Day 5 – Culture Shock

Just… wow. I don’t even know if I can put into words what today was. It wasn’t the piles of garbage in the street, or the hustle and bustle, or the traffic, as I think I was prepared for those. I think what made today so crazy was that I was the spectacle.

People stare at me wherever I go. I know the blonde/purple/black hair doesn’t help the situation much. And while I’ve been stared at in other countries before, it pales in comparison to this.

On top of staring at me, they take photos. Michael, whom I met at breakfast and is also doing the Delhi to Kathmandu tour, first noticed it this morning, when a young boy used his cellphone to snap a picture of me. While I didn’t see it that time, I saw it happen at least a dozen other times throughout the day.

And groups of people stopped me for pictures. Mostly younger boys, probably 13 or 14 years old, but some families too. I was probably stopped a half dozen times for people to take pictures of me with them, and each time they took three or four or five photos, ensuring every member got their turn. [ edit: its E

If this is what it’s like to be a celebrity, I don’t ever want to be famous.

It’s beyond overwhelming to constantly have eyes trailing on you. While at the mosque (I forget its name, it’s a huge Muslim mosque in the centre of Old Delhi) [edit: its English name is the Friday Mosque], I was waiting for Michael to returning from climbing a tower (I opted out, as I was tired and I don’t fare well with spiral staircases). A man stopped and stared at me, completely unabashedly, for at least 15 minutes. What do you do in that situation? And it was clear I was uncomfortable, yet he just stood there, staring and staring.

Most of the people are much friendlier in their gawking though. One family stopped me, and after they had taken pictures with me, the husband asked me to turn around so he could take a picture of the back of my head. I guess the purple is just asking for it though.

#1 rule when traveling in India: determine a price before you do anything. I’ve heard this time and time again, but it’s easy to just jump into something, which makes it difficult to argue the price as you don’t have the option of walking away.

I fell into this trap twice; once, with a snake charmer. Michael and I couldn’t remember what the snakes are, are they cobras? Anyway, he had two, and I got suckered into sitting next to him. The next thing I know he’s putting one of his two supremely venomous snakes around my neck and telling me the price is Rs 2000 (about $50 CDN). He wasn’t even a very good snake charmer. His flute playing sucked. Needless to say, I think we paid him a very generous Rs 500 instead and fled that section of the bazaar before he could protest.

The second time I fell into this trap was with an elephant! Michael and I went to the park that Ghandi was cremated at, and wandered through to the construction area / slums behind it. We spotted two elephants a ways off and eventually caught up to them. Without thinking, I immediately accepted the owner of one’s offer to get on the elephant. It wasn’t until I was getting off that he started demanding Rs 1000. A far better price than the snake charmer, but I’m not paying $25 for sitting on an elephant for one minute, especially since that price is probably comparable to the two- and three-hour elephant rides we’ll see later in the tour.

I’m back in my room after eating dinner in the meeting room with Michael. He’s from Denmark and I’m so grateful he speaks perfect English. I’m also grateful that I could go tour the city with him today, as there is no way I’d have survived it alone.

I’m beginning to doubt my decision to spend six days alone in Mumbai. I keep hearing that there isn’t much to see and that I’d be better off going to Goa. I’m going to see if I can change my flight from Mumbai to Goa instead. Alternatively, I can take a train to Goa from Mumbai, but it’s a 12 hour journey each way, which will eat up two of my days (unless it’s a sleeper car, but I don’t know if I feel comfortable sleeping on a train alone).

Michael and I got back to the hotel around 4 and I slept for a couple of hours. It’s now a quarter after nine and I’m already really tired again, so I’m (hopefully) pretty much adjusted to the time difference. I guess waking up early and walking all day is all that’s needed to shift.

We took a rickshaw and a couple of auto-rickshaws today, which are both not as terrifying as one might expect. And we saw our first traffic accident, which was merely a bumper grazing another. Every. Single. Car. has dents all over it. And the nicest car I’ve seen so far was a brand new Honda Accord. This is not a land of luxury.

The computer’s battery is dying, as is mine. Time to recharge both for another day of India tomorrow.