India, Part Two

First off, let me admit that it has taken me several weeks to finally post again, but I am doing so from the relative comforts of Nara, Japan. You can drink the water! You can eat raw vegetables and fish! It has high speed internet access! Of course, getting to the high speed internet access requires more knowledge of Japanese than I possess. There are allegedly slews of internet cafes all over the place in Japan, but since they're not in a ground floor storefront, they're tucked away from sight. I've been asking about and looking for one for a week. My hotel in Nara, the Fujita Hotel gave me instructions to one, but they were ever so slightly wrong. Anyone know what a Japanese sign for an internet cafe looks like? Me either. My instructions were to go to a certain corner, and up to the 4th floor. A place called Shalala. Only trouble was, it wasn't on the corner, but two buildings in, a fact which I found out the hard way by riding the elevator in a half dozen buildings. Maybe they meant the other side of the street? Nope. Maybe they meant this building? Nope. Does anyone in Nara speak English? Nope. Maybe they meant two doors down? Yup. Anyway, the place is open 24 hours, and is unspeakably expensive, so I'll hope to post the first half of Japan tomorrow. Oh, and I budgeted an hour and a half to post the remainder of India, but this high speed access is bitchin, so I should be done in 40 minutes.

OK, so I'm thrilled to be in Japan, and it sounds a bit like I'm ragging on India, and, in fact, I am. Don't get me wrong, I thought India was fantastic, but it does wear you down after a while. I think it all started in Varanasi. I had spent a couple of days in Lucknow beforehand, which just doesn't show up on the tourist radar, so I was lulled into a false sense of security. Then Varanasi hit me. It's supposed to be one of the holiest cities on earth, but "holy" is not a synonym for "clean" or even "nice". There's definitely a spiritual side to Varanasi: roaming sadus, riverside cremations, nightly ceremonies, the relative calm of a boat ride on the Ganges; but you have to wade through a lot to get to it. That Ganges, it stinks, and it is full of garbage. Cows, goats, and dogs freely wander the streets shitting everywhere. Men urinate openly in public. And while the concept of a riverside cremation sounds spiritual, we are genetically hard wired to dislike the smell of it. And perhaps worst of all, the townspeople of Varanasi have been swindling tourists for three millenia, so they really have it down to science. To quote Shehnaz's father Erich "Why on earth would you want to go there?"

So by the time I got to Calcutta, I was pretty much spent, and then the heat and humidity hit me. It was unseasonably warm when I got there, and I just couldn't work up enough energy to actually sightsee. I did manage to have a wonderful dinner with Shehnaz's extended family, who are incredibly sweet and not afraid to mince words. (Was Slumdog Millionaire really worth 8 Oscars? I suggested it may have been Hollywood guilt for ignoring India's vast cinematic output for decades.) Unfortunately, I was feeling pretty ill by the time I got to the Dalal residence, so I didn't eat much and I hope they didn't think I hated the food. I also randomly met Bostjan (from Slovenia) and Jacopo (from Turin) on the train, and since they were both separately staying in the same neighborhood, we kept running into each other. So even though I didn't see much in Calcutta, I did meet a lot of new and worthwhile people, so, all in all, it was a pretty positive experience.