Well, since leaving Mumbai things have gotten a little tougher. I am still having trouble getting a mobile phone and have given up on this. However, I have already spent about $75 to get a wireless card for my laptop so that I can surf the internet anytime anywhere. I have been trying now for over 2 weeks to get this thing working, and every damn time I talk to the bastard manager at the mobile company he says it will be activated in the morning. It is getting ridiculous and I would rather have him just tell me the truth then feed me some more crap about this and that.
I have now experienced some real train travel on India's rail system and you get what you pay for when you purchase a ticket. It seems that you pay one way or another, if you get a super cheap ticket you are gonna pay for it in inconvenience. I purchased a general class ticket and this was a total mistake. It was about a 6 hour ride to go maybe 150 miles or so (not so fast, lots of stops). But in general class you are not guaranteed a seat and it is utter mayhem at the train station when the train stops. There is a crush of humanity going both ways, off and on, all converging with luggage and babies and elbows at the small 2.5 ft wide doors into the rail car. Men are literally jumping on and off while the train is moving pretty fast, some people are waiting down on the ground on the opposite side of the platform so they can get at the doors where there will be less of a fight to get in. When the train stops, the poor women folk have to beat men about their heads to get off the train. And once you get on, don't expect any kind of a seat, just be hopeful you can have a tiny little spot to stand where you aren't getting in the way of the boys and girls selling chai tea, peanuts, and snacks or near some babies with stinky pants. When you do this for a few hours, inevitably someone near you will get up and you will have a nice warm seat. Several hours later, you arrive almost on time at your scheduled destination, but the whole event can be rather stressful. No longer will I purchase a general ticket to travel. The ticket cost about $3.75, but in hindsight, I paid a lot more for it.
I have been fighting off a cold for the last few days and now have the leaky bowels just a tad AND I have some kind of bugs from the cheap ass hotel rooms. I saw a few bed bugs at the place in Mumbai and I guess they got me worse than I initially expected. I am hopefull that it isn't scabies, although this ancient scourge is a fairly common problem in India.
I got some concrete dumped on me by some construction workers today as well. The idiots up on the roof of a 2 or 3 story building were pouring concrete and some got splashed over the edge and nailed me. I was upset, but it wasn't such a big deal as I walked about two more blocks, found a clothing store and got a polyester polo fashion-shirt for about $6.50.
I have over-estimated the infrastructure of India-this was a near-sighted miscalculation of mine. I thought that internet connectivity would be much more ubiquitous than it really is. I have had a tough time getting on the net, and when I do find some internet cafes, they quality of the computers is universally shitty. It is like surfing the net at 1996 speeds and on more than one occasion the internet connectivity has totally failed and everyone has had to go home for a while until the connection may or may not re-appear several hours later. I sure hope that this bureaucratic bastard gets my damn wireless card activated like he keeps promising so that I needn't worry about internet cafes anymore.
All in all things are OK. These are just some normal trials and tribulations of traveling abroad in a strange land. I have seen some amazing things in the past week and am enjoying the people watching too. I am going by bus tomorrow night to the large city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat state. I plan to spend a maybe 2 nights there before taking another overnight bus to the island town of Diu on the southern coast of Gujarat. The beaches are supposed to be nice, clean, and relaxing, but as I am quickly learning in Indian, I must lower my expectations to avoid disappointment.
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How did Ahmedabad go? I spent some time there and found it to be an interesting place with some great people. It is a large city when I had expected it to be smaller and less congested than Mumbi but it felt just a large.
ReplyDeleteI think Inda is still a third world country and your expectations will always be tested. It is a very different culture and while being competitive with us, it is not competitive when it comes to our lifestyle and expectations. Never forget we use 80 % of the worlds resources.
I think managing the expectation thing is really hard in third world travel. So much is different and unexpected each day.
I am in Ahmedabad now and you are correct, it is large city with about 4 million people. There are lots of large urban slum areas around, just like most of India (as far as I can tell). I came in just this morning on an overnight bus, and the city is very interesting at 7AM. This early in the morning you can see exactly how many people are living in the streets and cars and what not as almost nobody has woken up yet. And it is pretty warm here, so many of the slum dwellers sleep outside of their homes on small, raised, nylon or rope woven cots along the sidewalks or in the steets. There is a large river bisecting the city and many people live near the city center in the river flood plain area. I was at the a museum today, an all concrete building designed by architect Le Corbusier, and saw some photos of what that area looks like in a flood year. The squatter town will get completly destroyed if they monsoon rains are big. Over the past 5 years, the rains have been pretty disappointing (that dern climate change thing) and a lot of India's economy and people have been affected by this lack of rain. However, I suppose these slum dwellers have benefitted from this lack or rain and after several years of no flooding their settlement's infrastructure has surely increased. Unfortunatly, the day will come when this river escapes its banks and runs ramshackle over these people's homes. I believe I will be moving on tomorrow night. After I leave the internet cafe I am heading over to the bus ticket agents to arrange some kind of trip south to the island city of Diu.
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