Category Archives: India

I lived in India for a year and studied Indian culture at university.

Back From India

Posted on 15.02.2012 by Stephanie Booth

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Je suis rentrée d'Inde!

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I’m not good at transitions, at changes of life rhythm.

Switzerland to India and back is a big transition, and not because of the temperature gap. Everyone knows there is a huge difference in culture and lifestyle between these two places of mine.

But there might be an added twist. I don’t know if it’s personal to me, or if it’s something others experience while navigating between India and “The West”. When I’m in Switzerland, my life in India seems very very far away. It feels unreal, almost fictional, or like it’s somebody else who is there when I’m there, not really me.

What about when I am in India? India feels very normal. Switzerland is very far away, and my life “at home” also fades away into some degree un “unrealness”, but with a different quality. Put side-by-side 35 years in Switzerland and 1 year in India, I guess it explains it.

(Come to think of it, my time in India is adding up: 11 months + 6 weeks + 5 weeks + 5 weeks + 2 weeks + 6 weeks… we’re approaching a year and a half end-to-end.)

Put simply, I feel there is a rift between me-in-India and me-in-Switzerland. I’m not exactly sure what it means or how to deal with it. I’m almost sure, though, that it does have something to do with the very strong feelings I have about India and Indian culture when I’m not there. It doesn’t mean I’d like to go and live there for good, or even for an extended period. But sometimes I feel a bit like I’m caught up in a one-way love story with the place.

Anyway, here I am in the plane, typing this during the hour-long layover in Frankfurt (thankfully they don’t make us get off the plane). I did not plan my time in India exceedingly well (more about that in a bit), but I did plan my return well: I have 5 full days with no serious work commitments so that I can “land” in peace, and then I ease back into my work life by attending the Lift Conference. Most of my work stuff is currently under control, either because I dealt with it before I left, or because I stayed on top while I was traveling (blogs like the Ebookers Travel Blog and the Paper.li still need an editor even when I’m in India, right?). So, I’m happy with myself about that bit.

What I’m less happy about is how I approached my time in India — but thankfully, the stress I got myself in led to an important realization. You see, my now-annual India retreat is my big chunk of downtime for the year. So I spend all year thinking “oh, when I’m in India, I’ll do… all sorts of things”. Examples of things I planned to do in India:

read a huge amount of books
write a lot (fiction and for the blog… you can see how well that turned out )
put all my photos online, and catch up with the backlog
work on my Hindi
see a long list of people
eat a long list of things
learn many more Indian recipes from Nisha
do a long list of India-specific things.

What happened with that is that when I arrived in Pune, I started feeling very stressed. There was actually humanly not enough time for me to do everything I had unrealistically put in the “when I’m in India…” box. I understood this during the return journey from Mahabaleshwar, so early enough in my trip, thankfully. I started writing down the list of everything I expected myself to do, and quickly understood why I was feeling so stressed. As I couldn’t extend my time in India (specifically Pune!) I started chopping things off the list. It helped a lot. For my second week in Pune, at the end of my stay, I actually decided to plan my time a little (as much as India allowed) and everything went much better. I’ve learned for next year: diving in without any structure is not a good idea when there are things I actually want to do!

Sometime during the last weeks, I read this article on the absence of work-life balance: there are always piles of things we “wish we had time for” but in practice, even when we do have time for them, we don’t do them. We’re fooling ourselves. I need to think more about this, because I spend a lot of time trying to make more space for things I think I want to do, and failing quite a bit.

So, I didn’t read much this year. I read American Gods. That’s pretty much it. And as you can see, I didn’t write any blog posts (well, barely). However, I did quite a good job on the photos, including catching up with some of last year’s. I saw almost all the people I wanted to see, bought enough stuff to bring back to get me into trouble at the airport (Kuwait Airways: 7kg hand luggage and 20kg in the hold… even though they didn’t enforce the 7kg hand luggage limit on the way to India — I hate it when airlines are not consistent).

I think I had a really nice time. I had some adventures, which I tweeted about when they happened. Come to think of it, maybe this is one of the reasons I blogged less? I had an Indian SIM card with data, which meant that I pretty much stayed connected on Facebook and Twitter and Path. Aside from that, I have to say that having a local phone number and data connection made my life a thousand times easier (think: suspicious-looking rickshaw-driver and Google Maps, for example).

I might or might not write about these in more detail at some point, but just to give you an idea:

a day trip to Mahabaleshwar with a bunch of scientists
frogs in the kitchen in Kerala
swimming in the Arabian sea, both in my clothes (Kerala) and in my swimsuit (Goa)
many days of rice and sambar and fish/chicken curry (very nice but a little repetitive for me!)
trying to teach a bunch of Hindi-speaking Delhi guys a French song
huge piles of seafood
being climbed all over by a two-year-old in the train (I was not in the mood)
drinking 80-rupee masala chay (in a teapot, probably justifies the price)
a whole afternoon/evening of listening to students in Western classical music perform (very nice and completely unexpected!)
car encounter with a roadside tree-stump (nobody hurt but the car)
a very long day trip to a waterfall which turned out to be dry (food not included
unexpectedly really liking Goa (large quantities of seafood helped, so did the Portuguese architecture)
things turning out all right when I didn’t expect them to
experimenting the 2×2 sleeper bus: one berth, 1m80 by 1m20, me, and some unknown Indian guy (more horrified than me, probably)
no major stomach issues! yay!

Of course, aside from the adventures, there was also things like eating lovely food, discovering new Hindi music, spending time with nice people (old friends and new acquaintances), taking lots of photos, relaxing, enjoying the warmth (specially when Siberia decided to move to Lausanne). I think I had a really nice time and am coming back relaxed and refreshed (once I’ve got over the jet lag and lack of sleep from travel).

Amit Gupta Needs You, and Other South Asians Too (Join the Marrow Registry!)

Posted on 02.12.2011 by Stephanie Booth

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Amit Gupta, celui qui a démarré Jelly et Photojojo (entre autres), court le risque de mourir de leucémie aiguë s'il ne trouve pas un donneur de cellules souches du sang. La chance de trouver un donneur pour quelqu'un d'Asie du Sud est très faible -- c'est pourquoi l'entourage d'Amit (et tout internet s'y met) remue ciel et terre pour encourager un maximum de personnes du même groupe ethnique de s'enregistrer comme donneurs.

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I should have blogged about this weeks ago. I’ve been anxiously watching the countdown of the time that was left to find a bone marrow donor for Amit Gupta.

I’ve been checking Facebook and Twitter in the hope that I would see good news announced.

The countdown now says 0.

It doesn’t mean it’s too late, but it means that if there is no good enough donor amongst the people currently in the registry, Amit will have to take his chances with extra rounds of chemo (with possibly lasting damage) to survive the acute leukemia he was diagnosed with only mid-September.

If caucasians have a roughly 90% chance of finding a matching donor should they need one, chances are much slimmer if you’re South Asian (1 chance in 20’000 of finding an exact match). The reasons, it seems:

the huge variety of HLA profiles (a set of genes) amongst South Asians
a general reluctance to register and if matched, to donate (50% or more of South Asians back out once matched).

Heck, if the Ugly Indian can keep a street clean in Bangalore, can he not join a marrow registry and possibly save a life?

I have to say that when I first heard that Amit needed a marrow donation, I imagined the procedure was something like a spinal tap. It isn’t. The donor’s stem cells are usually taken from the blood stream directly, or if needed from the hip or pelvis, not the spine. All in all, the procedure is close to giving blood. Not a huge deal, to be honest.

Team Gupta’s next move, Clark tells Wired.com, is to make sure people are aware of how simple and painless the donation process is. Marrow is extracted from the arm and generally takes six hours or so. The procedure is about as invasive as donating blood — it just takes longer.

And to join the registry, all you need to do is send back a cheek swab. It’s really easy.

Here’s how to help if you live in India.

Even if you’re not a match for Amit, you might be a match for somebody else whose life depends upon a bone marrow donation.

As for me, well, there’s little chance I may be a match for Amit (obviously). I looked up the Swiss Marrow Registry to sign up, and was quite disappointed to see that my heart operation seemed to rule me out. I checked with them, though, and it’s on a case-by-case basis. In my case, there’s happily no reason to rule me out on the basis of the operation I had over 30 years ago.

So, who is this Amit? I don’t really know him, though I had a couple of e-mail exchanges with him when I started the eclau Jelly. Yup, he’s behind that. And he also started Photojojo, which you should definitely join if you’re into photography.

But this goes beyond Amit: it’s an issue for the whole South Asian community. If you are South Asian, in India or elsewhere, please do see what you can do to help.

The Ugly Indians Are Cleaning the Streets of Bangalore

Posted on 30.11.2011 by Stephanie Booth

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A Bangalore, un groupe de volontaires nettoie et reprend possession des rues remplies de détritus. Tout ça en s'organisant en ligne, bien entendu. Ça rappelle un peu les Riot Wombles des émeutes de Londres.

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If you’ve been to India, you know that the streets there are not a model of cleanliness. As for myself, coming from very-clean Switzerland, I always had a hard time with the idea that the accepted thing to do with your plastic cups when you’re travelling by train is to throw them out the window in the countryside.

Not in Bangalore, but a very typical sight in India, sadly.

Well, it seems that there are non-Swiss people who also think like me: The Ugly Indians (don’t just click on the link; go through the first pages of the site and take the tour of their work — it’s very well done).

It’s a grassroots citizen mouvement, which reminds me a lot of the Riot Wombles in London and elsewhere in the UK, concerned citizens who showed up in the aftermath of the infamous riots with brooms and buckets to clean up the mess.

The Ugly Indians are anonymous and self-organizing. They decide on a spot to reclaim, clean and prettify it, identify the main sources of “dirtification”, and once reclaimed, keep it that way. Less broken windows.

Read the piece the BBC did on The Ugly Indians. Like them on Facebook. Share with your friends, in India and elsewhere. Most importantly, read through their success stories — it’s incredible what they’ve accomplished!

Living in India, and feeling inspired? You just have to e-mail them.

Eat, Pray, Love: Damn You, Elizabeth Gilbert

Posted on 23.04.2011 by Stephanie Booth

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J'ai aimé Eat, Pray, Love plus que ce à quoi je m'attendais. Le trip "spiritualité indienne sauce occidentale", je m'en passerais, mais il y a plein de bonnes choses -- outre l'écriture, que j'aime beaucoup. Pour plus de détails... lire l'article complet en anglais!

[en]

Damn you, Liz Gilbert. I didn’t want to like your book, but I did. I even like you (well, the narrator you). Yeah, of course I can relate: 30-something heartbroken woman finds peace and love. Which single woman in her mid-thirties wouldn’t?

It annoys me, though, that you found them through faith, because I can’t do that.

I don’t doubt that you had a life-changing experience. I’m not either against religious or spiritual paths journeys per se, as long as they actually serve to grow us as human beings. But like the friends you mention near the end of your India book, I cannot believe anymore — believing there is a God or some other power, personal or not, is too incompatible with my worldview. A part of me would like to believe, so that I could find the peace you found. But I’d be faking it, right? Because another part of me is certain that there is nothing up there — or in there, aside from ourselves.

To your credit, you do not proselytize, nor try to tell us that your way is The Only Way, and that we should all be doing it too. You bear witness of your own personal path, which involved a spiritual adventure in an ashram in India. I can appreciate that. But I have trouble relating to that aspect of your journey. (There is the Siddha Yoga issue too, which bothers me, but that I won’t delve into here.)

Also, whether you want it or not, your spiritual journey is coloured by a very specific — and modern — Indian school of thought (and by that, I don’t just mean Siddha Yoga). You acknowledge that, but in some respects you are blind to it, for example when you serve us truths about Indian spirituality or religions in general — you are talking from the inside of a specific religious tradition, not giving us access some kind of general truth. It’s a mistake many make, and I guess I can forgive you for it.

I personally believe that our conversations with God are conversations with ourselves. I believe we are much bigger than we think, and probably much bigger than we can ever know. And I say this not in a “mystical” or “magical” or “supernatural” sense, but in a psychological one. So for me, any religious or spiritual path is no more than a path within and with ourselves, using an exterior force or entity (“God”, “energy”) as a metaphorical proxy for parts or aspects of ourselves which are not readily available to our consciousness. Yes, it’s sometimes a bit complicated to follow for me too.

So what I can relate to, clearly, are your conversations with yourself in your notebook. I know I am a good friend. I’m loyal. I can love to bits. If I open the floodgates, I can love more than is possibly imaginable — just like you say of yourself. But I do not let myself be the beneficiary of so much love and care. “To love oneself,” not in a narcissistic way, but as a good friend or a good parent would. I know this is something I need to work on, I knew it before reading Eat, Pray, Love, but your journey serves as a reminder to me. It’s also reminding me that meditation (even when it’s not a search for God or done as religious practice) has benefits — and that I could use them.

So, thank you, Liz Gilbert. We may differ in our spiritual and life aspirations, but your journey has touched me, and inspired me. I didn’t expect it to. Thank you for the nice surprise. And damn you, because now I can’t look down quite so smugly anymore on those who rave about your book.

I’m Home

Posted on 31.01.2011 by Stephanie Booth

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Je suis rentrée. En Suisse, il fait gris et froid et Bagha est mort. Retour à prendre au jour le jour, en me félicitant d'avoir prévu une reprise en douceur après ce mois de décrochage.

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I’m home.

Back in cold grey Switzerland, back to my dead cat and other losses that were put on the back-burner while I was in India.

Sorry for the gloom. There isn’t even snow to make things a little fun and exciting.

To be honest, I don’t feel really home. “Home” has lost a bit of its “homeness” without Bagha.

Part of the love I’ve had for my cozy flat these last ten years was because Bagha was here. Not all of it, but part of it. I used to always look forward to coming home after a trip, because it would mean being back with my cat. I missed him when I was away.

OK, maybe I’m painting the picture a little rosy in hindsight. Maybe I didn’t always look forward to coming home from my travels. But I was always happy to see Bagha again. I always looked forward to that.

Of course, it’ll get better in the coming days. I’ll see my friends again, rediscover the comfort of Swiss life, get working on my projects here (both personal and professional).

And scatter Bagha’s ashes in the garden.

Even now, all is not bad. It’s quiet. I have privacy. There is cheese.

I miss India already, though. You know, Nicole, I think I understand what you meant a couple of months back when you told me that you loved and hated it here, because I think I feel the same about India. I love it there. But some things also drive me nuts and make me thing “OMG I’m so glad it’s different at home”.

I’m going to spend more time in India. Two weeks scheduled in October (Delhi, Hindi tutoring) and most certainly January 2012, like this year. I have plans. Go back to the lovely homestay in Mysore. Visit a village near Pune where a friend has relatives. Go to Goa (yeah, even though it’s your cliché tourist destination). Spend a couple of days in Mumbai with Reality Tours and Travel. Plan a trip to Rajasthan (a lead and contacts showed up a week ago). In Pune, visit Parvati temple, the Aga Khan Palace, and one of the hill forts without giving up halfway there. Take Marathi classes. I could go on.

India is huge, diverse, exciting, chaotic. It’s a mess. The disregard for safety and rules can be maddening, but it’s also a healthy release from our coddled and controlled lifestyle here in the West.

I’m home now. A little anxious about how the next days will go, but I’ve decided to take it day by day. Today: unpack, check the state of my bank account and bills to pay, make a few appointments, go to judo. Tomorrow: go to a few appointments. Wednesday: dive into three days of Lift.

Indian Stretchable Time

Posted on 25.01.2011 by Stephanie Booth

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En quelques mots? Pas envie que mes vacances se terminent.

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You what what they say about time in India: IST doesn’t stand for Indian Standard Time, but for Indian Stretchable Time. I think it’s pretty obvious to anybody who spends enough time here that the perception of time is very different here than in Europe, for example.

Holiday-time is also different from work-time. Days stretch ahead when your holiday is long enough. You forget what day of the week it is. You lose track of how long you’ve “been here”. You spend a whole day in Lightroom and fooling about online without worrying about being “productive”. You get up when you get up, don’t worry too much about mealtimes (especially if that is taken care of by your hosts), forget about your upcoming plans and deadlines.

And suddenly you realize there is less than a week left before you’re back in Switzerland, back to work-life, back to processing e-mails, back to a catless flat, back to earning money and paying attention to how much you spend, back to the cold and grey winter, back to everything you left behind.

Let me say it clearly: I don’t want my holiday to end and I don’t want to go back.

Of course, I look forward to seeing my friends again — but I’ll miss the people I love here. And I am very grateful I took example (partially) on danah and decided to send all my holiday e-mail into the black hole — meaning I will be coming back to work without an e-mail backlog to catch up on.

But right now I really don’t want to go back to my life.

We had a really nice time in Bangalore and Mysore. My Bangalore photos are online now, but I haven’t got around to sorting through the Mysore ones yet, or writing all the articles I want to write — as if putting it off was going to extend my holiday. (Articles? Bangalore Walks, Hillview Farms Homestay, Security Theatre in India, some thoughts on Indian culture in the light of independence and colonial legacy, a whole bunch of Indian recipes…)

I’ll go back to reading my book or hanging out on Quora now, while Nisha makes lovely-smelling chapatis next to me and the dogs nap on the cool stone floor.

Choc culturel à Bangalore

Posted on 21.01.2011 by Stephanie Booth

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Bangalore. A culture shock for Indian me.

As the editor for ebookers.ch's travel blog, I contribute there regularly. I have cross-posted some of my more personal articles here for safe-keeping.

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Cet article a été initialement publié sur le blog de voyage ebookers.ch (voir l’original).

Après plus ou moins 14 mois en Inde si l’on met mes séjours là-bas bout-à-bout, j’ai vécu la semaine dernière un de mes plus grands chocs culturels indiens: Bangalore.

Tout en vitres et en hauteur.

Après Pune, Bangalore est immense, moderne, et ressemblerait presque à l’Occident. Grands boulevards (même s’ils sont surchargés de voitures), bus neufs climatisés roulant à toute vitesse (autant que les embouteillages le permettent), tours vitrées chatouillant les nuages, population jeune et habillée à l’occidentale, arbres majestueux, restaurants luxueux et chers, immense chantier du futur métro en plein air au-dessus de l’artère principale de la ville, aéroport à faire pâlir certains d’Europe… Certes, on trouve à Bangalore des coins qui me font penser à Pune. Mais ma petite semaine sur place m’a laissée presque un peu déboussolée.

Rickshaws rutilants et bien alignés près de Commercial Street.

J’ai commencé à mieux comprendre cette ville lors de mon dernier jour sur place, à l’occasion du Victorian Bangalore Walk auquel nous avons participé (fortement recommandé, je vous en reparlerai). Bangalore, comme les Etats-Unis par ailleurs, est une terre d’immigrés. Au tournant du 19e siècle, les Anglais y installent leur centre militaire (cantonment) pour l’Inde du sud. Forte population Anglo-Indienne, donc, afflux par la suite d’immigrés du reste de l’état du Karnataka, installation précoce de l’électricité (1906), arrivée d’entreprises comme Tata et Texas Instruments, sans compter les prisonniers italiens durant la deuxième guerre mondiale qui ont grandement contribué au développement du football dans cette ville… Quelques éléments d’histoire disparates et un peu en vrac, n’empêche: Bangalore est une ville qui s’est développée à travers ses immigrants — et ça continue aujourd’hui. Moins de 30% de la population de Bangalore parle le kannada, la langue locale.

On comprend donc mieux l’occidentalisation rampante, l’esprit entrepreneurial et le développement fulgurant de Bangalore, centre de gravité technologique attirant entreprises et cerveaux du sous-continent et d’ailleurs.

Mais qu’on ne s’y méprenne pas: la ville reste indienne, surtout dans ses infrastructures. Coupures d’électricité, maisons construites les unes sur les autres, ascenseurs et connexions internet en panne, vaches déambulant sur des routes souvent en mauvais état, rickshaws et leurs mythiques conducteurs (surtout ici!), offices postaux inintelligibles aux non-initiés, et surtout, mondes parallèles qui se côtoient sans jamais sembler se toucher, ou tout juste du bout des doigts. La nourriture y est excellente, et Bangalore recèle bien entendu des quartiers de petites ruelles (surtout dans la vieille ville) et des marchés détendus où il fait bon se balader, comme le Gandhi Bazaar dans le Basavanagudi.

Gandhi Bazaar.

Je vous l’avoue, j’ai de la peine à l’aimer, cette ville trop occidentale à mon goût, même si pour beaucoup d’indiens elle représente le futur, le progrès, et la direction que doit prendre leur pays. Mais je ne doute pas qu’il doit faire bon vivre dans cette métropole multiculturelle, pour qui a un revenu lui permettant le train de vie qui s’y étale.

Panneaux d'affichage.

A visiter? Oui, certainement, surtout si le côté “rustique” de l’Inde vous intimide un peu et que vous désirez conserver quelques repères en matière de confort occidental lors de votre séjour.

Depuis ici:

vols pour Bangalore avec ebookers.ch — et les hôtels (vous pouvez aussi vol et hôtel en même temps si vous le désirez)
Bangalore sur Wikipédia
Bangalore sur Wikitravel (en anglais)
Bangalore Walks, pour découvrir la ville en vous promenant avec un excellent guide
photos de mon séjour à Bangalore

What’s Up?

Posted on 15.01.2011 by Stephanie Booth

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Occupations, réflexions et choses intéressantes des derniers jours.

[en]

Keeping myself busy in Bangalore, either by eating in posh restaurants, buying too many books, conversing with fellow travelers, learning to use Lightroom correctly and uploading my photographs, and hanging out on Quora.

A few random things for today.

Bangalore is a real culture-shock for me. Big, new, shiny, orderly and expensive compared to the India I’m familiar with (Pune).

I’m still dumping my photos on Flickr without much sortage (or they’ll never get online!) but I’ve started organizing them into sets. Check them out.

Instagram.app is just wonderful for taking snapshots when you’re traveling. I’m getting my friends hooked on it.

Blossom Book House in Bangalore is a book-buyer’s paradise. They even prepared my book parcel for me (I just need to go to the post office and send it, praying it won’t cost an arm and a leg).

Magazines Store has cats. Meow! And they’re on Facebook!

I have a backlog of Indian recipes to write up.

2011? More travel, more reading, more writing, more photography.

Want excellent (really excellent) Western food in Bangalore? Go to Chamomile. It’s pretty pricey (by my Indian standards) but absolutely delicious. I think this was our biggest culture shock so far: we were really worried when we saw the place and the menu, but ecstatic when we started eating the food. My dad had an extraordinary T-bone steak, perfectly cooked.

I’m hooked on Quora. Tell me if you want an invite. (Can you get in without a Twitter/Facebook account, by the way?) I spent all morning two days ago answering cat questions, and have started getting replies to some of my India questions (asbestos, anyone?).

India is a great place to get stuff repaired. My chappal (Indian sandals) which cost around 12 CHF to buy cost me 45 CHF to re-heel in Switzerland. Here: 20 Rs (1 CHF = 46 Rs). Need to replace a broken screen on an otherwise functional laptop? Quite affordable, labour included. Next time I come I’m bringing all my old sandals with me. And any laptop that needs repairing. Oh, and scanning slides? See:

ScanCafe looks like an excellent slide/negative/photo scanning service. They built their scanning centre here in Bangalore. Pity you can only use their services from the US/Canada for now. I am going to see if there are good slide scanning services in Pune/Delhi though, for next time I come (I have 1000+ slides to scan from my year in India). Spend some time reading their website — a model of what a company website should be.

Two other great websites I encourage you to spend time visiting, and great projects:

First, the Ashraya Initiative for Children, a small non-profit in Pune that helps street kids. They’re doing extraordinary work, both by housing selected children (Residential program), supporting Yerwada children’s education (Outreach programs) and improving life in their community. My friend Mithun is their Social Media Manager, which is how I came across them. I’ll be paying them a visit when I go back to Pune next week and am eager to see how I can support their work. Oh, read their blog too and find them on Facebook.

Second, Reality Tours and Travels Mumbai, a travel agency which specializes in small guided tours off the tourist track: Dharavi slum tours (80% of the profits from those tours go to NGOs working in the area, mainly Reality Gives, the non-profit sister organization they set up for that purpose), village tours (2 days and a night in a local village outside Mumbai), as well as the more traditional market and sightseeing tours. All that with guides from the local communities who speak very good English, in small groups (less than 6 people). Anita’s friends from Australia, whom we spent the day with yesterday, did the Dharavi slum tour and were very enthusiastic. I’m definitely planning that and the village tour for my next visit to Mumbai/Pune.

In the same vein of “non-touristy tourism”, my dad and I will be taking a Victorian walk through Bangalore tomorrow morning.

Taking photos from a train, like I did on the Udyan Express? Some tips gleaned from Twitter and experience: wide angle, manual focus to infinity, speed locked on 1/1000th, shoot facing direction of travel or opposite (rather than at a right angle) to minimize motion blur. If traveling in an AC carriage like we were, do not hesitate to go and open the door between the compartments. Forget about shooting through the dirty tinted windows.

Plans?

Come back in October to spend two weeks in Delhi to brush up my Hindi. Got good Hindi teachers there to recommend for private lessons? Let me know.
Travel through India by train. Or maybe, travel to India by train. Or by car. Anybody done this?
Do stuff other than helping people communicate better (just a vague desire, I’m not looking at a change of career right now, but I’d like to… do stuff, rather than just talk all the time)

Indian food is mainly carbs. Not much veggies in fact. A few veggies, tossed in spices, and lots of bread to eat them with. And rice and daal. And if you’re eating non-veg, it means “no-veg” — meat and bread. (Bread = Indian breads.) Nice, but not very balanced.

Fashion seems different in Bangalore. More Western clothing. Much more. Women in business suits. Way less salwaar kameez.

Going to Mysore rather than Pondicherry after all. Happy with the change of plans.

Internet-enabled India is very different from non-Internet India (ie, my experience 10 or even 7 years back).

Very happy with Cleartrip for booking train and flights in India.

It’s lovely to have lots of “empty” time to do things without having to worry about being productive. I guess that’s what holidays are, I’d forgotten!

OK, back to sorting my photos and learning how to use Lightroom

A Quick Survival Guide to India

Posted on 11.01.2011 by Stephanie Booth

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Quelques conseils de survie pour qui se rend en Inde pour la première fois. En très bref:

s'attendre à ce que les choses prennent du temps et n'aillent pas comme prévu -- être modeste dans ses ambitions pour le programme de la journée
être patient
la confrontation directe n'est pas très efficace; un oui n'est pas forcément un oui (non = perdre la face, donc on dit oui quand on veut dire non, souvent)
les gens qui vous abordent spontanément ne sont pas forcément ceux que vous désirez fréquenter (ils sont intéressés s'ils prennent la peine de vous courir après, en général)

Bien plus dans la liste en anglais!

[en]

A friend of mine mentioned she might be going to India for business next year, which prompted me to dish out a few “Indian culture survival tips” to her — how about a quick blog post about that? Also, being here with my dad (who is in India for the first time) has made me notice things I’ve grown used to but which aren’t “obvious” for the first-time-visiting foreigner. So, in no particular order, while I sort through the 500 somewhat blurry photos I took from the train to Bangalore…

Warning to my Indian friends: this is full of stereotypes and clichés. I know not all of India and not all Indians are like this. This is just to prepare people to things that do function very differently from in the West.

expect everything to take longer than you expect
in general, expect things to go slowly
expect plans to be derailed and changed and modified and cancelled
be patient
we’re in a part of the world where saying “no” amounts to some degree of loss of face — so expect people to say yes or give you an answer when in fact they mean “no” or “I don’t know” (classic: ask for directions, people will point you in some random direction rather than saying they don’t know)
don’t plan on accomplishing more than one thing a day (you’ll exhaust yourself and make yourself sick)
people don’t generally make eye contact unless they want something — so don’t look people in the eye when saying “no, I don’t need your prepaid taxi” or “no, I don’t want to give you money” (just shake your head, say no, ignore them — and try and pick up the “negative” hand wobble if you can)
people don’t usually shake hands or hug or kiss or anything like that, so take the cue from the person you’re meeting rather than sticking your hand out
expensive services or goods does not necessarily mean they will be quality (ripping people off is generally not viewed as “immoral” as it is in our Judeo-Christian culture)
eat when you have a chance, pee when you have a chance — you don’t know for sure when the next occasion will be
the weird head-wobble means anything from “of course, you moron” to “yeah… may-be” — context will help you (or not)
direct confrontation does not work very well
expect people to make plans for you without asking you if it’s OK for you
expect people to assume you can’t eat “normal-spicy” food (but if you can’t take hot food at all, it will still be way too hot for you)
bottled water is called “bisleri” (whether it’s proper Bislery, Kinley, AquaFina or anything else — down to the shadier brands)
don’t expect western-style toilets or toilet paper (carry some around with you if you can’t do things “Indian-style”)
people will be wanting you to “sit”, have a cup of water (politely decline if it’s tap water, but say yes to chai)
the horrible loud midi tunes you hear outside are cars reversing
it’s noisy
beds aren’t really private places
wash your hands, don’t drink unbottled/unfiltered water, don’t eat uncooked stuff (the general rules — bend at your convenience and at your own risk)
expect to freeze in A/C places (trains, busses, hotel rooms, offices)
verbal communication is often kept to a minimum — lots of hand gestures (people will gesture you to follow them instead of saying “would you please follow me”)
most Indian food is eaten with your fingers (rip a piece of chapati/naan, pick up food with it, put in mouth) or a spoon — your fingers are more sensitive to heat than your mouth, so if you can pick it up without dropping it, you won’t burn your tongue
men: jeans/trousers and shirt are fine — t-shirt is trendy for Indians, but makes you look touristy if you’re white; women: jeans are starting to be OK with long-covering kurta, but I recommend going a little more classy and getting a salwaar kameez in the fashion on the day stitched — it’s pretty and it makes you stand out a bit from the 100% touristy crowd (leggings and kurta are in fashion now too, but I feel I get treated differently when wearing a pretty flowing salwaar kameez — maybe it’s just me)
expect things to not go as expected (did I already say this?)
life is complicated enough without making it more complicated: if you’re trying to buy something and have a chance to buy it, don’t think “let me first shop around” or “I’ll come back later” — just get it then and there (if you really need it, that is)
expect commuting to be not as simple as you imagine: rickshaw drivers might refuse to take you where you want, specially in the evening (we had three local guys flag down about 20 of them the first evening my dad was here before we found one who would take us home by the meter)
you’re not supposed to tip left, right and centre — ask a trusted local or a well-adjusted foreigner when to give extra (again: not often)
at stations and airports, take prepaid taxis or rickshaws if your transport has not been arranged (you’ll find the prepaid stand by yourself, don’t follow the guys who ask you if you want one)
in general, don’t go with people who come up to you offering services (e.g. flagging down a rickshaw on the road is much better than taking the one who just drove 100m to come to you; and no, you don’t want to go to the shop this guy who just walked up to you is suggesting you buy from; etc.)
the country in general is not designed to help people figure out “how it works” — you just have to know (hence how precious local help is; don’t expect instructions to be written down anywhere to tell you how to take the bus)
expect to be stared at, by children and grown-ups alike
be ready for paperwork; tedious and seemingly useless paperwork
the person you interact with and the person doing things is not usually the same person — big division of labour: you talk to a guy in the store and ask to see something, he tells somebody else to take the thing out, and that person might in turn tell somebody else (perfectly normal, just feels weird at first); also, in a restaurant, not the same person who serves meals, seats you, picks up the dishes, cashes in the bill, etc.
expect many occurrences of “not my job” brokenness
what locals expect you to want and like is probably not what you will want and like…

Did I leave anything important out?

India is a lovely place once you’ve understood how it rolls. Main piece of advice? Be patient, and if you can hang around with local friends or well-adjusted foreigners, observe them, and try to learn by example.

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