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.