India, Part One

Hope you are enjoying reading sideways.
I've been in India for well over two weeks and still haven't managed to post. It has been difficult to find an internet cafe outside of the major cities, and while I was back in Delhi for a day I got horribly sick. I'll be leaving for Japan in a couple of days, so while I'm in Kolkata, I'm going to try to post all of India in two parts: a daunting task because India is really amazing.
I've spent four days on my own in Delhi; one week with the Intrepid Travel tour of the Golden Triangle (Delhi, Agra, Jaipur); and a week again on my own. I've travelled on a half-dozen trains; stayed in hotels ranging from $15 to $60 a night; eaten at serious restaurants and street stalls; spent entire days shopping ; and looked at more Mughal architecture than I care to remember. All of these things are part of what makes India great. It's cheap. The train system (the world's largest) somehow works. The food is indescribably delicious. There are so many monuments from so many different eras and religions, I doubt anyone could feel like they've adequately explored them in a lifetime.
Of course, India has it's dark side. It stinks. It's horribly polluted. Poverty is rampant. The touts in any tourist area are downright aggresive. It's noisy and chaotic. It's 90F by the first of March. It hasn't rained once in two weeks. People spit, piss, shit, and throw their garbage in the middle of the street. There's no such thing as privacy or personal space.
But, I've seen this all before. Everywhere worthwhile that I go, I am forced to confront that ugliness in order to appreciate the beauty. And India is very beautiful. Despite the degradation, the landscape can be arresting, wildlife abundant, and culture so ancient it is overwhelming. Even if this weren't the case, the food alone makes India great. Paneer tikka! Aloo gobi! Garlic naan! Stuffed tomato curry!
Then again there's always this:
Everybody has an image of the Taj Mahal fixed in their mind. We all know what it looks like. It's that big white mausoleum right? Well, it looks white from far away, but as you get closer to it, you realize it is completely covered with inlaid semi-precious stone work: flowers, gemetric patterns, texts from the Koran. So it's this white monolithic thing from far away, and this elaborately colorful building from close up. also, it's rarely white. I sat in front of the Taj Mahal for three hours over sunset, watching it turn from blazing white, to bright gold, to muted pink. You may have an image of it firmly fixed in your mind already, but it is so worth seeing the real thing.

Boy am I glad I'm not in Egypt

Well, you're just going to have to accept the erratic layout of this post, because I have neither the time nor the patience to resolve this right now. I started this over an hour ago, and this internet cafe is closing in less than an hour. I've been in Delhi for four days now, and I've been so busy enjoying myself that I haven't had time to post. Also, quite frankly Egypt is the worst place I have ever visited in my entire life, and I'd really rather not dwell on it. OK, well maybe a little. It's not just that it is overpopulated, polluted, and messy; I've been to several countries that would easily fit the description. It's more that the Egyptian people themselves are the nastiest, greediest, most short sighted, thoughtless, shiftless, most disengenuous people I've encountered. It's "every man for themself" there. And I do mean man, because you simply do not meet Egyptian women. Ick. Oh sure, there's the Pyramids, the Sphinx, all of those ancient statues, which are all really amazing, but somehow the whole experience was ruined for me by the general unpleasantness of the place and the people. I will never go back.

India, on the other hand, despite being overpopulated, polluted, and messy, is so much more relaxed. There's a much better vibe here. As my sister said, the Indians just have better karma.

Talkin Turkey

As I look through these pictures I realize that they say a lot about friends. Friends saved my trip to Turkey: meeting new people on a tour through the countryside, then getting together again in Istanbul. Or getting to spend time with Ozlem, who not only seems way happier now that she's in Turkey, but her overwhelming hospitality more than makes up for the constant barrage of Turkish scam artists.

My post two days ago was about my time in Istanbul. This is about a trip around the countryside in Turkey: the extensive Roman ruins at Ephesus; swimming in a thermal spa at Pamukkale with ruins under foot; sleeping in cave house in Goreme; and surveying 20,000 years of human artefacts with Ozlem at the the Anatolian Museum in Ankara. It was action packed week, what with two nights accomodation on a bus, but it was also more relaxed and friendly than Istanbul. If you're going to Turkey, don't forget to get out of Istanbul.

My last day in Istanbul I made the sketch above of the Blue Mosque. I gave the sketch to Cigdem, who works at the Hotel Sultanahmet, for all of her help to me. While writing and sketching in the park, Ibrahim, an elderly gentleman sat down next to me and struck up a conversation. For some reason the accursed carpet came up, and as we were talking about it, Emre, the man who sold me the carpet, showed up with his American girlfriend Maureen. I asked Maureen when they were getting married. This was news to her. Emre had never proposed to her, he only used this line as a sales pitch on me. Immediately after this Ibrahim suggested we go to the Grand Bazaar and change some dollars into turkish lira. He knows someone who sells lira at a great rate. I could exchange the dollars, then change them back at a regular currency exchange and make a neat profit. If Ibrahim thinks I don't smell a scam here, then he's even more naive than me. And why he felt he needed to add his own scam on top of the carpet story, well, that's just pathological.

I'm going to have to face the fact: my trip to Turkey may have been great because of friends, but it was also heavily scarred by the constant scheming.