Vietnam: first impressions

Yesterday we flew from Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City. We are staying in a small room in a small guest house tucked away off an ally near the heart of this crowded city. This morning we began a long walk at 6:30 am and walked around for about three hours. First we went through a park with many people doing their tai chi and aerobic exercises. Then we made our way to the Saigon river and walked along the river and found the zoo. After visiting the zoo (beautiful well-kept grounds, but not so great conditions for the animals) for a short while, we continued on our way, getting kind of lost for a while and finally found our hotel.

Crossing streets can be very difficult here since there is a never ending flow of traffic, mostly motorbikes. You have to inch your way across, angling downstream, as the flow of motorbikes weaves around you.

After being in India, Vietnam is kind of a relief. We haven't seen homeless people here so far, and it is cleaner too. There is a lot less visible garbage. But it is more difficult to travel here because people don't speak English like in India. Also, India had the very cheap three-wheeled taxis so convenient to get around in.

Final days in India

During our final three days in India we took a day hike from a small town about 30 miles outside of Jaiper. The town is very old with narrow streets and many crumbling walls and city gates, the usual fort, and a palace converted into a 5 star hotel. We began a long climb up some steps leading to a trail that gets to a temple after about a 2 mile hike passing through rocky, arid country with big boulders and some cactus. We enjoyed the conversation with the young man who accompanied us on this hike. I suspect he wanted to be our guide at first even though we didn't want a guide. We had a wide ranging discussion with him about the problems of society, religion, and gender equality. We veered off the main path before the popular temple continuing another mile or so to a more isolated temple with lots of monkeys around. The scenery was wonderful and the air fresh. We left the man praying to his gods in the small Hindu temple at the end of the trail and made our way back down to the car and rode back to Jaiper.

That evening in spite of the horrendous traffic, we went for another walk near our hotel. We saw so many homeless people on the streets in very desperate straits. We also saw a couple of elephants lumbering through the crowded streets with their human riders on their backs.

The next day was spent driving to Agra, the site of the magnificant Taj Mahal. The Moghul emperor of the time (17th century) ordered the Taj Mahal to be built in memory of his deceased wife. On the way, we stopped in a medium sized city (Barahtpur) and walked around looking at the crumbling old buildings and the fort with a moat around it. We also visited a small English language school and briefly talked with a teacher and administrator there. Unfortunately, the students were not there as the morning classes were finished.

Our last day in India, we got up at 5:30 in order to walk to the Taj Mahal, hoping to catch the 6 am opening to see the sun rising over the site. However, we encountered a long line of tourists waiting to buy tickets and then waited about an hour until the doors opened at 7 am, an hour late and well after the sunrise. This place is truly awesome in so many ways, definitely worth visiting although you would have to endure the extremely aggressive street and stall merchants trying to hustle up some business from the foreigners.

That afternoon we drove to Delhi. It seemed to be practically one city all the way from Agra to Delhi, about 130 miles. It took us about 6 hours because the traffic was so bad. We found Delhi to have a very large quantity of shanty towns and many people in quite desperate straits. Sometimes when waiting in traffic, children would knock on our car window pleading for a handout. It was quite depressing. In spite of the high percentage of homeless people,we have not seen evidence of housing construction for low-income people. All this with India participating in an international military air show extravaganza in Bangalore this week. What mistaken priorities. Reminds me of the United States.

In the evening, we drove by the independence monument in New Delhi located in the wealthy sector where the embassies can be found. Then, Shambhu brought us to the airport. We paid him a hefty tip, said goodbye, and entered the airport to await our 1 am flight to Bangkok.

More on Rajasthan

Rajahsthan is a heavily populated (56 million) desert province of northern India west of Delhi. Rajasthan seems much poorer than Kerala; there are a lot more miserable people living on the streets and at times we have been accosted by people demanding a contribution. these are people who eat, sleep, on the street, have no access to running water or a toilet. When you give to one, you may be surrounded by several others in the vicinity demanding payment; it is an extremely uncomfortable and delicate situation. You also see some terrible shanties and sizable shanty neighborhoods in the cities.

Rajasthan is also one of the most popular tourist destinations in India because of its many palaces and ancient forts, many of them built on hillsides, its colorful street life, and its crafts and art. The women wear beautiful saris, there are markets all over, and you can see many camels pulling carts. We also saw an elephant lumbering down a boulevard in Jaiper.

Yesterday we visited a fantastic fort and palace built in the 15th century in Jodpur (the blue city). It is amazing to see how the rajahs lived with their many wives and very interesting to learn about the history of the place, the many conflicts and actually see the artifacts associated with this history.

We are getting along really well with our driver, Shambhu. He is very considerate and always helpful to us. He stops when we want to take a picture, to use the "open toilet" or go for a hike. We always invite him to have a meal with us and he takes us to some cool lunch stops where you can have a "thali" for the equivalent of about a dollar. A "thali" is a complete Indian meal with a little bit of several dishes: at least one veggie dish and legume based stews, some rice, a little curd (sour yogurt), a little cucumber salad and some chapatties, for instance. You don't get a whole lot of any one thing, but the cooking here is excellent wherever we have been. We haven't had one bad meal in India, and haven't really gotten sick either.

Moving around Rajasthan

The next day, we visited nearby Sariska park in the morning. We walked around with a required guide for an hour along a river and saw bird life and the skin of a sizable snake. Then we got back into the car and drove to Jaiper, Rajasthan's capital and largest city.

Jaiper is an overcrowded, chaotic city, fast growing with heavy traffic, constantly honking horns, dirty, dusty, extremely busy and commercialized and many poor people including many beggers and homeless people in very dire circumstances. It is strange and disturbing to be confronted by such beggers, some of them children or mothers with children looking hungry and dirty, and then later sit down to a delicious Indian meal.

The following day we continued on our journey traveling another 175 miles (5 hours) to a smaller city, Bikaner. There, we took a tour of the impressive fort and palace of the majaraja which lies in the heart of the city. The museum included many items from the heyday of Moghul rule in the 17th and 18th century before the British took over as well of some photos of the Maharaja and his family during the 19th and 20th centuries.

From Bikener we drove another 200 miles west towards the border with Pakistan. As one travels west the terrain gets drier and more desert-like. Yesterday we stayed in a tent near some sand dunes in a beautiful desert. We were the only ones staying in this tent hotel and enjoyed the moonlit evening and the dry and warm desert air. Around 5 pm two local boys took us on a camel ride to some sand dunes about 2 kilometers away. It was our first time riding a camel; we enjoyed the late afternoon air and the fine view, said goodbye to the boys who accompanied us on the camels, and then walked back to our tent watching the sun go down. Later that evening we went to a nearby place to hear live Indian music and watch dancing by two lovely young women wearing beautiful colorful costumes. The musicians used drums, flutes and other instruments which I don't know the name of. After the women danced for a long time and did some acrobatics , one did nervy things like bending over backwards and picking up a razer blade with her eyelids. Then, a man in a colorful dress danced energetically while balancing a large wooden thing about 5 feet tall that he placed on his head. He did all kinds of amazing dances and movements while balancing many different things on his head and also balancing things on his feet. He also danced on mashed glass (it appeared) and somehow didn't get bloody feet. At the end, the dancers invited the audience to join in and dance together (men with men and women with women), many of whom did. Then we walked back under the starry night sky to our candle lighted tent.

It is worth noting that we feel very safe in India pretty much where ever we have gone. We walk around in the village and in the desert without a guide and have no lock to our tent. The traffic on the other hand, is really something else. In India single road lanes become three way traffic sometimes, and two lane highways often spontaneously become three and four lane highways when the situation demands it. So far, at least, we have seen a great deal of cooperation among the drivers to avoid accidents and have yet to see any driver lose his temper.

Rajasthan beginning

On Tuesday morning we took a 3 hour flight from Kerala to Delhi in the north of India. We were picked up at the airport by Shambhu Dayal, our driver and guide for the 9 day tour of Rajasthan we have booked. This is our second tour since we have started traveling together 25 years ago. We enjoy the independence of traveling on our own (and the lower price). However, to avoid the stress of traveling on our own here and booked this economical tour.

From the airport, we drove about three hours to get to our hotel near the Sariska Tiger Reserve. Sadly, there probably aren't any tigers left here due to poaching we are told. However, there are lots of birds, wild pigs, antelope, and snakes including cobras and pythons.

We were the only ones staying at this quiet hotel with beautiful grounds and architecture. I told the young man at the hotel who helped us to our room that we wanted to go for a hike and he offered to go with us. We took a trail from the back of the hotel going past some fields, an old Muslim temple, and up the nearby mountain. The three of us started to walk through the dry scrub land with a few trees and bushes. We walked past a very poor small village, no more than a few houses. We climbed up a rocky path passing some sheperds and hundreds of sheep and goats on the way down. As it was getting late we decided to turn around and stopped on the way back to talk to the people by the cluster of houses. We met two women, dressed with beautifully colored saris, an older man with a turban and about 20 children. The kids had attended school that day. One woman wearing a beautiful purple sari covered her head and stayed away from us. A small child was playing with clay. The other friendly woman offered hot tea (very sweet with milk) and Ana played with the baby. We asked the kids to sing a song and then we briefly sang "This land is your land" for them which I am sure they didn't understand since this group was not fluent in English. We communicated with the help of our friend from the hotel sho, although he spoke some English, was quite difficult to understand. Apparently the men were still working in the nearby fields, ripe with tomatoes, wheat, onions and other produce. These people were extremely poor and we gave each woman 50 rupees and one woman responded by offering us her beautiful shawl which we declined. We took some photos (to the delight of the kids) and continued back to our hotel.

Getting lost and an excursion to the backwaters of Cochin

Last night we wandered along the waterfront through the crowded city and tried to come back along a canal but got lost in what appeared to be a predominently muslim neighborhood. The waterfront area has these huge "Chinese fishing nets" that the Chinese sailors introduced between 1350 and 1450. The nets are lowered into the water via a pulley system for a time, and when they are brought back up the the fish and other seafood is harvested. Some of the fine looking fish is sold right there on the waterfront and you can have it cleaned and put on a grill for you.

Walking back along the canal we realized how primitive and bad the living conditions here are for this community. There are open sewers and a lot of garbage and filth. Family life does go on and you see people washing, getting water and talking to their neighbors. It was just after dusk and everybody was out when the lights went out and we had to try to continue in the dark streets. At this time the muslim call to prayer service was very loud and we also noticed that only men were out on the street. We were getting nervous about our situation and after a while found a rickshaw to bring us back to our hotel.

Today we went on an excursion to the backwaters of Kochi which is on a peninsula. We went with about 14 other tourists, most from Europe and one Indian man who owns a restaurant in London. First, we were driven about 25 miles to a beautiful spot on a wide river where we got on two boats and were paddled through some narrow channels that run through the thick, shady, palm dominated foliage. It was really beautiful. We stopped at a house along this channel and watched how the people make rope out of coconut husks. We were explained the process. Then we went to another place and saw how coconuts are used to make coconut oil which is used for cooking, shampoo and other things here in Kerala. We were told that the rope production is organzied through a cooperative and that the people pretty much share the profits. The women do this work and the men go out and try to supplement the family income in other ways such as digging sand. Also, Kerala's Communist-led government limits how much land an individual can own (15 acres max) and helps to subsidize the income of these people. We were told that education is free until 15 years old and there is free medical care too and that nobody starves in Kerala. There is also a two child policy here. Our gudie was very positive about the govenment of Kerala. Two of our group said that they had seen a workers march of several thousand people a few days ago. The unions are very strong here in Kerala.

We were also shown many different kinds of trees and plants including pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, bay leaf and other spices.

Lunch was included in the package and the tour leader had us all sit down along a narrow wooden table. Another group of excursionists, I think from Pakistan and India, joined us. We were given a green banana leaf which served as a plate and then the servers came around and dished out rice and a variety of stews and other tasty concoctions to eat together with the rice.

Fort Cochin

This morning we took the 6:55 train to Cochin, a six hour ride. We rode in the first class air-conditioned wagon this time. The countryside of Kerala is truly magnificent. Kerala is appropriatly called the land of the coconut trees as we see millions of these beautiful trees everywhere and there are so many rivers, marshlands with bird life, rice paddies and canals.

I was reading in my guide book about the agricultural problems India has had in recent years. It seems the much touted "Green Revolution" contributed to a growing disparity of wealth and has driven many poor farmers to give up and move to the urban slums or even to commit suicide. Free trade agreements (pushed by both Clinton and Bush) have limited government provided help for farmers who find it hard to pay for the seeds and chemicals required. There have been many protests. In Bangalore, I was reading in the papers about an upcoming conference of organic farmers. 50,000 was the expected attendance.

Cochin is a very old city and there is quite a bit of tourism in the area known as Fort Cochi. The Portuguese established themselves here and had two churches built in the 16th century. Then the Dutch took over, followed by the British until India's independence.