India, where people have nothing -- and everything

redleader

I'm going to India tomorrow night for the first time. 4 or 5 years ago I would have never considered it. But now, I'm really excited about going. I'm not totally sure what to expect or how I will react both emotionally or physically, but I've grown to become more adventurous, inquisitive, and open minded in the past years. I don't doubt that there is plenty of poverty, crime, pollution, you name it, but I'm also not someone who thinks that a "vacation" should only involve glamorous metropolitan cities and beach resorts with umbrella decorated drinks. I see this as a learnin experience and an opportunity to broaden my horizons and experience more of the world around me. I would never convince someone that they should feel the same as me or use their vacation time in the same way, but I detest when people make faces or ask me why, of all places, would I want to spend my vacation in a poor third world country.

I've been visiting this sight for well over a year now, learning and researching for this trip and while there have been comments here and there, I've never seen more negative opinions than in this thread. Like I said, I don't mind that people have their opinions about the place, I just don't appreciate it when people act as if there's something wrong with me for wanting to go there.

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lotus blossom

Very well said, all of it.

I've read that they've created a real situation for themselves in japan with being so germ-phobic. apparently, they use anti-bacterial products so often that everything is becoming immune to it. it is true that without the dirt our immune systems will actually suffer, but it is the earthy kind of dirt that we need not the sort produced in a lab as with vaccines, which also compromises the immunity.

i was heartbroken when i saw dharamsala this year. when i was there four years ago it felt like paradise, now it is stinky with garbage littering the streets everywhere.

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GoanCanuck

Considering the fact that there are frequent power outages all over India, incinerators won't be a suitable option.

aurora

I'd do it all again!

ruins_explorer

also, isn't burning trash create a lot of air pollution? Incinerators seem bad to me. Maybe more recycling programs, but I guess that would be too ambitious.

seraph

When I moved to Puri, I asked my landlord where I should dispose of the garbage. He told me to throw it over the front wall into the street. That the residents of the street pay a sweeper to clean it up.

Since it was not my intention to add to the city's pollution, I told him that there had to be some other option. Seeing my predicament, he offered to take my garbage and promised to dispose of it himself. I asked him where he would be taking it (thinking to myself that there was no reason to inconvenience him) and he replied "Nowhere, I will just throw it into the street."

As it was obviously not going to make any difference whether he threw it into the street or I threw it into the street, I decided to try and overcome my inhibition. The first day, rather than actually just throw the garbage into the street, I took the bag out and set it against the wall by our front gate. Within minutes, someone had overturned the garbage bag and taken it while others were sifting through the garbage to see what, if anything, of use they could find. They took a few things (paper, metal, plastic), but left quite a mess!

In the end, I decided to throw the garbage over the BACK wall of our compound. The rag pickers still come everyday and everything gets scattered about, but since it is an open field it somehow seems "contained". Also, this way the cows don't need to dodge the traffic!

lotus blossom

I experienced this same thing in jaipur. i held onto my garbage until i left my flat because i did not know what to do with it. it was not until the day that i left that i realized the "landfill" was right across the street from where i was living. and no sooner than i put my three small bags of refuse out did a woman comb through it looking for treasures.

i am always astounded when i see people just throw trash into the street!

rangss

I blame the city governments for the garbage menace. In places like Bangalore, they have an active garbage disposal system. In Chennai, there is a system but never works. In Hyderabad I hear the streets and throughfares are cleaned overnight...so what's the problem with other cities and towns?

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...and I took the road less travelled.

Aristocat

Please! Please! As an Indian, let me decide which of you is my gift to planet earth.

BangaloreDancer

So true...

nadusch

Hi Bangalore dancer!

I fear you are right. Besides some stomach problems due to the different "flora and fauna" in my body, I felt very good and healthy because of indian food. Even my children had very little problems and very quickly got used to hot and spicy food. And that is the first question they all asked us back in Germany "Didn`t you get ill?"
Germans are overfrightenend of dirt and deseases!

BangaloreDancer

Hi nadusch!!!

Hmmm.... Actually who said that was LotusBlossom... I just agreed with her.
Anyways, Isn't that truth that in Germany they eat lots of pig- meat,sausages,etc.. (My father's family in Brazil is descendant of Germans, and they are used to eat fried pig skin and pig's blood sausage (I forgot the name) for breakfast-ewwwww-thanks God my father never wanted his kids to eat that junk (he is a doc). So much for cleanliness !
Also some of my coworkers in Hawaii were all "grossed out" about me coming to live in India.... And most of them eat fastfood every freaking day !!!
And I have to say that I never felt healthier in my life, eating only indian food now (of course I avoid the fried and oily stuff)...
(I know this is totally )

torryquine

Well lets get one thing straight, India isn't everyones cup of chai. People either run screaming from the place vowing never to return, or - like most non-Indians on this site - can't wait to go back.

My brother falls into the first camp - he and his wife spent two weeks in Goa and his abiding memory of India is watching women gathering cow-pats from the roads. To him it was dirt, to the women, it was fuel.

When we visited India, we were intrigued by the way that Indians make the best use of all the resources they have to hand - including cow-pats. Indians are highly pragmatic people who live in a harsh environment. "Dirt" isn't always dirt - cow-dung can waterproof your home, light your fire or fertilise your fields.

A lot of the problems with rubbish are the result of using modern, manufactured products and wrappings. In parts of India, this is being positively tackled - for instance in Gangtok, the shops do not use plastic carrier bags, so you do not see these spoiling the environment.

In many parts of the world (I noticed this especially in Indonesia), where people have used natural materials like leaves or terracotta as containers, they are accusomed to disposing of them in middens where they naturally decompose and renew the soil. Only now that those rubbish heaps contain so many plastics have they become "dirty".

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