LtR Rakesh, Kailash, Parvinder, Dirty ManGreetings!
First of all forgive the bad typing, the keyboard I'm using is busted, and quite a work out. So I'm going to try and keep it shortish.
Sitting here typing this in a dingy cyber cafe (read - computers on the side of the road), I feel like I've been here for weeks, but its only been 6 days! The Taj Mahal, Delhi airport seem to be so long ago. I'll give you a quick run down of my life for the past week.
Catching the plane in itself was quite an experience, sitting trapped in a seat for hours and hours on end is an extremely unpleasant experience, made all the worse when the person your travelling with is drunk and hitting on every air hostess that walks past (thanks Abi....). But after surviving this we arrived in Indira Gandhi Airport my first impression was, I was surprised at how empty it was. My preconceived ideas of India being a crazy bustling country were wrong, but we quickly learnt that only hours before our plane had landed, shots were fired from inside the airport - everyone was on edge (including the police with a mounted machine gun on their Jeep and the guys inside the airport carrying AK-47s).
We met Kailash Singh Manhas, Rakesh Sen, Parvinder Singh Katoch (our three hosts) and Abi Rakesh and I jumped in a taxi.
All I can say is WOW. India is completely different to how I had imagined it, it is an extremely poor country - imagine the worst suburb in Melbourne, Frankston, Coburg, Springvale, Caroline Springs- where ever times that by 1000, then times that by two and you come close to the BEST areas of Delhi. I was imagining something similar to Thailand, where poverty is common, but in the touristy areas are highly structured and well developed - this isn't the case, from what I saw. People everywhere, pissing and taking dumps on the side of the road, donkeys on freeways (road rules don't exist in India- driving is ruled by the size of your vehicle, who has the biggest balls and how you use your horn) , poverty is endemic, oh and the dirt - Its everywhere, even the hotels! I can't recommend it for any neat freaks.
Never have I felt such a culture shock, coming from a rich structured and ordered country to India. Look at my pictures on facebook and you can begin to get a feel of what its like. But one thing the pictures can't describe is the smell, the poor sanitation means everything smells, some places more so than others
My arsehole is constantly sore from a five letter word beginning with C..... Curry! The food, depending on where you eat, is amazing, there was one restaurant we ate at in Jaipur (twice) and the food was far better than any other Indian food I've had. On the oposite end is a the filthy resturant we ate at on the way back from Janter Manter - the spoons, plates and glasses were all dirty (more so than other places) and the food was crap.
But through all that chaos, a sort of order emerges, everyone knows their place and co exists in a certain harmony that seems at odds with how crazy everything is over here. I'm loving it all (except the dirt), its an amazing adventure.
Was going to go into more detail about everything but I have to go I'm taking too long, speak soon, already missing everyone back home!
