Planes, trains, and auto-rickshaws: A Chutney Christmas

Hey you folks, because Zar couldn´t publish directly from his iPad there in India, he emailed me the text and the pictures and asked me to do it.  Wish I could take credit for this great post. Enjoy!

Hello again Johns family blog followers! Or should I say "namaste"? It's time again for the much anticipated annual Zar blogo posto. I would like to start by apologizing for the length and incoherency in the following post. I wrote most of it during our train rides and didn't get to post until we got to a hotel with wifi. Hope you enjoy!

 

For this Christmas, we decided to do our best to increase the number of Johns family blog followers by traveling to the country responsible for 1/7th of the world's population: India. After our 8-hour flight, our adventure began by booking an autoricshaw to take us to our hotel.

 

Mel and Zar in a rickshaw

 

He didnt really know where he was going, so he simply asked other rickshaw drivers at every red light. After passing our hotel's street on the highway's gateway, our driver simple did a 180 (i.e. against the flow of traffic) and honked his way through the oncoming cars until we got to the right street. We got to the hotel and relaxed for a bit before going to the house where Gandhi spent his last year and was eventually murdered while leading a prayer.  Below is a picture of his bed, as well as the final steps he took toward the altar where he was shot. It was a really touching museum and was actually quite inspirational to see what he was able to accomplish through non violent means.

 

Ghandi's last steps

 

By the time we finished it was pretty late, so we headed for our first real Indian meal. One thing we were warned about was that the cab drivers tend to be pretty pushy in terms of where they want to take you. Hailing a cab usually consists of walking out of a tourist site, choosing one of the four men who harness you as soon as you get out, convincing him that you want to go to where you are telling him to take you ("no my friend. You don't want to go there. that place is poor/dirty/closed/does not exists. Go to my friend's hotel instead. It's very nice"), and finally arguing for the price you want to pay to get there. In this given instance we let the cab driver win. He took us to his recommended restaurant and charged us double what we should have paid. Given that the food was really good, and the cab ride was less than 3 dollars, we didn't mind it very much.

 

The next day we went on our ultra fast pace sight seeing adventure. Several tombs, forts, and mosques all from the mughal empire 500 years ago. My favorite was visiting a library where emperor humayan died while running down the stairs. That story was literally the only thing I remember about the Mughals from coach K's world history class( ring any bells Carolyn?). I'm not sure if coach would be proud that I remembered such a minute detail about an emperors death or ashamed that Mel and I had forgotten everything he taught us about one of the most powerful empires in non western history. My second favorite thing was at the jama masjid, where Mel had to cover her immodest outfit consisting of jeans and a jacket in order to enter.

 

Immodest Mel

 

My least favorite thing was not being able to see a couple of the sights due to the massive protests that are happening in Delhi right now. Apparently the police used tear gas and cold water from fire trucks to clear the protesters after we left the area.

 

The next day Mel got sick with what will hopefully be the only case of Delhi belly we experience. We had to cancel most of our adventures for the day. I went to the train station to check that everything was in order for our next trip, then stopped at these amazing buildings used 300 years ago to measure the distance of the sun, the diameter of the sun and moon, and other celestial measurements.

 

Astronomy building 

 

For dinner we had planned to meet with a friend from Oxford who is from Delhi. Mel insisted that I go, so her Christmas Eve dinner consisted of take-out curry, and mine consisted of a massive feast with Akul. I can't remember the last time I got a stomach ache just from having too much food in my stomach. It was amazing! When I got back home, we stayed up a little bit to wait for santa and then went to bed before our 4 a.m. cab ride to the train station. Our hotel insisted we take it two hours before our 6 a.m. train just in case traffic was bad.

 

Christmas Day: due to the lack of traffic, we got to the train station 1.5 hours early only to find that our train was delayed by two hours. We spent about thirty minutes getting harassed by several "touts" telling us what to do. All of them insisted they didn't want any money and only wanted to help us. Mel eventually yelled at one of them that we would do what we want and to leave us alone. You go Mel! Our children better beware. After spending 4 hours of Christmas morning trying to entertain ourselves at the train station by playing get-to-know-you games (she still won't tell me who her favorite sister is ), we boarded our train. It has since been 5 hours and we have still not completed our "two-hour" train trip to Agra. So far I would say the last ten hours have made for the worst Christmas ever, but who knows--the Taj Mahal may make it all worth it after all. We're currently still stuck, so for now this adventure remains to be continued...

 

I would like to take this time to thank one of our sponsors, the Call family. After reading and loving the book/movie Eat, Pray, Love, Cat insisted we have a similar adventure to really find ourselves. Thank you Call family! Merry Christmas.
 

December 26:

And we're back! We are on a train again, this time headed for Jaipur. Agra was ridiculous! In a good way. Our train adventures finally ended at 3 pm. In total, what should have been a 4 to 8am Christmas train trip took 11 hours! By the time we got to Agra, we only 2 hours to see the sights, so we had to cancel seeing everything other than the Taj Mahal. Worth it! It was absolutely breathtaking. I think the best description comes down to just one word: big. It was sooo much bigger than I could have ever imagined. All from perfect white marble. You can tell that emperor Shah Jahan really loved his wife. I promised Mel that if she dies giving birth to our 14th child, I too will build her a Mahal to help me deal with the grief. The best part though was not the building itself. It was a small Indian man who came up to us and asked if we would take a picture with him. When we said yes, we were immediately swarmed by at least 3 generations of this man's family. I've attached the picture I had them take with my camera. Our first Christmas family picture! I'll photo shop the rest of the Johns family in later. After we took the picture, it was time for the individual shots. I was not invited to be in these, but Mel took an individual picture with several of the kids. After the fourth one, her smile started fading. By the fifth grandchild she just stared at the camera, and by the sixth, she just said, " Okay. Thank you" and walked away from our new Indian family.

 

Our new family at the Taj Mahal

 

After the Taj we asked our taxi driver to take us to a restaurant Mel had chosen from the guidebook. To this he of course replied, "Oh you like restaurants? I know 1 restaurants, 2 restaurants, 3 restaurants, 4 restaurants. Which one do you want me to take you to?" "The one I just told you," Mel replied. It took a while, but she finally convinced him. This guy worked for our hotel and was with us all day. Mel and I had already agreed not to have a cab driver for more than one ride (they all offer to go around with you all day, and we had already had a bad experience with it in Delhi.). Each time it was a hassle convincing him to do what we wanted. It turns out they get little coupons every time they take a customer to certain restaurants and bazaars, which confirms what we thought might have been happening in Delhi. Other memorable stories from this guy included:

 

1.  He was supposed to pick us up from the train station, but when we got there no one was there with a "Baltazar Zavala" sign. We figured it was because we were 7 hours late, but actually it turns out he was there the whole time holding a sign for "Bahaunur". Given that the hotel got all of my information from emails where Mel clearly wrote my name, I'm not sure how Baltazar Zavala became "Bahaunur". The hotel blamed us, but Mel refused to pay the three-dollar cab ride out of principle. The force is strong in this one.
2. "That is Kentucky Fried Chicken. It is a famous Japanese chicken restaurant."
3. After spending 4 hours with us having a very hard time understanding him, he sincerely asked, "Do you not speak English?"

 

For dinner we went to a very nice restaurant on the rooftop of a five star hotel. Everything was extremely overpriced though. Easily 3 times more than it should have been just because it was a five star hotel overlooking the Taj Mahal. Each entree was 10 dollars. It was well worth it though, and made for a nice cap on our most adventurous Christmas yet. We miss you guys a lot and hope you all had a very merry Christmas. I'm not sure if our next hotel will have wifi.  I hope it does so I can post this bad boy on the blog. If it doesn't, the rest of my post will contain even more stories and shatter the record for longest post ever. Sorry for rambling : ( It's the Latino coming out of me.) Feliz navidad!

 

Time to give another shout out to our trip sponsors: Paty, Mary Lee, and Bill. I'm sure it's hard to not see your kids for Christmas, especially when they chose to spend it with an Indian family they don't know instead of spending it with you. We miss you soooo much. Thank you!!

 

December 26th night time:

Our hotel has wifi! Our train ride today was completely on time. We took a rickshaw to our hotel with a driver that was very insistent that he should be our tour guide for our time in Jaipur. He followed us into the hotel lobby even after we were clearly ignoring him completely. He then waited around an extra half hour for us. I know this because I went down to reception to ask for something and he popped up and said, "are you ready?" I said no thanks, and luckily he was gone when we were ready to go. After that incident though, the rest of the day was fantastic. We went to the old city center, and saw the palace and another one of the big collections of buildings for astronomical and astrological measurements. Just like the one in Delhi, it was mind blowing what people were able to accomplish 300 years ago using geometry and the sun. We also saw some monkeys that live in the trees around the buildings while we were there. After that, we decided to finally give haggling a shot and go shopping for some souvenirs. I used the technique I learned while I was in china. Whenever you want to buy the same present for a lot of people, you always buy one at the lowest price you can get (usually 50 percent of the first price they offer) knowing that you will get ripped off. Once you have one, you walk up to any other store and ask how much they cost there. You then act really disappointed that you got ripped off and the guy will offer you the same thing for twenty five percent off. You say you already have one and have no need for two. They then suggest you get them for friends and you say no several times. You then walk away, and they come chasing you offering it for anywhere between 50 to 75 percent off of what you paid for the first one. Works every time! I hope you all enjoy the little Hindu god I bought everyone. I'll let you fight over who gets Ganesh, the one with the elephant head.

 

After we finished haggling, it was pretty late and Mel wanted to go home. I insisted we go see this one temple though that was open until very late. She was reluctant, but I managed to convince her. When we got to the "temple", she soon realized I had surprised her with a Christmas spa experience. She was thrilled and insisted I get one too. It was amazing. Full body oil massage. I expect we'll sleep like babies tonight.

 

Well, that's it for our trip for now. We have four cities left, and each of them gets warmer than the one before. Our last three days will be on the Goan beaches hoping not to get sun burnt by the 90 degree weather. Ha! Sorry for writing such a long post. Just wanted to make sure you all knew we were safe.

 

Pretty Mel

 

Pensive Zar

 

 

 

Namaste!