Lessons learned from travelling in India

1. Washroom is literally a stall that you can wash yourself in. You must ask for a "toilet" instead.

2. Never trust a business's advertising as showing what is available.

At stores it will be stated that some products or services are available there, however, when you ask for this, the employees will tell you that this is not the case (as though you should have known) and send you to the next business. You will have to continue this search from business to business until you eventually find one that meets your needs. Indians are often very helpful in showing you the way to the next business may help you out. Overall, this is a very different business approach than is used in the West.

At restaurants, there may be a large menu, however when it comes time to order, the waiter will tell you that whatever you want to order is not available. The menu suddenly shrinks to a very small amount of items that you may not understand what they are. At this point, the waiter will tell you what you must get (they often forcefully make the recommendation but it is with good intention because it is often the item that the restaurant is best at or the bread that the area is known for).

To approach this problem, you must be very patient and be prepared for things not working the way you want them to. You can get almost anything you want and need in India, as long as you put in the time.

3. With any food that you eat and are unsure of, take caution of anything that is served in a disproportionately small size compared with the rest of the meal. This is often extremely spicy!

4. Unless there is a marked price, you can and should bargain for a fair price.

5. There is no one Indian English accent.

There are so many different languages spoken in India.  Many people speak more than one Indian language as well as English. English is the national language because it can be a common language between everyone. Because of all the different Indian languages that influence their pronunciation,  I have not been able to recognize a common Indian English accent. Some are easier to understand than others. In Tamil Nadu I had the hardest time understanding their English because they spoke it so fast that it sounded like another language.

6. Showering involves a bucket and pail and does not always involve hot water.

7. Power outages are a common occurrence. Try not to heavily depend on electricity and be prepared to improvise.

8. Anything white does not stay white.

Clothes are hand washed in Indian and white becomes dirty quickly with the heat and dust. Although white may look great the first time that you wear it after purchase, it will never look that good even after a good scrub. You either have to embrace beige clothes or opt for different colour choices in clothing.

Indian Food

As I have already talked about several times in this blog, chai (masala, milky tea) is a very popular drink in India and it is served multiple times in the day. Usually it is at least served in the morning with breakfast and in the afternoon, between lunch and dinner. It will also be served to welcome a guest (at any point in the day). Chai is also served by vendors on the street and on the trains, making it the safest street food.

The typical breakfast consists of idli, sambar, chutney, and vadas. Idli is a savory cake made from rice. It has a very mild taste and is eaten with sambar and chutney. Sambar is a vegetable stew. Each place makes their own variation of sambar and it is very delicious. Usually the sambar is poured over top of the idli and chutney is used as an additional taste. Vadas look just like mini donuts. They are savory deep fried donuts made of dal, lentil, flour, and potato. They are either eaten alone or dipped in chutney and sambar.

The lunches and dinners are very similar in that they are heavy and contain many different kinds of bread, rice, stew, and sauces. Nann is a bread of the north so I have not been getting much of it yet. Typically, I have been eating roti, chapatti, parata, and dosa. My favourite dishes are aloo gobi (potato and cauliflower), channa masala (chick peas), and dal (lentils).

The restaurants are easily distinguished as being vegetarian and non-vegetarian (although the non-veg restaurants have many vegetarian dishes on their menu. The food is very cheap- typically a meal will cost about 2-4 Canadian dollars.

Thali is a typical item at restaurants in India. Some restaurants will have such a limited menu that they will not serve much else than thali. A thali is a selection of different dishes, served in small bowls on a round tray. Each thali that I have had is different, served with the specialties of the restaurant or area. It is a great way to try new things without having to know what they are on the menu. Thalis are served with rice and different kinds of bread on a banana leaf. Along with the main dishes in the thali, there will be one bowl with yogurt (to cool the spice), one very spicy sauce or chili (to add- as if there isn't enough flavour), and one with some sort of dessert. I am still not totally sure what is the correct way to eat a thali because I don't know what is supposed to go together but it seems to taste great when I mix different dishes together and add yogurt.

I have not been able to find a type of Indian dessert that I like. I find that they are so sweet that they overpower any other flavour. The sweetness makes the dessert so rich that I can not eat more than one or two bites.

Indians have a specific way of eating thali that I have not been able to master yet. At first it looks as though they are really messy eaters but upon further observation I noticed that they are very organized and at the end of the meal, the plates are clean. There are no utensils used when eating thali and you can not use your right hand at any time. They pour the sauce from each dish on the rice and mix it around quickly with their fingers tips so that it is a good consistency then they pick it up and expertly bring it to their mouth without dropping a single grain of rice. This is surprisingly hard to do without getting your hands dirty or dropping your food everywhere.

First day of Classes

Today was my first day of Indian classes in Mysore. I will be here for the next three and a half weeks studying. The day of classes started at 9:00am and went to 7:30pm with breaks for lunch and chai. I am really getting used to having tea time everyday!

My classes today were Women and Gender studies, Science and Technology, Culture and Civilization of India, and Hindi (the language, Hindu is the religion). My first two classes were pretty interesting and the teachers were easy to understand, however, I had trouble understanding my teacher for Culture and Civilization of India. For that class, the teacher spoke at least 4 Indian languages and he had a very thick accent when he was speaking in English. The lecture style is also very different that I am used to at university. There were no visual aids other than a board at the front of the room that the professor rarely used. There are many Hindu myths and stories that are important to Indian culture and during our class, the professor told us two important stories. Initially I was able to keep up but as the stories got longer and more elaborate I was totally lost. Each one contained many characters that were related to one another in some way and many had names that sounded very similar to me. Apparently there is symbolic meaning related to each of the characters and the stories are used to influence people about what to do and what not to do. In true Indian fashion, there was a power outage in the middle of this class. We continued the class as usual as these things happen all the time and the power usually returns quickly.

My teacher for Hindi seems really enthusiastic and patient, which will be nice because I think that I will have lots of trouble learning such a different language. Hindi will be more useful in the North, which is where I am headed in about a month.

We started to learn the vowels in Hindi and were practising writing the alphabet when we heard a girl from our group screaming from outside of the classroom. We ran out to see what had happened and there was a monkey, sitting on the ledge outside of the classroom eating bananas. Apparently this monkey had walked into the girl's room while she was in there and stole the bananas from her shopping bag and ran away to eat them. We all wanted to get close to the monkey but our Indian professors strongly warned against this and tried to scare them away instead. I learned that these monkeys are very dangerous as they can bite and scratch. As with many animals in India, monkeys are sacred and you can not kill them. We were told that every morning, the groundskeeper at our school residence goes around the property shooting the monkeys with a pellet gun in order to scare them off.

After Hindi we had a presentation on yoga from the Vivekanada Yoga Education and Research Center. Yoga is derived from the Sansrit "Yij", which means union or join. After a brief introduction to yoga, we had a demonstration by a group of kids who practised yoga at this center. These kids were so flexible that it was hard to see some of their poses without feeling sick. One boy was double jointed almost everywhere and could fold in half and fold into a pretzel very easily. Many of the children started yoga when they were very young and participated in competitions, like children do at home for dance. The owner of the Yoga center told us that it was best if the children started practising yoga at 8 or earlier.

Rainforest

For five days we are staying in the rainforest- in the Western Ghats near the town of Madakari. Our group was split up into a large group who were staying at a place named Rainforest Retreat and a smaller group staying at a place named Golden Mist.

I am staying with the smaller group at Golden Mist. Golden Mist is owned by a German man named Ludwig. Apparently this place does not take many guests and it is not very many people know about it. Ludwig is a very soft spoken man who says that the right things just happened in his life and he made many decisions where he just followed his gut feeling and that led him to his life here in India. He lives here with his two German shepherds and a few Indian staff. On the property where we are staying, Ludwig does organic agriculture and has built several little cottages for guests to stay at. He says that because of the extreme rainfall, agriculture is not profitable enough for him to make a living so he takes guests although he does not like to do this too much. He grows coffee, tea, vanilla, pepper, cardamon, and rice. Apparently he was once a very successful landscaper in Germany and could have supported himself very well in that business although it was not what he enjoyed and he was not totally concerned with making lots of money.

In golden mist, six of us are staying in a really cozy cottage with a fire place and a nook to sleep in. It is really nice to stay with a smaller group and we are getting really close. At night and in the early morning the temperature drops and you can hear the crickets very loudly.

Rainforest Retreat is owned by a couple named Sujetta and Annu. Sujetta has a PhD in Botany and Annu has a PhD in Molecular Biology. They perform research in organic, conservation agriculture and have a 13 year old daughter named Maya.

During our time in the rainforest we are harvesting and processing organic coffee, tea, and vanilla. We are also studying many of the other flora and fauna. We visited an elementary school in the rainforest were there are 8 students studying. These children would only know their very secluded part of the rainforest and many would stay there for their entire life. We tried to tell them a little about Canada and taught them a camp song (There was a Great Big Moose). They were really cute although very shy.

When we were waiting for the bus to take us up the mountain from the elementary school to the Rainforest Retreat, a few girls from the trip and I had a really good conversation with one of the interns from the Rainforest Retreat. She was from India and studied International Development and International Relations in the UK. It was a really good opportunity because she had experienced another culture that was similar to ours and was able to see some of the differences.

She said that western culture is more open to new things and there is an importance of individuality. She said that western people are more expressive. She explained that Indian culture is very traditional and that Indians are not able to be as expressive because they are restricted by their obligations. Indians are expected to act a certain way based on their sex and caste and also, a person's actions are a direct reflection and representation of their family. She thought that it holds some Indians from finding out who they really are.

The most interesting thing that the intern from the Rainforest Retreat told us was about the significance of the bindi (marking that Indians wear on their forehead). She said that when someone is angry, they will rub their forehead and the action of doing this is like acupuncture on the pressure point to relieve some of this anger. The bindi is placed at the pressure point between the eyebrows in order to keep acupuncture on this point.　This is significant because it reminds people not to react and to be peaceful. This is a very important aspect of Hinduism. I have seen women with all kinds of beautiful bindis in different colours and designs. It has turned into a kind of fashion and these bindi stickers are sold everywhere. We asked if it would be appropriate for us to wear a bindi and she said that it would and that Indian people would take it as a complement.

Turtle Bay

Turtle Bay has by far been the best place that we have visited in India so far. Turtle Bay is a very secluded area in India on the coast of the Arabian Sea. We are staying at a simple resort on the beach, directly in the middle of two small fishing villages. I am staying in a yoga studio with 14 other girls in one big room. We are served 3 Indian meals a day and chai at 4:00pm everyday.

The temperature of the water is so warm that it is easy to stay swimming in the ocean for a long time. We spent a lot of time in Turtle Bay at the beach and hanging out around the resort. In the morning, when it was cool, I went for a barefoot run on the beach.

On the second day in Turtle Bay, we had a talk from an Ayrvedic Doctor named Jessica who works at the resort that we are staying at. She is originally from Boston and trained in India and has now worked and lived here for 10 years. It was really interesting to hear about what she had to say about the Ayurvedic approach to health and medicine. Auyvedic health and wellness uses principals found in ancient sacred Hindu texts, the vedas. Some of the principals are similar to western health and medicine, such as eating well and exercising in order to live a long life, however some of the principals were harder for me to accept, such as blood-letting. It is interesting to see an alternative to western, traditional medicine although some of it is hard to take in because of our culture. It was interesting that the Ayrvedic doctor said that traditional, western medicine treats symptoms, while Ayruvedic medicine treats the causes.

In the afternoon we visited one of the fishing villages with an NGO called FSL India. This NGO was building toilets in the fishing villages because sanitation was a really big problem. The community was defecating on the beach before this NGO stepped in. This is a health problem because it can cause dengue fever and hook worm. Also, for the women, it is not culturally appropriate for them to do this in public and they are forced to hold it for long periods of time. The community was very proud to show us their homes and village. The kids were so cute and they loved to get their picture taken and then see themselves on our cameras.

We walked back to our resort from the fishing village along the beach just as the sun was setting. As we sat on the beach and watched the sunset, a Muslim family approached us and asked my friend, Stacy to hold their baby for a photograph. It seemed like such a crazy request but she agreed and they were so happy get the picture. The baby was so confused and scared and did not appreciate it as much as his family.

On our last day in Turtle Bay we went snorkeling around an island with a cave and white chested sea eagle (different from seagulls) nests. From where we were staying in Turtle Bay, we took a bus to a public beach then took a boat from the beach to the island. The public beach was full of groups of men swimming, some women swimming in saris, and plenty of animals. There was a cow lying casually on the beach and groups of stray dogs playing and fighting. I have been in India now for a few weeks so this did not surprise me, however you would never see something like that at a beach back home. By the public beach there the largest Shiva statue in India and a massive golden temple beside it that looked like a skyscraper. I have seen so many temples since I have arrived but none were the same scale as this one.

We were out all day on the boat and had collected our garbage from our food and water in two cardboard containers. At the end of the day we were handing our bags and equipment from the boat to the bus drivers to loading up the bus to head back. We handed them the garbage that we had collected and they immediately threw them onto the beach in a pile of other garbage. We were all really shocked because littering seems like such an irresponsible thing for us to do. We had to assure them that we would take the garbage with us.

In India, there is garbage all around the streets and it is very difficult to find a garbage can. There does not seem to be a very established and national system of garbage collection so littering is very common. In Chennai, we saw women cleaning the streets and we were told that these women work 24 hours a day, each working 8 hour shifts to clean the streets.

On our last night in Turtle Bay we had a bonfire on the beach and had some cheap Indian beers.

Cochin

The train ride from Coimbatore to Cochin was a little crazier than our other train rides so far. Up until now we have been taking night trains, however, this train was from 4:45am to 10:30am. When we arrived on our section of the train there were several men without shirts on and with paint markings on their face and body for religious purposes. They were taking turns showering and cleaning themselves in the train bathroom. Every morning at 5:00 am we are woken up by the call to prayer and I think that this is what the men were doing. They seemed to be pilgrims and were walking up and down the aisles of the train with incense and small flames of ash and were singing and chanting together. It was really cool to experience because that was not what I was expecting religious activities to be. The men seemed to be acting more like friends or team mates. After about 30 minutes they quieted down a bit. At each stop more and more people were coming onto the train and very few were getting off. At one point, my friend counted and there were 16 people in our section, which is supposed to fit only 8. Complete strangers would come onto our seats and bunks wherever they could find space. To us Canadians, this seemed rude and an invasion of our privacy but obviously this is not the same in the Indian culture. I feel as though personal space is a luxury of a first world country with a small population, such as Canada. I was on the top bunk and immediately after I stepped down from my bunk to get ready to get off at the next stop a man had sprawled out in my place. Also another girl on my trip sat up from her lying position on her bunk and people shoved bags on either side of her.

We started the first day in Cochin with a back water tour. We were seated in a large, flat boat with a roof made of coconut vines and were taken through man made canals and small rivers with small settlements on the shores. There were two men, one on either end of the boat directing the boat with long sticks that looked almost like bamboo. Instead of paddling the boat, they would push off the bottom and maneuver us through the narrow passages. Along the tour we were able to see men diving to the bottom of the river to bring up dirt from the bottom. We though that they would use this as rich soil in agriculture.

After the backwater tour we went for lunch at a rooftop restaurant overlooking the ocean. A man from the next table told us that if we looked really closely at the water that we could see dolphins and we totally could. They were diving and coming up for air- very cool. In the evening we went to a cultural dance show where they showed us different kinds of traditional dances including one where the two men were fighting with swords.

On the second day in Cochin we walked around the little streets and practised our bargaining skills at the boho, beachy stores by the beach. I have learned that in areas where there are lots of tourists, you should never take the first price that they tell you. I bought a tunic, shirt, scarf, and pair of pants. All of the clothes are a really cool fabric that will be great in the heat. I didn't realize how hot a cotton t shirt can be until I came to India. At one of the shops where we were looking, a man working there offered us tea because it was their tea time and we had some nice milky masala tea. Apparently Chai actually means tea so when we order one in Canada we are actually asking for "tea tea".

In the afternoon we went for lunch at a great place in the back courtyard of an art gallery. At one point there was a group of school children coming through the courtyard to the art gallery for a school field trip. The boys were so excited and were waving and yelling. They asked us if we liked Kerala (the province that we are in) and they cheered when we said that we did. The girls also waved at us although they seemed more shy. We walked back from lunch along the beach. Along the shore there were several groups of men fishing using Chinese fishing nets. They waved us to come aboard and we did a shift pulling up the nets (for a small fee, obviously)

Coimbatore

After an 11 hour night train from Kanyakumara we arrived in Coimbatore, which is in the middle of the Tamil Nadu province. I immediately felt like I was treated very differently here than I have been in the other Indian cities that we have visited. Walking in the streets and driving in the bus I am getting a lot more stares from people and many seem almost shy to approach us. I feel as though many white tourists do not visit this city often. I have not seen another non-Indian person thus far in this city.

Coimbatore is known for its textiles and IT as well as the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. This university is known around the world for its agricultural research and extension work and has a partnership on projects with my school, the University of Guelph. In the afternoon of the first day in Coimbatore we visited the TNAU where we were greeted with chai tea and and were ushered into an air conditioned classroom where several people from the university spoke to us about the work that they are doing. Although it seemed very interesting and I wanted to listen to what they had to say, it was incredibly difficult to understand them most of the time because of their accent and speed of talking. I could follow for a bit and then there were times when they were speaking so quickly that their words were all connected and it sounded as though they were not even speaking English.

In the evening, I ventured out to a local department store with a group of girls from my school. This department store had 5 floors: one for saris, one for pre-made clothes, and the other three for fabric. This department store had about 25-30 people working on the floor and were more than happy to help you as you expressed the slightest bit of interest in the clothing in their section. It was so overwhelming as there were so many unique tunics, dresses, and skirts. I started to look at the fabric and I also started to get overwhelmed because there was so much that I liked and I could not decide which I liked the best. I ended up leaving the store without buying anything although some of the girls that I was with ended up buying 2 saris each. The sales people on the sari floor are very good. They dressed my friends in these saris and made it look so good and easy that they could not refuse to buy at least one. I am not sure if they will ever be able to recreate the same folding technique.

On the second day we had an amazingly scenic bus ride up a mountain about 30 minutes outside of the city to a TNAU agricultural hill station. Tea is grown in this mountain. The windy roads that led to the hill station had my eyes glued out the window. It was such a lush forest and there were even monkeys hanging out in groups on the side of the road. I was amazed to see as we got much higher to the top that there were so many people living in the mountain. After the hill station we also visited botanical gardens, a rose garden, and a tea factory. The weather was significantly cooler than it had been in the city because of the high elevation and many of the locals were bundled up in hats and sweaters. It was a really nice break from the constant heat that I have experienced since I have arrived.

Pictures

Chennai

Pondicherry

Train

Kanyakumari