PCV: Paid Caribbean Vacation

I kept looking at India through the eyes of a tourist or a traveler. For the first time it was hard to distinguish a difference for me. India made you something different from the time you stepped onto the soil. Everything I saw I thought it was strange. Everything in this country was just so weird and foreign to me. This is the first country where I was like whoa… these people are different.
Their customs and traditions are completely different than anything we are used to. I learned this by staying in hotels without bathrooms, bathrooms without water or toilet paper, and waking up at 5:15am every morning I was there. It was nonstop India. I couldn’t get enough of it. It was so disturbing to the eye. It was watching the most disgusting thing I could have ever imagined and I couldn’t look away. From the kids playing cricket in the streets to the women carrying maimed babies begging for money, I couldn’t stop to sleep. I knew that if I slept, I was missing something and I didn’t know if I would ever get the chance to experience anything so foreign to me again.
India was different. India was strange, but the strangest thing about India wasn’t the lack of beef or booze, it wasn’t the Ganges River or Varanassi, it wasn’t silk shops, rickshaws drivers, or the horrible smells either. The strangest thing about India was me. It was Semester at Sea. We didn’t fit in at all. As we pulled up in our extravagant ship waiting to hit the streets and shop for useless things we didn’t need, we didn’t realize that India is something that we will be able to change during our stay. We can look and judge everything we experienced in India but we can’t change India. We can’t ignore India. It smacks you in the face with breathtaking poverty and makes your day with the smile of a child that hasn’t showered in weeks. Everyone there was in harmony. It was chaos but it was harmony. We were the beat that didn’t fit the rhythm. Therefore, instead of us being progressive and trying to change India, I hope everyone realize how much India changed them because you can’t walk the streets and not be affected. In other places or even at home where you might have to look for the poverty or bad conditions, all you had to do in India was open your eyes. Some people couldn’t handle it. I loved it. It’s not a place I’m dying to go back to, but it’s probably the place I’m the most grateful to have experienced.

Something strange and at this time unique to India is its system of kickbacks. Everyone gets a kickback on everything. Trust no one that is taking you anywhere. They are making money off you as you travel. Beware of them taking you to places you didn’t ask to be taken to silk shops and emporiums of all sorts in the hope that you will buy something. The crazy thing is they don’t even care if you buy anything. They make money just by bringing you there. It’s a terrible waste of time for us since no one ever buys anything and they make us more frustrated along the way and lose money from people that may tip them later.
There are so many people in India that in order to make sure everyone is doing something productive they are extremely inefficient. They get the job done faster perhaps but the job can always be done with less people. For example, it was not uncommon to walk into a restaurant (not top of the line by any means either) and have 1 man outside the door greeting you as you walk in. Another person would hold the door open for you. Another person would seat you. Another would bring you drinks. Another would get the order. Another would bring the food. Someone else gave you the check and then you had to take it to someone else to pay. In some instances, there was even an extra person giving out mints as you left. A restaurant that would take 5 people to run in American would easily be manned with 10-15 people. Most of them were standing around doing nothing most of the time, but they all had work. They had no shame in this as long as their fellow man made a living. They were selfless in the sense they would do anything to look out for one another. It was common for rickshaw drivers to stop on the side of the road and split a large group up for less costs because they were trying to help their friend make a small bit of money. Once again, frustrating, but admirable on how little they seemed to care about themselves.
All in all, India is a country of kickbacks. They look out for each other and have no problem making an inconvenience to the foreigner they are trying to make money from. I can’t blame them; they are trying to make a living just like the rest of us. The only difference is they seem to look out for their fellow friend before themselves, something we need to stop getting frustrated by and give them a hand because unless us, they care about more than the money they are making that day.

Now there is something to mention about this great country of India and possibly a reason not to go there. If you are a Beer drinking meat eater… this place is not your best friend. It’s strange! Beer is hard to find in most places and expensive. I did however find a beer called Royal Challenge that was enjoyable but the price wasn’t worth another. Most places are hole in the wall bars because most people in India do not drink due to religious practices.

If that wasn’t bad enough, you can’t even get a piece of meat in this country. Well, let me correct myself, meat can be found, just not beef. You see, the cow is sacred in India. They run the country and can be found on the road everywhere. If you kill a cow… you are in some deep cow shit, as in the gods might hate you forever. Bottom line is people don’t eat beef. Its not there. I looked. Part of the asshole in me really wanted to find some sort of beef in the country just to be rebellious, but I failed. It was no where to be found. I even degraded myself to walking into a McDonald’s but they too had nothing. They had burgers but when I ordered one, it was pork and the other was chicken. I felt trick and cheated. I guess that’s what I get for trying to mess up their customs. I just feel sorry for people that don’t know how good their sacred cow is. Yummy.

I saw some crazy things in my time in India but the strangest of them all was the holiest river in the world. The Ganges River (Ganges is English, Ganga is Hindi) both are the same depending what language is being used. We got there at night to see a few ceremonies of people praying but since our taxi driver screwed us over and took us to pointless silk shops out of the way, we missed sunset. We were none too pleased. We went anyway though and were happy we went. I didn’t get too much out of it besides the general smell of the River. We had to park the car pretty far away from the river because all the alley ways leading to the river were small and I guess the drivers thought it would be easier if we just walked though. Some of the smells were hard to handle and I don’t know if I have ever seen so many cows in all my life, but when we opened up from the small alley way of rabid dogs and homeless people begging on the street, we saw the river.
Black as night, mosquitoes everywhere and small children laughing and playing. It was a land of contrasts. It was past dark and the kids were out with no parents anywhere in sight in some of what I would call one of the dirtiest places I have ever seen. It was dirty and the entire area was full of steps. These are called Ghats. The river is full of them. They are basically steps leading down to the river.
The next morning we were up bright and early to see the river at sunrise. We rented a small boat with this little old man and he rowed us up and down the river. When the sun came up, it was something out of the movies. The pictures we took aren’t real. If someone is in them, they look superimposed and fake. It’s too beautiful for words. Ironic because the word beautiful was one of the last things I expected to think of when I thought of this horribly disgusting river.
I call it all comes down to how disgusting and beautiful are completely relative terms. What I thought was filth and dirt, these people saw as the most sacred and clean place on the earth. A little different than what I expected at first.
Moving on down the river a little further with the sun still rising, we went down the river to the bathing ghats. It was only 6:20am and there were hundreds of people bathing in the river. Now something needs to be explained here. In India, the toilets are far from what we would call sanitary. In most places, toilet paper is a foreign thing. Basically you go in the ground and then use your left hand to wipe. We call it disgusting, they call it culture. For this reason, it is not polite to use your left hand for much of anything. You do not touch people with your left hand or eat with it.
Back to business, we are just going on down the river watching people bathe when right next to them you see little boys pooping in the river at the same time. Just in front of them other boys are learning how to swim. All this is happening simultaneously. It was life. Ganges is the life of the people. Without it they were nothing. It was the beginning of everything and the end of everything at the same time.
The end was probably one of the hardest things to stomach. For Hindus, the only way to die is at the Ganges. It is the most honorable and the only chance of reaching “nirvana.”
The way this is done is cremation. Hundreds of people each day are brought to the river by their families to be given to the gods. People that are impure are cremated. The only people that are not cremated are those that are considered pure. These are children under the age of 12 and pregnant women. Everyone else is impure. While being cremated, it is thought that these people reach nirvana and they can be reborn again. This cremation takes place on the banks of the river right in front of your eyes.
All of those that do not need to be cremated have a different way of going out. They are tied to stones and put in the river to sink. After about 2 weeks, usually the ties let free and the body floats down the river in the way of ultimate cleansing. I was fortunate (if you want to call it that) to see a few bodies floating in the river. Our boat guy didn’t even seem to notice. It was normalized to see a dead body floating down the river.
Right up from the body are people cleaning themselves, swimming, going to the bathroom, and just praying. Everyday people come to the river for a daily cleansing. Life then ends and if you are lucky enough then you get the ultimate cleansing of dying in the Ganges.
What was the Ganges? It was the circle of life. Everything happened here and everything ended here. I may be wrong but I would bet there is no other place on the earth where you can take a breath of fresh air and no that it is far from fresh because it is full of dirt and smoke from human remains, then look down to see a the most beautiful sunrise of your life. At the same time there are children playing, people dying, people praying, people cleaning their clothes, people bathing, children learning to swim, and tourists watching them wandering what they are all doing. In one glance, you could see the entire span of a lifetime at one place. Life and Death. Fun and Despair. It was all there. It was beautiful and disgusting at the same time. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to look at and I could not turn away. It was a drug that kept me coming back because I knew that so many people never lived this way. They had everything they needed on the side of a river. We have everything and it’s never enough.
In water most people wouldn’t be caught dead touching, they were drinking it and bathing in it. There was nothing more holy or clean for them. A land of contrasts.
If there is one regret I have about this trip so far, it’s that I didn’t get in the water. If I ever get back to Varanasi, I am bathing in that river. I touched the water, I looked at it in a bottle, but I never really got in. I was the only person in our group to touch the water but it wasn’t enough. I wanted to be like the people. By thinking the water was disgusting it was like calling their way of life disgusting. They were people too and a hell of a lot happier than we were. Therefore, next time… I’m getting in. I want to be like them. They have something we don’t. I don’t know what it is, but in a place where everything happens, nothing happens. It’s the same cycle over and over. Whether that be coming everyday to bathe, or praying multiple times a day, or coming when you die, it all is a cycle. One big circle continually repeating itself. It’s the circle of life in a place we would have trouble calling a good life. They have been doing the same thing for thousands of years and it hasn’t really changed. They have something figured out that we don’t.
If you go to the Ganges, I recommend getting in the water. It’s the cleanest place on earth.

The strangest thing about India was the small completely congested city of Varanasi. Chennai was more of an industrial kind of pollution where Varanasi was just absolute filth. It was the dirtiest place I have ever been to in my entire life and it was one of the best places I have been as well. The overpopulation of this city can’t be explained or comprehended. People everywhere with what looked like nowhere to go.
Most of the streets were unpaved and just had packed dirt. The problem with this is it hardly ever rains besides the rainy season so the dirt turns to dust and the dust then enters your lungs. I don’t have too bad of allergies but Varanasi was out of control in terms of dust and the amount I sneezed. While this isn’t just Varanasi but more of India as a whole, but the color I think of most is black. Not black because of skin color or darkness, but black because that was the color of the ear wax that would come out when you cleaned your ears. Black was the color of the snot you would blow out. Everything on your body was black. Dirty. Filthy. Varanasi was something different from the rest of India. Being the capital of the Hindu world, it just had something special about it. This was the center due to one thing: The River Ganges.

The strangest thing about India might be silk shops and how they are on every corner and every one of them offered a special price just for us. These silk emporiums were out of control. The usual routine was to parade all of us into a room of pillows and served us tea. Then they start with saris and scarves and usually finish with bed sets. The walls are covered in nicely folded silk and by the time they are finished there are things everywhere. They just unfold it all and 99% of it we don’t want so someone has to fold it back up. Me, being the extremely cheap person that I am, didn’t have any interest in their silk in the first place because I don’t know what nice cloth is, so I have no reason to start with the world’s finest. Don’t be disappointed, I wouldn’t have bought you anything anyway.
The first silk shop we ever went to was in Varanasi which is pretty much the capital of silk. We got taken there by our shady taxi driver who was trying to profit off our naivety. The first guy was not nice and would not show us all the tricks of the trade that luckily someone knew. Here is the class, listen up.
When going to a silk emporium, make sure they show you the quality of the silk not by looking at it or feeling it but by burning it. When you burn silk, it should burn like hair and smell like hair. It should leave nothing behind and no residue. Other fabrics will smell like plastic and leave residue behind. Just a quick little lesson incase you ever wind up in the middle of India and might be buying silk. Keep that in mind.
So the 2nd shop we went into was a little different and on the next morning. I felt like it was a set up on top of a set up because we went from silk dealer #1 who was a complete asshole to silk dealer #2 who treated us like kings and seemed to not lie to us at all where asshole #1 did nothing but lie to us the entire time. I didn’t buy anything there either. Don’t get your hopes up. The people that I was with spent close to $1,000 on tons of things but paid prices that I thought were a little steep even though apparently if you try to buy fake stuff in the US you cant get it for that cheap with intricate designs such as the ones they had, but I don’t know any better so I didn’t buy anything haha. Silk shops were strange because I was in them for so long and had nothing to do but look and laugh at my American friends get hustled by Indians who didn’t care about the quality of the cloth and knew that any price they demanded, these kids would agree to. My final analysis: silk shops are overrated. Go to a flea market instead. Then end.

The strangest thing about India is the Taj Mahal. Now you may be thinking to yourself that this is not true because India is not India without the Taj. This might be true but it’s a building that almost doesn’t belong. All around the Taj and the city of Agra is poverty. There are beggars on every corner. People sleeping on the street are not uncommon. Then as you walk along a dirt road you find pure paradise. From extreme filth to a posh you can’t comprehend. The symbolism of the buildings and the balance that the building has is a spectacle that architects today should be jealous of. 350 years ago, they did it right the first time, there was no need to go on and make renovations or anything to come close. The Taj Mahal is in a word perfection. And the coolest thing is that it was created by a king who made a vow to his dead wife that he would build her the most beautiful tomb the world has ever seen for birthing him 14 children. The building took 22 years to make and it was made entirely of white marble. It’s a sacred ground and although a tourist attraction, something they still take very seriously. I found it interesting that it costs locals 20 rupees (50 cents) to get in and it costs “foreign nationals” 750 rupees (about $18). Call it redistributing the wealth and get over it. There we were at the Taj, we had traveled for about 10 hours to get there and we stayed for 2 hours only to turn around and prepare ourselves for another 8 hours of traveling before getting to our next destination.
While the Taj was something to see and I’m glad I saw it, I don’t think I ever need to go back. It’s not that great. It’s a building and more than anything it just paints the picture that we are somehow better than the rest. Upon leaving the fort that protects the Taj, you are surrounded by hawkers. The saddest part is most of them only speak enough English to sell you something. When a friend asked them who they were selling for, the only thing that they understood was how to lower the price of the album they were selling. It was hard to think that for the most part, we would never come learn anything about each other and for the most part, he didn’t care. I wasn’t a person to him, just another white person there to spend money. It was interesting to see that on the other side because so often we look at poor people and only think of them as another bum on the street. To be discredited the same way is something I may never forget. The Taj was beautiful but it was the heart wrenching things going on outside the ruined it and took the beauty away from it. I don’t blame the kids; I just wish we could have learned more about each other instead of making brash judgments on me being the rich white kid and him being the Indian kid trying to sell a measly book.

The strangest thing about India is the 150 mile stretch of road from Delhi to Agra and the van driver that we had along the way. Ryan, Erika, Dustin, Jenny, Claire, Dannie, Erik, and myself got a large van that could fit all of us inside. They charged us about $25 to go to Agra and back. Agra is where the beautiful Taj Mahal is located. I figured this was overpriced for India but cheap considering it was about a 4 ½ hour ride each way and the driver waited for us the entire time. Even if it was a rip off, I felt it was a good price compared to what we would have paid at home (Shamrock shuttle is like $30 just to get to the airport… wtf mate).
The first thing you notice about India when you get on the road is how much they use their horn. We use it only to tell someone they suck after cutting us off or to warn someone before getting in an accident. Well, in India, they have a contest with themselves that if you don’t beep your horn more than your heart beats then you lose. You might think I am exaggerating, but to put this more seriously… it goes something like this. You come up on a car, and you literally beep a few times before just laying it on and leave the horn on until they finally decide to move over and let you pass.
The saddest part of it all is that when you are beeping the horn so much, it becomes completely irrelevant and people stop paying attention to it. The people of India are completely numb to the sound of a car’s horn.
As if the horns weren’t bad enough, different enough, but the other laws of driving also don’t even apply. If there is any rule of driving in India, it’s that there are no laws. If someone were to drive in the US like they do in India, it wouldn’t take 5 minutes before they get a speeding ticket, reckless driving, kill 10 children, run over 4 cows, and probably total their car.
Now India is rich country, but also a poor country. I feel they are wasting some of their valuable money. The put these things on the road called lines. Some of them are yellow, most are white and others are even dotted. They usually make up what we call lanes on the road. Something to learn is that these lanes are completely ambiguous. They mean nothing. Therefore, do not be alarmed if the driver crosses into the other direction of traffic and cruises along and comes within 6 inches of another car while going 50mph.

The strangest thing about India is how the country has a distinct odor to it. You get off the ship in Chennai (where we docked) and it burns your nose. At times, it’s so strong you don’t even breathe because breathing even through your mouth allows you to taste the air. It has been a few days since we have sailed away from this country and if I open up any bag that contains anything from that country, I know exactly what came from India. I can pick up any clothes, and I know immediately if I wore them in India. I can take a breath right now and know exactly what it used to smell like just a few days ago. I can’t really put into words what exactly it smells like but it’s different in every city. Chennai, New Delhi, Agra, Varanasi, and Sarnath all have their own unique smells. I’m sure the other cities that I didn’t get the chance to visit have their own as well. It sets them apart from the rest. Some cities have skylines, some have famous attractions, and India has the smell.
While it is not the most pleasant thing, don’t write off India as bad just because of the scent. It’s part of the culture and by keeping an open mind and just experiencing it for what it is, then you truly get the chance to live like they do. The smells of coal, smog, feces, burnt human flesh, soap, grease, exhaust, people, dogs, and cows all mix together to form what they call India. It’s utterly disgusting and fragrant at the same time. It’s something you don’t want to ever smell again but something you can’t get enough of. And this is something pictures or stories will never do justice.

The strangest thing about India was the rickshaws that acted as taxis to get us from place to place. They are these scooters on 3 wheels and they have a canopy on them so they become something like a car. It’s nothing close to a car. The idea is to get as many people in them as you possibly can. The people outside of the gate will tell you that you can only fit about 3 people in them but this is far from the truth. On the first night, including the driver, we fit 11 people in one rickshaw. To get a better understanding of just how small of a space this is, it’s about the size of a Smart Car for any of you that know the size of those things. They are far from luxurious and are apparently rumored as the world’s most dangerous form of transportation. You better believe I got in one many times throughout my days in India.
As if just thinking to yourself about the size of them is not bad enough, the way they are driven is even worse. These things are like bumper cars on the street and the drivers are some of the most fearless people I have ever encountered. In the United States, we usually stay a long way from other people on the road, here it is not uncommon to be able at anytime to reach out no more than 5 inches and touch the car next to you. I have video of a city bus being about 2 inches from my arm as I hold on and try to stay in the car and not fall to my death. Upon leaving the states, I was given one mission: don’t die. I knew I couldn’t let too many people down so I decided to hold on for the mean time.
The spectacle of riding in a rickshaw is fun in itself but perhaps the best part of getting a rickshaw is actually scoring the rickshaw in the first place. It may seem like it is easy to get a taxi but this is far from a taxi, not to mention based on the color of my skin, I am immediately loaded with oodles of money. The going rate in India is about 6 rupees per km. There are about 44 rupees to 1 US Dollar. Needless to say, it is very cheap to ride around in these 3-wheeled scooters. The process starts at the gate when get you off the ship. You step out of the gate and in front of you are about 50 rickshaw drivers coming up to you and pining for your attention and hopefully your business. No matter where you tell them you want to go, they will have somewhere better for you to go to. Turn them down. You don’t have time for bullshit. When you find someone that “says” they will take you where you want to go be prepared to be charged 10x the going rate.
This is where the fun begins. We wanted to go to the post office the first day we were there just to check it out and buy some stamps for later in the week. The post office is about ½ mile away down the road and we actually walked there before it was over but that is not the point. When asking the drivers about the post office, almost all of us told us the one down the road was closed and they would take us to the other one downtown. If it wasn’t closed then it was about 10km (6 miles) away and it was too far to walk. We insisted to walk and just tried to ignore them. They don’t respond to this very well, aka they don’t get the hint. When you walk away, they will follow you. They just walk beside you, leaving their cars behind, until you find somewhere else to go. Getting rid of people is sometimes the hardest thing to do in India. A simple ‘no thank you’ doesn’t really do anything for you here.
If you do decide to get into the rickshaw, make sure you agree on a price before getting in. Anywhere in town should be less than 50 rupees for the entire ride. There is no per person fee, which is why you pack as many people as possible into these things.
The price never starts out that low so bargaining is crucial. In the end, we usually tipped but the bargaining is part of the culture and if you don’t participate you are missing out. I argued to the death with some drivers over 10 rupees (about 25 cents) and when I got my way and if he took us there we usually tipped him 100 rupees. Its not about the price, it’s about winning the game.
Now as if that’s not fun enough, once again the fun has only begun. Rickshaw drivers hardly ever take you where you want to go. They are going to take you somewhere they want to take you because of the commission they make off that place. The popular shopping market is Spencer’s (very good by the way, highly recommended) but it’s not so easy to get to because no one wants to take you there. On the way to the market, it will not be uncommon for the car to stop numerous times at silk emporiums, random shops, restaurants, and anything else under the sun because the driver knows someone that will give us a “special price.” Don’t believe them. All special price means is 10 times more than what they would usually charge. It’s crazy I tell you. You will constantly feel lied to but the important thing is not to get frustrated. It is how the country works. This is fun and the second you get mad, the fun stops. The strangest thing about India may have been these tiny 3-wheeled carts that took us for an adventure that no roller coaster can and nothing is more unsafe, adrenaline pumping and fun than a ride in an auto rickshaw in the middle of rush hour in a major city in India.

I have no real words to even attempt how to explain what has happened to me the past week. The contrasts of good and bad, beauty and filth are too much for one to take in. I could honestly write a blog called India and simply leave it blank or just leave it at ‘wow’ and that would be all I need to say. Despite my lack of words, I will try to muster up something to attempt to give to you what India has given to me…