Author: Joel

Delhi, India

The Hassle of the Hustle

Joel

Cairo may have been Hustle City, but Delhi must be the Hustle Capital of the world. I sort of knew this would be the case, judging from my experience with Indian merchants in other parts of the world. About the only people who will hustle you in Singapore, for example, are Indian tailors. They always start out casually chatting with you as you walk down the street. They like to act like they’re just sociable people who are interested in visitors. You learn to never answer questions like “is this your first visit?” in the affirmative because you quickly realize that it will only encourage them. The next thing you’ll know, they’ll be taking advantage of your naiveness while they herd you into their cousin’s shop.

So sure enough, in the lions den of hustle (so to speak), I found Delhi to have the most persistent hustlers I’ve ever come across. Now I had long heard that India was notorious for its hassles in getting from place to place and dealing with the crowds, but I found the hassle nothing compared to the hustle. In fact, the biggest hassle was from hustlers trying to “save” you from the alleged hassle of travelling through India.

At times it would get so bad walking around Connaught Place that I would have to retreat to my room back in the guest house. Not only did people constantly try to steer me into some travel agent or “emporium” of Indian relics, they would do so in such a persistent manner that I couldn’t help but become extremely protective of myself. I would initially try to respond politely, but when that only seemed to encourage them, I would end up snapping. I later found myself snapping at people on the street the second they opened their mouths with lines like “You look like a movie star!”

This was interspersed with beggars walking along side me and pleading for my money as well. Even some of the begging appeared to be hustling. I spotted families of beggars walking down the street before they saw me and they seemed to be healthy, happy people. Their kids were smiling and running around playing with each other. As soon as I came into view of them, however, that would all immediately change and they would start their groaning and begging act. It was quite disturbing.

The saddest incident happened when a group of kids tried to persuade me to visit a travel agent. I kept telling them I wasn’t interested, but they kept persisting with their sales pitch. I finally whipped around, glared, and snapped “I don’t care!”, only to find a frightened and confused look in their eyes — as though they honestly felt they were trying to do me a favor. Poor kids. I actually felt sorry for them. It was as if someone told them that they were doing an honorable service by helping tourists find places to spend all the money they were just dying to get rid of. As though I had been out on the street yelling that I had all this money and desperately needed somewhere to spend it all.

After a typical bout with the hustling, I would find myself back to the seclusion of my room at the guest house to watch my multitude of Indian cable-tv channels and nurse my post-traumatic hustle stress disorder.

Delhi, India

The Poverty

Joel

There were headlines in the India Times yesterday about a CIA study that concluded it would be inevitable that China and India would become the world’s next superpowers over the next twenty years. I didn’t get a chance to read the article, but it seems hard to imagine with all the problems India is currently facing — namely its poverty.

It almost seems as though a huge percentage of the population here is living on the streets. I had to venture out at 6AM for a trip to Agra the other day and I must have walked passed well over 100 people sleeping on the streets in a three block jaunt I had to make to hook up with my tour company. And those were just the ones I noticed who weren’t sleeping in total darkness. There were a number of fires burning along the way to keep several of them warm.

Along the train lines and along the highways outside of Delhi are tent villages with scores of people living outside. At most intersections and in shopping areas you will come across beggars, staring in the windows of your taxi or reaching in for money. If you happen to be in an autorickshaw, which is a noisy tricycle-type motorcycle with a roof but no doors, they’ll just climb in with you. Some are disabled, many are small children who spend their time otherwise playing with each other in the gutter or median strip, waiting for the next traffic light to stop traffic they can approach. No one seems to hand over any money to these people. Lonely Planet advises giving a donation to a charity that will look after them instead. It’s all quite disconcerting.

On the other end of the scale are the very wealthy, living in individual compounds that initally looked like embassys to me — each with big gates, guards, and servants. There seem to be door men for every store you go in and security guards lurking around inside, presumably to keep the homeless out. My guesthouse locks down tight from about 11PM until 9AM and has a guard sleep nearby the front door on the couch. Occasionally you’ll hear banging on the front door in the middle of the night, which is a bit creepy.

Agra, India

Sharing Highways with the Other Billion

Joel

I headed off on a long all-day tour down to the city of Agra and back yesterday, primarily to see the Taj Mahal, but also to see some of the other historic sites around the area.

The whole experience of getting there and back is something I don’t think I will ever forget. The drive took about four hours each way, and was about as treacherous as anything I’ve ever experienced. It doesn’t seem as though India has any safety regulations on its roads. Even when we were traveling down a paid turnpike, the road was full of roaming cows (I was wondering where all these sacred cows were since I hadn’t seen any in Delhi), camels and horses pulling carts, bicycles, motorcycles, motorized tricycles, pedestrians, buses, and trucks. And never a police officer in sight.

People generally drive down the middle of the road here, straight over the white lines — presumably to avoid hitting pedestrians and other dark, shadowy, slow moving traffic. This means everyone who comes up behind must lean on their horns to get drivers to pull over. Many trucks even have big signs painted on their backs asking you to honk. All you hear the whole way is horns honking continuously. Everytime you hit a traffic jam, the road appears about as organized as a clogged bumper car ride — with vehicles pointed in just about every direction.

One of the more unsettling experiences came when our van got a flat tire in the middle of the trip. The driver merely pulled half way out of the lane onto the shoulder on an outer curve of the highway. We weren’t ever asked to get off the vehicle. Instead we just sat there while he repaired the flat. While we sat there, large overloaded trucks continually came barrelling around the curve up from behind us and quickly had to swerve out of our lane to get into the clear lane. It was unbelievable!

At night there were many vehicles on the road with no reflective material of any kind — including some oversized trucks that would be barred from most Western roads without a lead and follow-up vehicle and lots of flashing lights. The air at night was full of smoke, burning from fires lit by all the homeless people living in tents along the road trying to keep warm, or big onerous factories belching black fumes from their smokestacks. Our van would typically come barreling down the highway to stumble across giant dark mysterious shape that would turn out to be a slow moving cart or truck pulling a massively over-packed loads. There was no break in speeding traffic. The whole experience was quite scary, but I never actually saw any accidents.

Agra, India

The Taj Mahal

Joel

What can I say? It’s an amazing building. The second you lay eyes on it, you’re mesmerized. It just commands your attention. You have to hand it to the Muslims: they certainly seem to have a keen sense for design. The Taj Mahal was designed by an Iranian architect, based on Islamic themes you find in many mosques throughout the Muslim world. Everything about the Taj is purely symmetrical.

The Taj Mahal is also full of optical illusions that give it a real presence on the landscape. Things like vertical lines that diverge as they run up the building were made to look parallel while you view them from the ground. When you enter the courtyard (the place where you see the most famous view of the Taj Mahal with the fountains in front), you can start stepping backwards and it will actually appear to get bigger the further back you walk. The surrounding towers lean slightly outward to protect the main building from earthquakes. Some circular columns that run up the building appear to be angular columns when viewed from more than 10 feet away. It’s an amazing place.

The building itself is pure white marble with designs raised or cut out and filled in with black marble and semi-precious stones. You can shine flashlights through the marble and illuminate different colors behind the stones. It’s supposed to be amazing to see late in the day when it illuminates in a range of colors as the sun sets, but it was a bit too hazy and the sunlight too defused for me to see the effect when I was there.

Delhi, India

Indians are doing it for themselves

Joel

India is proving to be quite a fascinating place. I feel as though I’ve had a pretty good primer on congested cities while visiting Cairo and a pretty good primer on Indian culture while visiting Singapore and Fiji (where there are large Indian populations).

Although Delhi has a comparable population to Cairo (12 vs 10 million), it seems much greener with lots of broad leaf trees and grassy parks, and is much more spread out. Kind of like Manhattan vs. Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, I guess. Its something my fellow travellers seem to notice immediately as well.

Unlike Cairo, however, there is a much greater variety of cultures, so I never seem to get tired of looking around. I’ve seen just about every vehicle imaginable travelling down the roads, and I have been through some sections that are even more congested than Cairo. And I’ve seen just about every kind of colorful food, flower, and craft product being sold from vendors alongside the roads.

There does seem to be a lot more poverty about, with beggars on just about every street corner. One major bonus about traveling around India (from my Delhi perspective, anyway) is that most people seem to be able to understand and speak English.

I’ve signed up for a few tours (gasp!) put on by the Indian government to help with my tight schedule here. The good thing about the tours is that the tourists are mostly Indians themselves (currently living overseas or in other Indian states), so I feel as though I’m not isolated from the culture I’m viewing. I did a tour of Old Delhi yesterday afternoon and got to see some exquisitely designed buildings in the “Red Fort”. We also made a visit to where Gandhi was cremated as well as a few Hindu and Muslim temples. All the people on the tour were very nice and sociable. I will do the New Delhi tour with them after travelling to Agra and the Taj Mahal tomorrow.

I spent most of my afternoon today browsing through the National Museum of India which had objects dating back to 4000BC. There were lots of intricate stone carvings from temples and a large collection of “Indian Minature Paintings” that were extremely detailed, beautiful, and absolutely fascinating to pour your eyes over. I spent a long time scruitinizing each one. One guard eventually walked up to me and said “You must be a teacher.”

My guest house is in a great central place in an area known as the “circus” that is loaded with good restaurants and shops. I even get a TV in my room that has 99 cable channels of pure Indian entertainment. No Western channels in sight!

You have to hand it to this country. With over a billion residents, it’s huge (poised to be the world’s largest in the next 20 years) and is definitely wrapped up in itself with little need to look to the West. Has it’s own movie industry (Bollywood’s bigger than Hollywood these days), it’s own culture, etc, etc. It hardly seems as though anyone around here even pays attention to what’s happening in the U.S. (unlike many countries around the world). I haven’t ever felt that way in any country I’ve visited OUTSIDE of the U.S. (the most famous of all for navel gazing).

Delhi, India

Dateline Delhi

Joel

So I’ve arrived in Delhi, India, after a few too many hops through the Persian Gulf region. The only flight I could get between Cairo and Delhi took me overnight through Bahrain, Adu Dubai (UAE), and Muscat (Oman), before heading up to Delhi. Each plane ride was only 1-2 hours long with 1-2 hour stops between each point — but all in the middle of the night.

So yes, I arrived exhausted, but was greeted at the airport and whisked to my guest house for a good long nap. The airline, Gulf Air, was quite nice and insisted on serving a hot meal for each of those short segments. There were plenty of Westerners about, in the terminals and on the planes. In fact, every stewardess was either European or Asian. The airport waiting areas seem to be full of people ranging from Saudi Arabian shieks doing their duty free shopping in the glitzy Bahrain airport to European hippies headed for India.

I got the impression that many of the Indians travelling on my last fight into Delhi had not flown in a while. When stewardesses game through the cabin to collect headsets, they would try to give them everything (pillows, blankets, magazines, etc). When my neighbor asked for a second helping of his Indian dinner, he got infuriated because he claimed the rest of his food got cold before they brought it — ruining his meal (as though he was in some fine restaraunt). The second the plane touched the ground, long after it has even gotten off the landing runway, half the Indians were already on their feet grabbing all their stuff out of the overhead lockers. The stewardesses were screaming at them to get back in their seats and buckled up.

This behaviour seemed to continue after we got off the plane. When we all arrived to go through immigration and customs, many of the Indians looked around and tried to scheme ways of circumventing the long “Indian Citizens Only” line. They would try sneaking through the non-Indian tourist processing line as though it might be a short cut, but the customs officers refused to serve them. I guess this behavior all comes from having to deal with the competition you face for attention from the other billion people in this country. That and perhaps a poor understanding of the English language.

Aswan, Cairo, Egypt, Luxor

The Hustle

Joel

The most tiring aspect of life in Egypt is having to endure the constant hustling. When you first arrive, they must sense your naiveness and big bright eyes because they seem to decend on you more. Now that I’ve learned to keep my head down, I tend to be left alone.

Although everyone I’ve met has been very friendly, the friendliest people have seemed to be the ones after your wallet. They are always trying to steer you into a shop somewhere, although sometimes innocently (I think). If anyone tries to be extra nice to you here, you can bet they’ll want money in the end.

The hustlers I really resent are the ones trying to con you in some way. They will lie to you about something being closed (whether its a museum or pyramid) in order for you to be bundled into their shop and given a hard sell on something. Or you may find yourself being given a “free” tour you never agreed to pay for but one you’ll be expected to give a hefty tip for.

Every tourist I’ve spoken with seems to agree that the area around the Great Pyramids in Giza is the worst. Its very hard to appreciate the significance of the pyramids when you’re being bugged every few minutes for a donkey, camel, or horse ride, or a tour guide. The other really bad places have been along the Nile in towns like Luxor and Aswan where you are constantly being asked to take a Felucca (sailboat) ride, a horse and buggy, or a taxi. It’s nice to get inside a museum, temple, or tomb because you’ll usually find a temporary moment of peace and quiet in there.

Other annoying hustling happens when children run up and ask you for Euros or adults try to charge you a toll for walking through their scenic neighborhoods. The worst place I found for this was in the beautiful Nubian villages on Elephantine Island in Aswan.

Photography can be difficult because a lot of people will try to demand money if they know they will be in your shot. Market stall owners will try to charge money to let you photograph the front of their stalls. I’ve been trying to sneak telephoto shots as a result.

It all gets a bit taxing, but as I said, I seem to be bothered by hustlers less and less the longer I hang around here. Either that or I’m just noticing it less.

Aswan, Cairo, Egypt, Luxor

A life in the Middle East

Joel

After spending about ten days here, I thought I would give you some reflections on life in the Middle East.

You can feel a slow transition of cultures as you work your way across the country. The further north and east you get, the more Middle Eastern everything feels. The more southern you get, the more African everything feels.

One of the hardest things to get used to is Arabic script. The tourist places will usually have English translations, but you won’t find them in a lot of areas. The most difficult thing are the numbers, which are unlike the numbering system you’ll find in the West or in Asia. They use a script that makes a “5” look like a “0” and a “0” look like a “-“, so “50” in English translates to “0-” in Arabic, among other things. Simple things like trying to find your train platform or an address on a street you’ve been able to find on an English language map are very difficult. The currency is printed in Arabic on one side and English on the other, so you have to keep flipping your money over to make sure your handing out the right amount.

The country is predominately Muslim, although there are a few old churches and synagogs about. While most Eqyptians don’t seem to be devoted enough to drop to their knees every day, there are plenty that do. The mosques call out for prayers early in the morning (before sunrise), around 3PM, and at sunset. Hearing all the mosques calling out is almost like hearing a multi-alarm fire going off at fire stations throughout your community. Except instead of a siren, you hear someone singing/wailing through a microphone. When travelling by train through country towns up and down the Nile the mosques are all decorated with neon lights.

Most women keep their heads covered, although some more than others. Some have everything but their eyes covered. Every time I have tried to speak with a woman in a head covering, she has attempted to communicate back in a friendly way, only to be snapped at in Arabic by a passing older man — forcing her to reel back somewhat. Many of the older men here dress in traditional clothing that resembles something along the lines of Libya leader Omar Khadafi’s getup.

The younger population seems a bit more hip, listening to funky Middle Eastern music and rap from the west. Many young kids seem to be learning English in school these days because they always seem eager to practice their English on you.

This all being said, virtually everyone I’ve interacted with has been very friendly and honest with me and their fellow Egyptians. It almost seems as though they’re all distantly related somehow (especially in more rural areas). They seem to know exactly how each person walking down the street fits into their huge extended family.

Aswan, Cairo, Egypt, Luxor

The Commute

Joel

Just thought I would fill you in on some interesting characteristics of travelling around Egypt, now that I’m back in Cairo:

I mentioned before at how crazy the drivers were in this city of 10 million. Nobody seems to pay any attention to lines in the road, traffic lights, or even police officers directing traffic. They may moderately slow down, but if they see a gap in cross traffic, they just surge straight through a red light. If police are out directing traffic, they’ll sneak behind them as soon as they turn their backs.

The biggest shock is their refusal to use headlights at night, for some reason. I asked one taxi driver why nobody liked to drive at night with their headlights on, and he told me they don’t use them if they can see without them. This applies to the country as well as the cities. Occasionally they’ll flash their headlights to warn someone who they think may not have seen them. It gets really dangerous on country roads because their are plenty of donkeys pulling carts without reflectors. This all being said, I have yet to see an accident (although I have witnessed a few very close calls).

As you can imagine, this makes being a pedestrian very scary. I find myself continually heading down side streets where the traffic is narrow and lighter or heading for subway tunnels to get across some of the more congested parts of town.

And speaking of donkeys, you’ve never seen anything as funny as someone riding on the back of a donkey. Unlike horses, they never seem to get off the ground. They just seem to roll along with little tiny bounces that resemble a dribbling basketball just before it starts to roll. It looks most uncomfortable for the riders.

Cairo happens to have a very nice subway system, although like everything else around here, it seems to be covered in a fine desert silt. Eqypt in predominantely Muslim, so they reserve the first few cars of every subway train for women only. Every time I see those cars roll by, the women look like they’re having a great time without any men around. Women are allowed to sit anywhere on the trains, it’s just that men can’t sit in these first few cars.

Boats use much the same custom, especially as you head south. I made the mistake of sitting in the women’s section of a ferry boat in Aswan and was politely invited to sit back with another guy in the rear section of the boat. He was very nice about it, but explained that it was their custom.

Taxi’s don’t use meters here, so you have to barter a fare before you get in. You can often get them to cut their prices in half. The most annoying thing about them is that they insist on honking everytime they see a tourist (inquiring whether they might want a taxi – just in case they hadn’t already thought of it on their own). It gets really annoying and makes a walking exploration of the city quite jarring and stressful.

When I was riding in one half hour taxi ride around sunrise, the driver promptly pulled over at the first hint of daylight, got out of the cab, aligned himself with Mecca, put his prayer mat down, got down on his knees, kissed the earth, and prayed for about five minutes. No meter involved since we bartered, so it didn’t cost me anything extra.

The cheapest way of getting around is to jump on a public taxi van. They seem to use the same system here that they were using in Fiji. Usually for about US$0.15 you can hop on a van packed with locals and ride as long as you want in whatever direction they’re circulating. It gets a bit wild and crazy as they boom funky music and try to cram as many passengers as they can in back, but it’s lots of fun. They seem to get a kick out of having a tourist travelling with them.

The overnight train here from Aswan was fine. They’re basically the same trains they use in Europe, and they tend to keep the tourists travelling separately from the general Egyptian population. I managed to get about five hours of sleep last night, which wasn’t too bad.

Security is pretty tight all over Egypt these days. There are armed guards with machine guns riding in the engine compartment of most trains. There are tourist police all over the popular tourist areas, and there are military check points on many roads leading around the country. Most of these police seem very friendly and eager to practice their English on you. Sometimes they’ll try to bum a cigarette off you in the end since just about everyone is a chain smoker around here.

Aswan, Egypt

Odd Egyptian Encounter #2: Aswan

Joel

With an hour to kill before my train was scheduled to depart Aswan for Cairo, I decided to take a walk around to a quiet city park so I could read my Lonely Planet Guide and plan my next few days back in Cairo.

There were plenty of local people relaxing in the park, but I finally managed to find an empty bench I could sit down on and read. The benches in the park were always paired with the two benches positioned back to back and facing in opposite directions from each other. My set of benches were empty on both sides.

While I started to read, I heard some Egyptian girls sit down on the bench behind me. As I continued to read my book, one of them said “Hello”. I turned and smiled and said hello back, figuring they just wanted to practice their English. There were three: two women in their late teens or early twenties, and a young girl of about 8. The woman saying hello to me happened to be very attractive.

I went back to reading my book. The same woman again said “Hello”, but this time added “My name is” and told me her name (which I can’t remember). I smiled and told her who I was. Every time I said anything to them, they seemed to look somewhat baffled at what I was saying as they tried to digest its meaning. Their English skills were obviously very limited.

I returned to reading my book when the same woman blurted out “I love you.” I love you? I mean, what do you say? Thinking she was joking, I turned and said “But you don’t even know me!” She looked very concerned that she couldn’t understand what I had said. She looked to the other woman for help in understanding me. I continued to try and talk with all three of these girls, but they just couldn’t understand what I was saying. The only one smiling was the little girl. I went back to my book. The other woman never really said anything but “hello” to me. She seemed to be there to support her friend.

Again this woman said even more forcefully “I love you!” and again, I could only nervously giggle. Every time I laughed, the little girl would giggle — but the woman looked more and more desperate and more and more forcefully said “I love you” again and again as she stared straight into my eyes. It was as though she was trying and put some voodoo on me, getting more and more frustrated it wasn’t working. All the English these girls seemed to know was “Hello”, “My name is”, and “I love you”. I couldn’t ask them to explain because they couldn’t understand a word I was saying.

Throughout this whole ordeal, older Arab men would occasionally walk past my bench and bark something at her in Arabic. She would usually sass something back to them in Arabic. Although most people seemed to be Muslim in the area, there were Catholic schools in town, and it was very possible she was Christian and not subject to Muslim customs — but I got the impression she may have been on a mission to be rescued from Egypt.

Perhaps she was placed into an arranged marriage she wanted no part of. Perhaps she was about to reach a point in her life where she would have been expected to start wearing traditional Muslim garb, like a head covering. Perhaps she just wanted to leave that part of the world. I will never know. And she obviously had no grasp of the complexities of moving to another part of the world. It’s not like I could have just taken her along with me.

Eventually a young man, perhaps a cousin, dropped by to talk with her after observing or hearing about what was going on. Soon he was joined by an older man, perhaps an uncle. They were both very polite to me and seemed to know a bit more English than the girls, but they also seemed to be quite concerned with her behavior and seemed to be lecturing her in Arabic.

In the end, I had to leave to catch my train. I shook each of their hands and said goodbye to them and headed off on my journey to Cairo. I cringed as I walked away, thinking that might have been offensive to them. The little girl seemed obviously off the hook because of her age, but I was quite concerned for the welfare of the other two women. Especially the one who repeatedly said she loved me. I just hope nothing bad happened to them afterwards. Such behavior in that part of the world is unheard of. I’m sure she was taking a big risk even talking to me.