Toes to the Nose

New Delhi, India
Have you ever taken a yoga class? Try sitting on your knees with your feet beneath you pointing backwards, grabbing your heels behind you with each hand and then arching your back as far as possible and holding it for a minute. Camel Position. Now stand on one leg and balance your free foot against your upper thigh to form a triangle, and for a minute or so stretch your arms high above you with palms flat together. Tree Position. Now go over to the wall and do a hand stand, using the wall to keep your balance if you must... I was best at stretching my toes close to my nose, I don't know why. Perhaps it was my high school karate skills coming back. I still seem to have some basic flexibility, but the instructor definitely told me to stick to the beginner poses. Overall, I enjoyed yoga for it's breathing, meditation, and slow pain. You come out very sore in weird places and very refreshed.

So we're back in Delhi killing time before our 4am flight to Istanbul. We spent our final 3 days in Rishikesh, relaxing and taking yoga classes on the banks of the mouth of the Ganges. The water is very cold there at the edge of the Himalayas where it has melted from ice, but pilgrims come from all over to bathe and pray to Ganga, especially at this time of year. The water is also cleaner at its source, and we were more comfortable jumping in for a swim. Does anyone happen to know why Lord Krishna is always depicted with blue skin?
Since Pushkar we have been through Jaipur, Agra, and lastly Rishikesh, opting to skip Varanasi on this trip. Varanasi is said to be more poverty and ritual and stench and humanity, while Rishikesh is known for its ashrams (Scott tells me the Beatles came here to study and learn the sitar) and peaceful ceremonies by the water. Leaving Rajasthan meant our final long haul by poorly ventilated, swastika decorated Tata Motors two-by-two buses (by the way, "svasti" means power in ancient sanskrit, and the hindu symbol is thousands of years older than backwards Nazi pervertions). The remainder of our trip was on 2nd class air conditioned sleeper trains!! Boy did I feel spoiled to high heaven. I actually grew to loathe arriving in a new city and having to exit the train, it was so cold and comfortable.

We've had some bizarre run-ins lately with other travelers. The coincidences abound. For instance, we ran into Aussie friends from Thailand in Pushkar and had dinner. OK. Then in Jaipur at the city palace we ran into the same Indian family we had met on a bus (I made origami for the kids) near Jaisalmer. Weird but great. Then we sat down with an Argentinian traveler on the roof of our hotel in Jaipur that evening and it turns out he was from San Isidro and was in fact old friends with the only other group of Argentinians we had met while traveling in Thailand. Finally, in Rishikesh, I again ran into a different Indian family I had met at the Jaipur city palace. We're talking about hundreds of miles between these destinations. Crazy. I guess with schools out the Indians really do some extensive travelling themselves. Other than that, it's all Israelis as usual.

The Agra experience was as expected. Despite all the horror stories you hear about the city and its filthy environment, you cannot skip the Taj. It is the most polluted city I've ever visited. So we did the customary 24 hour visit, rising to see the Taj at sunrise (first tourists in!) and boating across the drying up river behind it for sunset. The grounds of the Taj itself are immaculate, and it is an impressive monument. But the dirty state of the surrounding city takes away from the memory.

After seeing the Taj Mahal we were left with a day to kill, and I took a local bus to Fatepur Sikri to check out Akbar's abondoned city and his famous Jama Masjid mosque (rumoured to be an exact replica of a great mosque in Mecca). The mosque was a good experience, aside from the non-stop offers for tours. I broke down and gave a young kid a dollar to show me around since I didn't understand what I was looking at anyhow. I also unloaded a box of pencils on the poor young kids there, who promptly had them sharpened and put to good use drawing evil pictures of me and eachother on shreds of newspaper.
The highlight of my day trip to Fatepur Sikri was a stroll through the modern town and market there where I met Chandra, a local man gearing up for his exams to become a teacher. After struggling to order fresh squeezed lime juice and trying to figure out where the hell I had wandered off to, it was unexpected to encounter a man wanting to discuss poetry and literature. His favorites were Whitman, Frost, and Dickinson. Most people speak english very poorly and it is a victory for them to shake your hand and say hello; this guy is proclaiming "Oh captain, my captain!" I hope he passes his exams.

Reasons are accumulating for why we are pleased to be moving on to Turkey. India is a very difficult place to travel. For one, it is more crowded than you can prepare yourself for. Second, the smells accumulate; you do not grow more used to them as we thought we might. Third, the sight of Indian food starts to make you feel ill after you eat it for 3 weeks straight. You find your veggie standard dishes, but nothing is ever a "safe" order. Consequently, we have lost weight and look forward to more options, more energy and more meat. Fourth, the complete and total disrespect for the environment could bring you to tears. It is not only the poor who discard trash and waste on the streets and where they lie. Conductors toss plastic bottles from the fronts of buses and trains, policemen spray snot and throw trash into the holy rivers, and all people relieve themselves in the street gutters that line main roads. Trash cans do not exist, and cities and villages become colored in plastic lining like landfills. Fifthly, it is not overall the friendliest place to travel. You must work harder to meet nice locals and make friends, and even other tourists have become so hardened by constant gnagging on the streets that we meet less people than before.

Still, there are always great people to be found. Like two Californians we met in yoga class who shared some of our likes and dislikes, and who we may see again in Budapest or Bucharest I hope. This morning we arrived by train in a car full of seven, count'em 7, Indian families traveling together on vacation. How much fun would that be!? And last night in Haridwar before the train I met a rich Indian kid on a local bus who is going to Thailand soon and who had lived in Dubai for 2 years working. He had great things to say about the UAE. So you either run into hustlers, or you run into kind and generous souls. That's anywhere I think.

My email hasn't been working for about a week, so I may have to change. I'll let you all know. I apologize for the movie theatre scare - I was wrong, we were never at the same theatre, just a similar name. I should probably work for Newsweek, making mothers worry like that. But we did see Star Wars the other day, it was amazing, the best of the new three, and I hear Lucas is gonna make one more prequel that predates number 1! Security at the theatres here is so crazy - worse than the airports. We thought it was tough before the bombings because they made us keep our bag in the manager's office. Well, this time they didn't even allow women to bring purses in. We had to trust a coffee shop owner down the street to watch our bag before passing through a metal detector and two full-body pat downs. That was worse than the Taj security, although the guard at the Taj seemed to like to grab your asses.
Enjoy the work week!