Indi(an)a Kelly and the Nightmare-sicle of Doom

Spent 8 days in India, ate one full meal, it was on average 115 degrees, and I am on 6 medications now. This is the most beautiful, yet polluted, place I have ever seen. My gum is crunchy, my phlegm tastes like dirt, the kids look like pig pen, and when I blow my nose at night, looks like I have been sitting next to a campfire way too long.

The Cow Yogi?
Yes, India is the land where the cows are even happier than they are in California and Wisconsin. That is because they are holy here. Where else in the world can you walk through a major city and have cows by your side, even in a restaurant? People even play with their patties to form little hamburger-sized pellets to cook and clean with! They do not have green pastures of grass, but garbage does suffice their four stomach chambers. This is a great place to play What Scat is that? Cow? Camel? Dog? Monkey? Elephant? Goat? All these animals walk the streets of major cities and even the people poo in the streets. I actually broke down crying after stepping in a holy load of dung in my flip flops.

Varanasi
We started our trip in Varanasi – “The Oldest Continuous City in the World” (Taj Ganges wait staff, 2008). It is the City of Shiva – the holiest place in the Hindi culture to wash away your sins and the crossing grounds between the physical and spiritual world where people send their dead to be burned into the Ganges River in a cremation ceremony. Steps, or Ghats as they are called, line the Ganges in this town where 60,000 people a day bathe in the same area as others burn their dead and 30 large sewers discharge into the river. 400 million people live along the basin of the Ganges. There are 1.5 million faecaleoliform per 100ml of water. To be safe to bathe in, it should have no more than 500 (Lonely Planet 2007).

Varanasi is has 2000 year old architecture through the maze of streets which make up their Old City inspired by Buddhists, Hindis, and Muslims. Puja happens every night at dusk, where people gather for the ceremonies along the ghats. Sitars and music play through the loud speakers which also distribute prayer calls, as little boys and girls pester you to buy post cards and candles. They LOVE Goldie Hawn here and want to know if we know her in California.

Bodies wrapped in colorful silks are being burned along the shoreline. The air smells of spices, urine baked in the sun, barnyard animals and burning flesh.

The Nightmare-sicle
Of course the first day of the trip in the extreme heat, when I see an ice cream man selling dreamcicles for 10 rupees (about 25 cents), I am ecstatic and run to get in line. As I enjoy my yummy Popsicle and ask Craig if he wants a bite, I notice his look of disgust.
“I’m not eating a home-made popsicle!”
“It’s home-made?” I inquire as I notice the recycled stick inserted crooked. Of course I walk back to inspect the packaging of my ‘dreamsicle’ and the FDA would probably not approve this operation, but I finish it anyways.

Shiva Shits
My India welcome package came today! Complete with draining my plumbing, projectile vomit, dehydration, and body aches. It is 115 degrees and I have goose bumps. I am confined to a beautiful room in a medieval mansion along the shore of Assi Ghat, decorated in antiques, colorful silks, beautiful light fixtures and a four-post bed with a trippy god painted above it which makes for great fever hallucinations. It hurt to even sit up in bed.

Considering I had perfect attendance in school and have only taken two real sick days (one for a sprained ankle and the other because I was slipped a ruffie at a local bar) this sitting home sick thing is horrible, especially when on vacation. Craig kept me alive and found a doctor in town to get some medication and electrolytes. Fever broke the next morning in time to see the sunrise over the Ganges.
About 10 km from Varanasi and dating back to 290 BC is Saranath, the Monastery of the Turning Wheel of the Dharma.”. This is where the Buddha gave his first sermon. We spent the day here before flying to Udaipur in Rajasthan, North India.

Octopussy
Many of you would know Udaipur from 007’s 1984 adventure in Octopussy. Most of the movie was filmed here and every rooftop terrace in town plays it at 7:30pm. The Monsoon Palace sits above a hill in the horizon and the floating palace is literally right in front of hotel room view, which is good since Shiva has struck again and I am confined to the room for the morning.


During the afternoon, while the temperatures soar over one hundred degrees again, we went to tour the City Palace with beautiful mirrored mosaics which made some of the rooms feel like you were inside a disco ball. Other rooms of the palace reminded me of Jeannie’s bottle.


In the afternoon, I had to return to a silk shop, since I was so rude to some girls that tried to sell me a sari while nauseated. They were surprised to see me come back and began wrapping me in two meters of fabric. I knew I could never dress myself alone this way and asked if they had something more modern like the girls on the streets wear. The teenagers took me up to their room and opened their closets to try on their clothes, while showing me their school photos, pictures of their boyfriends and the shrines to their gods.

After the fashion plate session, I ended up clad in a Mother Theresa veil with a dress in the international colors of McDonalds, but it fit, it was authentic and I paid some Indian girl 500 rupees to steal clothes from her closet. They stuck a dot on my head, tried to henna my hands, and placed rings on my toes.

Our second day in Udaipur, Craig rented a motorbike and we tried to head in the direction of a fort 85km out in Rajasthan, but after going in circles for a couple of hours, we decided ride through the desert and explore the lakes around Udaipur, stopping in hill tribes, the TB hospital, and finally finding the Monsoon Palace and wildlife preserve, which we deemed to expensive for what it was worth. In one village, my Blackberry was the highlight – all the village kids came out to see the magic phone.

Our last day, we ventured almost 200km out to the massive and majestic Chittorgarh Fort situated on a hilltop in Rajasthan I don’t even have the energy to climb the stairs of the bell tower (and you know how much I love Stairmaster), but after seeing Craig’s photos, I wish I could have made it. I stayed on the ground while the monkeys and children terrorized me. Again, I was a tourist attraction in this town as families wanted their pictures taken with me. What am I, a freak of nature?




Taj
That evening, we hopped a plane to Delhi and a train to Agar, home of the Taj Mahal. Train stations in India are the dirtiest, grimiest, most polluted endroits. Of course the stomach cramps and vomiting started again for the three hour ride from hell where I was either in the fetal position or throwing up into a squatter in which no one has made it into the hole, including me.

I can not go to India a without seeing the Taj, so at sunrise, I forced myself out of bed to join Craig to the mausoleum before the bus loads of overweight tourists can get into our pictures. The structure is beautiful white marble which is great to moonwalk in the shoe covers they make you wear. It is hard to enjoy when you feel like crapola and are dehydrated, but outside the walls, I find the dentist/doctor/veterinarian to prescribe me medication that I can not find in town.

Tried to lay low during the afternoon to sleep in late and relax on the roof terrace with a view of the Taj compound, however, I didn’t close the main door to the stairwell and accidentally let a band of monkeys into the hotel who raised havoc and got chased out by the manager with his rifle.

To stay out of the sun, we visited a boutique hotel that costs $1,200/ night then headed to see a Bollywood film. I was excited to see a McDonalds and after not holding a meal down for six days, I was curious to see if my Bali-Belly cure would solve Shiva’s revenge, but WHAT?!?!? No Big Macs or hamburgers at McDonalds!?!?!? What the? That is like having the News without Huey Lewis! I guess in India it would be equivalent to having the body of Christ on a bun.

To end, I would just like to share with you the biggest news stories in India:

‘Stray Cattle are still a big problem in Delhi,’ –but they still can not do anything about it.
‘The Dalai Lama doesn’t have horns.’ - ?
‘Man-eating Leopard is loose in Dhaurahra’ – he has already eaten six people.
‘Housewives are forced to have unnatural sex’ along with a whole page dedicated to molested children. And the largest story which made the news every day was the fury over the scantly clad cricket cheerleaders in Bangladesh, who happen to make the front page of the papers every day. As one of the put it, “wouldn’t a sari be hard to kick in?”

Namaste.