Indian Travel Guide by Me

An excerpt from an email to my parents and sister will serve as a stand-in for a post about India. Sorry I STILL haven't gotten around to South Africa and Mauritius. South Africa is a work in progress, and Mauritius shouldn't take too long, but in the next month I'll hardly have any time on the ship to write blog posts so don't get your hopes up too much. If you wanna know about them, ask me on facebook or chat or in person!

-I had a blast on the Delhi-Agra-Jaipur trip, and there's still tomorrow in Chennai.
-Beggars and hawkers swarm you everywhere touristy. Beggars make you feel like shit and your money doesn't help them so its better not to give them anything (they don't even thank you anyway.) The hawkers are annoying and follow you for miles sometimes but they're also an opportunity. I tried to sell my hat to one of them and he almost bought it but then I ran away without selling it (I like my hat!). I realize they're poor and a bit desperate to make a sale, but after 3 days of it you've got no sympathy for them (or the beggars for that matter).
-Jaipur is really cool and I had a few hours "on the ground" there. I have video of some of the most ridiculous traffic ever, and my friend Joe has a video of us crossing the street. I survived! I will never fear crossing the street in the US again, because WOW compared to them our craziest highway is like a funerary procession
-I rode an elephant up a mountain into a 17th century raja's palace. This event was also documented with video. And my new friend Ali took some pretty good photos of me too. He said "Ali takes the best photos!" and then I bought a set of 4 of the prints (he made them while we were touring and then sold them as we left) for 100 rupees, or a bit over 2 bucks. He wanted 200 rupees but then I pointed out "if I don't buy them, who else will?" and he was like "ok 100 then!" Basically I got a few things I bought for super cheap, which made up for other things being somewhat overpriced... bargaining works out like that. I bought a bronze cast statue of a seated meditating Buddha (for the garden!) that the guy originally wanted 1800 rupees for, but I haggled it down to 900 by asking for a student discount. I was a complete asshole too. He had to go to another room to get a card reader for me to pay with my Visa debit, and at that point the price was 1000 and he said "ok 1000 rupees" and I said "wait I thought we had said 900!" and he said "no no you said 1000!" and I started to be like "oh well never mind then!" and he relented and went down to 900... I love playing these mind games, especially after getting ripped off a few times. India owes me! and to be fair I DID give a few handouts to beggars. I had some extra food at one of the lunch buffets and I took it with me in a napkin and gave it to a genuinely grateful mother and child, and then when another mother nearby saw I gave her 100 rupees (then ran onto the bus and hid before everyone else could come over).
-Saw the Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort. They were also ridiculous. I tried to take lots of "off the beaten path" photos of the Taj Mahal besides the usual facade view, and I'm satisfied
-I took a lot of photos in general. Sometimes Indian people wanted to be photographed, sometimes they also wanted money... but I got some good photos of people, still life, and architecture.
-The trip was more fun than my safari because it wasn't full of spoiled rich morons.
-India has an astonishing range of truck horns. Some of them actually play little songs. You can hear some of them in my Jaipur video, but they were really crazy on our bus rides on the highway. Indian drivers blow the horn all the time; to signal that they're passing mostly, but also if someone's going slow, going fast, if there's a wide ox cart, if there's something to look at off on the side of the road, if there's a cow in the way, etc.
-Yes there are cows wandering around. They are completely unphased by everything, because they know traffic will avoid them as much as possible. One dog I saw, however, was not so lucky... ewwww
-On the way from Agra to Jaipur we had to take a detour on the bus cuz of some riots. There were tons of cops... and the cops in India all pack some SERIOUS heat. They've all got AK-74s on their backs, even the port guards.
-Delhi is massive and spread out and has that artificial and planned look to it. But mostly massive. It also had the highest density of hilarious and awkwardly-worded shop names. I've got photos of them too.
-I rode and survived a train ride from Delhi to Jaipur. The entire way there, the train passed a massive never-ending shantytown along the railroad tracks.
-Public urination is the ONLY kind of urination in India. I saw an ABSURD number of people peeing on walls and in gutters. I tried to count them but literally lost track in the 40s, and this was just in the first day in Delhi. At any given time there's probably more people peeing in public in India than there are people in the US.
-when we took that detour to avoid the riots the bus took a country road through rural Uttar Pradesh state on the way to Rajasthan, where Jaipur is. Since it was a bit off the beaten path, the people in the villages we passed through weren't used to seeing tourists, and therefore were overjoyed to see a bus of foreigners in their town. This is the only time I saw genuine non money-related friendliness in India. Everyone came out to stare (Indians stare... after a while it doesn't offend you anymore) and a few people had cameras. I took some great photos of the people since they were so excited to be photographed.
-All buses and trucks in India are decorated with flowers and images of Hindu deities. They were reminiscent of the Beatles' bus from Magical Mystery Tour.
-A lot of places require shoes to be removed, such as the mosque to the side of the Taj Mahal. This keeps the floor extremely clean but makes your shoes smell horrible. I dunno if they'll ever be the same. Also India has some pretty unholy smells of its own. Urban areas smell like urine and gasoline all the time, with other exciting aromas mixed in based on whats nearby (human shit, elephant shit, cow shit, welding torches, vegetable markets, fish markets, spicy foods, spicy food shits, etc.)
-One thing I saw on TV was a commercial for skin-whitening cream. White people try to tan to get darker, and Indians use sketchy cosmetics to look whiter... what a world.
-Speaking of white people, you'd be hard pressed to find dark-skinned Indians on TV or in advertisements. They're extremely rare. Everyone is either an extremely fair-skinned Indian or an actual white person. Not really sure why, but its kind of messed up, since most Indians are pretty dark, even in the north.
-With liberal use of Pepto Bismol, Delhi Belly was kept relatively under control. Only 1 relatively minor incident was resolved quickly. No injuries or deaths to report. I do have quite a few mosquito bites though. We'll see how THAT plays out...
-I totally know what that professor meant when he said said this before we got to India: "When you're there, all you can think of is 'GET ME THE HELL OUTTA HERE!' but then when you've left you already want to go back.