Time has gotten away from us and somehow more than three months have passed since our last blog entry. Believe it or not, we’ve kept quite busy. Since the last time that we posted from Phuket, Thailand, we have traveled through northern Laos, Cambodia, southern Vietnam, and northern Thailand, and have spent the last two months back in India. In India, we spent a week at Rutvik’s friend Anish’s wedding in Ahmedabad, spent several weeks working with his dad on his medical start-up, The Clinic, in Bombay, traveled in northern India with Kelli’s mom and her brother Jeff, and now are spending some time in Goa, a beach town on the western coast of India. Since it’s pretty impossible to pick up where we left off, we thought we’d tell you about our experiences traveling in northern India with Kelli’s family. We had a great time with some good laughs and there are plenty of fun stories to tell.
Due to the brief time they were in India, we ditched our fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants independent traveler hats and mapped out a day-to-day itinerary and even booked all of the hotels! Our path took us from our home base of Bombay through the historical cities of Udaipur and Jaipur in Rajasthan, on a tiger safari in Ranthambhore National Park, to Agra, site of the Taj Mahal, up to Rishikesh, yoga capital of the world, and finally to Delhi, India’s capital. Landing in Bombay at 2 am, Kelli’s mom and Jeff got quite a different introduction to India than Kelli had gotten a few months ago. Come to find out, the city actually does sleep for a few hours and they weren’t so struck with all the people…. YET.
The “meet the families” went off really well. Rutvik’s family went completely out of their way to make Kelli’s mom and Jeff feel welcome and comfortable in India. They had arranged for a room at a nearby country club and left a gift basket full of Indian goodies for their arrival. Rutivk’s mom made delicious food that they hadn’t tried before and we had some interesting discussions and laughs about differences between life in India and life in the US. It was neat that our families blended so easily, given such different backgrounds, but I guess we really never expected any different.
Kelli was super excited to see her family and enjoyed being able to play tour guide to some of the local sites of Bombay, feeling somewhat like a veteran of the city after spending several weeks there. We hit up all of the major tourist spots, which really highlighted the contrast between lifestyles of the upper and lower class residents of the city. Mishraji, the family driver, had some good fun watching us take videos of the hundreds of washermen handwashing laundry in big vats at the dhobi ghat, the area where most of the city’s laundry gets done, and stand on the median in the middle of one of the busiest intersections of Bombay to watch the dabbawallas get organized. (The dabbawallas are a group of men that pick up lunch tins from individual houses and deliver the hot meals to people at school and work. They’re actually so efficient at what they do that their process has become a six sigma case study at Harvard.)
Mishraji’s amazing (and quite aggressive) driving abilities also provided us entertainment as he managed some particularly challenging maneuvers through the Bombay traffic, like a right turn from the left lane across four or five “lanes” of traffic (if you know Bombay traffic, you will understand why “lanes” is in quotes). Jeff was so fascinated that he got videos of us weaving through the streets while mom closed her eyes to avoid a heart attack from the constant flinching.
We toured Dharavi slum (the second time for us), the biggest slum in South Asia, with over 1 million people living in a 1.7 sq km area, and the real life locale of Slumdog Millionaire. During the course of the trip we saw the various industries being run in Dharavi - recycling, pottery, leather goods, etc., which apparently generate over $665M of commerce each year. We also walked the residential areas of the slum and had to duck through narrow alleys and navigate open sewers and trash heaps. Kelli’s mom was amazed at how organized the slum was and how people were able to survive and lead their day-to-day lives in these conditions. Jeff wouldn’t even touch a bottle of water we bought at the store there and knew he was done when he saw Rutvik step on a dead rat! Rutvik’s family was in parts amused and appalled at Kelli’s family’s fascination with dhobis, dabbawallas, and the slums, things they consider just part of daily life in the city.
We also visited several of the attack sites from the November terrorist attacks. It was interesting to see that the bullet holes were still left in the window at Café Leopold – for posterity or for further investigation it wasn’t really clear – and it was eerie to walk through the lobby of The Taj, the hotel that had been under siege by the terrorists for days last November. The threat of terrorism is visible everywhere in Bombay. You have to pass through security at every mall, movie theater, tourist attraction, hotel, railway station, etc. in the city but sadly often the security is pretty lax and easily bypassed. It’s common that we’ll walk through a metal detector and won’t get stopped even though it beeps and when we walked into the Oberoi hotel, one of the attack sites, Kelli and Rutvik’s mom didn’t get frisked because there wasn’t a female guard on duty. Unless the security is beefed up, it’s unlikely that we’re going to see the end of these attacks anytime soon.
Bombay is a down and dirty introduction to India – both captivating and appalling. At times, it can be disgusting and tiring but it’s also quite charming and easy to love. Rajasthan, where we headed next, is quite a contrast. You feel like you are taking a step back in time, especially after being in the very modern city of Bombay. As opposed to south India, which is a road less traveled, Rajasthan is probably the most touristed state of India, full of old palaces and forts. It was the first time that we felt that the tourism infrastructure existed in India. People were at our service offering all sorts of western-style amenities. With a large number of foreigners, Kelli felt less like a spectacle than before. Having a tourist infrastructure has its benefits, like ice made from mineral water and export quality products, and pitfalls, like more aggressive vendors and highly inflated prices because they assume all foreigners are loaded.
The first two cities we visited were Udaipur, which is known for its gorgeous lake palaces, and Jaipur, which is known for its historical buildings made from pink sandstone. A few highlights:
- Best meal: We had dinner at Chokhi Dhani, a village themed amusement park complete with fortune tellers, snake charmers, magicians, animal rides and traditional buffet dinner. Mom and Kelli got to ride a camel (only one humped although Rutvik claims some of them have two!) for the first time and we all took a bullock cart ride. It was funny to see the bullocks scamper around the dirt track since we normally think of them as slow docile creatures.
- Biggest laugh: We had been stopped several times earlier in the trip and asked to be in pictures with Indian tourists. Couldn’t quite figure out why they wanted pictures with random sweaty white people, but we had fun pretending we were celebrities for a minute. Hilarious then, at Chokhi Dhani, when we stopped an Indian woman and asked her to take a family photo for us. She misunderstood and thought that we wanted a photo with her!! Kelli bit her lip hard as she went to take a picture of a very very flattered Indian lady smiling wide next to a very very stunned mom (with the most unique expression EVER!) We laughed all the way home.
- Best cultural experiences: We took an Indian cooking class (yes, we will be trying to use you all as guinea pigs when we get back!) and saw the most balance defying traditional dancing with local women balancing multiple earthern pots on their heads while executing some nifty moves.
- Scariest moment: We had ducked into an internet café in Udaipur one night to get out of the rain when the power went out (very common in India). We decided to get a couple rickshaws to get back to the hotel. Kelli and mom jumped in one together and suddenly the music was thumping and we were flying through back alleys of the dark and abandoned city with no idea of where we were or where the guys were. We held on tight with our hearts pounding as we wondered whether the driver and his friend were on drugs and where exactly they were taking us. Fortunately, they just decided they’d give us a good scare (which they definitely did) and we ended up back at the hotel with the guys close behind. Phew!
- Biggest surprise: North Indian cities are like zoos, literally. Next to concrete buildings and roads lined with traffic you can also see camels, monkeys, "billy" goats, dogs, cats, donkeys, horses, bullocks, buffaloes, snakes, rabbits, chipmunks, cobras (this one only of the snake charmer variety, fortunately), crows, pigs, warthogs, cows, doves, lizards, peacocks, elephants, sheep, pigeons, and sparrows – to name a few! Northern India is not only ALL the people but ALL the animals as well!
On the long drives between cities, mom had lots of fun taking pictures of all the people and all the animals – women carrying pots on their heads, shopkeepers in turbans, monkeys on the roofs playing, cows in the road causing traffic jams, etc. We’re not in Kansas (or Nebraska) anymore, Toto!
Next we went to Ranthambhore National Park to do a tiger safari by jeep. Staying in the wilderness in tents (well, luxury tents!) was a welcome change from the bustling cities we had visited thus far. Over dinner that night, the locals told us that two tiger cubs had recently been found in the town. While we were certainly hoping to see tigers, we looked back at the luxury tents and hoped that we could wait until the next morning in the safety of our jeep to see the furry felines. Luckily, we slept uninterrupted and had a highly enjoyable three hour safari stalking the wild beasts but unfortunately besides spotting some pugmarks we came away empty handed. The naturalist pointed out all sorts of animals like spotted and sambar deer, peacocks, kingfishers and monkeys throughout which combined with all the animals in the cities made for an impressive array of creatures we had seen in a short time span!
After Ranthambhore, we headed to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, probably the greatest love monument in the world. It was built by Emperor Shah Jahan as the tomb of his late wife Mumtaz Mahal. Rutvik had claimed that, despite all the hype associated with the Taj Mahal, we would not fail to be impressed. He was right - we came away believing that the Taj Mahal is the most stunning monument we had ever seen. It is gorgeous in its purity and simplicity and its design shows tremendous forethought that seems way beyond its time. The four towers that surround the tomb were built leaning outward such that an earthquake or plane crash would cause them to fall away from the structure, leaving the tomb intact. Legend is that the Emperor intended to build a black version of the Taj Mahal across the river. However, he failed and his body laid to rest next to his wife is the only asymmetrical feature of the Taj Mahal. This gave new meaning to one of our favorite Incredible India ads showing a picture of the Taj with the caption “And to think that guys today can get away with giving flowers and chocolates to their wives…” Wow.
Rishikesh, which has grown to be the Yoga Capital of the World since the Beatles spent time with their swami here during the 1960s, was another change of pace. The city is set on the holy river Ganges and is full of many hippie types who come to practice yoga and meditation. Kelli was expecting it to be a quiet town with a peace-loving huggy type environment and was disappointed with the commercial atmosphere the town had developed, the huge number of motorbikes and flies everywhere, and the type of foreigners that seemed to congregate there – as Jeff described, these were more the self-reflective “dirty hippies” than the peace and love kumbaya-singing hippies from the 60s. We spent our days shopping the markets, doing yoga at the ashram where we stayed, and eating good (often organic) food. We did the ritual of dipping our feet in the holy Ganges, which, according to Hindu tradition, absolved us of all sins. (Fortunately, Rishikesh is near the source of the river in the Himalayas, so it didn’t have all of the people washing themselves, cleaning their clothes, and relieving themselves, with dead bodies floating by as you hear about in Varanasi!!)
One day, we walked to where the “Beatles’ ashram” was and found a guard from the Forest Department outside. Rutvik managed to bribe the guard but didn’t have to pay a bribe himself as he was mistaken for our tour guide! Only in India J This wasn’t the last time he was mistaken for a guide, though. In Delhi, which was our final stop, a guy stopped him to ask where he should put his shoes outside of a mosque. That assumption was perpetuated by the fact that Rutvik often paid only a tenth or less of the admissions that the rest of us non-Indians paid to get into the same tourist attraction and his tickets were often printed on crappy paper and did not include “free” audiobooks that we received!
All in all a super fun two weeks! Feel free to browse through our photos on our Picasa site. The photos are sorted by city. In case you missed it, we’ve posted the links to the left.
Due to the brief time they were in India, we ditched our fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants independent traveler hats and mapped out a day-to-day itinerary and even booked all of the hotels! Our path took us from our home base of Bombay through the historical cities of Udaipur and Jaipur in Rajasthan, on a tiger safari in Ranthambhore National Park, to Agra, site of the Taj Mahal, up to Rishikesh, yoga capital of the world, and finally to Delhi, India’s capital. Landing in Bombay at 2 am, Kelli’s mom and Jeff got quite a different introduction to India than Kelli had gotten a few months ago. Come to find out, the city actually does sleep for a few hours and they weren’t so struck with all the people…. YET.
The “meet the families” went off really well. Rutvik’s family went completely out of their way to make Kelli’s mom and Jeff feel welcome and comfortable in India. They had arranged for a room at a nearby country club and left a gift basket full of Indian goodies for their arrival. Rutivk’s mom made delicious food that they hadn’t tried before and we had some interesting discussions and laughs about differences between life in India and life in the US. It was neat that our families blended so easily, given such different backgrounds, but I guess we really never expected any different.
Kelli was super excited to see her family and enjoyed being able to play tour guide to some of the local sites of Bombay, feeling somewhat like a veteran of the city after spending several weeks there. We hit up all of the major tourist spots, which really highlighted the contrast between lifestyles of the upper and lower class residents of the city. Mishraji, the family driver, had some good fun watching us take videos of the hundreds of washermen handwashing laundry in big vats at the dhobi ghat, the area where most of the city’s laundry gets done, and stand on the median in the middle of one of the busiest intersections of Bombay to watch the dabbawallas get organized. (The dabbawallas are a group of men that pick up lunch tins from individual houses and deliver the hot meals to people at school and work. They’re actually so efficient at what they do that their process has become a six sigma case study at Harvard.)
Mishraji’s amazing (and quite aggressive) driving abilities also provided us entertainment as he managed some particularly challenging maneuvers through the Bombay traffic, like a right turn from the left lane across four or five “lanes” of traffic (if you know Bombay traffic, you will understand why “lanes” is in quotes). Jeff was so fascinated that he got videos of us weaving through the streets while mom closed her eyes to avoid a heart attack from the constant flinching.
We toured Dharavi slum (the second time for us), the biggest slum in South Asia, with over 1 million people living in a 1.7 sq km area, and the real life locale of Slumdog Millionaire. During the course of the trip we saw the various industries being run in Dharavi - recycling, pottery, leather goods, etc., which apparently generate over $665M of commerce each year. We also walked the residential areas of the slum and had to duck through narrow alleys and navigate open sewers and trash heaps. Kelli’s mom was amazed at how organized the slum was and how people were able to survive and lead their day-to-day lives in these conditions. Jeff wouldn’t even touch a bottle of water we bought at the store there and knew he was done when he saw Rutvik step on a dead rat! Rutvik’s family was in parts amused and appalled at Kelli’s family’s fascination with dhobis, dabbawallas, and the slums, things they consider just part of daily life in the city.
We also visited several of the attack sites from the November terrorist attacks. It was interesting to see that the bullet holes were still left in the window at Café Leopold – for posterity or for further investigation it wasn’t really clear – and it was eerie to walk through the lobby of The Taj, the hotel that had been under siege by the terrorists for days last November. The threat of terrorism is visible everywhere in Bombay. You have to pass through security at every mall, movie theater, tourist attraction, hotel, railway station, etc. in the city but sadly often the security is pretty lax and easily bypassed. It’s common that we’ll walk through a metal detector and won’t get stopped even though it beeps and when we walked into the Oberoi hotel, one of the attack sites, Kelli and Rutvik’s mom didn’t get frisked because there wasn’t a female guard on duty. Unless the security is beefed up, it’s unlikely that we’re going to see the end of these attacks anytime soon.
Bombay is a down and dirty introduction to India – both captivating and appalling. At times, it can be disgusting and tiring but it’s also quite charming and easy to love. Rajasthan, where we headed next, is quite a contrast. You feel like you are taking a step back in time, especially after being in the very modern city of Bombay. As opposed to south India, which is a road less traveled, Rajasthan is probably the most touristed state of India, full of old palaces and forts. It was the first time that we felt that the tourism infrastructure existed in India. People were at our service offering all sorts of western-style amenities. With a large number of foreigners, Kelli felt less like a spectacle than before. Having a tourist infrastructure has its benefits, like ice made from mineral water and export quality products, and pitfalls, like more aggressive vendors and highly inflated prices because they assume all foreigners are loaded.
The first two cities we visited were Udaipur, which is known for its gorgeous lake palaces, and Jaipur, which is known for its historical buildings made from pink sandstone. A few highlights:
- Best meal: We had dinner at Chokhi Dhani, a village themed amusement park complete with fortune tellers, snake charmers, magicians, animal rides and traditional buffet dinner. Mom and Kelli got to ride a camel (only one humped although Rutvik claims some of them have two!) for the first time and we all took a bullock cart ride. It was funny to see the bullocks scamper around the dirt track since we normally think of them as slow docile creatures.
- Biggest laugh: We had been stopped several times earlier in the trip and asked to be in pictures with Indian tourists. Couldn’t quite figure out why they wanted pictures with random sweaty white people, but we had fun pretending we were celebrities for a minute. Hilarious then, at Chokhi Dhani, when we stopped an Indian woman and asked her to take a family photo for us. She misunderstood and thought that we wanted a photo with her!! Kelli bit her lip hard as she went to take a picture of a very very flattered Indian lady smiling wide next to a very very stunned mom (with the most unique expression EVER!) We laughed all the way home.
- Best cultural experiences: We took an Indian cooking class (yes, we will be trying to use you all as guinea pigs when we get back!) and saw the most balance defying traditional dancing with local women balancing multiple earthern pots on their heads while executing some nifty moves.
- Scariest moment: We had ducked into an internet café in Udaipur one night to get out of the rain when the power went out (very common in India). We decided to get a couple rickshaws to get back to the hotel. Kelli and mom jumped in one together and suddenly the music was thumping and we were flying through back alleys of the dark and abandoned city with no idea of where we were or where the guys were. We held on tight with our hearts pounding as we wondered whether the driver and his friend were on drugs and where exactly they were taking us. Fortunately, they just decided they’d give us a good scare (which they definitely did) and we ended up back at the hotel with the guys close behind. Phew!
- Biggest surprise: North Indian cities are like zoos, literally. Next to concrete buildings and roads lined with traffic you can also see camels, monkeys, "billy" goats, dogs, cats, donkeys, horses, bullocks, buffaloes, snakes, rabbits, chipmunks, cobras (this one only of the snake charmer variety, fortunately), crows, pigs, warthogs, cows, doves, lizards, peacocks, elephants, sheep, pigeons, and sparrows – to name a few! Northern India is not only ALL the people but ALL the animals as well!
On the long drives between cities, mom had lots of fun taking pictures of all the people and all the animals – women carrying pots on their heads, shopkeepers in turbans, monkeys on the roofs playing, cows in the road causing traffic jams, etc. We’re not in Kansas (or Nebraska) anymore, Toto!
Next we went to Ranthambhore National Park to do a tiger safari by jeep. Staying in the wilderness in tents (well, luxury tents!) was a welcome change from the bustling cities we had visited thus far. Over dinner that night, the locals told us that two tiger cubs had recently been found in the town. While we were certainly hoping to see tigers, we looked back at the luxury tents and hoped that we could wait until the next morning in the safety of our jeep to see the furry felines. Luckily, we slept uninterrupted and had a highly enjoyable three hour safari stalking the wild beasts but unfortunately besides spotting some pugmarks we came away empty handed. The naturalist pointed out all sorts of animals like spotted and sambar deer, peacocks, kingfishers and monkeys throughout which combined with all the animals in the cities made for an impressive array of creatures we had seen in a short time span!
After Ranthambhore, we headed to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, probably the greatest love monument in the world. It was built by Emperor Shah Jahan as the tomb of his late wife Mumtaz Mahal. Rutvik had claimed that, despite all the hype associated with the Taj Mahal, we would not fail to be impressed. He was right - we came away believing that the Taj Mahal is the most stunning monument we had ever seen. It is gorgeous in its purity and simplicity and its design shows tremendous forethought that seems way beyond its time. The four towers that surround the tomb were built leaning outward such that an earthquake or plane crash would cause them to fall away from the structure, leaving the tomb intact. Legend is that the Emperor intended to build a black version of the Taj Mahal across the river. However, he failed and his body laid to rest next to his wife is the only asymmetrical feature of the Taj Mahal. This gave new meaning to one of our favorite Incredible India ads showing a picture of the Taj with the caption “And to think that guys today can get away with giving flowers and chocolates to their wives…” Wow.
Rishikesh, which has grown to be the Yoga Capital of the World since the Beatles spent time with their swami here during the 1960s, was another change of pace. The city is set on the holy river Ganges and is full of many hippie types who come to practice yoga and meditation. Kelli was expecting it to be a quiet town with a peace-loving huggy type environment and was disappointed with the commercial atmosphere the town had developed, the huge number of motorbikes and flies everywhere, and the type of foreigners that seemed to congregate there – as Jeff described, these were more the self-reflective “dirty hippies” than the peace and love kumbaya-singing hippies from the 60s. We spent our days shopping the markets, doing yoga at the ashram where we stayed, and eating good (often organic) food. We did the ritual of dipping our feet in the holy Ganges, which, according to Hindu tradition, absolved us of all sins. (Fortunately, Rishikesh is near the source of the river in the Himalayas, so it didn’t have all of the people washing themselves, cleaning their clothes, and relieving themselves, with dead bodies floating by as you hear about in Varanasi!!)
One day, we walked to where the “Beatles’ ashram” was and found a guard from the Forest Department outside. Rutvik managed to bribe the guard but didn’t have to pay a bribe himself as he was mistaken for our tour guide! Only in India J This wasn’t the last time he was mistaken for a guide, though. In Delhi, which was our final stop, a guy stopped him to ask where he should put his shoes outside of a mosque. That assumption was perpetuated by the fact that Rutvik often paid only a tenth or less of the admissions that the rest of us non-Indians paid to get into the same tourist attraction and his tickets were often printed on crappy paper and did not include “free” audiobooks that we received!
All in all a super fun two weeks! Feel free to browse through our photos on our Picasa site. The photos are sorted by city. In case you missed it, we’ve posted the links to the left.
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