!ncredible !ndia!

Is that too many exclamation points? Whatever it is, incredible is an accurate description. But let's start ya'll out slowly. Arrived in Delhi 2 nights ago, nice hotel, everything perfectly fine. At 9 pm (on arrival) it was still very hot and terribly humid (technically it is monsoon season, but the rains are a bit late). So the next morning I had about 8 hours to kill before the bus trip to Manali northern India in the Himalayas, where the photojournalism workshop would take place).

I decided to walk. Really had no idea where I was going, but why not, had some dinky map from the hotel so decided to try it. There are tons of rickshaws and bikes driving by all day long, some carrying people to work, some aggressively trying to find a customer. A younger rickshaw driver who spoke very good English convinced me to hop in his natural gas powered, yet old school rickshaw. Honestly, i thought he was joking when he said he would take me to town for 20 rupees. It is hard to imagine what people mean when they say that India is cheap, but it is ridiculously cheap. 20 rupees is about 45 cents! (Later that day i bot 2 waters and 3 packets of cookies/crackers for 85 rupees, that is less than 2 bucks!). Anyhow, the kid that picked me up (his name was Ansar) proved to be most helpful and took me to a cell phone place to exchange my Tanzania sim card for an Indian one. That was the most expensive transaction all day, but electronics/cell phone related gear always is in these countries. He then tried to get me to pay him $30 for a full days worth of activities. Showing me the sights around the whole town as well as getting back to the hotel to fetch bags and then off to the bus station by 5 pm. That was a good 7 hours of work. I stopped bargaining when he offered $20 because it feels pointless to argue over a few bucks especially with people that are clearly less well off (understatement of the year). Most people think you could pay $10 for the full day, but still sounds like a good deal. I was able to tour much of Delhi and have him direct me to food stores, places to eat, cell phone stores, etc all for the price of a taxi ride in NYC from my (now old) apartment to the UES!

Well, Delhi is pretty crazy. There are tons of people and there is a ton of traffic. We saw some of the touristy tombs and buildings, etc but also went over to the bazaars in Old Delhi. I was slightly surprised that people in India are less concerned with white westerners walking around. After having been in Africa for 6 week where everyone is waving or scowling at the white person in town, it was nice that most Indians really couldn't care less.

The Indian government is pretty strict about the traffic pollution and most vehicles are required to use CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) which burns much cleaner than regular gasoline or diesel. Having said that, the lack of exhaust leaves your nasal sense wide open for the various smells that pervade Delhi, anything from the food to bad body odor to urine and other nasty human smells.

Overall, Delhi was a nice experience, the people seemed to be rather friendly. After a day full of sensory overload, I headed to the bus stop to meet up with the photojournalism crew. We all piled into an large bus with AC to prepare for the 14 hour trip. Yes, 14 hour bus ride. Well, the bus ride started at least 1-2 hours late tragically prolonging the pain of the trip. It was quite difficult to sleep as the roads outside of the city (on our way to Manali) were quite curvy and the bus driver was not shy about going as fast as he comfortably could around those bends.

Honestly, i thought the driving was bad in Africa, but it is worse here. It is hard to tell whether people just don't care or if they are not educated enough to know what 2 speeding cars colliding can do. The road from Delhi to Manali is a small 2 lane "highway" (which in this case is equivalent to a residential road in the US) and it is packed with lorries (i.e. trucks). These are not the 18 wheelers that we are accustomed to because the roads are too windy to allow them. They are, however, still pretty big (and the drivers aren't terribly forgiving or cautious). The lorrie drivers and our bus driver don't have enough patience to wait for open roads, so they do a bunch of blind curve passing while letting the horn rip. This was mostly effective...except for this morning. Naturally, I couldn't sleep on the bus, too much motion and at about 6 am we were approaching a curve. There were 2 trucks parked on either side of the road. 1 in our lane, another in the other lane (really stupid positioning, but as pointed out previously, people that drive in this country don't think...at all). There was just enough space to fit one car through. The bus driver cautiously approached the space and started to squeeze through. A lorrie driver on the other side decided it wasn't necessary to be cautious and he plowed right into us. Not even a chance to break. Luckily, nobody was hurt...but there was some pretty good damage to the bus. Needless to say, this delayed our already delayed (and very sweaty and uncomfortable) trip even more so. We unloaded everything because the bus driver couldn't get the bus started again with the steering wheel all jammed up against the seat. We eventually chose to get some private trucks for transportation the rest of the way and our 14 hour journey eventually finished in a total of about 20 hours. Quite an ordeal. Honestly, not that stressful since my new state of mind seems to be intense "chill" and relaxation. Obviously the heat was unpleasant and we all needed showers (and never want to repeat the experience) but this is what happens in developing countries, you have to just deal with it.

On a positive note, we did all make it safely to our destination and Manali is a very scenic place at the edge of the Himalayas. The last few hours was spent driving up the river valley (think the Beas river) and the mountains were over 1,000 meters high on either side with virtual straight drops to the river below. There was cultivation all the way up some of these mountain tops, pretty amazing to see. Some people even have baskets and pulley systems suspended over the river in order to get themselves (or goods) from one side to the other. The week here has just started and the jet lag is kicking in. Will check in later if there is any interesting news. Hope all is well.

dave