| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 07 February 2005 |
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Mark's Preface: Am I glad I went to India? Yes, I think so. India is wonderful. And India is terrible. It is spectacular and at times
disgusting. Did I enjoy my trip? Well, I have been to something like forty
countries and I would say that the most negative experiences happened to us
in India of any of our trips. Positive experiences--and some were very
good--were the minority. I am glad I could go to India and see a very
different culture and a very different people. Evelyn and I went to India
with the same sense of wonder with which we approach any country. And as
someone who enjoys having his cultural assumptions challenged, I found India
very stimulating. However, if a tourist looks American, if he looks
European, my recommendation is that he should not try India on his own. No
country I have visited treats visitors nearly as badly as India does. Of
all the countries we have visited, the one in which we encountered the
highest proportion of pushy and rude people is India and no other country
comes even close. Perhaps things are better if one takes a packaged tour.
But the assumption made in India so often is if you look American is that
you are rich, stupid, and an easy target. Not that the problem is crime.
Evelyn and I found crime relatively easy to avoid. More than once people
tried to pick my pockets but found the pockets they could reach were empty.
But in India your life is made miserable by being swarmed wherever you go by
people trying to sell you things, by cab drivers sneaking commissions from
the places they take you, by beggars, by children wanting gifts of pens and
rupees, by shoeshine boys throwing fresh (wet) cow manure on your shoes and
offering to clean them for a price (two consecutive days). The operative
words are 'mercenary' and 'aggressive' and incredibly 'rude'
and 'inconsiderate.' None of these people seem to target anyone but who
they assume are rich tourists. When there are three Indians and two
Americans in a train car and a beggar woman reaching through the window
spends five minutes begging from Americans and does not even bother trying
the Indians, it is easy to see what is happening. In this trip log you will
see that initially I treat the subject whimsically, but as time goes on and
fighting off people becomes an unrelenting necessity, it begins to wear on
me. It may not be obvious, but the descriptions of warding off hawkers
become less and less good-natured. It seems like a minor annoyance to just
tell someone no and walk away, and with 98% of the hawkers that is all that
is necessary. But the volume of that 98% and the persistence of the other
two percent just about whenever you are out in public, when you are in your
hotel, and just wherever you are is a very wearing thing. Indians touring
their own country where immune from being hassled. So if you look like you
are American or European, my strong recommendation is do not try India on
your own. Perhaps a tour group that can at least partially insulate you is
a better idea. India is one of the most stimulating countries in the world
to visit, or could be if the Indians would allow it to be, but it is a long
way from being an enjoyable trip. I feel a sense of pride and
accomplishment having visited India on our own. And I feel I have a much
better understanding of that part of the world, its culture and history.
But it is not clear even to me if that means I had a good time.
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Well, this is certainly the most adventurous trip
we've undertaken: three weeks in India on our own. We've been to exotic
places before, but usually with an organized tour. Southeast Asia we did on
our own, but there were five of us. All those constitute training for this,
we guess.
Excerpt from Mark's log: I am *not* a happy camper. We have never had
a trip start with such a bad omen. The trip is still 23 hours off and
already it is starting badly. I saw a mouse run across the kitchen floor.
We did have a problem with mice about a year ago. One had burrowed its way
into the foundation of the house. We started finding leavings (that's a
polite euphemism for mouse shit) in our den. Every day we would come home
and there would be leavings on the floor, or more accurately on the carpet.
Eventually we saw the critter but catching him turned out to be a difficult
task. We saw him under a bookcase but could not force him out. We watched
very closely, but somehow the mouse just disappeared. Several minutes later
we saw him in another room. Mice are dark and they move very fast. It is
like seeing a small shadow cross the floor. We called an exterminator, but
the thought of killing the mouse bothered me very much. Luckily we saw him
run out and discovered two holes at the foot of the patio doors. I stuffed
the holes with steel wool and that ended the problem. Mice hate steel wool.
It is worse than barbed wire would be for us. There is too much chance of
damaging their eyes. If they cannot easily push it aside, they just avoid
it. So that was the end of the problem. And it was a nice non-violent end.
Ahimsa is the Indian name for the non-violent way of life.
But finding a mouse hole takes time, and there was now no time for
that. We saw this mouse only twelve hours before we were leave the house
for three and a half weeks. We figured that means the mouse must be killed.
I went out and bought four mousetraps and baited them with peanut butter. A
little while later we saw the mouse run into the living room. It followed
the wall around and went into the 'pink room,' a bedroom we use as a library
of books about literature and cinema. The door closes very tightly, so we
closed it and the mouse was trapped. Or at least we think so. If we open
the door about a foot wide we can get in watching the floor very carefully
and closing the door almost immediately. We laid down newspaper across the
floor and put in one trap. I suspect the mouse will avoid both the paper
and the trap, but maybe that will tempt the mouse and give it a quick end,
though a mouse is smart and I suspect it will escape and do more damage
while we are gone. I wish there was a solution that would not kill the
mouse. Ethically, I think it is wrong to kill a mouse to avoid the
inconvenience it will cause. But I won't rationalize the action. I used to
work with someone who cheated on his taxes and had some argument why people
really should cheat on their taxes if they can. The guy probably did not
have a single ethical principle he violated. It bothers me when he violates
his own principles, but I have some consolation in knowing that I have
principles to violate, though admittedly it is more consolation for me than
for the mouse.
Well, that wasn't the best start. I promise to stop philosophizing
until I have written ten more pages. Of course, my pages are probably
shorter than your pages. I carry a pocket-size memo book on these trips to
write my log in. I wrote most of the above in the wee small hours of the
morning. Those of you who have read my logs before know that I have his own
weird way of avoiding jet lag. Most authorities tell you to get plenty of
sleep. I find what works for me is to keep myself awake the whole night
long the night before a very long flight. The next day if I keep active I
don't feel tired at all, though I recognize that I really am on the edge of
sleep. If I am doing something like typing at a terminal, my mind will go
off on a weird tangent for a second. It seems logical to me but suddenly I
realize that it was really something weird. I will look up and see a row of
K's across the bottom of my screen and realize I dozed off for just a
moment. (Needless to say, if you intend on driving, forget it. Jet lag is
much better than traction.) That may happen to me three times the next day,
but it is reassuring that I have a ready store of a useful resource--
fatigue. When I finally gets on the plane and relaxes, as much as one can
relax, I fall asleep. I have been known to sleep through take-off. This
for someone who usually finds it very difficult to sleep on planes. When I
wake up I have confused my internal clocks. To unconfuse them I just see
the position of the sun on the sky and accept it. I find if I keeps active
then I have almost no jet lag.
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Mark's log continues: So I was up all night watching
films, reading, folding laundry, that sort of thing. Except for three or
four ten-second naps I was able to put in almost a full day's work. Of
course, we had to leave at 4 PM. And of course there were a fair number of
people who were asking about the trip. We have six hours in Frankfurt.
Just to sound worldly, I called it 'Vronkfurt.' You could see them do a
double take. Does he speak German with a German accent? Is he that well-
educated? Is he just being an asshole? Actually, I'm just being an
asshole.
Of course, we get the usual question: where is the rest of our
luggage? We try to travel light, maybe twenty-five pounds (eleven
kilograms) each. Any more than that and you won't want to carry it all over
India. People talk about how they would like to go off and explore another
culture. Then there are those who ask why we would want to go to India. I
don't quite like Evelyn's answer that if you don't know, we can't tell you,
though there is some truth to that. If you are not intrigued by a really
alien culture and the thrill of culture shock, it cannot be really
explained. I think part of our fascination with non-Western culture is that
it is new to us as adults. It is sort of like the same phenomenon as
reading Kipling or Dickens as an adult. They are fresh and exciting when
you are reading something new, but you can never really appreciate those
pieces of Dickens or Kipling you were assigned to read in school. It spoils
their writing to be forced to read them too early. Well, perhaps the same
thing goes for culture. In school we came in contact with Western culture a
lot and were expected to know it and to have some understanding. But our
schools taught us next to nothing about Asian culture. That has kept it
fresh and new for us to experience when our minds are ready. People read
about Tolkien's Middle Earth and become enthralled by the completely
realized and self-consistent alien society that Tolkien has built. But
there are fully realized alien societies that you can actually visit. You
can experience firsthand a society with different cultural assumptions. And
because, perhaps unfortunately, our society demands little knowledge of
Asian culture, you learn it without pressure and can take the time to enjoy
it as you would Kipling or Dickens. The world you are visiting might as
well be fantasy for all the demands our society puts on you to know of it.
And as for the intrepid explorers who visit these cultures for twenty-five
days, we really are the people I wish I could be more like. I would have a
natural envy for the most world-traveled people I know, the person who has
seen all the strange temples of Egypt, of Thailand, of Mexico, of Rajasthan.
But as it happened, that's I. (No, I am not all that pompous, but I do like
to travel and I do recommend it if at all possible.)
I can just picture what all these places look like from memory and put
them into a perspective and continuum that contains all of them. |
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