I'm not going there again,,,,,,,,

sirensongs

Jamaica and Haiti, for instance, are two of the poorest countries imaginable (I think Haiti is the poorest in the western hemisphere). But they and their people are for the most part quite clean.

It doesn't cost any money to pick up your own garbage or to dispose of your own waste correctly (simple hole in the ground). Really poor people have no running water, but most everyone can carry water from the pump. A full bath is a luxury for them, but I don't think clean hands could be considered a luxury.

My mother grew up with no indoor plumbing, no electricity, getting water from the well and using an outhouse. And this was in a place with very cold winters but they still bathed, shivering in a metal tub of well water. Everyone was poor. They put cardboard in the soles of their shoes, stitched and re-stitched the elbows of their worn out sweaters, ate dandelion weeds they pulled from the side of the road, and kept on going. Poor does not mean dirty.

Sorry, we're getting OT! getting down off my SOAPbox (he he)

__________________
"Why do people go to India to find themselves? India is where you go to lose yourself."
Feringhee: The India Diaries

palerider

Poor may not mean dirty, but entrenched Poverty may relate to Apathy and disillusionment.
It gets back to the point about the dirt not being a personal attack on YOU, or ME.
It's just India
If the dirt bothers you, why not pick it up, and put it in a bin, or take it home and put it in a bin?.
Sorry, that's me Off my Soapbox now.

__________________
I finally realised, in the nic of time,
that Life was for Living.

haddojetty

Rishikesh - hated it due to all the western wannabees. They annoyed me.
Mysore - Chamundi hill was the biggest bore ever.
Auroville - Same reasons as Rishikesh.
Pondicherry - Nondescript place

SitaParityaga

DISCLAIMER:

I am not Christian and I was not brought up in the Catholic faith. Others may find this place spiritually inspiring: many do.

Did I regret going? Well, no. Still, I wouldn't return.

Upon hearing from several sources, both Indian Nationals and a Brahmin priest at a Murugan temple in Swamimalai, I decided to visit Vellangani on the coast of TN, just south of Nagapattim in Tamil Tadu.

I was told many had experienced the presence of Durga in the Catholic church of Vallagani. Built by traders from Portugal at the turn of the century. To add to the miraculous healing properties of a yatra to this place, I was also told it had remained unharmed during the 2005 tsunami, which took a large toll of lives in this seaside town.

What was I impressed by? The incredible power of Mother Nature. Two years after the tsunami, it was still easy to see the massive power the ocean had taken on land and people.

All the residents and merchants of this place felt to me to be traumatized. It had a very unpleasent, desperate "edge".

Beggars outide of the church were being hit with sticks (by unknown authorities) to stay away. One man in the church, emotionally moved by his visit, was mildly shaking the little "fence" in front of the alter: he also got a rude poke on the shoulder by the offical "watchman" of the alter.

As advised to do, I bought the 7 rp plastic container of "Blessed Oil", said to have miraculous curative powers. Being a fearful agnostic of sorts, I bought several to bring back to friends and family back home, and was curious to try it out on myself.

Results? Friends and family who were raised in the Catholic church felt their aches and pains had improved from rubbing this oil on their affected body parts.

May-be I am not in need of a healing, perhaps this is not "my flavor" of miracles or faith, but nothing happened to me.

On the way back from Vellangani, just outside of town, I see this billboard: "WORLD VISION PROJECT"

Behind the billboard is a concrete cinder block project of very small "homes", unfinished and uninhabited.

capt_mahajan

palerider, good post. I wanted to allude to apathy earlier but the word never came to me! If you are born poor in India, you are kind of doomed.. no opportunity, no education, nothing. In many countries you can substantially better yourself, even if the odds are against you.

sirensongs, your references to other countries is probably valid. (In Haiti, I did not have time to examine the poverty, though. I was too worried about my life. :-) )

sreejith

one place where i went with very high expectations and turned out to be the most disappointing was "Aurovile" near pondicheri.

Please forgive me if my comments offend anybody who really like that place and their global villege concept.

brian

hi all.
I have been stoned all over india.. had rocks thrown at me in Bombay. and a small village in N/goa called arunbul, had a bucket of dirty water thown on me in Agra, and had a monkey set upon me in delhi, but i would go back to all these places if I had enough time left to me..every experience is to be treasured and you shouldn't blame the place, its how you choose to look at the experience that is at fault. I must admit to shock at some of the magical places mentioned by some members as being bad..
Jaipur being one of them. and varonasi????? different stokes for different folks i suppose..

brian.

skell

Maybe if you stopped getting stoned, people would stop throwing things at you!!

Nick-H

I can't claim that children never lug a pebble at me (though rarely, and, unlike much of the world, they stop when remonstrated with) --- but stoned all over India? I never heard that before!

What on earth do you do?


And I was thinking, when I saw it, Oh, no, time for another of my boring IndiaMike-is-not-about-drugs posts!

__________________
.


Just one member of the IndiaMike Mod Team

brian

best explain the stoning incidents dont want you thinking I'm some sort of trouble causer..
landed in bombay during a general strike and protests against something political that I niether knew or cared anything about..first time in India...culture shocked..stuck in the aireport from 3am till 8 am no taxis chaos ruled aireport getting fuller and fuller..then a fleet of cars that looked as if they had been scrapped 20 years earlier started rolling up with army escorts through the picket lines, we eventualy got a car with a door missing and no seats in the back.
we set off at break neck speed away from the airport, after about 2 mins we were told to lay flat on the floor as rocks started bouncing of the car and the driver was swerving from side to side..that was my first morning in india ..

the time i was stoned in aranbul was more serious. this was in 78 my second trip. we had been staying in calangut sleeping on the beach acclimatising and getting over the culture shock before setting off to explore the beaches further north. calangut was a bit too crowded with indian tourist come to see the naked western women..there were about 4 straw built chia shops and 2 shops in calangut back then oh and a food market twice a week I think. anyway we found this unspoiled fishing village called Aranbul and rented a room in a house in the village. just somewhere to cook our meals. we had been there about a week when on the way back from the beach passing among the mud and straw houses that make up the village I spotted my wifes favourite Tshirt spread out on the sand, thinking she had lost it earlier i picked it up and thought no more about it untill a group of indians were gathered outside our front door shouting . we didn't know what was happening no one in the village spoke english apart from a young kid who met us as we entered the place a week earlier..he was nowhere to be seen, it got progressivly louder and more violent then the stones started raining in. we baracaded ourselves in and thay tried to smash the door down with stones. terrifying at the time, well someone must have gone for the young english speaker and he came and told us that we had stole a tshirt that the village woman had found fair and square and had put out to dry. we gave it back of course with an apoligy and left the village next morning. we walked north along the beach and rounding a headland found a lovely deserted cove with fresh water stream and lake.
we built a shelter under a cashew nut tree and stayed there three months revisiting Aranbul every 3 or 4 days for supplies.
sorry for going on so long .
that was nearly 30 years ago, there's probably a hotel now where our cashew tree was..
brian.

Nick-H

Wow!

Makes a change from all those good-old-days posts

I guess you look back on it as an adventure now, but it must have been very frightening at the time.

We await more posts of your adventures with interest

kullukid

What's the story with the monkey Brian??? KK

phantom

Wow.. I spent the whole day reading this thread.. reminded me of how many places I still need to visit to find out whats so bad about them

In fact, I couldnt think of any place i hated. But some places, i wouldnt be going again, simply because there's so many new places to visit.

Also, I would like to say that sometimes you see only one part of a city and attach your love-hate with your experiences there and dont even consider it worthwhile to find out the hidden gems
Lets take the example of varanasi. How many people going to varanasi actually visit the 8-10 waterfalls some 50 kms. from the main city. In fact, some of those falls are the most beautiful i have ever seen, hidden away from public, secluded in the middle of some mountains with no hassle, no sadhus, no touts and no crowds.

How many people disgusted with gokarna actually go a little further (5-10) kms and get to the beautiful virgin beaches of kumta and honnavar.

But i guess, its the unpopularity of these places that have saved them from getting ruined. So lets pick our backpack again and hit the "road less travelled"

brian

Hi Kulukid.

atually had two close encounters with monkeys..in delhi while walking through a park this chap had a monkey on a lengh of string, he was making it perform for the tourists and sending the monkey amongst them with a cup collecting the 'donations' well he must have noticed the look of disaproval on my face and as i walked away he started following me asking for money and shouting comands to the monkey all the time letting the string out so the monkey could get closer as soon as i stopped and started to remonstrate the monkey grabbed my leg and went to sink its teath in. I jumped back and had to kick out at it i missed and it kept comming at me like a mad dog. the guy realed it in and took off when he saw a policeman hurrying over waving his stick. they both ran off with the policeman in hot persuit.

In jaipur me and the missus in a peddled rikshaw and two friends in another in front of us. looking to the right we could see a big monkey running along the roofs keeping up with us and watching us as it came, all of a sudden it decended and ran into the road and jumped onto the guys back who was peddling our friends rikshaw, tipping it over and then running off. my friend ended up with severe grasing to the face and his wife a egg sized lump on her head. I think the motive was robbery..

brian.

Maheswara_shishya

What is a Western wannabe? What do they want to be? Yogi's?

I understand when someone from the west dives into something head first that fills them with wonder like Yogic thought and Buddhism, they may seem a bit over zealous. This is because many of us in the west were raised in dogmatic relgions, that offered nothing deeper ontologically and philosophically. That over zealous phase leaves quickly, what a friend of mine calls the "bible thumping phase".