Top Five?

Adventures in India

Part IV

On one of our first nights in India, I asked everyone to list their top five vacations. Fortunately, we are a spoiled and well-travelled bunch so we had quite a few to choose from. The week spent in Mexico for Darby and Dave’s wedding was a unanimous choice. The week we all spent together in South Africa was another (back before I called SA ‘home’). I listed my Contiki trip around Europe with the ‘goddesses.’ Darby said her first trip to Mexico, when she learned to scuba dive. Dave mentioned his trip to Korea; Roger said the six weeks he spent in Spain when he was eighteen. We talked about other vacations, never really deciding on the official top five (but that’s not really the point, is it?). As we wrapped up the conversation, Darby said she wondered if our current adventure would make it into the top five…

Just two weeks later as we sat in a bar in Mumbai, we revisited the conversation. Did our time in India make it into the top five? Would this go down as one of our favorite vacations? And what exactly makes a vacation great? We all agreed that while there was so much more to see of India, it wouldn’t be somewhere we would rush back to. Yes, we’d all like to see more of it, but none of us were dying to come back any time soon. Did that mean it wasn’t a good vacation? Well…no…but top five? It was left undecided.

Our flight back to Joburg left Mumbai on February 15th at 2 o’clock in the morning. We had an ocean front Valentine’s Day dinner with Darby and Dave before catching a taxi to the airport. We arrived at the airport just after midnight, and we were waiting in line to scan our luggage when an Indian man in the airport uniform came and got us out of line. We followed without question, assuming we were in the wrong line. The man brought us to another scanner, marched us to the front of the line and put our bags through. I felt somewhat confused, but after two weeks in India I had learned not to question the oddities. The man stamped our bags with the security tag and walked us over to the ticket counter where he turned to Roger with an expectant look. Roger went to his pocket and pulled out twenty Rupees and offered it to the man, but apparently, this man had a different figure in mind. He looked at the twenty Rupees with disdain. Refusing to take the money, he argued that his service was worth more than that because the line was very long. I clenched my fist in anger, though I shouldn’t have been surprised. It was the trademark move in India – force the tourist to accept your service, then demand your price. Roger just shrugged and explained that he was leaving the country and had no more Rupees. The man started to walk away – leaving Roger holding the twenty Rupees. But when Roger went to put the money back in his pocket the man quickly turned back to us and snatched the money from Roger’s hand. We watched him go back to the long line and guide some other unsuspecting tourist to the front of the queue.

My blood boiled with anger. But I wasn’t just angry with that man, I was angry with all of the men and women who had used similar tactics during our time in India. The man at Fatephur Sikri who dragged us through the fort then demanded eight hundred Rupees. The man on the side of the road who forced his monkey on my sister’s head, then insisted on a thousand Rupees when Dave snapped a photo (said photo would be inserted here had my useless sister managed to email it to me!). The tour guide who showed us the souvenir shops (where he earned commission) instead of the Agra Fort. The vendors who shoved their goods in our faces, refusing to accept a polite 'no' as an answer. I quickly learned to ignore anyone who might speak to me on the street…to avert my eyes from everyone lest anyone think they might have something I needed or wanted. The whole thing infuriated me…India had forced me to become a bitch.
Roger and I made our way through airport security, my blood still bubbling with anger. The airport, even after midnight, was buzzing with activity. The gate was swarming with people and my stomach churned in response to that distinctly Mumbai smell …a mixture of body odor, spices, urine and smoke. We hurried through a pile of sleeping travelers to the opposite side of the large waiting room and found two cramped seats.

I’m hot. It smells. I’m irritable. I desperately want to board my flight and get back to Joburg, a place much more like America than I previously realized.

Once on the plane, I start to relax. It’s late but I can’t help but do a bit of reflecting. My relief to be headed back to Joburg surprises me and I wonder if this means my vacation wasn’t all that great. After all, shouldn’t you be disappointed when a really good vacation is over?

But then I think about the memories we’ve made over the last few weeks. I think about watching the Superbowl at six a.m. over breakfast in Dave and Darby’s cubbyhole of a room in Delhi. I think about our driver teaching us how to say thank you in Hindi and the concierge at the hotel going out to buy us beers because the hotel bar was closed. I think about the strange karma dispensed by our hotels in India – alternately granting me and Roger, then Dave and Darby, the better room (though Dave getting electrocuted by a lamp in the Alsisair Haveli may have trumped the two twin beds assigned to Roger and I). I remember Dave snoring at the Raj Mandir while the rest of us watched a Bollywood movie. I laugh at the memory of the eleven year old boy who drove Roger and I around Jaipur in a bicycle rickshaw. I remember the day of the All India Carom Championship (which Roger and I won – despite some post tournament questions regarding the official rules).

I find myself giggling about the raw chicken breast mysteriously placed outside of Darby and Dave’s tent in the desert. Was it a curse? And what does it mean? I think about wandering around the bizarre “Mother of All Night Markets” in Goa. I blush at the memory of my high-viz massage. I think about Roger and Dave playing volleyball with the locals at Baga beach while Darby and I solved the world’s problems over eighteen thousand Kingfishers. I think about going to Leopold’s café in Mumbai and the sports bar around the corner where I went on a mini-tirade about how everyone in India wants to screw the tourists (I vaguely remember shouting “I’m from Snellville…where you don’t get screwed!” as we stumbled back to the hotel). I think about Dave challenging me to a wrestling match that night to help me release some of my anger (which he won. But only two out of three…I got him that one time!) I think about everything that the four of us have seen and experienced together and I have no doubt that this has been an incredible two weeks.

So does it make my top five?

I think so.
Two weeks in a strange land with three of my favorite people on the planet...
How could it not?