Out of India

Given the recent terror acts in Mumbai, my brother Joshua has asked me to explain why we visited India in the first place. (And I am sure he will be somewhat unhappy to hear that we are likely to go back at some point.)

 

Honestly, my initial thought was some desire to see humanity "in the wild" so to speak. We wanted an exotic experience that we would surely not have in Europe. Plus, we quite like the food. On those counts India did not disappoint. We saw strange people and places, amazingly colorful culture, and the food was generally excellent everywhere. In fact, considering the price, Indian food is easily the best cuisine in the world.

 

However, India has its drawbacks--and I don't mean the terror variety, though confronting extremists of any "faith" is an appalling notion:

 

1.) Everyone bargains in India. They say bargaining is expected. But I don't really enjoy buying stuff at the best of times, so the feeling that I should bargain for everything got tiresome. I often just purchased and assumed I was being ripped off; that is, until I knew I was being ripped off. Much of our time there I felt as if we were trapped inside a giant flea market (or, in the case of Pushkar, a town-sized mall).

 

2.) All the garbage in India gets burned. Okay, maybe some of it is recycled somehow, but, mostly, they burn everything. And I don't mean at a dump. Little piles of trash are swept together everywhere and burned on the spot. In the street. In ditches. Amongst palm groves. On the beach. Everywhere.

 

Perhaps that is a good thing in a way. Maybe we would all be better consumers if we had our garbage burned right in front of us and if, in essence, we were forced to breathe our trash. In any case, the smoke from these fires meant hazy skies and, long term, would probably take a few years off the average life.

 

But those two problems are really the main ones. As people, Indians are not radically different from any of the other people we've met on our travels. They like a good joke. They like making and spending money. They love and fear in equal measure. And, while acts of terror like the horror which just took place in Mumbai are upsetting for us all, you can be sure that Indians in India are the folks who are most angry and saddened by it.

 

As for us, we're now in Thailand, in which the prime minister has just announced a state of emergency concerning the "protesters" who have taken over the international airport here and stranded a bunch of tourists. Of course, most tourists could suffer worse fates than being stuck in Bangkok. However, given the world's recent economic downturn, this was probably not the best time to give the country's tourism industry a punch in the gut.

 

That said, we leave tomorrow for waterfalls somewhere. But we won't be flying.

 

So, life is good. Weird, but good.

 

NB