India - A Rainbow of the Earth (May, 2011)

I am going to write this particular piece in English so that I could share with my Indian colleagues. Without them, the trip would not be as smooth as it was.

All my Indian colleagues warned me that May was the hottest month in the year in India, especially in the north. I was then well prepared for that, hat, umbrella, fans, sun block, water bottle, energy drinks, and even cold packs (I thought I was pretty creative to bring the cold packs, which were used when someone having a fever. Walking under 44C was like having a fever!). Chennai was not as hot as I expected but once I arrived Jaipur, I experienced the real ‘hot’. It was 44 degree Celsius!

I'm not going to go into details on the sightseeing places as you can read on any travel book. I'd rather tell you more about the people I met and what I experienced. Those would probably be more interesting.

I Was a Sightseeing Spot
It happened in almost all the sightseeing places I went to: some local people came up to me with a camera and asked, 'We would like a photo please.' 'Yes, for sure.' When I reached out my hand and prepared to grab the camera and take a nice shoot for them, this was the response, 'No no, I mean we want to take a photo with you.' 'Oh!' This happened also to many foreign visitors. Two English ladies I met in Shimla told me that they met a group of 15 teenage girls, and they were asked by the girls to take photo together, one by one. It took them around 20 minutes to take photos with all the girls. I had no problem with these requests as I believed it's a gesture of friendliness, so there were possibly more than 10 people who had my photo in their camera.

OMG!
A HK colleague of mine joined me to Agra to see the beautiful Taj Mahal. We departed from different cities, I went to Agra from Jaipur while he set off from Delhi. When we sat down for lunch in Agra, he told me his scary experience of the Indian train. He was taking an early train at around 6am, and the ticket was arranged in advance. When he arrived the Delhi train station and showed someone who dressed in a uniform his ticket to get through the security, he was told that he needed to get his ticket validate by getting a stamp from a government authorized travel agent. He was confused but he followed the instructions and went to a travel agent which was about 5 minutes on taxi. Once got off, he went upstairs to the office on the second floor, and then he heard the gate closed behind him. He got a chill in the spin and thought something went wrong. At the office on the second floor, someone looked at his ticket and checked on the computer database, and then told him his ticket was invalid and there was no more seat available on the train. He was shocked but then he thought the whole thing should be a scam. He stayed calm and asked to call his local Indian friend (who was our colleague in India). The group looked astonished for the request and then they told my colleague that he could possibly get his ticket validated at the train station. They let him go. My colleague jumped on a taxi outside and returned to the train station. The taxi driver, who should be of the same group, still tried to get his ticket with all kinds of excuses. My colleague gave him a total ignorance and he returned to the train station safely, and boarded on the train without any problem. No validation was asked at all. Later when I read in my travel book and found out that this kind of scam was actually pretty common. My colleague kindly gave me a consent for sharing this incident here so that it could be some advice for those who planned to go India. Don’t believe in any stranger at the train station, even if they looked like staff of train company. For any queries, you should go to the ticketing office.



My Movie Experience
Being in India, I felt like to go for a movie to experience the passion of films of the locals. I was not interested in the Bollywood movies and hence I went for The Pirates of the Caribbean – On Stranger Tides (Ha!). I grabbed my Indian colleague to go with me, and that was her first one for the Pirates series (and she told me she didn’t like it after the movie). When I expected to see lots of the movie lovers in the theatre, we met only one other audience. Yes, so there were altogether 3 of us to occupy the whole theatre. Probably I had picked a quiet time, or the locals did not love Johnny Depp as much as we did. Anyways. Everything, the setting, the tuck shops, the size of the theatre, etc., was actually very similar to that in Hong Kong, so it was not a totally new experience except there was a break in the middle of the movie. After around 2 hours, the screen was black out. I asked my colleague what happened and she said it’s a break. It was interesting to me as I did not expect a break in a 2.5-3 hours movie. Later did I learn that the Indian movies were usually long (4 hours on average) and a break was needed for the audience to get refreshed or to go to the toilets. Almost forgot to say, my colleague took me to the movie theatre on her motorbike. It’s cool!

The Tranquil Shimla
I visited 5 cities in India including Chennai, Jaipur, Agra, Delhi and Shimla. Shimla is located in the northern part on the Himalaya. It was the summer palace of the loyal family in the past. My Indian colleagues said it was a must to go, so even it took me 9 hours on bus to go from Delhi, I decided to take the advice. It proved to be a right decision. Shimla was absolutely beautiful! I arrived this pretty city in an early morning and was able to catch the dawn. It was so peaceful. Instead of shoppers, I met typical Shimla locals who was doing exercises, or students who were going to school. During the day, Shimla was a busy place filled with locals and tourists. I saw it many times that 2 people stopped on the street, shaked hands and chatted about daily life. You could tell the neighbourhood of Shimla was close, and the relationships between people was pretty good. Shimla was a green city, in which smoking was prohibited. And there were also many green actions carried out in the place such as tree plantation, warnings on littering, promotion of the importance of green, etc, all these made me love the place even more.


The Only Asian
During my 3-days stay in Shimla, I did not bump into any other Asian. There were some white foreigners but I doubted I was the only Asian there. It felt pretty funny to be the absolute minority. I actually felt totally care-free as no one would judge me on the traditional values of a Chinese or an Asian. On the other hand, I did aware of the curiosity from others for seeing a single Asian girl walking around. I made a small counting on the guesses from others on my nationality: more than 10 people thought I was a Malaysian; around 5 made a guess on Singaporean; 3 tried Korean then Japanese (I was not pale enough to make the first guess to be Japanese); and not a singal individual said I was a Chinese. I concluded that I must possess all the lovely features of our neighbours. The funnier thing was that this pattern actually carried on to Singapore (except the Korea and Japanese part). This reminded me of 2 staff at a Malaysian restaurant in Oxford insisted that I should have some origins of Malaysia, and they asked me to check with my father and grandfather.

The Funny Incidents
I encountered a few interesting incidents when I was in Shimla.
1. The crazy bus tour – I joined a local bus tour for visiting the areas nearby Shimla. There was nothing to see in the places we visited, while we spent almost 6 hours on the bus from one place to another. What made it even worse was that there was a group of locals who were not used to long hours travelling, especially on the zic-zac hill roads, they kept vomiting for three quarters of the bus journey. They kept their heads hanged on the windows for almost the whole time. I felt very sorry for them as it definitely was a torture. It was also a very bad experience for me, who sat in front of one of them. I needed to keep my window closed to avoid the dirt from coming in while the guy was vomiting.

2. ‘Saving the young lady from the monkey’ – Start visualizing King Kong holding the beautiful Naomi Watts on the top of the Empire State Building? You could stop now as it’s nothing like that. I was the young lady referring to (so no Naomi Watts). I was walking to the Institute of Advance Studies, one of the sightseeing places in Shimla. People tended to take a cab there so the road was rather quiet but in a nice way. I had entered the main gate and was walking up a slope to the main building. Suddenly, a big monkey jumped out about 20 metres in front of me (monkeys were all around in Shimla). It was an instinct that I stopped right where I was. And then there was an Indian guy ran from the behind and stood in front of me, and he tried to hold my arm. I avoided that even he could be just kind and try to protect me from the monkey. I started to walk towards the main building as it seemed that the monkey was not going to attack me. This guy walked besides me and he tried to hold my hand again (by the time the monkey had started to go away). I avoided him again and kept a distance from him. He then tried to be friendly by saying Hello and tried to shake hand with me. I ignored him and started talking in Cantonese to him, and he left me alone after a few minutes. I was glad that I did not see him again inside the Institute. Otherwise, I might need to try my Mandarin.



3. ‘It was a coincident that I met you again here!’ – It was not unusual for people to stop me and to exchange a few conversations while I was in India, and I was kind of used to that. There was one time I was having my dinner in a pretty nice restaurant. An Indian in his middle age walked past my table after dinner and stopped and asked where I was from and something like that. He then said that I looked tired and probably was too stress. He said he was a yoga tutor and so he could spot that I probably was not sleeping well, etc. Weird conversation but I put it aside after the guy left. After around 30 minutes, I was done with my dinner and I asked for the bill. It however took so long for the bill to come (for at least 10 minutes), which was not common. I asked for it again and again, and at the end I decided to pay at the cashier. I left the restaurant and I bumped into this yoga person within 30 metres of the restaurant. ‘Hi. It was such a coincident to meet you here again. I hope you would not think I am waiting for you here intentionally.’ ‘No no, I didn’t think like that.’ That’s the only answer I could give. We chatted for around 5 minutes (actually he was talking most of the time and I was giving responses like ‘yes’, ‘oh really!’, ‘ah-huh’, and then I ended the conversation and headed back to the hotel. It’s weird to me for the whole thing, as this man seemed so prepared for the topics he talked to me, and he explained for a few times that he was there just out of coincident. I tried to figure out what was it about for the whole incident. Then I recalled that this yoga man was having a drink with another man when I entered the restaurant, and then I remembered that was actually the cashier I paid to. I guessed the story should be like this: when I asked for my bill, this cashier called up his yoga friend and told him that I was about to leave (I saw the cashier calling on his mobile after I asked for my bill). The bill was not sent as he was buying time for his friend to return. Since I paid my bill at the till (which I left the restaurant earlier than expected) and hence I did not bump into this yoga man right outside the restaurant but close to it. It’s a wild guess but it sounded more reasonable than a pure coincidence.

4. Rainstorm – there was a rainstorm in an evening. The rain was crazy, which hit the windows hardly and water came in from the window. People told me it was not at all usual. Not only it rained, electricity was cut out too. Fortunately, the rainstorm was gone around 2 hours.



Understand a different culture vs Safety
Many of my friends were worried when I told them I was going to India on my own, especially my Indian friends. They said it was unusual for a girl to travel by herself, and they were worried that I might encounter some bad people. I promised them I would be very careful, would keep them updated on my location, and would call up in case for any unusual situations. It was true that I struggled some times to keep a balance between making new friends and ensuring my own safety. It would be meaningless to visit a place without trying to understanding the life of the local people. I however was reminded not to believe in everything I was told, and to keep a reasonable distance to avoid getting into any trouble. It's hard. I was lucky to meet more good people than the bads. Actually many people reached out their hands when I needed help. Also, I made a new friend in India, who was a girl from Delhi and she told me more about her country from the perspective of a local.

I still believe, by exchanging views and perspectives, we can pull people closer.



Thanks
Finally, I have to take this opportunity to thank my Indian colleagues once again for all the assistance. They made things easy, so that I could enojoy a nice trip. Also, I would like to pay tribute to our friend Joyce, who is the number one adventurer amongst my friends. Joyce, how could you travel to so many interesting but complicated places without any assistance? You are bravo!