The DeeJarLings

I had never seen rain like this before. I didn’t know clouds could hold this much water. It was more than just buckets; it was a waterfall that was everywhere at once, and showed no signs of ceasing. After a matter of seconds spent outside, one would be completely saturated. All of our gear was drenched and draped over chairs and tables in the small one-room tour shop in a futile attempt to dry. Everything smelled musty and the nine of us were getting anxious as we waited for Gautam, our trip organizer, to arrive. He was running close to an hour late. There had been no electricity in Darjeeling for the past two days.

“Has the monsoon hit already?” I asked. No, it was late May, and despite it starting in the south a week earlier than expected, it was still too soon for the Indian Monsoon to have made its way to Darjeeling.

“I hear it’s a cyclone,” someone said, “so it’s probably not a great idea to set out today. Where the hell is Gautam?” My cell phone still worked, so I called up my friend Neil in California, where it was 10 or 11pm, and asked him to get to a computer and find out what the hell was going on in the state of West Bengal. Thirty minutes later Neil called me back with some details. It was a cyclone alright; it had a name and everything. Cyclone Aila had hit Calcutta hard but was rapidly moving north dissipating as it moved past Darjeeling and towards the state of Sikkim, precisely where we were heading to start a seven day Himalayan trek up to Dzongri, 5000m above sea level.

“Everything is fine,” insisted Gautam who had finally showed up, “I’ve driven in much worse than this.” We were skeptical to say the least. “It’s already breaking up. Calcutta got the worst of it. By the time we’re half way to Sikkim, we’ll be past the rain.” Even if that were true, the hiking boots and down jackets we had rented were now soaked, along with our newly purchased quick dry pants, trekking socks, hats, gloves; all of our gear needed to dry before we put it on, and nobody felt up for a six-hour jeep ride up a mountain while a cyclone raged on. We agreed to postpone the trip for a day, and to play it by ear from there.

Hours later we were all in a room in Hotel Ailement, getting drunk and playing a candle lit round of “mafia”, a group game I had learned years ago during a weeklong freshman orientation on a Connecticut farm. Cyclone Aila had made the mainstream American news. 300 had died in Calcutta, 11 in Darjeeling just down the road from us, and millions had been displaced across West Bengal. Of course both of my parents had called me up, frantically pleading with me not to go to Sikkim, and to wait the rain out in Darjeeling. The sentiment was shared amongst the rest of our group. With the rain continuing to pound into the night, the general consensus was that we would not be leaving early the next morning as planned. So we got drunk.

It was fitting that the nine of us had all convened that night in Hotel Ailement, having all checked out from two or three different hotels that morning thinking we would be leaving then. After all, that’s where we had been when we first got to know each other as a group two nights earlier. Darjeeling shuts down at 10:30pm each night, and Joey’s Pub had been no exception. The town’s main westerner hang out, Joey’s Pub was a great place to meet other backpackers, have a few beers, and share stories of traveling across India. The crowd had been rowdy that night and nobody seemed keen on going to bed come closing time. So I had invited everyone back to my place to continue the party on the roof of Hotel Ailement. About 20 of us bought as many beers as we could carry, and made our way up Darjeeling’s steep and windy roads towards the top of the hill where the hotel was situated. Around 2am, with only ten or so of us left after about a half dozen noise complaints, Bryony, a gap year traveler from England, pitched to us the idea of trekking to Dzongri.

She and a couple others had done their homework, having shopped around the area for the best price and most trustworthy organizers over the past couple of days. 10,000 rupee, or $200 USD, would cover everything for a week: permits, gear rental and purchases, a jeep to and from Sikkim, a guide, porters and cooks, food, yaks, a hotel for the night we returned, and storage for all the things we‘d leave behind. We’d sleep in sleeping bags in tents and huts, eat home cooked meals around camp fires, walk about 7 hours a day, and only get a couple hours of light rainfall each afternoon. It would be cold at night and at the top but we’d have thick down jackets and hats in addition to water proof jackets and pants.

I had only been in Darjeeling for about a week, loved it, and didn’t really want to move on quite yet. Before the cyclone had hit, the weather had been utterly perfect. I wouldn’t have changed a thing. Leanne and I had arrived via a 3-hour overcrowded and bumpy jeep ride from New Jalpaiguri (NJP) after a 10-hour overnight train from Calcutta. We had explored the area, visiting and taking photos of Darjeeling’s various Buddhist monasteries, churches, monuments, families of monkeys, and the gorgeous mountains surrounding us while downing cup after cup of the area’s world famous tea. We had taken a 3 hour tour on Darjeeling’s fairy tale toy train—an old school, coal powered delight that precisely corresponded with the image that pops into my head whenever I think of a choo-choo train. Darjeeling is part of an area of northern West Bengal demanding a separate state called Gorkhaland and “We Want Gorkhaland NOW” signs peppered the streets. The Nepali speaking locals would be the kindest, most articulate and best educated I would meet in India. All in all, other than the recent rain, I was having a wonderful time there.

But I’m not one to pass up a great opportunity, and this trek sounded like a fantastic time. The monsoon was rapidly approaching anyways. So the next morning, a day before the cyclone, the nine of us who were on board met with Gautum, went over all the details, and spent the day on a whirlwind tour around the town collecting the necessary permits and trying on gear. It was clear by the end of the night that we had an awesome group dynamic. We had three 25-year-old Americans, myself included, three 19-year-old Brits on gap year before university, a 21-year-old French Canadian on summer break from university in Quebec, a 30-year-old Australian police detective taking a year or so off to see the world, and a Dutch social worker taking time off before settling down to a career.

After leading a few rounds of “mafia” myself, John, the Aussie, tried his hand at narrating. Within the first few sentences of his introduction, he had mispronounced Darjeeling as “dee-jar-ling“, and the group’s designation as the “DeeJarLings” was born.

The next morning when my alarm went off, hung over, exhausted, and generally miserable, I rolled over and peaked out the curtain to see sunshine, blue skies, and chirping birds. “Fuck,” I moaned, “looks like we’re driving to Sikkim today.”

India Rail and Getting Out of Goa

May 16, 2009

It’s often said that the greatest legacy left by the British in India is the Indian Railway. An expansive behemoth, the railway crisscrosses across the country, and, with 1.6 million employees, serves as the world’s second largest employer behind China's Army of 2.3 million. While India's various airlines can get you across long distances within the country for around $120, the train is drastically cheaper, the preferred method of travel for backpackers, and a part of the Indian experience in and of itself. With 1.1 billion citizens, one can safely assume that, at any given time, a whole lot of people want to get from one destination to another. Add the nation’s diversity and financial contrasts to that equation and you get a massive permutation of quotas, classes, waiting lists, cancellation requirements, and options for getting from point A to point B. After some time exploring the IRCTC website, it became apparent I was going to have to get over a bit of a learning curve.

That led me to IndiaMike’s expansive coverage on the topic, a whole lot of time spent at an Internet Cafe, and the scary realization that every train heading north out of India’s blistering summer south had been booked up months in advance with waiting lists in the triple digits. Hope was not lost however, as no country wants to go around stranding tourists in a foreign land, and, as such, the question of Foreign Tourist Quota availability was still open. For whatever reason, probably because they need to see your passport and tourist visa, Foreign Tourist Quota tickets cannot be purchased online, only in person, and only at certain main train stations. There seemed to be a mass exodus of backpackers heading north out of Goa towards the Himalayan hill stations of Himachal Pradesh, so I signed offline with the intention of finding one such traveler who could offer some advice.

While still fighting a mild heat-stroke-induced fever, I followed the sound of live music to a local restaurant where a jam band was performing. I bumped into a friend there who was heading to Himachal Pradesh in a few days. She had been able to get a foreign tourist ticket to Delhi from Pernem, a train station about 45 minutes away by motor scooter. From there she’d take a bus to Manali, Dharamsala, Shimla, or any of the other hot spots in Himachal. Sounded like a plan. I began to pay my bill and go home to get some rest when I met Leanne.

A teacher from California, Leanne had taken a 2 year sabbatical from her inner city post in the LBC to travel the world. She was 8 months in and had an incredible set of destinations already under her belt. Her plans were to head from Goa to Darjeeling in the northeast state of West Bengal. This was going to involve a flight to Calcutta, a 10 hour train to NJP, and a 3 hour jeep up the mountainside to Darjeeling. She began showing me pictures of the gorgeous town known for its world famous tea.

“And best of all, the temperature is in the 60s. The 60s!!” This was a good point. But Himachal Pradesh would have similar weather and seemed to be the place to be in May. “That may be, but the monsoon hits Darjeeling in two to three weeks. It’s totally underwater afterwards while the rains don’t hit Himachal until July.”

I said I’d sleep on it, and the next morning was on board. There was still the matter of getting the train tickets from Calcutta to NJP, so that afternoon we rented a scooter for about $3 USD a day and set out for Pernem.

“No,” the man in the booth said.
“What do you mean 'no'? No, there aren't tourist quota tickets left? No, you can’t sell them? Or no, you don’t understand?”
“No.”
“A friend bought a tourist quota ticket here just yesterday to Delhi.”
“Yes, a ticket from PERNEM, not Calcutta,” he replied, and before I could say anything else another man pushed in front of us and started talking to the man in the booth in Hindi, who completely ignored our attempts to express that, no, we weren’t finished. We were eventually referred to Thivim, the next train station down the line in Goa. Back in the blistering heat, on the scooter, and another 45 minutes later we were in Thivim with more bad news.

They had no access to sell foreign tourist quota tickets from this station. This ticket man was far nicer, actually turning the computer screen around to show us as he selected Calcutta as the source station, NJP as the destination, and foreign tourist as the quota. “YOU DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO PERFORM THIS OPERATION,” blinked the terminal coldly in black on white text. Crap.

Leanne then went to talk to the station manager to see if she could get some sympathy points for being a poor, stranded, foreign woman, traveling by herself. Her description of the station manager’s office coincided with one I would eventually have weeks later in Varanasi. One man (or two in the case of Varanasi) sat behind a desk covered in telephones, all ringing at once, while speaking into two handsets at a time, as various other men ran in and out with papers and requests. It was like walking into a 1950s newspaper room during a breaking political scandal. All this for a small train station in rural Goa, so one could only imagine what the state of Calcutta’s station manager’s office was like. Needless to say, Leanne did not manage to get us tickets.

At this point I enlisted the help of a trusted travel agent, who looked into it, found out that tourist quota tickets were still available, and that the train station in Vasco De Gama was our best bet. Vasco De Gama was 2.5 hours from Arambol, and it was already getting dark, so we headed back for the night, sore, sunburned, but still determined. We set out again the next day, this time with an overnight bag packed, as I really didn’t feel like driving 2.5 hours and back in one day just for train tickets. This was a good call because by the time we got to Vasco De Gama the station was closed for a half day…go figure. We found a reasonable guest house to stay in on the nearby beach of Bogmalo, a popular Indian tourist (and thus considerably more expensive) spot.

The next morning, after an hour of waiting in line, filling out forms, and waiting in line again, we had our tickets. As I stood there, staring at the ticket that had taken so many hours and miles to obtain, I realized that, though it was priced at 630 rupee ($12.60), this piece of paper in my hand was priceless. I carefully folded it into my wallet, got back on the scooter, and spent the rest of the day sightseeing our way across the Portuguese colony back towards Arambol.

Just a Heads Up…

For those of you following along, keep in mind this blog has particularly lagged behind my actual adventures in India. I’ve been placing more emphasis on quality over timeliness, and as such, I put off writing about my actual experiences here until they have time to settle in. For an up to date feed of the places I actually am in, and the activities I’m doing, just check my Facebook feed . For those not able to do so (or just don’t want to), as well as for posterity’s sake, here’s a brief timeline slash recap of my time in India so far:

April 19th to May 5th - Delhi.

Did sightseeing, got over not-Typhoid, made new friends, and got a taste for middle class 20-something life in Delhi.

May 5th to May 21st - Goa.

Soaked up the sun on Arambol Beach. Explored the state on a motor scooter. Met random backpackers from around the world and fought to get train tickets on a tourist quota to escape from the hellish heat and humidity.

May 21st to May 26th - Darjeeling.

Savored the perfect weather, delicious tea, and gorgeous vistas while getting to know the most intelligent and hospitable locals I’ve yet to meet in India. Brought the patrons of a local pub at closing time to my hotel for a roof top after-party that ended around 2am with the remaining 2 Americans, 3 British, 1 French Canadian, 1 Australian, and 1 Dutch travelers agreeing to go on a 7-day trek into the Himalayas together two days later.

May 26th to June 3rd - Sikkim

After a day’s delay due to cyclone Aila (killed 300 people in West Bengal, 10 of which were in Darjeeling, and displacing 5 million people), the DeeJarLing Trekkers set out to Dzongri in the Indian state of Sikkim, 5,000m high. One of the most amazing experiences of my life, I spent it with a wonderful set of people all sharing a great group dynamic. The pictures are phenomenal and I’m finally over the mutual cold we all ended up sharing. It also made me realize that I need to inject more camping and trekking into my trip and my life in general.

June 4 to 5th - Varanasi

Myself and 5 of the 8 other trekkers went to Varanasi along the Ganges River. The holiest city in Hinduism, Varanasi facilitates 300 cremations a day as well as thousands of pilgrimages. Fascinating experience but awfully creepy in a Temple of Doom sort of way. Saw a dead body for the first time. Several actually. With their eyes open. And on fire. Also crazy hot and crazy humid.

June 7 to 8 - Agra

Mysef and two of the trekkers visited Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, Red Fort, and a forgotten city. While it lived up to the hype as a spectacle of human architecture, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the Taj was just one big (and extremely expensive) photo op. The other sites were remarkably similar to ones I had already seen in Delhi and less impressive.

June 9 to 10 - Delhi

Food poisoning from Agra kicked in on 110+ degree train ride to Delhi. Miserable. Stayed with a friend in Delhi for two nights recovering before getting on a bus to Manali in Himachal Pradesh.

June 11 to Now - Manali

I took a 14 hour bus ride on my own to the hill station town of Manali in the state of Himachal Pradesh. Gorgeous town. Completely overrun with Israeli backpackers. I’m getting to practice my Hebrew again while loving the fact that I’m finally done with the heat. The views are incredible and there are ton of outdoor adventure activities to do. I’ll spend at least a week here before exploring a few more sites in Himachal Pradesh including Dhara Masala, the home of the Dalai Lama in exile, before returning home in mid July, the six month mark, for a 4 to 6 week break from traveling.

Actual posts will follow on (this is more of a to-do list for me):

• The ordeal of getting tourist quota tickets in Goa
• The joys of traveling with a netbook
• Dealing with a sense of escapism and the looming real world “plans” waiting for me on my eventual return
• Darjeeling and meeting the DeeJarLing trekkers
• The trek to Dzongri
• Varanasi and the crematorium
• Agra, the Taj Mahal, Delhi seeming a lot more expensive now that I’ve been in the rest of India, and getting used to and then sick of no longer traveling alone
• Riding the trains in India and the awe inspiring power that comes with a commanding moustache
• An eventual (I honestly am going to write this) high level post mortem on my Israeli experience

Goa: Paradise in the Off Season

As I tumbled and bounced around the back of a dilapidated taxi-van, driving north across the Indian state of Goa, staring at the jostling trees, rice paddies, and huts streaming past my window, and trying not to think about the sweat pouring down my neck, it occurred to me that I was only now really starting the “backpacking” portion of my adventure. Despite three nights spent in dorm style hostels in Masada, Haifa, and Eilat, my three months in Israel were spent in guest rooms or on spare mattresses of friends and family. The lodgings in Holland were even cushier with comfortable and clean hotels booked ahead of time and another guest room waiting for me with my Uncle Shimon. Then there were the three air conditioned weeks in Dehi split between extra rooms with Rahil and Bekkah, and the 5 days spent in the hospital with not-Typhoid.

But, no, those days were over. I was on my own with only vague notions of where I would be heading, sleeping, and going after. My main concern was whether there’d be any other travelers or even open guest houses given the off season date of my arrival. According to Lonely Planet there were 14 beaches in Goa, and I had opted to try Arambol, the northernmost one, first. It’s reputation as a chilled out, scenic, and cheap hippy destination seemed to resonate with what I was looking for in my escape from Delhi’s congested city life. What I found was an Israeli spring break ghost town. About half of the shops were closed and those that were open offered huge price cuts to lure in the remaining westerners. Every restaurant had an Israeli food section and I saw a spattering of Hebrew on signs around the town.

One of a few of my regular breakfast spots

View from my guest house patio

There were, however, no Israelis, just 20 to 30 backpackers and aging hippies who had set up shop years ago and got by on the occasional yoga lesson or massage appointment. It wasn’t hard to see why. A great meal (King Fish is amazing) would cost you under 100 rupee ($2 USD), beer was 40 rupee ($0.80), a bottle of 80 proof coconut fenny was 80 ($1.60) and lodgings ranged from 50 to 350 a night ($1 to $7). The sun was always out, the ocean was always gorgeous, and, because there were so few tourists there, all 20 to 30 of us got to know and become friendly with each other pretty quickly. I met a great group of British gap year students, recent Nigerian university grads, and Australian, Belgium, Dutch, German, Spanish, Austrian, Norwegian, and Swedish travelers. I met one American on my first day and another on my third to last, but generally speaking I was the only US representation around. Everyone had various reasons for traveling ranging from taking a year off before university to living half the year in Goa every year and it all made for some very interesting late night conversations and debates. I found myself taking on three Europeans in defending America’s entrepreneurial spirit as the source of its success one moment, and hearing about the level of corruption in Africa the next. There was a decent amount of drugs going around but not as much as I had been lead to believe, but then again, it was the off season. As for the locals, they seemed to recognize the degree to which tourism funded their lives and were considerably nicer and more laid back than in Delhi though just as persistent in touting their wares.

Anjuna

Felix from Nigeria

British Gap Years

Simon and Caroline from England

Like the rest of India, Arambol was covered with stray dogs (but no cats!) that all looked related. Every area in India that I’ve been to so far has its own hyper extended canine family and at this point I could probably differentiate a Goan pup from one in Delhi, Darjeeling, or Sikkim. They’re all cute, lovable, and sleepy during the day, and loud, rowdy, and territorial at night. The Goan pups’ night time transformations were especially disconcerting and I found it often in my best interest to win over the love of one when walking home late at night to follow you and bark off the others who would growl viciously at you along the way.

Adorabe pup wearing my sandals and waiting for me to wake up

There was plenty of Internet access and for 150 rupee a day ($3, just double it and divide by 100) you could rent a motor scooter and explore the rest of the state. While there was a decent number of sights to see, the real joy in this was the act itself of riding a scooter down windy roads, over bridges with gorgeous views, stopping to talk with the usually friendly locals or to grab a bottle of Limca (why don’t we have this stuff in America??) One day I rode on to a ferry, headed up to Teracol Fort, and enjoyed some freshly made brusccetta while gazing over the water below. I honestly couldn’t have asked for a more relaxing getaway.

Ferry ride with scooter

Teracol Fort

Well, that’s not entirely true. There’s a reason it’s the off season and a reason that I eventually left after 2 weeks. Every day was hotter than the one before. While the ocean provided a breeze, it also brought with it a suffocating humidity that left everyone just plain used to being wet all the time. While dirt cheap and with gorgeous views, none of the accommodations had air condtioning, and it wouldn’t have made much a difference given the rolling blackouts that were a regular part of the day. You take the bad with the good but only up to a point. After a walk to buy a new phone (travel tip: swim trunks with pockets are super convenient. Swimming with your phone in your pocket, not so much) left me sweating out so many electrolytes that I ended up with a fever, I decided it was time to head north.

This wasn’t an easy decision. My plan was to head south from Goa into Kerrala to see Cochi, Trivandrum, Pondicherry, and Aurroville among other major south Indian destinations if not for the stifling heat. But the fact is that India is an enormous and diverse country and there’s no way I was going to see all of it in one go anyways. You can spend years returning to this country and still only see a portion of all there is to see, by which point all that you’d already seen would have completely changed anyways. So for me, missing out on the wonders of the south is just another reason to come back here again some day. Another thing that made this decision difficult turned out to be how hard it was to get a train ticket out of there. In a country of 1.1 billion people, trains fill up fast, especially when summer hits and everybody flees to the north. After about an hour of online research I realized I was going to have to do some leg work to find a way out of Goa…

Coming to India

I’ve done my best to model this trip with a gradually increasing difficulty so coming to India immediately after Israel was never part of my original plan. They say that if you can travel in India, you can travel anywhere. This is, of course, a gross exaggeration, but it still seemed like a country I should warm up to with, say, a month or two in South East Asia first. However, I had two good friends, Rahil and Bekkah, who were both in Delhi on respective social action projects and who would only be in the country until the end of May. I hadn’t seen either in awhile, and wouldn’t for a while longer, plus having that kind of home base in a new country isn’t something that you pass up, so I opted to come here to India first, and work my way east from here.

Besides the jump-in-the-deep end facet, there was another downside to my timing. I arrived in India in mid April, just as temperatures across the country were starting to rocket upwards and about 6 weeks before the epic Indian Monsoon would hit the southern and north eastern states and begin to work its way across the country. The monsoon here is the result of the country essentially boiling over. As the land heats up, the air rises to be replaced with cooler air from the sea, bringing with it evaporated ocean water to fall over the land as rain. The energy released when the vapor condenses into rain over the land causes this wet air to warm up and rise further, which in turn enables even more wet air to come in from the sea. This self propelling engine is driven on two fronts by the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, and makes it’s way across the country over the course of a month. Tourists flee and locals rejoice as the entire agricultural backbone of India depends upon it’s very often fickle schedule. The six weeks leading up to the monsoon are some of the hottest of the year which humidity rising past 90 percent in the southern states bordering the sea. The off season; not the greatest time to visit India.

Delhi was between 105 and 115 degrees Fahrenheit during the 3 weeks I was there, and it was only getting hotter when I left. I saw on the news that it was the hottest April in Delhi in 60 years. Rahil’s room mate Andy was out of town which meant I could stay in his air conditioned room while he was gone-- a real godsend. While my nights were comfortable, my afternoons seeing the sights of Delhi were blistering. The sun was relentless and wind was non existent but I dealt with it and kept myself busy in my first week, suffering only the occasional sun stroke and mild dehydration. I walked around the historic Red Fort where the Mughals ruled, coming back for a night time audio and light show that chronicled the history of the fort and its inhabitants. I donned a makeshift leg covering, left my sandals with the shoe keeper, and explored the sprawling Jama Masjid, India’s largest mosque, including a winding climb up a minaret for a stunning view of Old Dehi. I gave in to a persistent rickshaw driver for a makeshift tour of the crowded bazaar of Old Delhi and was equally amazed both at his ability to navigate through the windy streets packed with merchants, customers, beggars, cows, and (lots and lots of) dogs and with the sense-overpowering combination of scents, sounds, and colors.

Red Fort

Jama Masjid

View of Old Delhi from Minaret

Rickshaw ride through Old Delhi

I saw the gorgeous architecture of Humayan’s Tomb, a precursor to the Taj Mahal. I walked the length of the Rajpath between India Gate and the Secretariat and the president’s estate (did I mention the sun stroke?). I also went to the Ghandi Smriti museum, and explored various marketplaces. It was a whirlwind first week of pretty straight forward tourism, crowds, touts and scams, and good food.

Humayan's Tomb

India Gate

Secretariat

Delhi is a sprawling city similar to LA in terms of layout. It’s not a city you can walk around so most get around via auto-rickshaws: three wheeled contraptions that run on natural gas and look like a mix of a golf cart and a motorcycle. Autos are everywhere and always seem to have a meter that’s “broken” making every ride a lesson in the tourist tax as drivers initially demand up to three times what the meter would charge. Most areas are filled with enough of autos, however, that you can just walk away from any driver who’s being unreasonable. While cheap and convenient, autos are completely exposed subjecting you to suffocating levels of smog when stuck in traffic. Delhi ranks number two in terms of world cities with the worst air pollution and it’s definitely something you pick up on. Another disadvantage to being in the open is the number of beggars that come up to you at every red light, poking and pleading for a few rupee.

While I was prepared for India’s massive poverty problem, it was particularly striking in a city where the cost of living is remarkably low yet night clubs charge NYC prices for drinks and often ask for cover charges of $100. The dollar is just worth less in Manhattan where even waiters make more money so it’s easy to wrap your mind around over charged venues. The same is obviously not true in Delhi making witnessing that kind of excess unsettling. This paradox is a much talked about theme of India. I’ve been reading In Spite of the Gods, a book chronicling India’s strange, fast, and uneven rise to modernity and it’s provided some wonderful context to my time here.

The range of prices is interesting across all products. Pharmacies are on every corner and charge bare bottom prices for even name brand drugs. At the same time there’s no guarantee that the pills you receive aren’t counterfeit sugar pills. A few friends I met are working on a startup called PharmaSecure to address this problem by printing serial numbers on the back of pill packs that can be sent via SMS to a service that reports on their authenticity (and prevents the same number from being used again). In general, Indian labor is dirt cheap so services such as auto rickshaws, house keepers, lock smiths, and food service cost low where as packaged goods can be a crapshoot. Many American products still cost American prices while others, presumably that can be fabricated locally (such as Coke) are considerably cheaper. You also find fast food joints like Pizza Hut have become full service sit down restaurants with elaborate menus and eager waiters. The food in Delhi was delicious and not restricted to Indian food only.

So my first week in Delhi was an informative one. I made several new friends, saw, photographed, and appreciated the obligatory tourist attractions, improved on my bargaining skills, learned my way around a sprawling city, got a taste for both ends of the financial spectrum, fine tuned my scam-o-meter and got used to a state of constant sweat. I spent a weekend in Rajasthan that I’ll talk about in another post, followed by the week of hell in a Delhi hospital I described in a previous one.

From 04-30 Hospital

I spent a third week in Delhi with Bekkah’s host family recovering further and, in general, cheering up. Getting as sick as I did really depressed me and for a few days I just wanted to get the hell out of India. That feeling eventually passed and I decided to reinforce my rediscovered excitement for India with a relaxing couple of weeks in Goa, a beach state in the south west. More on that incredible experience later.

Goa - Night 1

I suppose it was my own fault.  The “guest house” was off the beaten path.  I followed the manager there and the walk back to the main beach was entirely self explanatory.  It just looked so self descript I didn’t think I’d have any problem identifying it again.  During the day, anyways.  I suppose I also should have recognized that the fact I didn’t get cell phone reception in the hut wasn’t a fluke.  My service just didn’t extend very far past the beach, which should have been reason enough to blackball the spot as a viable housing option.  It was just so damn hot, and my bag was so damn heavy, and it overlooked the water, and really seemed just fine at the time.  And I suppose it’s just fine now.  Now that I’ve found it again.  The last hour of wandering around the path, exploring every make shift stone stairwell before verifying that the building it led to was in fact deserted, before giving up and walking back to the beach no less than 3 times to call the manager and plead for better directions was anything but fun.  Thank god I took down his number.  The fact that the directions got better and better with each plea just made me mad.  Why didn’t he tell me it was between Lude Guest House and Neeru Guest House the first time?  Why didn’t he tell me that the first sign for Om Gesh is a restaurant, the second leads to an abandoned building (after a bit of a hike), and the third isn’t well marked but is well lit and is also the spot I’m looking for?  At least he picked up his phone each time.  Man, did I start to panic.  

I’m here now, and that’s what really matters.  I’m praying for an easy night’s sleep and for my thoughts and dreams to not dwell on the funky mattress and sheets (that’s what the silk dream sack is for), nor the humidity, nor the mosquitoes (lets see what this repellant is really made of).  Even if I do sleep soundly, I think odds are high that I’ll switch residences to the better reviewed Residensea in the morning now that I’ve actually located it.  In the meantime I’ll focus my thoughts on the interesting folk I’ve met so far, the feeling the ocean surf had on my skin, and the prospect for an adventurous scooter ride in the A.M.  

Delhi Belly, Baby

“Have fun in India,” Neil said to me on gChat during our last online conversation before I left Tel Aviv, “try not to eat, touch, or look at anything.” I laughed and groaned at the same time, knowing full well that the Indian rite of passage affectionately referred to as “Delhi Belly” was an inevitability I’d have to face eventually. I had no idea what I was in for.

Weeks later, sitting in the bathroom of the Max Super Speciality Hospital in Saket, a neighborhood of New Delhi, I wrote the following line in my journal, “how did I get here?” I’ve always been enamored with the practice of taking a mental snapshot at the start of a big trip on which to look back on at various milestones thereafter. Looking back on a moment captured mere weeks earlier can seem like peering back ages at a different version of myself. This helps me to appreciate the degree to which my experiences change myself and my views of the world and, at the very least, always makes for a good “wow” factor. This snapshot effect was especially pronounced as I sat there comparing where I had been two weeks earlier compared to my current predicament. Five days in a Delhi hospital with symptoms --a 102+ fever that wouldn’t respond to normal doses of antibiotics or fever medication, a swollen liver, spleen, and nodes, and a torrential waterfall coming out of me that showed no signs of relenting no matter what the nurses gave me-- that all indicated Typhoid Fever as the most likely cause. And I had been doing so well.

As one week in India had become two, including a weekend excursion beyond Delhi and into the province of Rajasthan, I started to think that a mild form of Delhi Belly must have had come and gone without me taking notice. Granted, I was being careful, but not obsessive. I only ate at street vendors vouched for by ex-pats, stuck to bottled water unless a restaurant was filtered, avoided anything uncooked, and carried around hand sanitizer wherever I went. And while I knew that a fever was a possibility, I definitely didn’t foresee myself spending close to a week getting my own first hand account of India’s hospital system.

My tests for Typhoid eventually came back negative, leaving me with a mere yet severe gastrointestinal bacterial infection to blame for my woes. Was it the sip of water I took before Rahil told me not to trust any restaurant’s water? The onion masala dosa I ate that was filled with an obscene amount of onions that may or may not have been raw? The god awful mango lassi in Pushka? Did I possibly brush my teeth with tap water one night in Jaipur and not realize it? Why do most get 24 to 48 hours of diarrhea while my immune system was completely crippled for close to a week? Did it really matter? All I could do moving forward was raise my vigilance level up a few notches and try to see the experience as a set of stories I can tell and questions I can answer about my hospital stay in Delhi.

The doctors were great. They spoke English, knew their stuff, and were better equipped to treat something like Typhoid than any western physician. The facilities were on a western par and were, in general, very hygienic. Conversely, the nurses and attendants, and service in general were all pretty horrible. I’ve become used to dealing with language barriers by now, as well as the ways different cultures deal with them. In India I’ve noticed a tendency for locals not to acknowledge that they don’t understand you. “Yes,” they will answer to a question or “that way” they’ll arbitrarily point when not understanding a word you just said. While only a small nuisance on the street, this can be agonizingly frustrating when in a hospital and asking for something like “an injection to keep me from throwing up all the pills you just gave me” from a nurse who stares back blankly and insists she can speak English just fine when you ask her to send for someone else. You just had to get used to this sort of thing along with the door to your room being constantly left open, requests for items as critical as toilet paper (did I mention the waterfall?) going ignored three times over, and food trays being nonchalantly placed completely out of reach by an attendant who chooses to ignore your pleas as he walks out of the room. And while there’s a hand sanitizer dispenser on the wall, nobody uses it, so you better get in the habit of asking each nurse to put on a pair of clean gloves before giving you an injection or taking blood. And while people like the dietician who insists that sipping Coca Cola and Ginger Ale doesn’t soothe an upset stomach and calls an attendant to hand you your bag rather than grabbing it herself were often counteracted by a few very attentive and sympathetic nurses, in general my interaction with the staff was less than pleasant. But I’m out now, almost done with my oral antibiotic prescription, and able to consume solid foods again, and that’s what’s really important. I’ve also lost a good amount of weight which is always nice.

I’ve had a tendency to deal with bad traveling days with an involuntary muttering of “get me the hell out of this country” and I’ve been trying to keep that sort of negative sentiment under control, or at least confined towards Delhi, its daily barrage of 105 to 110 degree temperatures, and suffocating levels of air pollution and not to the entire sub continent. After all, I just got here. As my mood has increased over the past few days I’ve become more excited about exploring the south before the monsoon strikes in June and less anxious about what has proven to be a rather shitty immune system. I haven’t purchased a flight yet, but the plan right now is to fly to Goa on Saturday or Sunday in the hopes of decompressing by the beach and possibly rendezvousing with some Israeli backpackers (watching videos from Israel on my camera while stuck in the hospital bed made me long to hear Hebrew again). From there I’ll most likely follow the path of Alexander Frater as depicted in his Chasing the Monsoon but we will definitely take all things one day at a time.