The other day we were in a bar/cafe here in Mumbai. A reporter came up to Yo and asked if she would like to be interviewed & photographed for an article on upmarket teas. We were lucky that the article came out today, our last day in India.
Here she is signing an autograph for a couple of fans at an ice cream shop.
Also today she was approached on the street and asked if she wanted to be an extra in a Bollywood movie. Sadly she had to turn down what could have been just the break she was looking for.
-Shawn

Between us Yo and I have spent almost two years of our lives here in India. And while her love of India is more unconditional, mine tends to be a bit more critical. There were times on this most recent visit when I questioned whether it was worth all the hassels. At one point I even wrote a letter to India in my journal, "Dear India, Why must you be so difficult?", it began. But it's difficulty is a big part of it's appeal(not unlike mountain climbing). Take away this challenge and it becomes a much less interesting place to travel. The other day a teacher we met at Ajanta asked Yo why she came to India. He probably expected her to say because of the beaches, or the mountains, or the animals, or the food, or the Taj Mahal(and these are all great reasons to come to India). He seemed surprised and also pleased when instead her response was that she loves India because of its people. Its the people anywhere that make a place and in India they are its greatest asset. Depending on your attitude, they will either crack you up or drive you absolutely crazy.
Just as there are Anglophiles and Francophiles, there are also Indophiles. On this trip we met a French women who has been here 13 times and a British guy who has been here 12 times. Upon hearing this I knew right away that they each had a great sense of humor. If you can't laugh at and with India, you will not be happy here. India has a lot of negatives: the pollution, the traffic, the beggers, the hassels, the ripoffs, the stares, the blackouts, the bureaucracy, and the poor service. In some places there is literally shit everywhere. These are the things you notice first and if you come here on a two week vacation, it will probably be all you notice. This place needs time. India can only be enjoyed if you take your time, travel slow, and like to laugh.
Despite its poverty, India has a confidence that is rarely seen in other countries. And while most Indians are curious about foreigners(almost to a fault), they are also indifferent to our trends and styles. Unfortunately a lot of the world looks to the west for its taste in movies, music, fashion, and sports. Its impossible to go anywhere these days and not see boys & young men wearing soccer jerseys of their favorite European teams or some variation on the Nike, Puma, Adidas sportsware theme. Indians have a style all their own. In the north its popular for young men to wear pastel colored synthetic angora-like vests tucked into acid washed jeans, a little too tight up top, flared down low, and with something nonsensical like "Mister A to Z Denim Dance Factory" embroidered down one leg. Not my style, but definitely unique. The majority of women still wear traditional clothes, especially the beautiful brightly colored saris. Most Indians would not be able to pick Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, or Leonardo DiCaprio out of a lineup. Forget about Madonna, U2, or Brittney Spears. For them its Bollywood movies & music or nothing at all. Soccer may be the number one sport in the world, and baseball & basketball have large followings in many countries, but in India, cricket is where its at. There are several channels on TV devoted solely to showing & discussing cricket. The sports section in the newspaper should be renamed the cricket section. While the people of Cairo, Shanghai, and Rio are sadly all starting to dress, act, and think like those in New York and London, you can always count on India to be refreshingly different and uniquely Indian.
India is definitely an acquired taste. Its not for everyone, but because of its eclectic mix of languages, religions, history, cultures, and people, it remains for me the most interesting place in the world and my favorite place to travel.
-Shawn

Check out the last one--seems very ghetto!













yoshimi

After leaving Diu it felt like our trip was just about finished, and, in fact, it would have been a great place to end the trip, being so completely relaxing. However, we still had 3 weeks left. So, it was back to Ahmedabad. I always read about the booming Indian economy, all the high tech & call center jobs, a middle class of 300 million. The TV commercials here are always showing Indians wearing western clothes, driving fast cars, and living in modern apartments. But after two months, we often wondered, who are these people, and more importantly, where are these people, because we certainly haven't seen them. That is until now. Ahmedabad is the biggest city in one of the richest states. Across the river from our guest house in the "New City" we found the ultimate symbol that you have arrived as a true international city, a McDonalds. India's one billion plus potential customers is a market that McDonalds has probably been salivating over for some time now. Yet they've only recently started setting up shop here, probably because of the dietary restrictions of the major religions here. No pork for Muslims and no beef for Hindus, a bit of a problem for a burger joint. So instead, they're working the chicken angle. Yo had the Chicken Maharaja Mac and I had the McChicken Curry Roll. Interesting, but not something I feel a need to try again. Unlike at home, McDonalds here is the domain of the rich, the famous, and their kids. On my way to the cleanest bathroom I can ever remember in India I passed an Indian Ronald MacDonald entertaining a birthday party of screaming kids.

After lunch we stopped at a Borders-like bookstore with a Starbucks-like coffee shop. I sat reading the newspaper while I enjoyed my first ever latte in India. Then it was on to the movie theater. India's Bollywood is the world's biggest movie industry. Every year over a thousand films are made and exported to over 70 countries. Worldwide a billion more people a year buy tickets to Indian movies than to Hollywood ones. Bollywood movies show none of the harsh reality of everyday life and are intended to be pure escapist fun. There's lots of singing, dancing, and costume changes. The streets are clean and uncrowded. The movies are always three hours plus to give the maximum entertainment value for the rupee. Ten minutes into "Superstar" and the guy in front of us was already on his third cell phone call. I asked him to be quiet and he looked at me like I was crazy. And he was right. We soon realized that we were the only ones not yakking away into cellphones during the movie. The only time they stopped was during the intermission. And then about five minutes before the movie ended, just as you could feel the formulamatic story winding down, everyone got up, put away their cellphones, and left. Like those leaving the baseball game early when one team is up by too many runs. So we sat there and watched the end of the movie alone. I could spend the rest of my life here and I would still not even begin to understand India.

After this day of cosmopolitan city life it was another overnight bus south to Maharashtra state. The last two days we've spent visiting the famous 2000 year old rock cut cave temples at Ellora and the Buddhist cave frescoes at Ajanta. The highlight was the Kailasa Temple. This amazing architectural wonder was carved out the side of a mountain by 7000 laborers over 150 years removing over 200,000 tons of rock in its creation. On the crowded bus back from Ellora, Yoshimi snagged the last seat and was interrogated with the usual questions asked by Indians, which curiously were the same questions we were taught as children not to ask adults: How old are you? What is your religion? Why don't you have any children? How much do you make a year? I got called up front to share the engine block seat with the driver's nephew. They asked me basicaly the same questions, plus a couple of bonus ones: How much does a car cost in America...in rupees? Who is my favorite cricket player?

Tonight we catch an overnight train to Mumbai, our last stop in India.

-Shawn

Though it would be easy to spend another few weeks(or months)here in Diu, we must leave. We fly out of Mumbai in ten days and there are a few places we wanted to check out between now and then. But before we left our favorite ice cream shop gave us a personal tour of their ice cream and sodapop factory. And the four newborn puppies that we watched get bigger everyday have now all be adopted by families. It's time to move on.
It's been eight years since Yo and I have done a big trip together. In 1999/2000 we spent a year and a half traveling around Asia. Now that we are back in Asia its hard not to compare the two trips. Though India has hardly changed(except more cell phones), what has changed is the way that we, and people in general, travel. While we still travel on a budget and with backpacks, we are also now also equipped with an iPod, a digital camera, a blog, e tickets, and a ATM card.
Of the fifty or so places we have visited on this trip, I can think of only a few that did not have an internet cafe or some sort. Some were better than others. A few had keyboards that had been so used that there were no letters left on the keys. You just had to remember which key was which. It slowed things down quite a bit for an amateur typer such as myself. Eight years ago, there were no internets cafes at all along our route, instead we'd pick up our mail at the post restante section of designated post offices. We love getting emails and comments on the blog, but you can't imagine how exciting it was to pick up a packet of letters from family & friends every 4 to 6 weeks. It was our only news from home. We'd always have contests each time to see who would get the most letters. Each letter would be reread several times. Sometimes my Mom would send a care package with all of my favorite foods(of course pretzels). You can't beat email for convenience, but sometimes I miss the visceral feel of a letter. Tom Robbins, an author that refuses to use a computer to write, says that ink is the blood of language and paper is it's flesh.
It would be hard to go many months without any music. So we always travel with a little stereo and speakers. 8 years ago even though CD's were the medium of choice in the first world, cassettes were still the name of the game in the third world, so we traveled with a Walkman cassette player and a small set of speakers that were barely loud enough to be heard above the noise in the streets. We also had a case that held exactly twelve cassette tapes. As you can probably imagine it didn't take long to get pretty sick of those twelve tapes. Occasionally my friend, Tim, would send us a mix tape that was always most welcome or we'd pick up a tape of Indian Bollywood musical hits every so often. Now we have an IPod the size of a pack of gum that holds 200 CDs and a set of speakers that are more than capable of keeping up the neighbors. We can put this iPod on shuffle and not hear the same song for weeks-it's crazy.
In 1999 an ATM was a rare sight on our route. We traveled with thousands of dollars in travelers checks because most of the places we visited(Laos, Vietnam, Tibet, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Burma)had no ATMs at all. In fact the only places that did were India, China, and Thailand. I had a pamphlet that listed all the ATM's in India. Imagine a country the size of the continential US and with 3 times the population and the locations of ALL of the ATMs in this country could be found on a single pamphlet. We'd plan our trip around these ATM stops, stocking up with enough money to hold us over for a few weeks until we hit another one. Luckily this is no longer the case, now you can't walk 100 yards without running into an ATM. You could now very easily leave the country without a penny in your pocket and armed only with an ATM card, travel around the world without any trouble at all.
And then there is the digital camera. The benefits are almost too many to name. First there is the money saved from not having to buy film and then having it developed(last trip we had 70 rolls). It's easy to attach photos to emails and to blogs. Local people always get a kick out of seeing their picture after you take their photo. You can retake photos that do not turn well and delete the ones you do not like. You can entertain yourselves by looking through your photos. We've spent several evenings laughing as we went though all the pictures we've taken so far on this trip. You can take photos of bus/train schedules or of maps so you can use them later. There haven't been many photos of Yo on the blog because she takes most of the pictures and I'm not much of a photographer myself. But when I do take a picture of her now I take 4 or 5 slightly different photos and let her pick her favorite one later.
We're not real technology people, but I must admit that all of these things have made travel a lot more convenient. However, I do miss receiving those letters and packages at post restante.
-Shawn