R.I.P. Sir Edmund

Edmund Hillary passed away the day before our arrival in Auckland. Here in NZ flags have been at half mast; notes and flowers have been collecting in front of the various Hillary statues and portraits that dot the country; newspapers are filled with reflective anecdotes about his life.



We were in Queenstown the day of his funeral; on television we watched the Auckland procession and ceremonies that included large Nepali and Maori contingents.

Hillary was knighted by Queen Elizabeth (apparently it was one of the first things she did upon ascending the throne), and there were some ruffled feathers in the NZ press (to put it nicely) when it was found out the royal family had no plans to send any representatives to the funeral.

Sydney food

Our best meal of the entire trip, hands down: a place called Est. Maybe the best meal we’ve had in the past year, even.

Sydney is considered a culinary rival to SF, and we arrived armed with a list of restaurants, cafés, patisseries, delis, bakeries and takeouts that had all received glowing reviews from the press or recommendations from fellow visitors. The list didn’t prove very helpful though. Turns out that Sydney pretty much shuts down in January, and almost every single place on our list was closed for the month. After a few fruitless cab rides and metro trips, we learned to call ahead.

Sydney is home to some of the nicest McDonalds I’ve ever seen. They almost look... upmarket(!?) Modern & spacious with a pseudo Jonathan Adler design aesthetic; faux leather and woodgrain. One downtown branch had pillars, chandeliers and a cathedral ceiling. Oh, and they’re all pristine. After India, it was a strange thrill to actually see employees wiping down tables and mopping floors. Ahh, beautiful.

The perfect city

A Sydney cabbie asked us where we were from. "San Francisco? Our twin city!" he remarked at our answer.

Sydney and SF are often compared to one another; both are scenic coastal towns with similar cultural and culinary scenes (and iconic bridges, of course). I’m not sure this is entirely fair to Sydney: At its heart, San Francisco is still a shabby frontier town, no matter how expensive it gets or how respectable it pretends to be. Sydney, on the other hand, is strangely perfect. The city is safe, clean, modern and sprawling, with pleasant contemporary architecture, good infrastructure, and determinedly cheerful inhabitants. It’s scorching hot in the summer (that would be January), and there’s an almost complete lack of graffiti or panhandlers. It’s Scottsdale with a harbor.

Sydney is pretty quiet for a city of four million--most businesses and retail outlets close up around 5pm. Sydneysiders, though, treat themselves to one night a week to stay out 'late': stores are open till 9pm on Thursdays.

I can’t offhand think of two cities that are more different from each other than Mumbai and Sydney; Jacqueline and I experienced some real culture shock in flying directly from the former to the latter. In Sydney we were thrilled with the novelty of being able to drink tap water and eat food without getting violently ill, and relieved at the general ease of life here. But the calm and cleanliness and efficiency of Sydney seem…well, colorless. And empty. I felt like an ingrate for not appreciating it or embracing it.

Technology

Outside of Jodhpur, our bus stopped for a roadside bathroom break. Several of us walked over to a nearby water wheel. The elderly farmer proudly showed us the elaborate pulley system that hoisted water buckets out of a deep well, powered by an ox that moved the wheel. To irrigate his crops, the farmer spent hours a day riding his ox around in circles. His wife and family washed clothes on the rocks nearby. I was impressed with the inventiveness of the system, even as I pondered how it can take so much time and effort to do something as basic as retrieving water.

I turned around and noticed Jacqueline talking to a young boy, maybe about 10 or 12 years old. My headphones were on his ears, and he was staring at the iPod in Jacqueline’s hands. She was smiling, showing him how the controls worked, playing music and showing videos on the small screen. His jaw was slack and his eyes were transfixed; he looked disbelievingly at Jacqueline. Afterwards on the bus we wondered if the boy would tell all his friends about the strange spaceship that had landed on his family’s farm.

Slideshow: Waitomo caves

To see the full-size slideshow with captions, click here.

In the news...

...Madonna and family have been closely following our footsteps through Rajasthan and Mumbai (Though it looks like they're enjoying much nicer accommodations).

Slideshow: Jaisalmer to Mumbai

Click here to see photos full-size with captions.

Notes on "Most Disturbing"

Peter, one of our travel-mates, was sitting in our room late at night. He was relating a story to Jacqueline about a legless man with shoes on his hands, pulling himself through the street. I was fumbling with the laptop, half-asleep and only half listening; I absent-mindedly asked "Was he naked??" Waves of confused laughter from the two of them. I’m not sure exactly why I assumed the guy was naked, but it seemed plausible to me. We then talked about how India sharpens one’s sense of the sick and absurd. It got to be a common question people in our group asked each other: "What’s the most disturbing thing you saw today?"

From these conversations comes this unofficial, still-being-compiled list of some of the more unsettling things we’ve seen in India. They’re not in any particular order, and perhaps I’ll be adding to the list as I remember more.

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On the express train from Delhi to Agra, a cross-eyed & legless boy dragged himself down the aisle, tugging on peoples’ sleeves, asking for spare change and collecting the garbage/recyclables from our back seat pockets.

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In Delhi, as we sat on a tuk-tuk momentarily idling at a busy roundabout, a man hobbled up to us, dodging traffic, wincing in pain, naked except for a turban and loincloth. His loincloth, however, was pushed completely aside by the giant brown beach ball he tenderly balanced between his legs as he shuffled--he had scrotal elephantiasis(!!), something I had always thought was mere urban legend. The beach ball dangled down about mid-calf, and seemed in danger of hitting neighboring vehicles. "Money for medicine! Money for medicine!" he pleaded to us in a gravelly Tom Waits voice. We knew we were witness to something unique when even our tuk-tuk driver recoiled from the sight--he seemed genuinely spooked, and tore us out of our gridlock as soon as he saw the slightest opening in the traffic.

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In Bombay, stopped at an intersection, a handless beggar put his forearm stump through our cab window and asked for some rupees. Another day, at another intersection, a young man completely covered in blistered burned scar flesh (face, chest, and arms; he barely looked human)--leaned into our cab and asked for money (yes, I suppose I should know by now to keep my window rolled up, but it gets so hot). It had been mentioned to us several times that families sometimes deform their children on purpose—set them on fire, cut out their tongues, etc—to increase their "earning power" as beggars.

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Beyond that, there are the more common deformities we noticed: missing arms or legs, people with strangely “reversed” knee joints who walk around on all fours like dogs or horses. There are countless people with disabilities that seem treatable: basic limps, cleft palettes, cataracts... Evelyn (a longtime resident of Mozambique) shook her head: "It’s amazing. It’s like home; people die from completely stupid things like toothaches."

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In the muddy, open-sewered streets of Jaisalmer, feral pigs engaged in violent turf-wars with feral dogs. When walking, we tried to give them a wide berth. Some of our travel-mates saw a puppy shaken to death in the jaws of a big mamma-pig; this was what had set off the last round of animal violence & retribution near our hotel.

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Also in Jaisalmer, whenever walking back and forth between our hotel and the internet café next door, a rabid dog with hip dysplasia excitedly stumbled/wobbled after us with his mouth full of foamy saliva. We would throw rocks at him to keep him at bay.

Slideshow: Jaipur to the Thar Desert

Click here to see larger pictures and captions.

Bollywood best!

In India, people take movies very seriously. A rainy afternoon in Varanasi, a group of us piled into several tuk-tuks and went to the local multiplex. Jacqueline was already at the box office when I caught up with her, and a young Indian man was pleading with her not to see Om Shanti Om. "No, no, don’t do it-! It’s boring-! You have to see Aaja Nachle instead-! It will blow your mind-! Please!! It is amazing, it’s the best movie I’ve ever seen-!"

We saw Om Shanti Om anyways, as planned. It’s a brilliantly sentimental, color-saturated musical comedy/romance/ghost story/Bollywood satire/revenge tale that involves karma and reincarnation as plot points, and it’s one of the most popular Bollywood films to come out in decades. It’s entirely in Hindi (except for a few smatterings of English) and though there were no subtitles, it didn’t really matter. We were hooked.



Life in India is difficult, of course, and Bollywood films are pure escapism: beautiful musical numbers, elaborately choreographed dance sequences, over-the-top acting, incredible cinematography and set design. Imagine Pedro Almodovar, Quentin Tarantino & Andrew Lloyd Webber collaborating together on an MGM musical. It’s easy to see how cinema is so interwoven into life here. Dance moves are emulated; movie dialogue and song lyrics are taken to heart and often find their way into everyday conversation.





We ended up seeing Aaja Nachle too, a week later when we were in Jaipur. A paper-thin plot, but it was great anyways: after many years, the protagonist (a successful NYC dance instructor) returns to her small Indian hometown to save her old dance school from the bulldozers. We went to the 7pm showing at the giant mid-century theater that is a bit of a Jaipur landmark. The venue was a crucial part of the interactive experience: the crowd whistled and clapped at the previews; howled and cheered at the heroine; jeered and hissed at the bad guys; clapped and sang along with the musical numbers. As the credits rolled, people spontaneously clapped, waved and danced in the aisles. As the lights started coming up, a large group of laughing, dancing teens were amazed to see the group of white people a few rows behind them. They wanted to know how we liked the movie, and all cheered "Bollywood best!!! Bollywood best!!" when we gave them the thumbs-up.

The layover

From Udaipur, it was going to take us two days by train and bus through Gujarat to get to Mumbai. We decided to just book a cheap flight and enjoy the extra time in Mumbai rather than suffer through more transport headaches. Our flight was cheap because it involved a layover in Delhi. Our first leg was late in landing and we were worried about missing our connection; the flight attendant smiled and told us not to worry, she was sure our connecting flight would most certainly be late in departing.

Arriving in Delhi, we found ourselves in a crowd, staring disbelieving at the giant television screens in the terminal. Benazir Bhutto had just been assassinated, and we had never experienced an airport so eerily quiet. It had happened only 30 minutes prior to our landing, and the details were still scarce and contradictory. People stood with jaws open, hands on foreheads, whispering to companions or fumbling with cell phones. I saw one middle-aged man close to tears.

Most of our group was still in Rajasthan, close to the Pakistan border, preparing for the train the next morning (India put its border states on high alert, canceling cross-border traffic, and though everyone in our group eventually made it to Mumbai, at the time we wondered if they would be stranded). We spent our time wondering what was going to happen here on the subcontinent over the next few days, months, years.

I'm not sure what I can compare the experience to; but its unsettling to see something like this up close when you feel like an outsider.

Slideshow: Delhi and Agra

For larger photos with captions, click here.

Our last night in India

I woke up from a strangely pleasant dream--a mishmash of dancing horses, Rajasthanis with turbans and giant mustaches, office cubicles, laptops, fluorescent lights, and cool breezes over open water. I felt completely relaxed; I was in such a deep sleep it took me a few moments to figure out I was on my back in a toilet stall in a Bombay bar. My shins were up against the toilet; my head was nestled under the small sink. I slowly stood up and took several deep breaths. Two cockroaches and some cigarette butts on the floor. After a couple seconds sewer water started to back up and gurgle through a floor drain and pool around the toilet--I felt pretty lucky to have woken up before I got soaked. I felt pretty lucky I hadn’t cracked my head on the sink.

I had started feeling vaguely queasy earlier that afternoon, but wasn’t especially concerned (hey, it’s India, after all...pepto bismol has been our best friend here). Jacqueline and I took a taxi to the bar; we were excited to meet up again with the rest of our group for one last farewell dinner. It was a shabby Edwardian-style tavern, a dark-wood and wicker and ceiling fan sort of place; imagine the Cheers bar after several years of neglect. It was packed and sweaty. Our group had taken over the small back room; we were chatting, just ordering drinks and food when Jacqueline noticed I was looking pale. I excused myself, and pushed through the crowd. The stench of the bathroom helped accelerate the process--hands braced on the wall, I stood over the toilet and hurled repeatedly. I have a fuzzy recollection of wiping my face with tissue, and that’s about it.

After my little nap, I opened the sliding door and wobbled out of the stall; two Indian guys at the urinals looked at me wide-eyed. I looked at myself in the mirror; a few vomit spatters on my dress shirt, and enough sweat on my face and neck to look like I was slathered in baby oil. I grabbed a handful of paper towels and wiped myself off.

I returned to our table, feeling weirdly energized. “How long was I gone for?” I got to whisper to Jacqueline. “I just passed out in the bathroom. But I feel good now.” Jacqueline suggested we leave, but I wanted to stay.

We remained for another 30 minutes before my adrenaline wore off and the smell of the just-arrived tandoori and daal started my stomach gurgling again. I was flattered that two of our travel companions insisted on hugging me goodbye, even after I said "You’re kidding!! I’ve just been on the bathroom floor!"

It wasn’t until we got back to our hotel that we noticed the dark bruise that stretched across my ribs on my right side. I was up most the night and following morning, half-feverish, sitting on the toilet and clutching the trash can. Over the course of the night I slowly discovered other painful areas I must have hit when I fell—my tailbone, left hip, left ear, left temple and eye socket...the end of three weeks in India, what better way to make an exit?

Slideshow: Varanasi

Click here for captions and larger pictures.