THE RAJ

My mind, body and soul are all melting here in the desert. Writing this blog from Jaipur where the high is supposed to hit 111 degrees today. The only oasis in sight is home, 12 blooming hot days from now. We shall see how this blog goes; I told Libby I think the heat has actually been slowing my brain down. On top of it all, I got hit with the infamous Indian stomach issues here in Jaipur. Libby got hers in Darjeeling. But let’s start from the beginning. Calcutta.

We get into Kolkata around midnight and successfully withdraw money and hire a prepaid taxi. First time dealing with an Indian and he tries to shortchange us 100 rupiah, around $1.40. It honestly hasn’t been at all unmanageable since with the pricing/negotiating/bartering. It just served to reinforce our initial fears we read from the blogs and guide book. The taxis in Kolkata appear to be 40 to 50 years old, ours was no different. From that instant you stepped into the taxi you knew you were in a very different place. Driving along the streets you see rows of bodies. I’ve read that since the earthquake, the Nepalese were sleeping in the streets with tents. Well, it seemed that Kolkata was like Kathmandu, except without the tents. And 365 days a year. Thankfully the cabi was helpful with waking the attendant at our hotel and helped move the homeless people and their cardboard out of the way. What I envisioned Cuba to be like, I seem to have found in India. Everywhere in India, we still use the old-style of keys. The door locking mechanism here in India are ancient, yet delightful. Locked by similarly ancient Indian padlocks. Even the padlocks have their own charm here. Only after these few weeks do I realize how amazing our hotel in Kolkata was. For 15 dollars a night, there were multiple elevator attendants ready to zoom you up on the antique style elevator. The “Telegraph,” the Indian version of one of my favorites was slid under your door every morning. The restaurant though… a dark wood bar looking out over a multitude of tables spread out over of a beautiful marble floor. When we saw it packed with Indians on our first night, we knew to try it. We ended up going back the next night. Brilliant service, impossibly cheap food. I don’t know if it was the British or the Caste system but sometimes you receive amazing service. Not sure if The Broadway’s restaurant is going to be beat here in India.

The guidebook says Kolkata is meant to just walk around, so that’s what we started out doing. Stopping every 10 blocks or so to get a chai for 4-6 rupiah (6-9 cents). For breakfast, we got either Samosas (5 rupiah) or puri with potato curry (10 rupiah). After one morning, I tallied up our expenses and found that we spent 65 cents. One friend got his haircut for 50 cents. As if the taxis weren’t enough, the dozens of foot-rickshaws, people actually pulling other people as a mode of transportation help ensure your mind that you are in fact in a very different place indeed. The crumbling British architecture in concert with the sheer energy of this place, it is the most different place in the world, I’m convinced. You walk down the street and you have dozens of people taking their showers at the local water pump, markets set up on the streets and an impossible mass of cars, trucks, motos, rickshaws, bicycles trying to get through an alley. In trying to find the first-mover in what makes India, India, the answer became quite obvious. The population per square kilometer in India is 382. In comparison, America’s is 33.

You, like myself at one time, are probably thinking, “this is it, this is the place, the food, the culture, the architecture, THE PRICES.” And then you walk down a certain street and get bombarded emotionally, existentially. In rapid succession. First maybe there’s just the filthiest man walking towards you with his arms outstretched and complete desperation in his eyes putting his hand to his mouth, the universal symbol here for give me money so I can eat. Then maybe you pass a man with a limb missing, or two, or three, doing the same thing, except this time at least he’s seated. Finally, maybe you have a women with a young baby her arms. The baby’s stomach is extremely bloated, like what you see in African aid commercials. After one of those triple whammy’s, my mind is reeling, “is it right to have a strict rule on absolutely no money to beggars? Those people seem like they realllly need it? What does 10 rupiah even matter?” But then you fall back on your original rationale, “there’s hundreds and hundreds of them, who are you to choose who gets it or not.” In the end, you’re just left thinking this is insane.  Any empathy results in emotional stress and mentally wears you down.  I was honestly thinking, wow, I am so proud of Libby for handling this. When Libby stops on the street and in a really strained voice goes “I don’t know where we are, we’re lost; we need a break, I can’t do this.” We weren’t actually lost, but thankfully, there was a western style café across the street and we run into the AC to seek shelter from the storm. These scenes can’t help but shake you to the core. The most poignant one for me being a baby playing by itself in a pile of trash. But there’s countless others, the little boy really wanting my hat, a lady stroking my face, a young autistic boy hugging my arm. And it’s not just poverty, it’s the trash and grime everywhere, the stench of urine and feces (though I will say Varanasi had Kolkata beat on that one), and the heat that just slowly makes your blood boil through it all.

I will say as time continues to pass, the shocking scenes of poverty seem to fade away, and you are slowly left with the memorable, highly photogenic images of Kolkata. There’s an authenticity here that you don’t find in the more touristy places. Libby and I would go whole mornings and afternoons before spotting a single other tourist. I never knew until walking into a delightful little café/restaurant that Indians ate with their hands. Like Burma and its teak, India seems to be blessed with a preponderance of marble and it really goes a long way with making things look good. And only in Kolkata do you walk around 3 filthy blocks before stumbling upon this magnificent palace that belongs to the family of a Maharaja (Indian Royalty). After bribing the spear wielding gateman (instead of getting the Tourist office permission??), we got a tour of a palace where original Reubens and Morillos are decaying in the intense humidity. There’s a purported 90 different colors of marble used to make the most beautiful floors imaginable. Hence the name, the Marble Palace. But at the time of our departure to Darjeeling, we were more than ready to jump ship.

Darjeeling

Looking back, Darjeeling doesn’t seem a part of India. I believe mostly due to the heat. It’s not like Europe, as someone said, but certainly a relative oasis to the rest of India. To be honest, Darjeeling wasn’t exactly how I pictured it. For one, it’s not quaint. As one German I met put it, “100,000 people IS a small mountain town for India!” The architecture was ugly, that of a developing country mostly, prices like that of a tourist town, mediocre food, but it didn’t matter. Because Darjeeling might have changed me more than any other place in India.

Enter-Darjeeling tea. Darjeeling was life-changing in that I was able to experience tea in ways I never thought possible. Like Scuba diving to skiing, I don’t know if Tea will ever beat out Coffee due to the simple fact that Coffee has more caffeine than Tea. But! I think Tea has more nuanced and sophisticated flavors and mixing capabilities of tea-highlighted by our designated Tea Guru-are seemingly endless! Darjeeling had the wonderful walking paths, beautiful tea gardens (they call fields of tea gardens) on sloping hills with the tea factory in the background, and they had the colonial charm (we had afternoon tea at an old colonial era hotel). But, Darjeeling didn’t have it all in one, all the beautiful things of Darjeeling were punctuated by hordes of people, ugly buildings and the stench of pony S***. I mean, it was so India that there were food stalls across from the pony stables. But what they did have was Nathmull’s tea room. Where I was able to taste dozens of types of Darjeeling tea and where I got my initial education from the tea master.

Let me give you a brief review. There are two types of tea bushes, Assam and China.  Many of the best teas these days are grown from hybrids of the two.  There are three main types of teas that all come from the same leaves: black, green and white. These teas only differ on the drying process they go through. Black teas are fully fermented, meaning they are exposed to oxygen and undergo fermentation due to a catalyst from the crushed vacuoles inner liquid (if my memory serves me) (vacuoles are crushed during the “rolling” process). Black teas are the “Darjeeling tea” with their signature golden coloring. Green tea is semi-fermented meaning they are just exposed to oxygen for a lesser amount of time. And white tea undergoes no fermentation. They simply take the finest leaves (the tips), and dry it (not totally sure). Anyways, white tea has the most delicate and light flavor but also has the most antioxidants. I decided to focus my attention on the Black teas. The bushes are harvested 4 times a year-called flushes. Spring and fall yield the most expensive teas. Spring since they have the lightest most flowery taste and fall since the monsoon rains of the third flush give a nice bold flavor to the 4^th or Autumn flush. The second flush is noteworthy because there’s an insect call muscatel (or that’s just the name of the tea type) that use the leaf or something and give the tea a smoky flavor. I’m coming home with the intent of giving as many tea tastings as possible.

Anyways, that was my purist experience with tea. Equally satisfying was our time with the Tea Guru, in Kurseong. Kurseong is a small town 22? Km south of Darjeeling but still in Darjeeling province and so sells “Darjeeling” tea. If Kurseong had Nathmull’s tea room, there would be no reason to visit Darjeeling. Except if you wanted to see the world’s third highest peak, which was shrouded in clouds for our 4 days anyways. Kurseong was the small mountain town we had made Darjeeling out to be in our minds. Beautiful tea gardens, hills, quiet. Not to mention we stayed at an awesome little converted tea planter estate. We only planned on staying one night and upon arrival, immediately switched it to two nights. What was most special about this place however, was the resident tea mixer. He wasn’t a tea purist but he was what we called the tea guru. He had a whole menu full of amazing concoctions he mixed himself. Using ingredients like apples, oranges, honey, cinnamon, cardamom, pepper he brewed perfect concoctions. For like A DOLLAR!!!! What he did was bring the water to a boil with the ingredients in it first and then added the tea when it cooled to proper tea brewing temperature. I have some of his recipes, but whenever the café opens, assuming he’s not like 100 years old by then, he’s coming to train the staff.  Libby was bedridden for most of our time in Darjeeling proper. So she had to watch me as I came back from my 14 cups of tea tasting session bouncing off the walls from all that caffeine. We kept trying to get her out of the room (cinderblock walls made for a very “soothing” environment), but every time she tried to walk, she vomited all over the streets of Darjeeling. The great thing is India is so dirty that no one cares that you are puking in the middle of town square. The people, not being the friendliest, won’t bother you either.

Besides the abject poverty and the utter filth, I will enter another of the India negatives-the general population of people. Myanmar people are the nicest, most honest people in Asia, but really the rest of Asia comes really close. India, on the other hand, is decidedly the worst. To be fair, there are some really nice and helpful and friendly Indians out there. Enough to at times think, maybe I’ve been a little hard on the Indians, maybe they actually are as nice as other countries. But then you run into a string of douchebags/you name it, and you’re like “ugh, yep, I was right with my first assumption.” A little bit of it must come from the New York-esque thing where they are around so many people every day that they just sort of shut off their public self. Another bit is from their unfortunate cultural habit of staring (really hard) at you, but primarily girls, and then not smiling when you stare at them back and sort of say, “yes I see you staring for a past respectable amount of time, so you should smile and make it less awkward.”  The second bit only being exacerbated when you remember their unseemly reputation for rape in this country. And finally, you yourself sort of end up shutting yourself off to potentially friendly people in India because 99 percent of the people that say “hello” “excuse me” “let me help you” “where are you going” ect ect ect want to either take you to a place where they can get a commission and scam you. Or, they’ll just ask you for money after they “help” you.

Back to the travels. After four days in the cold but refreshing weather, I started to get the sniffles and so was happy to be off to Varanasi and the heat. Ha! Why would anyone be looking forward to 105-110 degree heat, I don’t know!!!