The Other Side

This week marks the half-way point for our trip through India, poignant to the core in some ways due to our current stay at a hotel just a stone's throw from the Taj Mahal in Agra. Claire and I made a choice early on with regards to the goals our blog, and it is something that deserves acknowledgment so our readers may better understand both our intentions and the truth of travel in this magical Asian subcontinent. That goal has been simply our desire to keep the tone of writing in the blog light, and to deliberately concentrate on the positive, historical, and arcane aspects that have captured both our attention and our hearts. This is, after all, our honeymoon. After five weeks of travel and assessing this goal and it's level of achievement thus far, we both feel it has been a success. At the same time, it also feels as though some very real problems that are evident to us on a daily basis are being glossed over, lending a slant of misrepresentation to those of you who have not had the luxury of experiencing this land for yourselves. In an attempt to address what I see as a shortfall, this blog entry will be a sort of full-disclosure summation of a host of problems that Claire and I have noticed and/or experienced directly during our visit. I also want to re-iterate the main goal of the blog; to be fun, educational, as well as to give our loved ones a sense of our progress and well-being on our travels. The puns and offbeat humor (no that was not a real incident with a hippo in Kerala) will continue to be included at no extra charge in future entries. This one is all real though... no punches pulled. Traveling through India is a once in a lifetime opportunity for us... and I do want to emphasize... once in a lifetime.

How would I best describe India in a few sentences to somebody who has never been here? To paraphrase my father-in-law, Barry Taugher, India is a land of extremes. The thing that stands out the most in a positive fashion, is that even among tremendous hardships and sometimes shockingly appalling living conditions and poverty of the general population, there is an indescribable humanity that shines through in so many of our interactions with Indians. India really does let it all hang out. It doesn't try to hide its problems, and it likely couldn't even if it wanted to.

This is a crowded country. With a population of over 1 billion and a high growth rate, India will become the world's most populous country by 2030. The population density is 4 times higher than the US. You can constantly feel this everywhere you go in this country. It can be seen on the overcrowded buses and trains, the congested city streets, and the large number of rural settlements. And with this large number of people there is a complete disregard for trash and pollution. Food wrappers and plastic bottles litter every street, park, national monument, railroad and roadside. Indians seem to use their beautiful country as a trash can. As one chai seller said after we finished chai in a plastic cup, “Use and throw.” It is frightening to think of what this place will look like in another 30 years if no action is taken.

Combine a “use and throw” mentality with the current method of garbage disposal... burning piles of trash outside of homes and businesses everywhere. Yes, the whole country is a landfill here and when the piles of used paper products and rotten produce have grown too large, Indians just light a fire and away it goes. Perhaps a methodologically sound practice for thousands of years, burning trash in some ways is a perfect way to get rid of it... the produce is eaten by the street dogs and cows which are abundant, and then the paper products leave nothing but ash and smoke. There is a major problem with this in the last century though, and that is the burning of plastics. There seems to be complete unawareness as to the toxicity of burning plastic bottles and packaging of all sorts. While most of the places Claire and I have stayed have not put up with the smoke directly, there are many times when we have been on a bus or rickshaw and been driven past heaping piles of burning plastic with an Indian stoking the fire while standing in the billowing smoke.

The poverty here is also always in your face. The beggars are the most obvious example of this and it is very difficult to see children begging, and knowing if we give the child a rupee or two, someone else will take the money from the kid. We've seen missing limbs, untreated broken bones, and other signs of a poor health care system. There is no social security system here so if someone cannot work and has no family to help, that person is forced to beg. People routinely give a couple rupees to the beggars (as that is the form of social security here) but as Westerners we are expected to give more. And the reality is we can afford to give more. But when you walk down the street and there are dozens of beggars asking for money, it is impossible to give to all of them. And it is so hard to ignore someone's suffering like that.

India is a land of extremes in every sense. We write this post to share with you the other side of India we have experienced, and these are the aspects of the country that will have a lasting effect on us. We don't want to dwell on the poverty and pollution with our blog but rather to show the beauty, light, and tremendous humanity here.

Jeff and Claire