Return to Delhi
INDIA
India Round-Up
By AARON
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Okay, before I start on this, I have to mention something – just before getting on the train from Jaisalmer to Delhi, Lyndi got pooped on again by a pigeon! I think the count is up to four, but wow. She is a pigeon-poop magnet. So add that frustrating (for her, hilarious for me) incident to the incessant cat calls from the fifty 18 year old boys on our train and you have a recipe for one pissed-off Lyndi. But on to our final days in India…
Have you ever been so happy you couldn’t get that stupid grin off your face? It’s that coyish look of accomplishment or achievement that seems to say “Hey, life is good”. Maybe it was that unexpected job promotion and the pay raise that came with it, or maybe you just got asked out by the best looking co-worker, or in my case: maybe you just duped the Indian Government.
As Lyndi wrote in the Udaipur blog, the red tape bureaucracy and hoops you have to jump through regarding Indian visas borders on the insanely ridiculous. Okay, it is insanely ridiculous. Not only does a “multiple entry visa” not allow you back in within two months, the forms and steps to get back in are asinine. Add that to what the two morons at the Foreigners Registration Office in Udaipur were trying to make us do and now you have a recipe for one pissed-off Aaron.
Udaipur was the last straw – I wasn’t going to waste 24 hours of my time in Udaipur filling out “residency request” forms for a registration office whose only goal is to make registration so incredibly hard, that you have no choice but to pay them the $30USD penalty fee and walk out with your tail between your legs. So instead of paying the fee to them, we walked out, and decided we would take our chances with immigration at the airport in Delhi.
Seven days later Lyndi and I stood in line at immigration, wondering who between us and the India government would get the last laugh – would the immigration officer actually notice that we hadn’t “registered within 2 weeks of re-entry”, or would he, like so many other workers, not even be able to keep up with the ever-changing rules and regulations for tourists? As we waited in line, I quickly began scoping out which of the three immigration officers in our line would best serve our interests.
All three were men in their 50s, glasses, and could have all passed off as brothers if need be. Which officer seemed more genial? Which one seemed to just flip through the passports with an uninterested glance, eyes glazed over from hours of work? My wanna-be recon work was quickly interrupted by a tourist at guy #3’s booth who was pleading his case of why he couldn’t register within two weeks. Uh-oh. As I eavesdropped on the conversation, officer #3 was definitely out of the question – either he hated tourists or loved his job too much, or perhaps both were true as I watched him talk and stare at this poor tourist with the apex of utter contempt. So much in fact that he wouldn’t let the guy leave! The tourist was told if he didn’t have the money, he had to leave the airport, find the nearest ATM or money wiring service, and come back when he could pay the $30USD fine. Ouch.
As he trudged off, head hung low and cursing in what I believe was German, I noticed that we were close to the front of the line. Okay, so guy #3 was out, but there happened to be two girls traveling together who split up guys #1 and 2 for themselves. Add that to the new person at guy #3 and this would be a photo finish of where we would be called.
As luck would have it, guy #1 finished about 0.0000003 seconds before mean guy #3; plus it also helped that we were kind of leaning towards that side anyways as if our will alone would push the girl in front of us through stamping and processing faster. And boy, were we lucky to get this guy. To our right was a pretty girl flirting with the 50 year old immigration officer (maybe she had the same problem?), so this meant that our guy spent the majority of his time looking over at the girl and smiling and even joining in on the conversation.
As he lethargically flipped through our passports I’m actually surprised he even got the exit stamp on them because he literally stamped both of our passports while checking out this girl to our right – and she wasn’t nearly as good-looking as Lyndi (brownie points for Aaron).
So off we walked through the cigarettes, liquor and chocolates of duty-free stores, Lyndi with a look of relief and me with that stupid grin on my face. We finished our time in India with a celebration beer at a nice bar and realizing that while it was just $60USD, it still equaled one whole day’s budget for us for such a senseless process and fine.
Score: Aaron-1, Indian Government- 0.
Okay, so for an actual India Round-Up – Lyndi and I both tried to express our thoughts and feelings about this country from blog to blog, and I think we covered much of it there. So what would be my parting thoughts?
Almost everyone I ran into who had been to India said “you’ll either love it or you’ll hate it”. I can’t say I fall into either of those two extremes. I would definitely say I disliked it more than I liked it.
India is a quagmire – it seems to have this allure to it and people flock there by the millions every year to “experience India”. People talk about the smells, the markets, the crowded streets and the forts and temples. I guess it depends on perspective: how long you’ve been traveling, if you like temples, do you find crowded streets amusing and entertaining or cramped, loud and annoying?
Some other people may say “but hey Aaron, you only saw Rajasthan, Agra, Delhi and Varanasi. There’s so much more to India!”. And they’re right, but everyone, and I do mean everyone I’ve talked to (both Indian and foreign), say that if you want to see the “real India” go to Rajasthan. So to Rajasthan we went. Sure, I’ve heard Goa is great and Mumbai is a sight to behold, but Goa seems to be the Cancun of India (bars, nightclubs, beaches and ladies drink free everywhere) and many of the cities seem to be metropolitan.
If Rajasthan is true India, then India is cramped, crowded, noisy and polluted where you are constantly harassed by touts, guides, gem scams and any other con to squeeze money out of you. The smells can sometimes make you want to vomit, and the rotten trash mixed with cow and sometimes even human feces (walk 3 blocks up from the train station in Jaipur and take a right) litters the streets and side alleys as you dodge streaming puddles and rivers of urine coming from three people to your right peeing where many others have as well. Other people will describe Rajasthan as “quirky” and “an overwhelming experience of the senses” – those to me seem to be the traveling real-estate agents (see Varanasi blog).
Like I said, I didn’t hate India. We did meet some nice people at times (Asher in Jaisalmer, random guy at Jaipur train terminal) and did some really fun things (camel safari, Taj Mahal, cooking class) and who could complain about the food? I will forever be hunting down Paneer Butter Masala and Malai Kofta for the rest of my natural life.
Unfortunately with India (for me), the benefits did not outweigh the disadvantages, and it will not make my top 15 countries I would recommend to other travelers, but one thing you can say about India – you will not forget it.
Maybe that’s what they’re shooting for – regardless of your experience in India, both the lovers and the haters of this interesting country will always have it imprinted on their brains, and whether they pass a pile of rotten trash in an alleyway, or a restaurant with scents of curry, peanut oil and chilies wafting past their nostrils, each and every one whose been there will instantly be swept away in their minds to a time when they walked those streets and experienced something that can only be repeated by visiting India again.
That is, if Immigrations lets me back in.
