Punjab

Immediately after Jaipur we were on the road again. We took an express train north the next day to Amristar to see the Golden Temple, a famous Sikh temple close to the Pakistan border in Punjab. We rode first class in the AC car, so within minutes we were drinking tea and eating terrible naan with jelly and butter. Kavi dozed because the train’s rocking and stopping and accelerating made her feel not great, so Kavi’s fufferji and I worked on a tough sudoku and looked at pictures from our other adventures.

By the second meal, Kavi was kind of awake and kind of feeling okay, so we were all talking and looking at pictures. That’s when Kavi noticed our new small friend. A little Sikh kid kept roaming up and down the isle as we were talking. He would sit in front of us and peer through the seats quietly to listen. He would sit behind us to see the pictures on the LCD, and he put his finger over his mouth with a smile to tell Kavi not to say anything when she saw him. He had a great smile as he watched and absorbed. Finally, after looking at pictures and finishing a game of Rummy, we decided to play an innocent game of Bluff and I wanted our new friend to play. So we invited him to play. Of course at first he flat-out refused. Then we asked again with a promise of fun, and he made the humble half-nod-half-shake that so many Indians do that doesn’t make sense to me. Is it a yes? Is it a no? It was a yes, we started to play, and he caught on quickly. His English was perfect, and he was also tricky and good. But not as good as Kavi’s fufferji. That man was sly, which I never would have guessed because he’s so good-natured and all smiles otherwise. He would be down to one card when I would be stuck with so many that I couldn’t fan them with one hand.

We finished playing just before we got to Amritsar, so we quizzed our friend about what to see and do in Amritsar. He was so happy to be able to give us information. When we finally got off the train, he said bye at least six times and headed off with his family.

We said goodbye, but we couldn’t waste time. Our train was an hour late arriving, and we were already booked on a return train for early that evening. So Amritsar was a warp-speed tour. We found an auto-rickshaw that promised he could get us to everything we needed to see and back by the time our train left, so in we went. We weaved through streets full of people and dogs and cars and rickshaws and carts. We made it to the temple, and realized how right people on the train were when they said it was too bad we were going on a Sunday. People were everywhere. More than any other place, I was an object of curiosity here. There weren’t as many foreigners, and I wasn’t wearing a suit. I just didn’t make sense to some people, so they had to stop and stare for a while to try to figure it out. But they didn’t have long because we were on the go!

We were carried by crowd to the shoe depository, through the holy water to wash off our feet, stopped by guards to cover our heads and pushed into the courtyard. Then I had to stop because the Golden Temple is beautiful. Like at many other temples in India, it was anchored in holy water from the Ganges. The temple was in the middle of a large, square marble pool, with a plank as wide as a road that tunneled all the visitors from the edge of the pool to the temple entrance. Across from the temple on the outer edge of the pool, men were bathing away their sins and kids were splashing clean despite their innocence. On the marble between the courtyard walls and the pool, everyone was walking and praying and making their way to the long line to get inside. People were bent in prayer, leaning to drink the holy water that volunteers were taking from the pool to wash over the marble. Others were doing their duty to wash the water back into the pool. It was a cycle of drinking, washing, praying and replenishing.

Kavi’s fufferji pushed us through the crowds. We made it to the line and waited for about ten minutes, after which point it was clear that we would never make it inside at the rate the line was moving. So Kavi’s fufferji left for a bit, came back to us and took us to a room in the courtyard. There we stood looking sad as he pleaded in Hindi that we had come from America and had only a few hours to see the temple. Welcome to India. The man inside took Kavi’s fufferji’s hand and wrote a word and the number 3, and we were off with many thanks and promises of donations. We were sent through the exit line to the temple and were in within ten minutes – because we were from America, because this was India and because we asked.

Inside the temple was small, cramped, chaotic and beautiful. The walls and ceilings were covered in patterns with gold leaf, and the center where the religious leaders sat was carpeted in red velvet. There were tabla players and singers overriding the mass of visitors, and people were crammed everywhere. I had no control of where I went once I got inside. I was pushed and pulled and smashed into a spot near the center, and when I had been there long enough I was pushed to the exit. There was a man in the center near me who was methodically sweeping the piles of money being offered into a box. Another man was stabbing the bills down with a dull knife to maximize space for the offerings. It was a fluid, rich operation. Everyone was throwing money in hopes for holy food, and it was the promise of a small orange packet of goods that kept people crammed against golden barriers waiting. We got one packet and that was plenty for us. We were thrust outside and made the short walk around to see the fish in the holy water (that people were bathing in, walking on and drinking) and then were ushered back down the same lane we had illegally entered a mere twenty minutes earlier. It was the most cramped I had ever been in India, but I expected as much when we were visited the most important temple of a major religion. On a Sunday.

There was no time to soak it all in. We took some pictures and headed to our next stop, a nearby historic site. We left the temple as quickly as we had come, and got a rickshaw to the ?????, to see a courtyard where half a century ago thousands of Indians were peacefully protesting British rule and the British opened fire, killing ????? people in a matter of minutes. The site was a small, closed-in courtyard, and Kavi’s fufferji explained that the British gave a two-minute warning. But with the only exit being an alleyway that five feet wide, very few were able to get out before the massacre began. There was a well on site that people jumped into to miss the bullets, and there was a small building that had bullet holes on the exterior. It was very strange going from the chaos of the holy temple to a relatively quiet spot where

After we saw the ?????, our driver delivered us back to the train station on time as promised, and we were off to Ludhiana for the night. This town was home for part of Kavi’s family, who live in a big house with a great garden and a vicious German Shepard. We arrived late and still managed to eat a ridiculous amount. We only stayed the night, but it was absolutely wonderful. Agra, Jaipur and Amritsar are smaller city, but they sustain through tourism. Ludhiana was the first city we visited that wasn’t really famous for anything. It was quiet. It didn’t have insane traffic. It was relatively clean. It was a nice change. And the family was great. It was like as soon as the train arrived, I could feel warmth. Kavi’s cousin and his wife picked us up, full of hugs and chatter. They laughed easily and often, and there was fun music as we made our way to the house.

As soon as we got to the house, everyone came to say hello. They didn’t speak a lot of English, but I was welcomed immediately. We had Coke and vegetables within five minutes of being inside, then we went for a yard tour. Roses, lemon trees, mango trees, carrots, chilis… everything was there. Green grass and vines growing on the walls. We then had potato pancakes with chutneys and sauces. They were delicious, and I finished two quickly. Too quickly. I wanted to stop snacking because I knew that even at 11 p.m. we would still be eating dinner, so I wasn’t going to have anymore. But they saw the empty plate, and loaded me with another one. They were happy I liked the food, and happy to give me more even if I said I was full.

During the snack, Kavi’s 3-year-old nephew came home, and he was awesome. He and his parents came in from being in the car for five hours, and he was ready to run around. So run around he did. And jumped on the chairs. And turned up the music on the computer. And brought his bike inside and rode in circles, intentionally running over feet and into shins. And rolled around on the couches. And screeched for toys. But he was a lot of fun. I made him give me a lot of high-fives, and he made me come into the yard and chase him. When it was finally time for bed, he screamed “bye bye ta ta!” about ten times before finally getting closed into his room. Little kids are great to have in a house where there is a language barrier because even if I don’t know the language, I know kidspeak and I can have fun for hours without saying much of anything.

We left early in the morning, and I was sad to leave such a fun house. But the cousin and aunt drive us to Patiala, a town closer to Delhi, for our next family visit. Patiala was a lot like Ludhiana, with relative peacefulness in the streets. We went to another big house, and this one had even more people. Fourteen people lived together. Six kids and eight adults. And visitors… us and people coming to see Kavi. So it was another crazy house. At first I spent all of my time in the sitting room, drinking Coke and pretending to pay attention as Kavi was grilled in Punjabi. I had no idea what was going on, and aunties seemed disappointed not to be able to satisfy their curiosity about me. We sat, people came, Kavi answered questions, the room went quiet for a bit, some kid would run in and be shy, we would laugh, conversation would start again.

A few of Kavi’s male cousins trickled in, and one asked if I was tired. I was actually exhausted from all of the traveling and waking up early and heat, but I shook my head that I was fine. I think that was all he needed to break the ice because then we began to talk about everything. He was one of the six parents, and he talked about his kids and Patiala and India and cell phones and industry and schools and language and life. He spoke English very well despite confessing that he hadn’t used it in years, and he had the curious personality that works well for conversations among travelers. We compared notes about our countries for the rest of our stay there. People would come, sit and listen. They would contribute questions and answers, and we all got more comfortable.

When there was a break in the stream of visitors, eight of us piled into the car and went to a maharaja’s house. Patiala, I learned, was the home of a maharaja who invited the patiala peg – a shot of alcohol that is enormous. Apparently this king was visiting England and kept telling the bartender to keep pouring when he was getting a drink. Everyone was amazed when he put back so much alcohol, and the drink was named after the town. ????? Another king or this same king was also famous because he wanted to buy a Rolles Royce. The car dealership didn’t know about the small-time king and refused him service. Finally the dealership realized the king had money to spend, and they sold him ten cars. He was so offended he brought the cars back and used them as a garbage-truck fleet. So Patiala may not have been the home of Indian tourism, but it did have some interesting history.

After our town tour, the whole family recognized that Kavi and I were worn out. Kavi’s fufferji had napped while we toured, so we went for a rest when we got home. We were woken up when more visitors came, and Kavi went back to her sitting-room post. I was in there for about five minutes, but I couldn’t handle it. So I went outside with the uncles, small cousins and dog. I played some tag and talked more about random stuff, then we all had dinner. Kavi was jealous of me… I was glad that I wasn’t the one coming back to India for the first time 14 years.

After a delicious dinner, I was presented with material for a suit as a gift, and another nephew came over. He was 17 and had a motorbike. I had seen them all over, and I wanted a ride. So at almost 10 p.m., I changed into pajama pants and went for a ride in India. Unlike most girls, I did not sit on the back of the bike with both legs on the same side. It was only after we were headed down the main road did I learn that Kavi’s nephew only had a permit, and he wasn’t really supposed to be driving. Oh well. I later found out that one of Kavi’s aunts had a license for three years before she learned how to drive. Her husband knew someone with the driving board, so she figured she may as well get licensed. Public systems in India are very similar in theory to those in America, but in practice everything changes because of corruption and evasion.

We got back from the ride, and the small kids wanted to play games. So Kavi and I ran around playing freeze tag and categories, we tried sardines but they wouldn’t close their eyes for long enough and we ended with some sort of tag. We went to bed close to midnight, but the kids would have stayed out running around until the sunrise.

The kids ranged in age from three years old to about 14 years old, and there were two three-year-olds who were so funny to watch. One boy, one girl, two different families. They lived in the same house and were insanely jealous of each other. It was sort of ridiculous. As soon as I got there, I saw the comedy unfolding. In the sitting room, the girl came in to see her uncle. She climbed on him and acted shy. Not long after, the boy came in to see his dad – the girl’s uncle. He climbed up into his dad’s lamp and immediately pushed the girl away. She didn’t cry, but she resolved to regain her spot by pushing right back. There was some grunting exchanged, and the girl started to cry. Finally the uncle took them both outside so they could get distracted with something else. It was the same with everything. At one point they both had glasses of Coke to drink. The girl gave her mom the drink to hold, and the boy followed suit. The girl took the boy’s drink from her mom’s hand and with a grunt handed it back to the boy. The boy shrieked, and the mom had to quickly take both glasses and put them on the table. Later the same thing happened with bread. And the same thing happened when the boy was in the grandfather’s lap. And the same thing happened when the girl got her bottle. And the same thing happened when the boy got to go outside. It was hilarious. They both grew more comfortable with me, and about five hours in I was able to hold them. When we were outside playing games, I was swinging the girl around and throwing her up in the air. I set her down to go run around, and she saw the boy walking over. She looked up at me and tugged on my pants with a squeal. I wandered away, and they both followed. Laughing, I picked up the girl and started hopping around. The boy chased after and pulled my pants hard to start climbing up my leg. So I hoisted them both up, and they started pushing each other out of my arms. I was laughing, they were starting to cry, and all that I could do was spin them until they both started laughing, hope they got bored and set them off to go find someone else to clamor over. Talk about in-home entertainment.

By the end of my day in Patiala, I was exhausted and sore. But it was a fun, fun day, and I was sad to leave at five in the morning because we couldn’t see the whole crowd together in full swing before we headed out. But I got emails and pictures before I even got back to Delhi, so I feel like it was more of a “see you later” than a “goodbye”.

Jaipur

Agra was the only tour outside of Delhi where Kavi and I were on our own. Our next trip was an overnight to Jairpur, India’s “pink city”. This time we got a driver and Kavi’s fufferji (uncle) came along. I spent most of the car ride through Haryana and Rajasthan taking pictures of the backs of trucks, and later as we approached Jaipur I got shots of camels and their carts padding along beside us. Rajasthan’s climate was much more desert, and we felt the heat by nine in the morning. The land on either side of the road was dry and dusty, and everyone on the road had their heads covered as a shield from the heat. I, of course, forgot to put on sunblock for the day. So my left arm that was leaning out the window for pictures was pink before we even got to Jaipur. Oops. This was the visit where I got my flip-flop tan, and my lips were blistered within a few hours. It was hot in Jaipur.

But we had a great time. We stopped first at a palace where we got to ride an elephant up to the palace. Awesome! It sprayed water up at us a few times as we made the climb, and the elephant driver (?) gave his token English response: “air conditioning”. We toured for a long time all day, and I will post more when I have time to write about the spots we saw.

We took a nap after all of our outside touring, and then headed to our entertainment for the night. It was a mock Rajasthani village where the admission was ridiculous and the staff was dressed in traditional garb. I was convinced it was set up for non-resident Indians who were afraid to take their kids to an actual village but who wanted them to have a village experience. It was so campy it was great. We saw young girls dancing on a stage who knew that asking the crowd to join them would make everyone smile. We saw a magician who got a bird to come out a shoe. There was a henna artist and a masseuse. We could buy tea or (in the ancient tradition) snow cones. There was a wooden ferris wheel and a merry-go-round. We got our fortunes told (I’m going to live until I’m 90. I am very lucky, but I cannot be lazy. I’m going to get married late and have two kids. I like people so I should do something that is creative and lets me work with people like theatre or – accounting.) There were shops with great stuff with English misprinted on it. I found two keychains: “It’s for you my brother like friend” and “Friend are like soul male”. I was highly entertained.

We could have ridden another elephant, but we opted for a camel instead. Camels are awesome for so many reasons. They have such a goofy, uninterested look to them. They walk around like they couldn’t care what they’re doing, and when they’re chilling they seem so content. And it is fun to get on and off of them. Kavi and I rode one together, and the camel gets up and down front-end first. So I was soaring in the air long before Kavi had left the ground, and I came crashing down with Kavi’s head banging into my back after the front had grounded. Kavi’s fufferji tried to get a picture of us on the camel, but all he got were our heads thrown back yelping as we came down suddenly. It’s an awesome picture.

They provided us dinner but berated me for my English, and they filled our plates every time they came by even if we said no. The food was okay, but it was more the experience of sitting cross-legged on the floor and using bowls and plates made from leafs. To help with digestion, we found the long wooden slide and ended our night skidding through red clay. Then we headed back to the hotel to sleep off sunburn and our very full stomachs.

The next morning we shopped. Our guide took us to a government emporium, and by this point Kavi and I were wise to the ways of commission and indoor shopping. Kavi’s fufferji was also pissed with the guide for taking us there. So he apologized and took us to a string of stores that had fabrics with the regional block printing. I found some placemats and a great purse. I bargained and got the price down a lot through banter with the owner, but in the end the price wasn’t what I wanted. It was the only time I regretted not paying more than I wanted for something because the purses were cute! Oh well, it happens.

Afterwards we headed to a monkey temple, which was cool at first. We got some peanuts, and at the entrance some cute monkeys took the food from our hands. We threw shells on the ground and they came up to snack. We had been warned all along against red-faced monkeys, and as we headed closer to the temple, we saw some to avoid. But they are feisty! The temple had some holy water that boys were dive-bombing and cannon-balling into, and it seemed like a party for the monkeys. They directed us up some stairs to another temple area, and then the monkeys came out. Probably twenty came out when they saw the bag. They advanced toward me, looking at my eyes as they moved. I threw peanuts away from me so they would go toward the shells. But they saw the bag and kept coming. Yikes. There were red-faced ones who looked hungry. I did not want to be eaten by monkeys in a desert in India. They came up to me quickly, and just as quickly Kavi’s fufferji grabbed the bag and started emptying on the ground. Finally we all got so panicked that we just sprayed out all of the nuts and dropped the bag on the ground. And we hustled down the steps. I never thought I would be so afraid of monkeys, but that was probably the most terrified I got the whole time I was in India. Those holy monkeys were too smart and too hungry to be friendly.

Our goodbye to the temple was our goodbye to Jaipur. We left at the hottest part of the day to go back in a car where the air conditioning had unexpectedly stopped working just before we left. So I dozed and sweated and listened to music and looked at trucks as we left the dessert and headed back to Delhi.

Agra

The second tour we went on was to go see the Taj Mahal in Agra. This time we got up early and joined a group of four foreigners on a minibus. The government has pumped money into the road from Delhi to Agra because of all of the tourism, and our van fell in line with hordes of trucks, buses and cars all headed in the same direction. The interstate roads are awesome in India. We passed through some villages where the people hanging out on the main road slowed us down some, but mostly the trip was a few hours of fields, gas stations and solitary houses on the side of the road. I couldn’t see any speed limit signs, but the traffic regulated the speed. The trucks all asked us to “blow horn”, “wait for signal” and “use dipper at night” in brightly-painted signs that covered their back end. So it wasn’t a quiet trip, and we didn’t stay in a single lane for more than two minutes. Like in Delhi, we stopped at sanctioned restaurant/hotel spots that seemed to be waiting for only us, and we were promised top-notch shopping as part of the day’s program.

We got to Agra after a few hours. We met up with our guide – a dynamic local man who spoke loudly and wanted to know all of our names. He repeated facts and dates a few times each time he explained something, and he ordered us to take pictures whether we wanted to or not. We left our minibus far away from the site and were ushered quickly onto a battery-powered bus… I was pretty impressed. Then the guide told us that Agra was a city based completely on tourism. There were no factories or production plants because of pollution control. There weren’t even a lot of cars in the city proper. So the lesson is: India cares about the environment when it means that it will bring in lots of foreign money. The town was crawling with hawkers (who we were once again warned against) and foreigners. We made it to the building. Kavi tried to pass off as a resident Indian, but they recognized her western clothes, accented Hindi and foreign entourage… so when they asked for Indian ID, she stammered for a minute and finally paid the charge that was more than ten times what an Indian resident has to pay.

But the $25 in admission fees for the day was worth it. The Taj Mahal really is beautiful. The courtyard, gates, mosque and guesthouse were all a deep red color with white trim and great detail in both red and white flower designs. There were gardens with flowers healthy-looking flowers despite the heat, and still-water pools that led to the Taj Mahal. We had to walk through the north tower to see the building, and it was like a giant, awesome surprise as we headed through the archway. Our guide – who ushered us along by yelling out random names and instructing “this way!” – forced us to take some group pictures, and we each got one of those depth-perception shots that makes it seem like we’re picking up the building. He told us the love story of a King who had many wives but really love only one – a wife who died young after producing a ridiculous number of children. He built (or forced 20,000 slaves to build) a magnanimous building as her tomb. The building was impressive from far away, but I was more interested in the detail. Its white marble is covered with inlaid patterns of gemstones. The exterior had carved flowers and small arches all over the walls. Everything was covered with intentional patterns.

New Delhi

For our sightseeing in Delhi, we got a car tour with Kavi’s cousin Bob, and they arranged a bus tour that took us all around the city. The bus tour was supposed to be in English, but their were three non-natives on the bus, so most of what was said was either in Hindi or heavily-accented English that was blaring from a microphone that was far too close to the guide’s mouth. But it was still a great tour. There was an Italian girl named Sara with us who was studying village architecture, so we wandered around together and exchanged stories. We went to the India gate and the President’s house where the lawn was being used by Army officials who were trying with everything they could to lift a hot air balloon into the air, the Kutab Minar where we saw some beautiful Arabic architecture and some precious puppies, a Hare Krishna temple where we were told that we weren’t circling an idol correctly and that the temple was where they turn western “hippies into happies,” the famous B’hai Lotus Temple where even Indians had to be completely quiet for the two minutes they were inside, a Swaminaren Temple that forced us to give up everything but our souls before we entered, the very crowded Indira Gandhi house where she lived and was assassinated, and the Gandhi memorial with its eternal flame. The tour driver tried to take us to the Red Fort, but apparently – a surprise to be the tour participants and the guide – the road and memorial were closed. It was the first of a few times that the glaring organizational disparities between American and Indian tour companies was made evident. But we went with it.

This tour was also the first time we figured out the system for the tour business in India in general. For shopping, the guides emphasize that we shouldn’t buy stuff from the street. It’s dirty, they’re trying to rip you off, it’s not good quality, they’re not good people, etc. etc. etc. Instead, they propose a shopping stop (that is never advertised in the tour information you get prior to the tour) where you go inside an air-conditioned building full of stalls where a staff is at the door to greet and guide you through shopping, and the prices are fixed at a considerably higher price than the hawkers you were just chatting with at a temple or memorial. In Delhi, Agra and Jaipur we were ushered into emporiums with promises of top-quality goods and cheap prices, and each time I found something that I had seen before marked up three or four times the original price. It is a great marketing scheme aimed at people who have no idea what prices should be, and it worked on our friend Sara – she left the emporium with a green silk salwaar kamiz that cost her probably as much as three of the same type of suits Kavi ordered later in the week. Kavi and I figured it out early on, and we waited to do shopping on the streets or with her family who could finesse a price to numbers that seemed so low that a profit to seem impossible. For eating, the guides usher us to restaurants that seemed to have opened just for us. In Delhi, in fact, we took a huge detour back to the bus depot because he wanted to take us to “good cuisine with north and south Indian food options”. Really, he just wanted to make us go to the restaurant that was owned by the tour company. The staff was ready to take our money, and the prices were once again some of the highest I had seen. It’s a good business being a tour operator.