Getting out of India. Last post.

Hi. For the last time. This is the last post.

I have safely arrived home. And a bit less safely spent 1 day in Tallinn and 3 days at a summer cottage with 4 friends. And in 3 days I'll leave to Latvia for a week, but maybe after THAT I can finally settle down here.

So. After leaving Jaipur I went to Delhi. In a few months in October they will have Commonwealth Games in Delhi. Commonwealth Games is like the Olympics for the British ex-colonies. So an interesting concept. All Indians hope it will be a huge event but some fear nobody cares about it. But for that, the whole Delhi is under construction. I have been told earlier that it's a crappy town but now that all the streets are torn open it seems to be even a bit crappier. So not the best place maybe, especially during monsoon.

There was a construction yard nearby. Traditionally the workers live next to the construction yard in this kind of fancy lodgings.

A guy at the campus was taking his monkey for a walk. Wait... what?

In Delhi I stayed at one Couchsurfing guy's place in a student dormitory by a college. It was an interesting place - a dormitory room in India. Not maybe the cleanest or the nicest but it works. The whole Monday was spent on traveling and on Tuesday we tried to go sightseeing a bit. But as it was raining it was a little pointless. So just wandered about and saw some places. But I honestly didn't really care much about anything, I was just smiling like lunatic the whole day as I knew I would get out of India the following day :)

Had to take a picture of these ridiculous police cars in Delhi. I couldn't help laughing about the idea of Indian police acting swiftly for at least the "complaints of citizens".

Somebody had decided to make a street broader. That's really easy in India - just cut one-meter piece off from each building.

So, I did get out of India. The plane was an hour late but no big deal. I came home. Sweet!

India is really an..interesting place. The whole thing has been an interesting experience. It wasn't as good as I hoped it would be, but now I know what India is like and at least it looks quite good in CV. I wouldn't really recommend India for others as a choice for a great place to live in, but it's ok to visit it and maybe travel around there. And, sure, I met people who had fallen in love with the country, but no, not me... So, I liked the experience but not the place.

Well, it's time to end this. Thanks to all the readers for..umm.. reading. And for leaving some comments. Hope this blog has brought some fun for you and maybe you know a bit of India now. And if you're planning to go there some day, feel free to consult me :) I can be contacted via email lauri.peltonen {a.t} alumni.helsinki.fi (replace {a.t} with @).

Scientific analysis on India

Disclaimer: The following post may be irritating for eyes and/or brain. The author takes no responsibility for injuries caused by the blog. Some parts of the post may contain exaggerations or faulty facts. The author also acknowledges that the blog is typically anyway full of bullshit but also that this time the bull may have overdone it.

The journey has come to an end, finally. Yesterday had some goodbye beers with colleagues from work. This day has been spent on curing a sudden and totally unexpected headache but also by doing some packing. Feels good to get out of here.

Farewell

Tomorrow I will go to yoga at 6 as I still need to bribe the teacher with some chocolate. Tried that this Friday but nobody showed up, probably because it was raining heavily. Gosh. After yoga I'll have breakfast at 9, then around 10 I'll go to the bus stop and have a goodbye beer with Pyry in a nearby bar if it's open and then I'll catch a bus to Delhi.

As I am soon a master of science, I know how proper research should be done. I have therefore taken it as my duty to perform a long-lasting objective research on the Indian culture and country. This has actually been my main reason for being here - objective and comparative research in the name of science.

For the research I have - over time - gathered a list of elements from this country and culture and categorized them. The following list has gone through several iterations and various peer reviews before published here. The elements are categorized in two categories: what is good in this country/culture and what is not good in this country/culture.

Let's start with the not-good-in-this-country/culture list. In an philanthropologic order:

- Infrastructure. Roads are extremily crappy, during monsoon they are full of water as there are very few sewers, trains are horrible and most of the buildings are horrible.
- Dirt. Everything is filthy and flies are everywhere. They banned the selling of plastic bags in this state a month ago which is a nice idea but I don't see how it helps for cleaning the nature and all places of all the garbage.
- Cleaning. Washing dishes is usually done with no washing liquids. Getting your laundry done is always a win-lose situation: in general clothes get cleaner but there appear multiple dirt spots everywhere in clothes. Also 99% of the cleaning of floors is done with tiny brooms; nobody seems to have realized that if you attach an extension stick to the broom you wouldn't need to be on your knees when you are cleaning.
- Locks. Yes, even locks. I haven't seen a single door in whole India which would have a built-in lock. All doors are locked with a padlock and the padlocks are absolutely horrible. I'll attach a picture with explanation.

A typical lock. The golden thing rotates freely so you need to align it with the straight hole in order to get your key in. This feat requires both hands. And of course to lock it you need to turn the key and hold the lock closed at the same time. Why can't they use locks which you just need to press to lock it? God damn. And I have to do this opening&closing many times a day as the family requires me to lock my door even for breakfast.

- Meat and beer culture. Nonexistent.
- Unpredictability. I am the only one who doesn't know when yoga is cancelled due to an imaginary reason. Also it's a habit here that you don't make appointments - you just walk in to an office and everyone expects everyone to always have time for them.
- Cold shower. I haven't had warm shower for a month now. The water comes from the rooftop from a black can which gets warm by the sunlight. And now that it's monsoon the water is quite cold. There's a boiler in my bathroom and I asked local dad if he could turn it on: "no, it does not work during summer." -"well could you make it work? I have no warm water." "no, it's not working during summer. Want me to bring you some hot water in a pan?". No thanks.
- Food and it being unhygienic. At constant intervals I have brown showers from my ass for a few days. And I haven't even dared to try some of the more exotic food options, like buying from the streets. Tani tried and it was not a pleasant experience.
- Shouting. Everyone always shouts everything. Yes, it bothers even me.
- Manly joy. Guys holding each others' arms and hugging each other. It's not ok to touch a girl in public but guys can do whatever they want...

The list could still go on. This is a summary of the findings of the research. And below are listed all the positive results of the research:

- Mangos.

Oh those emotions

Today is a special day. This week's Monday was also a special day but this one is more special. It's the last Wednesday in India. And this week's Monday was the last Monday in Jaipur. So on next week's Monday morning I'll be leaving to New Delhi. I arranged a couchsurfing hosting there who can also show me around.

As the departure gets nearer and nearer strange feelings surround me. This is the thing I have been waiting for. But lately I have also received another feeling: a little bit of sadness. Yes, it's true!

It hasn't been too much fun here. Haven't had many friends and there isn't much to do (for my cultural background at least). But still. This has become home, in a sense. Whenever I go traveling outside Jaipur it's always good to return 'home'. Here I at least have some idea of how things work. If in Finland I know 95% how things work, in Jaipur the percentage is maybe 50 and outside Jaipur in India it's maybe 35.

So leaving here means leaving one home. I've had a home abroad earlier but somehow that one was earlier to leave behind. Ok, that one had...issues (like the strangest roommate) but it was in a civilized country, Slovenia. So maybe here where the country is totally obscure a familiar 'home' - a place where you know how things work - is more important.

Ohwell. Still a week left. My plans for the rest of this week are simple - getting rid of my money. I need some in Delhi but not much maybe. So I need to do some shopping. Yesterday I already bought a black suit for myself. (It's not actually entirely black, there are small minorly-shiny stripes.) I had it tailored for me, took 2 weeks and costed 7200 rupees. Not a bad price I think. What other things I need? Could buy pants, sandals and some shirts. As everything is cheaper here anyway and the quality is quite good if you buy from a proper shop.

But let's see what my last week brings. Maybe I'll start crying when I leave. (Hah, as if.) I'll keep you posted.

Sightseeing! In Jaipur! Hurray!

Dear diary. Today I did some of the necessary evil. I went sightseeing.

I've been in this shaggy village for two months and I basically haven't visited any sights. Basically that's because I really don't care. It's like...going to see a new pile of garbage while living in dump pit. It's new and fascinating but it's still only shit.

Ok, don't get me wrong, the sights here can be nice and worth a visit. It's just that the surroundings don't really encourage you to want to see the sights. For example Taj Mahal was great. And this observatory I just visited here was nice. But to get there you need to swim through lakes of shit.

Indians have parked their vehicles. On the way to the Places.

I walked for about 90 minutes to get to the area I wanted. It's only a few kilometers away. I tried getting a tuktuk but they wanted 50 rupees instead of my offered 40 rupees so I didn't take one. 50 rupees is almost one euro, come on! So, I decided to just walk. And as I had no idea where exactly the places were (City Palace and the observatory, they are right next to each other) I got lost quite nicely. Almost took a rickshaw at one point but the conversation wasn't too encouraging:

- namaste. Will you take me to city palace?
- *shaking head in Indian style which can mean anything*
- no? fucking great.

After asking for directions a few times I finally found some place. I had no idea what it was but it was advertising itself as "now world heritage site 2010!". When I was in Mumbai with Tani we had bought tickets to the elephant island which is also a world heritage site. But nobody ever stamped the tickets or anything and the ticket says that it's valid on all of India's world heritage sites besides Taj Mahal. So I used that one. It clearly also says that it's for one-time use only. The guys at the gate had never seen such a ticket and when they saw the text "Not valid for Taj Mahal" they of course assumed that it was a ticket to Taj Mahal and didn't let me in. After I spelled out for them the meaning of the text they finally let me in. And didn't stamp the ticket.

A....thing. Round and big. For doing stuff.

Guess what this is. Yes, you guessed right! It's a sun clock! Measures time with an accuracy of 2 seconds, they claim.

Outer entrance to the City Palace. No need to go in.

After entering I asked some tourists what the place is. "This some planet stars here." Observatory! I had found it! But it just didn't look anything like the observatories I have earlier seen. It was a big open space with lots of different sun clocks and devices for measuring things. Huge devices. Nice place. Spent maybe fifteen minutes there and then tried to go to the City Palace. Well, it was closed at 5pm and I was 5 minutes late. Tough luck. But I was almost relieved - didn't have to go through another wonderful sight and I had the perfect excuse to just go home.

Now I believe I have done my duty. Seen some local sights. No need to see more. I hope.

Lalsot and more manly joy

It turned out we visited Lalsot. I wasn't sure where we are going. Or even better - I'm still not sure why we went there.

Lalsot is a place where Idex has delegated some volunteers. But the place is quite different - it's almost in desert and it's five degrees warmer there all the time. (What happens there when it's +48 in Jaipur? Not sure I wanna know.) The volunteers there are mostly high school kids from England. But doing a bit different stuff than the volunteer slum teachers here.

It's like a school trip for them. Except they go to India. They were first two weeks trekking around Rajasthan and now they are spending one week painting (yes, painting) some places in Lalsot. So half of the group was painting some shaggy building that was going to be some safe house for deserted children or something similar. The other is going to be a school. So, they trek for two weeks, paint for one week and after this they do something for one week (don't remember what). Then they go back home.

Our bus broke down. This is phase 1. In phase 2 they started welding something under the bus. While the passengers were waiting in the bus. That took a while..

Volunteers painting a classroom and us overseeing (watching).

We were drawing a lot of attention, as usual. The kids really don't seem to have anything better to do in India than to look at tourists during the day.

Clay huts. Not for the richest ones.

The only problem is that they pay loads of money for this of course. Volunteering means "you pay everything yourself". So I prefer being an intern when it's "we pay everything for you and even a tiny amount of salary". But in some countries doing some voluntary work looks very good in CV. I guess it's not such a big thing in Finland.

Anyway it was nice to see what the Idex volunteers do in other places. But there was very little for us to do - we were guided around and people told us different things. The whole thing was organized by a new British worker at the Jaipur office - she's going to be working there for a year somehow promoting the volunteer work. So she was very interested in seeing all that stuff and learning how things work. I think me, Tani and Pyry were not that interested. But it was something different than Jaipur, so all's well.

If you were a bit dumber you might think this is from any regular country. It looks almost normal! But, it's monsoon season. Before monsoon it has definately been quite different.

Lalsot. Upstairs was some Muslim prayer going on.

As an addition to my older post about manly joy, we saw now more of this manly joy. It's everywhere. But in the countryside it's even stronger. I'll attach a picture. We asked this new worker Caroline what it's all about as she's been in India for a few years already. The explanation she gave was a little scary.

Men in India cannot have anything with girls before they are married. And every person has some need for being close to somebody every now and then. So what are the options? Guess. So if you think about it for a while... Because you cannot touch a girl, you are 'forced' to touch men. I don't want to know how far it goes really. It still freaks me out to see men running across a street holding hands.

Manly joy. They seemed happy!

I'm glad it's ok in Europe to touch women. But it's of course just all about culture. Here it's nothing special to be close to men. And they don't care really if you're a Westerner or not - when we were at the local wedding with Pyry many local guys dragged us dancing with them. Closely. Or, well, tried to drag. Oh, these CULTURAL DIFFERENCES. That's what I always tell people who ask what I think of India. "It's very interesting as everything is so different." In other words, I am not used to the culture and I don't want to be.

P.S. Oh, remember the DND service I ordered to my cellphone? The one that should block the stupid advertisements and quiz questions? Well, surprisingly it still hasn't got activated. So today I noticed that I have way too much credits left in my prepaid. So I decided to try some of those stupid services that come to my cellphone all the time. The first one offered knowledge on "Are you in love?". I ordered the service, it costed 3 rupees and a minute later got the answer "This information is not available now.". Uh. So I tried the next one. "How to get as sexy as Bibasha Basu (a famous actor)?". One minute more and same answer. Third time was the same. So what the hell. They offer this incredibly stupid service which drains my cell phone battery and is next to impossible to stop and the service doesn't even WORK? Sure, they got my 9 rupees. Nice business model. India.

The Hut

Now I have seen everything I really needed to see here. The Taj Mahal. I haven't really had too many plans of seeing stuff, but Taj Mahal was a place everyone simply has to see if in India. Especially if you're up north as it was only 5-6 hours bus drive from Jaipur.

Well, it was nice. And better than in pictures, of course. Quite impressive! But when you go inside it there's very little to see - just a tomb. So you better stay outside and take pictures. Getting to the area costs 750 rupees which is a lot of money around here. Of course if you're local you pay just 20 rupees which seems to be the logic here. I guess it's ok though - tourists can afford lots more anyway. And if the price was 750 rupees for a local person aswell I doubt there would be more than 10 of those per day. Now there were plenty.

Approaching the palace.

Me and the Hut. The obligatory picture.

Nice one...

The city Agra around Taj Mahal is nothing special really. Basically it's a tourist trap built around the palace. We were warned of the many touts and people trying to cheat you but it wasn't as bad as I expected. Or maybe I'm getting used to just ignoring the touts.

We left to Agra on Saturday around 2pm. Took 5 hours, then we had some beers and went to bed. And got up early. Taj Mahal opens at 6am and everyone says it's best when the sun rises. So we tried to get up for that but eventually we managed to get there maybe around 8am. One of the reasons was that the ticket counter is 1km off from the actual palace. Which is really logical. After the visit we wandered around and left for Jaipur at half past four. With some crappy bus with no AC and it took 6 hours this time. Ohwell.

We had a habit of shooting stray cows. Or, well, the gun didn't really work but we might have! For some beef. Mom, please prepare some beef steak for me when I get home. Ok..?

A lot of similar people were walking somewhere. Something was happening somewhere. This happens a lot around India - there's always something somewhere but impossible to know what and where and why.

They sell everything in India.

Overall, I am now ready. I have seen Taj Mahal. I have seen Mumbai. I have seen some places nearby and will see one more on Wednesday (place called Lalsot). Oh, and Jaipur. Although I think I haven't seen any of the sights here yet. Maybe I should dedicate some day to go through those.. Not too interested though. Two weeks time.

The Taj Mahal night guards didn't appreciate our nightly shortcuts. Ohwell.

P.S. Today I got a package from my parents. A book about the Finnish nature, in English. They wanted to send a present to my host family for taking care of me. The book is actually really nice but reading it made me miss Finland again more... Gosh.

Pictures that should've been here

Hi

I have been taking some pictures here and there but they haven't fit my posts, I have been too lazy or something equally silly. So the pictures never made it here. So here are some of the pictures that I didn't put here.

A park in Mumbai had bought two pieces of the latest Cut-O-Matic-2000 series.

It was a little wet in Mumbai. But if you have decided to play football..what can you do.

Building a building in Mumbai. The whole country is full of buildings like this - many of them never complete and even if they do they remain mostly unused. Especially shopping centers...

Taxis in Mumbai. They were simply the best.

From a bar in Mumbai. The guy at the left is the best - some holy guy eating in the most Western bar there is.

Raj Mandir in Jaipur. Once the biggest and best movie theater in the country, now just the state's best. Just one theater inside this.

Inside Raj Mandir. This is the 'lobby'.

View over rooftops in Jaipur. This is what it all looks like.

Me an Pyry buying a wedding gift. It was some silly picture of some god-thing.

Outside my yoga place. As there is a street, the poorest people can live on it. They are sleeping under the canvases currently. Picture before the yoga.

Picture after my yoga of the same place. Pretty...miserable.

P.S. Tomorrow (Saturday) we are planning to go to Agra. Taj Mahal! And on next week's Wednesday to..umm...forgot the name already. Some place where Idex has volunteers, a few hours' drive from Jaipur.

Incredible India

I was having a breakfast 10 minutes ago. Yesterday evening the family slave had brought me some clothes that I had given for him to wash earlier. I noticed that two of them had big rust stains on them so I brought the shirts to breakfast and asked about them from my local dad.

The conversation went something like this (omitting most of the English problems of the dad):
me: why do my shirts have stains like this? They also smell totally awful.
dad: they come from the humidity. From the water. They dry slow and that's why the smell. Everyone here is used to that.
me: Well they look like rust stains. But why on earth would I have rust stains on my clothes?
dad: It's the monsoon. Water in the air. It reacts.
me: Eh. Reacts with what? You're not drying my clothes on iron strings, right?
dad: Yes, iron strings! Reacts with water.
me: Are you serious? You dry clothes on iron strings when it's raining?
dad: Everyone in India uses iron strings for drying clothes. They last forever.

So. The dad even brought a shirt of his own with a rust stain. 'Everyone is used to these'. So everyone dries clothes on iron strings. And gets rust stains. Like... WHAT THE HELL. I tried telling him about using some plastic strings but he wouldn't listen. "In Finland you use plastic strings". And that was a more of a statement, not a question.

This country is just totally totally wrong. I didn't believe this sort of thing was possible. I'm just totally pissed off due to things like this. The problem is that there are a lot of similar things. And the good side is that I only have 3 weeks left in this country. Jesus.

P.S. Oh, forgot to mention. Went to yoga this morning. Waiter for 15 minutes and the instructor didn't come. Went back home. So I woke up before 6am for nothing. Happy morning.

Rajasthani man!

Pushkar was great. Anything is great compared to Jaipur.

As I mentioned, it's a holy city. In the middle of the city there's a big pond which they believe was formed by something like Lord Shiva dropping a lotus flower on Earth and that created the pond. Currently the holy pond looks like Lord Shiva dropped something from his behind there. It's not very clean. Will attach some pictures.

The holy lake.

Gaurav from office had reserved places for us from a train on Saturday morning 8:55. The train was labeled "special train" in the schedules. We soon figured out why. It was 3 hours late and it always just postponed it by half an hour so we couldn't really go anywhere. The weekend started nicely by everyone being pissed off. Seriously, never take a train here. The tickets are hard to get and the trains suck. Buses are much much better and easier.

Rooftop view of the city.

Well, we eventually arrived to Pushkar in the evening. We spent a few hours in a town called Ajmer which is a necessary middle station, had to switch to a bus there. Went sightseeing for some beers there and found a really cool bar! In India! I'll show you a picture :)

The bar in Ajmer. These are all empty beer boxes! What a decoration.

Anyway. In Pushkar it was already dark. Although alcohol is forbidden there, we found some places that sell beer. From under the table, and we had to keep the beers under the table. And on Sunday in one place we went to, they even brought the beers in tea pots! So we were having a charming tea party in a holy Indian city! It was so cute! But we didn't find meat anywhere. It was ok, I guess we are already used to eating the holy food.

Tea party. Turban should be lower but the seller made it too small for me.

On Sunday we also did some shopping. We all bought turbans. And Tani and Pyry also bought some local style shirts, very light and quite cheap. The turbans were probably the best thing to buy in India - every second people on the streets yelled something positive to us. Quite often we were "Rajasthani man" or "You look half Indian!". It was all quite confusing. As the city itself is quite touristic (saw more Westerners there in a day than I will ever see here) it felt quite strange to be the middle of attention - tourists are supposed to be taking pictures of everyone and everything else, not the other way around. Every second local guy seemed to want a picture of us. I will bring the turban to Finland and maybe wear it in some job interviews. Let's see what happens. I even learned to tie it myself!

This is actually the closest we got to temples...

Now the life goes on regularily again. Came home yesterday quite late so I didn't go to yoga this morning. I actually haven't been there for a week due to being sick, mostly. On last week's Monday the teacher borrowed me a yoga book so would have some idea what it's about. After that he hasn't seen me anymore. I wonder what he thinks :) But, tomorrow...