Our last night in India

The Glass Half Full Version
As discussed in the previous blog, our taxi driver during the last leg of our India extravaganza was named Pawan and he was a sweet little angel in a country where it is very difficult to trust anyone, especially men. Initially, we thought he did not speak a lick of English, but he proved us wrong and we were able to communicate just fine. For 9 days he took us from town to town and tourist hot spot to tourist hot spot with no complaints, always telling us to be careful and be safe, don't talk to anyone. He brought us bottled water and gave us Indian hard boiled sweets throughout the day. It may not sound like much, but after what we have been through over the past 10 weeks in India, it was a G-d send to have him as our driver. We struck up a bit of a "friendship" with him over the week learning about his family (a wife and two sons...one 7 and one 3. The 7-year-old loves school and is very smart). He had an arranged marriage about 11 years ago and it turned into a love marriage very soon after. His wife has a "good face and a good nature" and he misses her very much. He is very close to his parents, whom he resides with and he has 3 younger sisters and 2 younger brothers. He used to be a long haul driver on a big rig truck, carrying expensive merchandise from city to city, but this is a dangerous job and he was attacked by "terrorists" who stole his merchandise and chopped part of his arm off and his skull leaving him with severe scarring. He was left for dead, but some army men were on patrol and found him and brought him to the hospital saving his life. He decided to change careers and become a taxi driver. He has been doing this for 3 years now, but we are his first non-Indian clientele. He seemed very excited about that. When he discovered that we were going to crash in the airport for our last night, as we all needed to be at the airport by 5:00am for check-in and we would not return to Delhi until midnight the night before, he was not happy. He must have spoken with his wife and family, as he invited us to stay in his home for our last night in a room with a bed and a toilet area to freshen up and he would take us to the airport for our early morning departure with no further cost or any expectations. Wow...we had read about this in our Lonely Planet book...about how lucky it is to be invited to an Indian's home, as they treat their guests like G-ds and cater to their every whim and need, no matter what their socio-economic status. We felt very touched and blessed by this invite and agreed. After a very long day of site seeing (the Golden Temple) and a further 10 hour drive back to Delhi from Amritsar, we made it to Pawan's home by about 10:00pm. We drove down a dark road and a small alleyway to a small driveway overgrown with brush and plants. There were 4 tiny cement stairs leading up to a very ornate gate-like door which opened into a huge room with a restroom to the right, a kitchen to the left and 3 bedrooms scatters around the circumference of the main living room area. There was also a staircase that appeared to lead to nowhere and we think he is renovating and perhaps may add a second floor in the future. The two main rooms had air conditioning units set up on stilts against the window and each and a ceiling fan on the highest speed it could spin. There are about 10+ people residing in the home and they were so accommodating...they actually moved several family members out of one of the rooms so that we three could share a single room to ourselves and rest comfortably in private...they dragged the cable and the one television in the home to the room and propped it onto the dresser for us to watch. They prepared us a meal of paneer curry with endless roti bread and rice, with a sweet rice/cashew nut/milk dessert that tasted like rice pudding with cardamom spices. The beverages of water and a fizzy orange drink were unending and our plates were never empty. We had to beg them to stop feeding us so we could sleep. They all crowded around us and we talked about Pawan's youngest sister's upcoming arranged marriage in November and her current college course she attends. We looked at family pictures and watched Pawan's 2 young sons sleeping in the bedroom next to ours. Now, it was about 45 degrees Celsius outside, so inside it must have been about 15 degrees hotter...so even with very little clothing on and the fan on full blast, it was pretty hot! The airconditioning unit was meager and did not blow cold air, but the circulation did help. We went to the bathroom area and washed our faces and brushed our teeth with fresh cold water from a bucket, as there is not running water from inside the home and used the toilet (a porcelain rectangular shaped hole, with a bucket of water you use to flush). It was quite basic, but did the trick just fine. All three of us laid side by side with very few items of clothing on, watching the one English channel on television until we fell asleep. Now, it was very hot, but laying completely still did help. There was one power cut through the night and this rendered the fan and air conditioning unit useless, but we were able to fan ourselves with our shirts and drift off to sleep once again. We were awoken to the smell of cinnamon, masala and sweet milk boiling on the stove for a delicious chai with vanilla wafers for breakfast. We don't think the family slept all night, as they were taking care of us and ensuring that we were comfortable and well cared for. Each of us received a gift, Alex's being the biggest, as it is her birthday, and then they all gave us hugs and kisses and we were off to the airport. Never in all of our 10 weeks have we ever experienced such hospitality and warmth from our newest friends in India, and it will never be forgotten.

The Glass Half Empty Version
As discussed in the previous blog, our taxi driver during the last leg of our India extravaganza was named Pawan and he was an honest man in a country where it is very difficult to trust anyone, especially men. Initially, we tought he did not speak a lick on English, and this was somewhat true, but we managed to communicate through charades and hand gestures and broken English and Hindi words. For 9 days he took us from town to town and tourist hot spot to tourist hot spot with no complaints, always telling us to be careful and be safe, don't talk to anyone. He brought us bottled water and gave us Indian hard boiled sweets throughout the day. It may not sound like much, but after what we have been through over the past 10 weeks in India, it gave us some sense of peace to have a driver that we could leave our bags in the car with...well at least the bits in our bag that did not include money or passports. We were able to connect with him on some level over the week learning about his family (a wife and two sons...one 7 and one 3. The 7-year-old loves school and is very smart). He had an arranged marriage about 11 years ago (which is typical in most parts of India), but he has grown to love his wife. His wife has a "good face and a good nature" and he misses her very much. He is very close to his parents, whom he resides with and he has 2 younger sisters and 2 younger brothers. He used to be a long haul driver on a big rig truck, carrying expensive merchandise from city to city, but this is a dangerous job and he was attacked by "terrorists" who stole his merchandise and chopped part of his arm off and his skull leaving him with severe scarring. Now, the cynical side of me thought...hmmm...what type of merchandise were you hauling around to bring on such an attack??? He was left for dead, but some army men were on patrol and found him and brought him to the hospital saving his life. He decided to change careers and become a taxi driver. He has been doing this for 3 years now, but we are his first non-Indian clientele. He seemed very excited about that and when he discovered that we were going to crash in the airport for our last night, as we all needed to be at the airport by 5:00am for check-in and we would not return to Delhi until midnight the night before, he looked concerned-ish. He must have spoken with his wife and family, as he invited us to stay in his home for our last night in a room with a bed and a toilet area to freshen up and he would take us to the airport for our early morning departure with no further cost or any expectations. My first thought was, hmmm, what might he be after...a bigger tip...would he be charging us for the ride to airport or the use of his home? My second thought was that his family would have told the whole neighbourhood about the rich white tourists that will be staying at his home and they would all either gather around to snap photos, try to convince us to go into business back in the USA and UK with them (mostly selling merchandise of some sort) or they would just wait for us to sleep and steal our money. May sound cynical or even totally evil, but this is India after all and we have not had the most positive experiences when trusting people...particularly taxi drivers. This place does teach one to be on guard at all times and this sometimes metamorphasizes into extreme disbelief and even sweeping generalizations and judgements. Despite the fact that we had read about this in our Lonely Planet book...about how lucky it is to be invited to an Indian's home, as they treat their guests like G-ds and cater to their every whim and need, no matter what their socio-economic status, we were a bit hesitant, but he actually had his English speaking sister phone us and explain that we would be safe and they were all waiting...a kind of guilt trip...so we agreed...hesitantly. After a very long day of site seeing (the Golden Temple) and a further 10 hour drive back to Delhi from Amritsar, we made it to Pawan's home by about 10:00pm. We drove down a dark unlit road with a pile of dirt on one side forcing Pawan to drive up with the car at a diagonal and then turned down a small alleyway to an even smaller driveway overgrown with brush and plants and probably cluttered with bugs and various animals. It looked a little bit like the entrance to the fire swamp (for those Princess Bride fans out there). There were 4 tiny dilapidated cement stairs that did not quite fit an entire foot on the base so it was very challenging/virtually impossible to climb up them with all of our bags. There were also no railings so you needed to use those core muscles to balance. They lead up to a metal gate-like door which opened into a huge open room (kind of like an outdoor house with no windows so not totally enclosed...with a toilet room on the right with a door that would not lock or close properly, no running water and a squat pot in the corner (no toilet paper is used, so one must use the bucket of water provided in front of the squat pot and one's own hand to rinse one's private toileting bits with water). This toilet room became very wet and slippery, as you can imagine, so it was only a place to use in an extreme emergency...additionally, it was very hot and kind of scary in this room with lots of spiders in the corners and lizards running across the floor and walls from time to time. You had to use extreme care and leg muscles when squatting as not to slip and fall into the unknown wet liquids on the floor surrounding the toilet. Wendy and I went together, as I had to hold the door shut for her while she used this toilet...it was an experience and I painted a picture for her to get her mind to a happy place..."Imagine that we are at mom and dad's house in the guest bathroom downstairs. It smells like potpourri and is clean with plush two-ply toilet paper just waiting to wipe your bum. It is soft and white and the toilet flushes. You are sitting on this toilet and there is no unidentifiable liquid surrounding your feet or bugs crawling around your face." We also washed our faces in that room from another bucket of cold water (this being the face washing and showering bucket, while the other one is the toileting bucket - please do not confuse these buckets) and the dirty water just rolls down to the drain hole in the corner of the bathroom and a squeegee broom is used to wipe the residual water down towards this drain. However, we did not brush our teeth in this room, as there was not enough room - according to one of Pawan's sisters, so we all gathered in the main room near the front gated entrance and brushed our teeth near the front door. Why, you might ask? Well, because when you spit your dirty mouth toothpaste onto the floor, they can rinse it outside the front stairs easier with a bucket of water. Yes folks, this is correct, we actually spit our toothpaste from our dirty mouths onto the floor in the their main living room and rinsed it right out the front door..pause for reaction...and continue. A kitchen was located off the left side of the main room and 3 bedrooms were scattered around the circumference of the main living room area. There was also a very scary cement staircase with various metal beams and bars poking out at random places that appeared to lead to nowhere and I don't think it is safe to go up those stairs and I am not sure what is kept up there (maybe the remains of previous backpackers), as we were told NOT to go near them...so we didn't. The two main rooms had "air conditioning units" set up on stilts and then propped onto bricks against the window and each and a ceiling fan on the highest speed it could spin. The air conditioning unit can only be described as machines from pre-World War 1 that probably had some sort of hamster running around inside making the thing work...it blew hot air that made our bedroom sauna like. There are about 10+ people residing in the home and they were so accommodating...well, the women/slaves were accommodating. Pawan and the other 3 men residing in this home disappeared and about 6 women came out and slaved around for the rest of the night...they made food, kept bringing in more and more, and then cleaned up after us. It must be said that some members of our threesome did not want to eat the food (not naming any names, but it rhymes with Mendy), but we all did not want to be rude so Alex and I had to choke down about 6 portions of paneer (cheese) curry and some rice pudding dish (not a good consistency and all food was very hot in temperature). Alex did a very good job fighting through her triggered gag reflex to finish it all with a smile! They cleaned our toothpaste off the floor, dragged the cable wire and television into the room for us, made the bed, brought us towels and fresh drinking water, they talked with us about their lives and upcoming arranged nuptials. And now for the temperature part of this blog entry. It was about 45 degrees Celsius outside, so inside it must have been about 15 degrees hotter...so even with very little clothing on and the fan on full blast, it was stifling! The "airconditioning unit" was meager and I think the hamster inside must have died from exposure to this heat, as it did not blow cold air, but merely circulated the already extremely moist hot air hanging over us in the room. All three of us laid side by side with very few items of clothing on taking care not to touch each other's skin for any reason and then tried to pretend we were in Alaska freezing to death. I think that we may have passed out from heat exhaustion from time to time, but Wendy did sit up at one point...I think it was after the power cut, which stopped the fan from circulating the only air in the room...and she began to pray to G-d to get her through this. When we spoke about this the following morning, she told us that she was actually contemplating running out of the room naked begging Pawan's sister to hose her down naked with cold water. Now for those of you who know my sister, you can imagine the desperation she must have felt to be pushed to even think about such a thing! It is important to note that during the power cut, the women in the household did open our door and just come in and out of the room...maybe to check on us...not too sure, but I think we were all delirious and we may have actually hallucinated this. We "woke up" in pools of sweat and all had headaches...I had the added bonus of a sever crick in my back from being wedged between the two mattresses that were made out of wood and had begun to slide apart throughout the night. They had made us piping hot cups of chai...piping hot cups...hot cups...HOT! Now, Alex is off tea again (that was short lived) and Wendy was in a special place, so I had to drink 3 steaming cups of chai so they wouldn't think we were rude...I did have a little tear in my eye at this point, but we all persevered. They gave us all gifts (my dad would call these shit-shelf gifts,as they are pound store/dollar store specials), but very sweet and thoughtful. We pulled our clothing over our sweaty hot sticky bodies, tried to make the bed with the dripping wet sheets, and said our goodbyes...we got into the air conditioned car and left for the airport. The car ride was such an amazing treat and so cool against our skin. Later that day, while on the plane, Alex noticed that she was covered with tiny red bed bug bites all over her body. She looks like she has the chicken pox. Never in all of our 10 weeks have we ever experienced such hospitality and warmth - but if this is hospitality, who needs friends.