Life As We Live It

Arriving in India at 5pm wasn’t quite the culture shock we suspected. The hordes of people, the stench and smells on this continent of 1 billion people just weren’t there. We did however fly through a cloud of haze arriving at the Delhi airport. We learned later that most flights arrive at night to avoid the daytime heat and pollution. Our first real introduction to India, besides the occasional taxi tout, was the MASSIVE cow in the middle of the airport roadway, taking a dump next to somebodys luggage. The street savy Julia secured us a fair cab ride to the train station downtown. The ensuing cab ride showed us peaceful streets, beautiful, sweet smelling flowering bushes and trees and a surprising lack of people. All that changed with one left turn. We found the one billion people…and their smells and garbage and cows, combined with the 45 degree heat created the scene we expected of Delhi! Our taxi driver turned out to be a decent man and steered us away from the delhi train station assuring us that there were no longer any trains to Agra that day. He took us to a cute little hotel and told us to get some sleep and that we could catch the 6am express train to Agra where we were going to visit with the family of Vikas, our good friend from Saskatoon. The hotel manager assured us that we could get two seats on the morning train if we arrive at 5:30 to the train station. Everything seemed to be going smoothly. Tyler still being sick didn’t have anything to eat and I was completely turned off of food for that moment so we got a lemon fanta deliverd to our room and called it a night. We got a tuk tuk to the INSANE train station where all one billion people hang out, we discovered. We literally tripped over the sleeping bums as we tried to make our way to the tourist information booth. Despite all of the touts telling us it was across the street…Julia had done her research and knew that there was one place only to get tickets that you can be assured are for tourists…upstairs at the booth that was OF COURSE closed until 8am?!! How were we supposed to get tickets for a 6 am train if the ticket office didn’t open until 8am?? We were left in a state of slight irritiation when out of no where, a man appeared next to the tourist ticket booth dressed in nice clothes and assuring us that he could get us a fair deal on train tickets. Julia’s warning flags go up and she adamantly refuses to go with this man who she is sure is a tout trying to rip us off. Tyler is in a state of desperation and trusts this man like he would his best friend. He follows the man across the street (where the book told us NOT to go for tickets…) Julia stays back at the station with our bags not believing for a second that Tyler would actually go through with getting any tickets. It is now 7am but Julia SWEARS hearing on a loud speaker in a broken English voice that the train to Agra has been delayed by a couple of hours. There is a HUGE screen with a million train numbers and destinations on it that you are supposed to use to “help” you find your correct train. About 15 minutes later Tyler arrives and with a proud look on his face explains that ALL the train seats were fully booked…the guy called the train station TWO times to make sure…but he got us two of the LAST three tickets available for a BUS to Agra instead. The only remaining seats on any bus or train in all of India. Julia loses it. Please tell me you didn’t give these people any of our precious few remaining rupees. It conveniently cost him all of what we had left. Almost double the price of a seat on the much more efficient and reliable train. Julia sends him back to get our money. Poor Tyler is trying to remain calm at the fact that his new friend has led him astray and betrayed him. He gets half of the money back without having to resort to violence. We had JUST enough to get two seats on the train…if only we could speak Hindi and looked like an Indian. The aweful part was that we felt like we could trust no one. Julia goes through two lines to try to find out where she should go to get a ticket. One security guard moves all the people out of the way so that she could get right to the front of the line to ask her question. She is told a gate number. She goes there and waits through a long line of pushy men, battling to get to the teller. She’s told she needs to fill out a form. They are at the other end of the building. She waits in line for a second time trying to fill out the form as best she can. She beats her way to the front. You need the train number. She tells him that SURELY he knows the number to the express train going to Agra that morning. He tells her there are many trains, madam. She goes to the giant screen and picks the train number that she is sure is the one for Agra, Express. A man beside her assures her that the train is gone already and that she would have to go all the way to another train station and catch a train there and if she really hurries she could get there in an hour. She is still sure that she heard that the train was delayed. Back into line with her form and train number. Has to literally beat men off who are trying to push in front of her. She gets to the front and is awarded two seats on the “completely full” train to Agra with 20 minutes to spare. Despite the fact that things weren’t immediately going in our favour, someone was looking out for us. We found out later that the express train to Agra is very rarely, if ever, late or delayed! The train was surprisingly great quality with wonderful service and excellent food. Memorable observations from the train were the large number of coal carrying cars, manure houses and sheds used by the farmers and the one million people who happened to line the tracks. We arrive in Agra and “Arse”, Vikas’s father, picked us up as promised with a small sign that actually indicated his hame was “R.C.” He was a cool cucumber and a kind and gentle man. We hopped into his small car, thankful that we packed light, and he immidiatlely started on the horn. Vikas phoned from Saskatoon to ensure we arrived safely just as we were pulling in to collect his look-a-like nephew, Chortu, from his look-a-like brother, Prateek. We were shocked by the driving conditions but amazed at how well his family could drive though the crowded streets of Agra dodging street cows, beggars, piles of shit, puke and other vehicles. When asked how they managed to be so calm in driving conditions that would break even the most confident of westerners, Vikas’s sister-in-law, Smita, said (in their brilliant ‘Apu’ accent) ‘My vehicle is 4.3 feet wide, I simply insert my vehicle into the appropriately sized space and proceed’. SURE…of course….simple…HA! Over the next two days we were treated like family, shuffled back and forth between their two houses, between meals prepared with love by their kind house maid and Vikas’s look-a-like mother, Kusum. We visited the town by car and took a trip to the train station to deal with our return tickets. Even the simplest task was an eye-opening event for us there. The people, the smells, the heat, the little medical miracles running the streets in search of food…it was all quite overwhelming!! To my surprise, the street cows were seemingly the healthiest creatures in sight. Of course, the cow is a sacred animal in India and were treated as such…fed the left-overs from the day (fruit peelings etc.) and allowed to go and do as they pleased. Coming from a farm-boy background…it was strange to see starving people living along side this enormous and delicious food supply…but that’s just another one of the mysteries of India. One time, after a 30 minute traffic jam in the blazing sun…time we spent sweating, shooing away the touts that came to rip me off some more and generally just soaking up the short time we would have in their culture…we drove past the culprit which was a LARGE bull (a male cow…for Philips sake if he reads this). It was lazing in the middle of a major 4-lane (dirt road) intersection, no one bothering to move it along. We drove past, my arm out the window only inches away from its rump, and like any farm boy…I had a strong urge to ‘encourage’ the cow to move. Just as I was winding up for the smack, I realized that it would be somewhat akin for a hindu to smack Jesus…so I withdrew, proud that I was learning to think before acting!! We spent plenty of time cooling off in the breeze of the household fans cooling off with drinks and conversation about various things and learning about their ways. That night, we accompanied Smita, Ishita and Chortu to their sports club for a refreshing dip in their pool, watching the little boy, Chortu, almost drown at least twice, and listening to him chatter away to us in hindi and educate us as if he were a 55 year old professor. The club, for the upper cast only, was a true oasis from the swarms and noise of the streets offering tennis, swimming, aerobics, etc. The next day, we woke very early for our trip to the brilliant Taj Mahal. A truly unbelievable history…in short, built by one of the ancient rulers (I think around 1000AD) for his beloved wife as a tomb where he and she would be buried together, forever. Unfortunately, when this guys’ son wanted his turn at power, he imprisoned his father for his final, say 20 years, but was generous enough to allow him to have a window view of his creation where his wife was laid to rest years before he died. The place is at least 25 acres of amazingly constructed stone work, gates, fountains, etc., with the pinnacle being the entirely white marble tomb studded with MILLIONS of semi-precious stones. The story goes that it took 20,000 labourers 20 years to build the Taj…and when it was finished, the ruler had all of their hands chopped off so that they’d never be able to duplicate this work of art. Like much of human history…it seems a hefty price to pay in my books. We followed that tour with a visit to the ‘red castle’. An even older structure where the emporers (?) and their armies and multitudes of concubines would rule with their oppressive thumbs…and where the Taj’s father was imprisoned. A brilliant and interesting visit, the Kulshreshtha’s (Vikas’ impossible last name) even provided us with a very sexist tour guide for the castle part…a man that refused to direct his comments to Julia, even after I asked him to include her and the rest of the group. Perhaps another cultural difference that needed to be tolerated. With a few more meals under our belts that afternoon, my guts starting to come alive again, and Julia’s starting a silent decline…RC took us for another drive. Somewhat suddenly, he pulled his car to a stop (in the middle of the road…you just don’t mess with the upper casts!), looked at us dearly (by this time we were very good friends with the whole family and liked them A LOT) and said… ‘and now, I present to you…the TAJ’. With his cute smile and confident swagger…we walked to a marble shop that no tourist would know about, and he bought us a BEAUTIFUL (and rather large…from a backpackers perspective) marble carving of the Taj Mahal. It mattered not to us or to him that Vikas had given us a very similar model for our wedding gift and we were thrilled to carry this gift from the heart through the rest of Europe!! We grew to love Vikas’ family in a VERY short period of time…our few days in India would prove to be some of the most memorable we had on trip…both the extremes of the country and the hospitality we experienced were unforgettable. Our time in India had come to an end…with only a train ride, taxi ride and airport to navigate…what could go wrong?? Well…this time, I’m sorry to disappoint, nothing did. We arrived at the airport around 11pm for our 3am flight…we waited in the line of about a million people for 1 hour only to be turned away from entering the airport yet (too early) and sent to ‘relax’ in a crowded lounge where we witnessed a Russian tour-guide literally scolding her adult crew (STANGE), boarded our plane without issue and flew to the United Arab Emirates with Emirates airline. A gorgeous airline, a modern and swank airport…we could feel ‘western’ civilization upon us. It was both a relief, and a little sad…this was the end of the culture shock part of our voyage. We were ready for something more like home…we’d been traveling for nearly 6 months at this point, but we knew we’d miss the cheap prices and the VERY interesting and different lifestyle!