Life in the Pink City

ELIZABETH

After the frenetic, high-paced, illness-filled visit to Agra to see the Taj Mahal as I turned 25 years old, the next two weeks in Jaipur seem like a hazy dream.  The constant battle with Indian bacteria in our intestines didn’t leave us, so some days were spent entirely in bed, watching movies like Lake Placid and Species with oddly edited subtitles and every semblance of sexuality cut out.  To have a break from the overwhelmingly oily curries, we’d occasionally order pizza, made with ketchup in lieu of sauce.

Other days we’d venture out, exploring the inner walls of the legendary Pink City, a title which we quickly learned wasn’t quite accurate, as everything was smothered with beige paint that left some to be desired.  We dashed around the creamy colored Hawa Mahal as snarl toothed monkeys with gnarled broken fingers chased us down ramps and pushed us upstairs out of their way.  We sought respite from the obliterating heat in an old coffee house, where I was begrudgingly allowed to sit with the men rather than in the dingy closets set aside for women.  We giggled as family after family insisted upon us posing for their photographs, their infants shoved into our arms.  While exploring the majestic Amer Fort, we marveled at painted elephants, shook our hips to traditional music, and found our own hidden hallways and towers to have a few moments alone.

Social interactions were strained as the dog-eat-dog mentality of the Indian culture was constantly prevalent.  Seemingly helpful tourists we came across really just wanted to bring us to their Hare Krishna compound.  Any auto-rickshaw driver who claimed to know where we wanted to go tried to bring us to a place that would give them a commission instead.  Men who offered to show us where the tourist office was would pretend that it had burnt down so that they could bring us to their own personal business.  Sometimes, even on days when we weren’t sick, we still stayed in, hiding from the brutality of dead bodies on the side of the road, mutilated children rifling through trash, the constant onslaught of harassment and hungry eyes.  One evening, sitting in the window of a restaurant, a cyclo driver stood just outside, glaring at us for an entire hour as we ate our lamb korma (which ended up being musky boiled goat).

The hazy dream that was our time in Jaipur was often nightmarish, but thinking about eating ketchup pizzas in the warm breeze while sitting on the rooftop of our guesthouse, listening to the melancholy sounds of the night, I can’t help but smile just a little.  We had some bizarrely beautiful moments in that rather horrifying country.

I kept thinking to myself, “If only dogs were considering sacred, I’d probably like India a lot more.”

The potted garden sanctuary of Atithi Guesthouse.

Construction in the pink city.

A man relaxes before the markets open.

Kevin and one of the many men who wanted to be photographed with him. Indian people made us feel very large.

KEVIN

During our stay in Jaipur, we were occasionally approached by people who invited us out for tea or to their homes for a meal. Most times, we didn’t feel quite comfortable enough to accept the invitation. India has a bad reputation for scams, and it can at times make you feel as if you can’t trust anyone at all. Sometimes these invitations came from random people on the street, to which we politely yet firmly declined. One afternoon I went to a busy kachori restaurant that served fried pastries and sweets over a deli-style counter. While looking around bewildered, three men in their late teens approached me, and insisted I share their food and eat with them. The three guys were clearly drunk, and upon taking notice of my shyness, began hand feeding me the food they had just purchased to make sure that I was eating enough. They barely spoke enough English to make conversation possible, and I spoke effectively no Hindi. After a very entertaining, if not confusing 45 minutes, one of the guys invited me to come with him on a 2-hour bus ride to meet his family. Part of me yearned at the possibility of a great opportunity for adventure and to meet some authentic Rajasthanis, but the reality is that it was just not a good idea. This bothered me, as I felt that we were not ‘surrendering ourselves to India,’ as it is often stated. Many a traveler has used that phrase to describe their most wonderful experiences in the subcontinent, and it pained me to let such experiences slip through our grasp.

Then, on a balmy night at a rooftop Italian restaurant, we got our opportunity. A conversation with the manager, a 28-year-old man named Raju, resulted in him inviting us to his home to meet his wife and baby son. This seemed to be the least risky invitation we had yet been presented, and so we accepted. We made plans to meet him back at the restaurant during his midday break, and to accompany him to his house for lunch.

We followed Raju as he led us down narrow lanes between pastel colored homes. The farther we got from the main road, the more attention we attracted. By the time we got to our destination, we had a group of 10-or-so children following us, pointing and giggling all the while. The occasional brave one would bellow out an accented “Hallo!” and then retreat red-faced back into the crowd as we turned to wave.

Raju’s home is the smallest of three shelters surrounding a small courtyard that contained shared facilities – a toilet, a water tap, clotheslines, and drying rack. Their home is three walled, with one side open to the courtyard. From wall to wall, his one room house is 10 feet long, by perhaps 4 wide. The floor and the walls are concrete, and the roof is a blue tarp strung above the structure. All of their positions, mostly cookery, can fit into two small duffle bags kept on a high shelf. As we entered, a buzzing cloud of flies swarmed around the door while our fan club of curious kids watched from atop the courtyard walls.

We were instructed to sit on a pad on the floor, which happened to be the family’s bedding. Raju sat on a spot of bare concrete with his son on his lap, while his wife squatted in front of an array of baskets, plates, and pans. Raju handed me his child immediately, and I held the confused 5-month old for a few awkward moments before his father took him back. Raju’s wife made us lunch that day, and we spent upwards of three hours with her in her home not more than a few feet away, but he never even told us her name. Not wanting to insult India’s delicate gender laws, we never asked.

Our lunch consisted of warm and fluffy bhatura – a puffed-up fried bread, creamy boondi raita – a Rajasthani curd salad with sweet balls of fried chickpea flour, and jeera aloo – cumin fried potatoes. It was intoxicatingly delicious, and every time I finished off a stack of the warm breads, another one appeared in its place. After the meal, we sipped hot and sticky chai while Raju lit up a couple of thin Indian cigarettes called beedis. As we rose to leave, I attempted to thank his wife in broken Hindi. She gave us a modest smile, and we left. I gave Raju my email address, and asked him to write me sometime. He hailed us a rickshaw for the ride home, then we shook hands and said goodbye.

Raju is a middle class Indian. He speaks good English, and has a good job managing a restaurant for an Italian owner. He is better off than very many of his countrymen. But, seeing his home was an incredible reminder of the disparity of wealth in this world. The dorm room that Elizabeth and I share in Antarctica is nearly four times the size of his house. Next time I begin to be bothered by how small I think it is, I hope that I will remember our friend Raju, and his lovely family.

The old city center of Jaipur – the pink city.

Spice shops – cumin, coriander, curry, and masala.

The gorgeous Amer Fort, original home to the Maharaja of Rajasthan.

Elizabeth at the royal entrance to the living quarters at Amer Fort.

Raju’s wife and son in their home. Nearly half of their house is visible in this photo. The kitchen in the background makes up almost all of their possessions, and the mat at the bottom of the frame is what the three of them sleep on every night.

Welcome to India

ELIZABETH

At first glance, I thought he must have some sort of severe joint disorder; his elbows and knees were twice the size of his limbs. Rashid slammed on the brakes, honked three times, and our autorickshaw stopped long enough for me to get a better look. The man sitting cross-legged on the side of the street was staring into the traffic but didn’t seem to be seeing anything. As my eyes darted from his face to his elbows, and back again, I realized that there wasn’t anything wrong with his joints. This man was completely skin and bones. So much so that his skin had grown tight, drawing back from his mouth so that his teeth protruded much past his lips. Several more honks, and the man vanished in the blur of motorbikes, rickshaws, bicycles, and cows surging forward.

Rashid pulled up outside the rundown mosque Jama Masjid, and helped us cross the chaotic street. A man sitting third deep on a motorbike leaned towards Kevin as he hurtled past and shouted, “You look like movie star!” The men in India stare at Kevin’s red locks with deep looks of longing, and a lot of them have dyed their own hair a startlingly unnatural shade of orange. We removed our shoes and Rashid assured us he would watch them, as several too-thin women started eying them and moving closer. A man with a disturbing dent on his forehead whisked us off, showing us the minaret that fell down during an earthquake, and the dingy little prayer room segregated for the women. My feet stung on the red marble that had been baking in the sun all day, but it seemed better than the alternative – a matted green strip of carpet turning brown from the dirty feet before us. The man demanded money for the lackluster tour we didn’t ask for, but not before chastising me for neglecting my duties in providing Kevin with male children. I simultaneously felt amused, annoyed, hot, nervous, bombarded, exhausted, and enlightened. Little did I know then that this barrage of emotion would be the norm for India.

Yantra Mandir, the giant equinoctial sundial at Jantar Mantar.

Kev enjoying the warm glow of sunset at Jantar Mantar.

The United Buddy Bears exhibit in Delhi.

The sun glows low in Agra.

Taj Mahal reflections.

KEVIN

My first thought was of surprise as the cramped black and yellow taxi made its way into New Delhi.  Huge green trees lined wide colonial streets. Modern cars and buses zoomed past, a shock after the rusted and aging fleets of Kathmandu. Clean sidewalks lined the road, bordered by tidy grass and manicured hedges. There was a lack of trash on the ground, and an abundance of order. Then, I noticed a lump on the ground up the road a ways from us. As we got closer, I realized it was a man. He was motionless, and contorted into an awkward position. Jutting out from beneath soiled and tattered clothing, his exposed skin was grey, and caked with dirt. His stiff belly clearly protruded from bloating. His matted hair shielded his face as we went past. Monkeys played in the trees overhead, and we zoomed on towards the city.

I don’t know if that man was dead, and I didn’t know it then, but that was a very accurate welcome to India. The country is infinitely surprising, and painfully honest. Just as you begin to marvel at the grandeur of colonial boulevards, ancient forts, and modern luxuries, you notice a dying man on the side of the street. India is growing, and developing into a world power, but it is not there yet, and the disparity between the few haves and the overwhelming amounts of have-nots is breathtaking. India is fancy, colorful, and beautiful, but it makes no effort to hide its awfulness. This juxtaposition of a growing and developing nation is painful, and every acknowledgment of beauty comes at a cost. India makes no effort to disguise its poverty, its corruption, nor its social inequities and it welcomes you wholeheartedly into its truth.

We had one day in Delhi before we hopped the Kerala Express bound for Agra. During our day in Delhi, we walked the filthy and crowded streets of Paharganj, Delhi’s backpacker ghetto. Between dodging an infinite stream of honking rickshaws, leaping over flaming piles of trash and feces, and sidestepping grey-eyed junkie tourists there to kill themselves with cheap and powerful Afghan heroin, one doesn’t have much desire to hang around long. We headed towards Connaught Place, the epicenter of British Raj and currently the commercial center of New Delhi. We walked around the circus looking at designer western clothing stores, and Indian men in fantastic uniforms opening doors to expensive air-conditioned cafes. We stopped at Wenger’s, a South African owned deli, for milkshakes. We sipped the cool, flavored milk out of glass bottles alongside middle-class Indian teenagers and businessmen on iPhones. As we were finishing, a young boy came up to the crowd to beg. He was dirty, and wearing rags. He was painfully malnourished, but he had broad shoulders and a wide frame. His square jaw exaggerated his sunken cheeks. In another world, and another life, this boy would be a handsome high school athlete. But here, in this world, and in this life, he was holding his skinny and shaking hands out to a crowd that uniformly and completely ignored him. As he shuffled by, we noticed that he was bleeding from a wound to his head.

Several days later and we had made our way to Agra. We stayed in a guesthouse on the outskirts of the Taj Ganj, a touristy area that was originally housed the migrant workers who built the Taj Mahal. In the evenings, we would climb the stairs to the building’s rooftop to sip chai and watch the hazy, South Asian sun set on the Taj Mahal. Calls to prayer would echo their mournful and loving songs to God from far off minarets. Kites would dip and dart in the orange sky. Monkeys would tiptoe along neighboring rooftops, leaping and bounding across alleyways and into fruit trees at a whim. It was here, during these magical moments spent on rooftops at dusk that I began to love India.

And that’s how it is in India. One moment you love it, and the next you hate it. India grabs you and pulls you into the chaos. It shows you firsthand how most of the world’s people live. It doesn’t let you ignore the plight of the poor and the disenfranchised. It holds you down and extracts everything it can from you, relentlessly. But, in those brief moments where you can get your head above the water and stop for a moment to reflect, you can come to grips with madness and let India flood into your heart.

This observatory, at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, was built in 1724 by Maharaja Jai Singh II. This specific instrument was used to measure time.

A worshiper walks across the courtyard of Jama Masjid, Agra’s largest mosque.

Fishermen on the river Yamuna, north of the Taj Mahal.

Elizabeth enjoying some shade on the north side of the Taj Mahal.

Some of the ‘world’s wonders’ seem over-hyped and disappointing in person. The Taj, is not one of them.

Travelogue: Kathmandu

KEVIN

Tightly packed streets, blaring horns, endless swarms of rickshaws and shady touts. These are some of the more obvious elements of Kathmandu’s backpacker ghetto, the Thamel. But, looking beyond these irksome bothers, one will notice brightly colored prayer flags strung between overhead rooftops, pastel windows and doors adorning ancient walls, monkeys playing on far off buildings in the hazy afternoon sun, and golden stupas with painted eyes rising above the chaos. The Thamel is loud, crowded, and dirty, but it is also incredibly convenient as a home base for exploring the city. Most things are accessible by foot, or an inexpensive cab ride. Places to sleep are easy to come by, most with free wifi. Cheap and delicious food abounds, including NRS150 (< $2US) falafel gyros and yak cheese sandwiches. A quick trip out of the district can bring you to the relative calm of the suburbs, or the surprising grandeur (again, relative) of the CBD. Or, in another direction, it will bring you to the breathtaking poverty of the slums, or to the misery of a destroyed river, complete with burning sewage and partially submerged dead cattle. The air quality is awful, and it only takes about an hour of being in the city before you start noticing black things coming out of your nose. Kathmandu is a fascinating place, and deserves a few days of exploration before or after your trek, but don’t stick around for much longer unless you’re after a souvenir respiratory infection.

Quick Highlights:

1. Swayambhunath  – Also nicknamed ‘The Monkey Temple’. A grand stupa on top of a hill overlooking the city. Lots of interesting wares being peddled, and a cheeky troupe of monkeys to keep your entertained. A nice 20-minute walk from the Thamel leading from the old city, over a nasty river, and through the wide lanes of the suburbs.
2. Garden of Dreams – A surreal escape from the insanity of the city. Beautiful and extravagant gardens complete with a tiered lawn with mats and pillows for naps or reading. Relax and stroll amongst white stone pillars, lush grass lawns, and babbling fountains. Get there before the bar opens up during the evening time, unless you like your nap in the grass set to aggressively loud Katy Perry and Ke$ha songs.
3. OR2K – Vegetarian restaurant that serves the best food in Kathmandu. Fresh, flavorful, and homemade. Kind of an irritating faux-hippy scene at night, but great for long lunches. Delicious fresh baked breads, goat cheese pizzas, voluptuous salads and a great Mediterranean platter. Free wifi!

The modern Kathmandu struggles with pollution.

The streets of the old city are cramped in with three story buildings highlighted by beautiful, vibrant colors.

The stupa at Swayambhunath.

The Garden of Dreams is a walled-in refuge from the dust, dirt, and disorder.

ELIZABETH

At first glance, Kathmandu is complete chaos.  There are street children hungrily licking the walls, eying you through the windows of the grocery store.  There are the hoarse whispers of, “Want something?” from bleary eyed hash sellers.  And there is the constant bombardment of noises: motorbike horns, dog barks, and the omnipresent hocking of phlegm.  But on that first night at around 8pm, when suddenly the streets go dark and eerily quiet, and you realize that the city has gone to sleep, Kathmandu’s charm starts to reveal itself.  It’s a quirky city, with four-feet-tall lady cops lugging around huge bamboo canes, threatening disarmament by cuteness more than intimidation.  After several tries, the man who is always outside the guesthouse will stop trying to sell you Tiger Balm and nail clippers and just nod, “Namaste.”  The proximity to everything makes seeking out oases quite easy, and there is a dazzling array of excellent food to be found.  It would be easy to chock Kathmandu up to just noisy, dirty, and chaotic, but if you’re willing to dig a little deeper, there’s a bit more to discover.  Just don’t expect too much, make sure to choose a guesthouse off the main drag, and by God, wear a handkerchief around your nose and mouth while walking on the streets.  Trust me, the person still coughing a month later.

Quick Highlights:

1. Chikusa – Hands down best breakfast in Kathmandu.  And among the cheapest, as well.  This tiny café is staffed by five rather sullen young men who are there everyday, in the same clothes as the day before.  But after our second, third, fourth visits, they would break out in grins and start writing our orders down before we could verbalize that, yes, we wanted the masala omelette and french toast, again.  We eventually returned enough times to try other dishes, but everything was so delicious that it was hard to stray.  Also, it’s one of the only places to find real coffee for those who tire quickly of Nescafe.
2. Shree-Lal House of Vegetarian – Not only is the Indian food delicious, but the young man in the baseball cap who takes your order might just be the sweetest young man in Kathmandu.  This judgment is based solely on his smile and quiet demeanor, but I’m pretty confident I’m right.  The restaurant is found about a hundred feet down a dark, dank hallway and has the mood of being underground.  But the rather drab setting is immediately remediated by the perfectly spiced shahi paneer, the freshly baked roti, and belly bursting thalis.  The hot lemon with honey is the perfect antidote for an afternoon spent inhaling Kathmandu’s pollution.
3. Rooftops – Pretty much every guesthouse winds up innumerable stories of rooms to open up to a rooftop garden.  Some are equipped with chairs, and others are assuming you won’t venture up there.  But you really should.  The constant noise and bombardment of the Thamel sheds away to a new world filled with the soft whispers of prayer flags and a constant onslaught of birds flying overhead.  The peace found on these rooftops will keep you going in Kathmandu.

The peaceful respite of Kathmandu rooftops.

One of many vendors selling various wares from their bikes, often with a long nasal call of what they're selling. This man often rang out with a deep, long, "Neeeep."

A monkey gazes out at the city from his perch among prayer flags.

The front door of Chikusa, home of Kathmandu's best toast.