The only hot water that ran was from a tap at about knee height in the bathroom, which I guess was a shower for the dwarf. After putting my yoga to good practice in order to have a wash and paying the dwarf for the room on the way out, who was posing on a sofa in a strangely provocative way, we were ready to complete our journey to Rishikesh.

We headed out onto the main road and luckily within a few minutes of walking a largish rickshaw pulled up and asked us if we wanted to go to Rishikesh. There was already eight people in the rickshaw but with the Indian mentality we managed to get ourselves and our bags successfully into it too. After one rickshaw change halfway through due to the first one breaking down, we were dropped off somewhere in Rishikesh to try and get our bearings and also to find somewhere to stay. A guide book and online reviews had all said it was easy to find budget accommodation in Rishikesh, so we didn’t think it would be too hard to wing it. We had 300 rupees in mind for our budget, about **3. Unfortunately what we did not realise was that this was the peak season for this area, so hotels were either full or unwilling to negotiate a lower price for rooms so the hunt was more difficult. One hotel fairly tucked out of the way said they did not have any rooms but to try the next hotel, and pointed across a field. I went across the field in the direction given, and found myself jumping over a mini stream, climbing up some rocks and ducking under washing lines, and came across a building which initially did not seem like a hotel and the only sign was in Hindi. A man popped out and said he had one room available, and was prepared to take 350 rupees per night and seeing as we were tired and bored of room hunting, we agreed. The only issue was that the room had a single bed in it, but apparently a double bed would be able to be put in there in 1-2 hours. Realising that an Indian 1-2 hours could be about 5-10 hours, we volunteered to help sort it out instead of waiting, and ended up moving furniture to make our room and carrying beds and mattresses around the hotel.

After the stressful room hunt, we decided to explore the area. Rishikesh is a town built around an area of the ganges, and has both Indian and Foreign tourists visiting. It was made famous for tourists after the beatles spent time there, and it is also a famous place for yoga. There are an abundance of cafes and restaurants overlooking the river, surrounded by mountains. It is also an enforced vegetarian area and alcohol is banned there too. After having dinner at a rooftop restaurant and listening to the people on the table next to us discussing their experiences of colonic irrigation, and finding a yoga class for the next morning, we bought some fruit and headed back to the hotel, which was about a forty minute walk away. Unfortunately the fruit was in a plastic bag and I had forgotten that there are greedy eyes waiting to pounce in this situation. Casually strolling along, I heard a cry of ‘MONKEY!’ from Jonno and turned around to see a fully grown monkey charging at me. I whisked the bag away just in time and gave the monkey my best roar to try and scare it, which thankfully worked. Not that we fully learned our lesson from this occasion, as a few days later Jonno decided to buy an ice cream and flaunted it for all of the monkeydom to see and then had to try and dodge pouncing primates whilst on a very narrow bridge.

We were planning to spend a week in Rishikesh as we were quite tired of constantly being on the move. I had decided to book myself in to a week of yoga classes, so every morning I left Jonno to his beauty/beard growing sleep and took the forty minute walk into town for the class. The instructor was very nice but brutal, and seemed to take enjoyment in pushing me further into postures which was fine until one attempt in the second session where whilst being manipulated into the splits, my hip gave a loud pop and left me with pain for a week afterwards. Apart from being broken, it was nice to be able to get back into a routine of doing yoga which is difficult whilst travelling. Jonno would then meet me after the session and we would go to a riverside restaurant for the most amazing breakfast of fruit, muesli and yoghurt, and relax in a pile of cushions for a few hours with a view of the Ganges and a book. We spent quite a few days with this as our main activity, which was nice, and also sometimes necessary as the temperature rose to about 36 degrees Celsius some days.

View of the Ganges from a cafe

Best post yoga breakfast

Cake shops are popular here for both humans and cows

We also booked one day of rafting on the ganges, which seemed a popular thing to do whilst in Rishikesh. This part of the river Ganges is higher up than Varanasi, and thankfully before the chemicals have been pumped into it and the rubbish and corpses have been deposited in it too. We were taken in a jeep to a high point in the mountains and armed with a helmet, life jacket and paddle and given instructions on how to work together to keep the raft moving. It turned out to be good fun as there were points with rapids, a chance to swim in the ganges and we stopped off at a set of rocks to jump into the river.

We also were told that near our hotel was a short walk up to a waterfall, so we decided to investigate. The short walk turned into a few hours and was not a waterfall as such, but a mountain stream which was a series of tiny waterfalls. It was a really lovely walk though, and along the way we were given a mission by a man on a moped that a lady had lost her socks somewhere up the mountain and could we please look for them. Sadly we were not successful though, and some poor lady is sockless.

After a few days of this routine and walking past numerous posters advertising yoga teacher training courses, Jonno brought up in conversation if that was something I wanted to do. I had been thinking about it, but didn’t want to desert him for a whole month and leave him being bored, and also was not sure about the cost of it. Jonno reassured me that as long as he had somewhere to go with wifi and cheap chai he was quite happy for a month and that it was cheaper here than anywhere else, and the opportunity to take that amount of time off may not happen easily when we get back to England. So we went in search of a course, and found one that was a bit of a walk away from the town but in a peaceful area, and runs yoga teacher training courses every month for a reasonable price. So I signed up and paid a deposit, and will be starting the course on the 15^th April. The days are likely to be pretty intense, the day runs from 7am to 6.45pm, there are yoga sessions morning and evening, with lessons and lectures in between and I will be tested to be able to gain the qualification. But by the end of it I should have a better understanding of yoga and also gain a new skill of being able to teach it, which is very exciting! We have changed our plans slightly as we were originally going to catch the flight to Nepal we had to book at Heathrow on the 30^th March, and then return to finish the north of India after Nepal, but we are missing the flight to do north India before the 15^th April, then going from Rishikesh to Nepal after the yoga course.

It was all going well until the last day, when I started my walk down to my final yoga class of the week. Only 5 minutes into the walk and my sandals broke and were unwearable, and to go back to the room would have made me late for the class. So I decided to carry on the remaining 35 minutes barefoot, managing to dodge all sorts of rubbish and excrement that were dotted in the streets like an assault course, and having 2 spare minutes before the class to wash my feet in the bathroom. During the class we could hear the rumble of thunder outside and it started to rain, but was just a light drizzle so I thought I would be fine for the walk back. Unfortunately as soon as I started the walk back the sky decided this was a good time for a downpour, and there was no escape. Every set of stairs became a waterfall, and every street was a river. The rivers were not just made up of rainwater, but also had gathered all the rubbish and excrement that I had so delicately dodged before, to create a nice flowing brown concoction for me to wade through…in bare feet. When I finally got back to the room I was not a happy bunny!

Anyway, poo rivers aside, we really enjoyed our time in Rishikesh, which is lucky because we will be back in a few weeks for a month!