A Land of Contradictions

I truly do not think I have ever, ever traveled anywhere as intense as India. I have traveled a lot and I have experienced a lot of things, and none of it comes close to India. It is the best and worst place I've ever been. The most fascinating and the most frustrating. The filthiest and the most beautiful.

After the stress of yesterday, we decided to take it easy this morning and got a late, leisurely start to our day. Oh, yes we did. We also got to start it off with hot showers here at our hotel in Jaipur, which was like a little piece of heaven on earth. Let me tell you now, if you have access to a hot shower and a clean bathroom every day of your life, you are one of the luckiest people on earth. I am not exaggerating.

Someone had recommended a particular rooftop restaurant to Fen so we found it and officially started our day off there with more fabulous Indian food for lunch. I swear I could live on garlic naan alone. We decided to spring for a motorized rickshaw, called a tuk-tuk, (I still find them to be a totally cool experience!) and, long story short, ended up with a personal taxi driver for the day, which was nice. It cost us the equivalent of roughly $6USD for the whole day, which was also nice. It eliminated all of the hassle of trying to find places and messing around with getting lost. We did some 'errands', like going to the bus station to buy our tickets ahead of time for tomorrow (we learned from our mistakes of yesterday), spending a little time at an internet cafe to make some future reservations, going to an outdoor market and, once again, having fabulous food for dinner (are you sensing a theme here about the Indian food?).

It all sounds so easy, but it's all so difficult. I wish there was some way to express to you the intensity that every single thing here takes on but there just isn't. It's like sensory overload, all the time: the sights, the sounds, the smells, the tastes.

You don't just drive somewhere, you drive there with non-stop (and I do, very literally, mean non-stop) horns blaring, with people cutting you off, with oxen walking through the road, with fumes burning your nose, with other cars and rickshaws and motorcycles literally inches away from your rickshaw on all sides, with regularly being bounced out of your seat from hitting the potholes (and you thought PA was bad).

You don't just stop and ask for directions, you ask for directions and then suddenly have ten people shoving in around you all offering you their services to take you where you want to go.

You don't just walk down the street to get where you want to go, you walk down the street and have people staring at you constantly, people shouting things out to you constantly, people trying to talk to you constantly, people begging from you constantly, people touching you, people following you, people bumping into you, people near you constantly.

You don't just wander around and browse at the bazaars, you get bombarded with men talking to you, following you, hassling you, trying to pull you into their stores, shoving their stuff in your face, ogling you, forcing their wares on you, shouting at you.

And, yet, the weird thing is that I love India. Because for all of its filth and hassles and scams and infuritating qualities, it is the most exotic, rich, fascinating, complex place I have ever been. Go figure.