First Impressions of India

I think it is important to catch first impressions as they are sharp and immediate. I have noticed that with time we get used to everything, no matter how strange or different it might have appeared at first. The four of us scribbled our initial thoughts about India based on crossing the border at Saunali, a crazy bus ride to Gorakhpur, our first train ride in India and a half asleep day in Varanasi, the Holy City.

Maria:  The erratic energy of the country could be felt immediately when we stepped on Indian soil. In comparison Nepal was very chill and the people were relaxed and not too much in your face. Once Nepal was behind us though the madness began. It didn’t help that the border crossing was marked by an endless line up of Indian trucks whose drivers were bored to death by the long wait and were pretty much leaning on their honks while crawling forward in the heat. I am very sensitive to both heat, noise and dust but the combination of the three is more than I can usually handle. In response I become “Woman Big Trouble”, to use the exact words of a sweet Nepali bicycle parking attendant who experienced my mean side on a hot June morning.

After acquiring the Indian entry stamp in our new passports we had to take a local bus to Gorakhpur. There were plenty available so we got on the first one after peeing in some filthy abandoned forest in front of a ghost of a hotel (no bathrooms anywhere) and got on the first bus waiting to depart. Once the bus got moving it made a few short stops and before we knew it it got filled with people to the brim. The bus probably exceeded its capacity three times. Add the heat from the low setting sun and the angry screams directed towards the driver from aggravated passengers and you get a mad bus full of mad people driven by a mad driver. Now, I did grow up experiencing some pretty tight bus rides in my home country, but nothing like what I saw that day. When the mad bus reached a small town where a wedding was under way we had to slow down so we don’t mow the celebrating crowd. A young girl was dancing on a truck in front of what looked like an Indian disco party. The bride was stuck in a white car in the middle of the sea of people, probably swimming in sweat. The moment the crowd saw us they went berserk! Men started jumping under our window grabbing the window bars and screaming HelllloooO!!! Raina got totally freaked out by the mob, yelling in excitement. It was a relief when the bus finally took us away…

Hot and exhausted we got to Gorakhpur’s train station. Oh, man…that’s when things got really creepy. People were sprawled on the floor of the station in random spots, as if they were suddenly taken over by sleep and just collapsed wherever. No scarf under their bodies, just laying smack on the tiles. Smells of pee were everywhere, poop on the tracks. Little girls were just emptying their bladders in the middle of the waiting room and men were peeing against a special pee wall at both sides of the the train station entrance. Heat, stale air, stares from everywhere, constant noise and beggars, curious inquiries…we were so hot and tired that we couldn’t cope with the attention. Raina started crying, I dug my head in my book pretending not to notice the guy who was gawking at me from a few feet, Boryan in his usual cool self was holding up fine but his face was on fire and his t-shirt was soaking wet from sweat, K had a splitting headache. Let’s say that this was the second low point of our trip besides the passport drama in Phenom Penh.

The train got in the station one hour late but the moment we boarded we were asleep to wake up in Varanasi.  We somehow got to the old city through a hot and dusty roads in a rikshaw whose driver tried to swindle us. Poverty was staring us in the face from each corner. When we started walking little kids were hanging on us asking for chapati, women and men were begging, holly men were trying to bless us for a few rupees. The city’s tiny alleys smelled of pee and we had to jump over the occasional cow and dog poop.

It helped that we had a jolly Mexican with us, David, who put things in perspective after spending three months in India. He promised that we would get used to it all, the street poop included. Two days later I am already used to the cow chapati and avoid stepping on them like an expert. What smell of urine?! Grossed out by people drinking the Ganga water!? Noooo…It is all good.

P.S. Sorry that I used the potty words too many times but if I had to be factual there was no way around it:(

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Raina:  India is nothing like how I imagined it to be. I imagined it more clean and I didn’t imagine people laying down half naked in the streets and in the train station. My first impressions is that India is a very dirty place. People here throw trash everywhere on the streets and even in the rivers. Little toddlers roam the train stations with no grown ups. There are monkeys in the middle of  the cities jumping on terraces, buildings, and trees. Cow poop is everywhere. I saw a cow pee and her pee made a big river on the little alley. It took a long time for the cow to stop peeing! People then stepped through the pee. Kids play on roofs and try to get into other people’s roof terraces. Everybody is very pushy for us to to go to their hotel, rickshaw or restaurants. People steal names and menus of other restaurants that are in the guidebook and that can be confusing.

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Kuba:  Although I was prepared for some chaos and overall mess I must say so far India has exceeded my wildest expectations – the amount of grime, trash, urine, both animal and human excrement, smog, dust and dirt is beyond my comprehension.

At the border town of Saunali almost missed immigration in a sea of trucks, cars, motorbikes, people, beat up buildings, vendors selling crap out of dinky stores or free standing shacks, dust, heat and noise. No one would probably have noticed if we got in India without a visa.

We were told that the bus to Gorakhpur would leave in 20 min. but it took more than an hour to finally get moving. It stopped every minute or two to pick up more people and eventually tripled its maximum passenger capacity. With all the extra people squished like sardines in the isle we could only do our best to brace against the pressure of the bodies squeezing into our seats. At some point we needed to firmly refuse giving up Boryan’s seat demanded (with gesture only) by a man next to us. Still some of the victims of the isle madness would edge their bottoms on the sides of our seats forcing us to squeeze in the heat. Gorakhpur train station was like a scene taken from a newsreel after some natural disaster. Bodies were lying around everywhere in waiting rooms and on all platforms, luckily alive. The squalid state of the train station was not helped in any way by children relieving themselves right where they were standing and men spitting out their bright read tobacco/herb/nut chewing mess all around the perimeter of each room and walkway. With every train entering the station the crowd on the given platform would suddenly pick up and starts chasing the moving wagons jumping in through the train windows (the few that didn’t have bars), tossing in luggage in an attempt grab empty seats. Needless to say women dressed in their saris (often running with a little crowd of children and a baby in their arms) lost out in this battle unless their husbands were there to jump in first.

The true nature of the people has yet to reveal itself to us. Any foreigner walking down the street will quickly acquire a small crowd of guys walking along, seemingly trying to help with directions, asking of course where you’re from but then offering hotels, taxis, rickshaw and boat rides. It is hard to figure out what people are about in such situations but we noticed that you can have a very nice chat with anyone that’s a bit more stationary in a small shop or restaurant. Do not, repeat, do not engage with anyone roaming the streets aimlessly:)

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Boryan: India is not how I expected it to be. I thought that there would be people crowding around trying to get a glimpse us, people trying to tut us into stores, hotels and rickshaws and that the heat would be unbearable. Unlike the rest of my family I didn’t feel crowded by locals. They just liked to talk to is and ask us where we are from (we play this game now-every time someone asks us where we are from, !that is often! we name a random country because we got tired of answering the same), rickshaw driver’s, hotel employees and clothing shop owners did try to tut us but that didn’t happen that often and the heat turned out to be just fine.

Although I noticed a lot of trash in the train station and on the train (there was a hundred foot barrier of trash between us the rail tracks and the city) and in the Varanasi alleys somehow I wasn’t bothered by the layers of grime. I was bothered about how environmentally unfriendly it was though.

There were some things I didn’t expect though, like monkeys wandering around Varanasi with chapatis in their hands. One monkey is a regular at our guest house balcony. Monkeys are sacred in India because in Hinduism there is a Monkey god. Cows and dogs are also holy and wander Varanasi free and undisturbed. Cats are not sacred:) Cows eat every little thing possible and since there is no grass in the city the cows eat the trash in the alleys. At lunch yesterday we were sitting in Dosa Cafe (dosas are a thin crepe like pancake that is prepared in ghee – purified butter) waiting for our dosas when a cow casually walked up to the door and  pocked  her head in! The owner said that the cow visits his Cafe every morning. We asked him what do the cows eat in the city when there is no grass? He answered that every day early in the morning all the cows are gathered on the main street and are led out of Varanasi to pastures where they graze until they are herded back. Another thing I didn’t expect was that men stare. They don’t just look at you. They Death Stare and it feels like they have their eyes locked on us for longer periods of time than feels ok.

The first class Indian train was pretty comfortable, but when I saw how the regular train compartments were. They looked pretty crazy with people barely keeping themselves from bursting out of the open doors and at there were at least two people per seat! People were standing or sitting in the walkway, no empty space in sight. Luckily though we got a first class compartment that had seat numbers so we had room.

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Have you been to India and if so, what are your impressions? Do you think ours are far off?

No matter that we had a rough start we are super excited to explore India. The heat is bearable, the food is glorious, our days are jammed packed with interesting sights and we meet a lot of friendly people who are not trying to drag us their way. I am sure that in a week we will feel at home here.