I see poverty all around me, but I have yet to experience not scoffing at the price of any item. The exception is the half-empty pack of cigarettes one shop keep tried to sell Kristina for only a slight discount off the sticker price. I've decided I'm going to pay for the laundry service in the hotel because it comes out to roughly a buck a shirt or pair of pants, and they iron each item way nicer than I ever could. They also go the extra mile and hang everything up in your closet too, which I really appreciate. Before, I left, when I found out I had a dishwasher in the apartment, I felt it would be prudent to ask if it was a machine, or a person. I was told it was a machine. I do have a dishwasher, but the housekeeper does all my dishes every day. So I actually do have a dish-washer. The housekeeper also finds some way to organize/fold/neaten nearly every item in my apartment every day. I'm going to be RUINED when I get back to the states. Hey Mom, will you iron and hang my shirts for 2 bucks a piece?
We do however, barter with the auto-rickshaw drivers anytime we take one (which is nearly every trip around town except to and from work). They usually come out asking 10-15 times the fair price of a ride, and we negotiate it down to roughly 4-5 times the price of the ride. That is of course, unless you get lucky and get an honest (or should I say stupid) driver who will turn the meter on. Someone recommended using the threat of calling a police officer over when a driver won't use the meter, since not turning it on is illegal, but the only way to get a police officer to enforce the law, is to pay him some money. In India, the wheels of justice always need a little grease.
Driving in India can be likened to a game of Asteroids, except you have no missiles to shoot at the cars/trucks/buses/motorcycles/rickshaws/bicycles/people on foot rocketing at you from all directions. Traffic lights are optional, stop signs non-existent, the sidewalks are built at least a foot of the ground so they can't be driven on. The only thing keeping everything delicately strung together is a deafening symphony of horn honking and lots hand waving. Yet our driver insists India has one of the lowest accident rates in the world. What lines on the road?
On the way to Mumbai last weekend there was some old dude who couldn't walk, sitting indian style, slowly shuffling himself across a major intersection with his hands. This is completely normal. I also have seen naked children running around barefoot (that is redundant) in construction zones, and the other night I saw a man shaped like a pumpkin, literally a uniform circumference, sitting on the ground begging for money.
In the last week we have been swarmed by beggars at least once. You get used to this really quickly and get over your sorrow once you learn that they have to deliver any money they receive to the gangsters that are pimping them out to the streets. I have a video of Kristina being swarmed on Chowpatty Beach in Mumbai at dusk which I'll post later. This beach was a crazy place...thousands of people littered across the sand and the surf. It looked like a big beach party - but this is just how it is all the time. We stopped at a 5-star hotel right off the beach and actually spend roughly $45-50 bucks a person on dinner. This was probably the fanciest, most gourmet meal I've ever had in my life though, and would easily fetch upwards of $200 in NYC. Earlier in the day we took a boat ride out to Elephant Island, hiked up a two-hundred year-old staircase to see a 1200 year-old temple built inside the top of the island. Really cool. This island also had wild monkeys. One of the greatest things I saw was one of these monkeys chilling in a tree eating a corn-on-the-cob, and holding the corn-on-the-cob like a human would.
Now I'm going to continue my vacation by smoking some "shisha" on the balcony. Not what you think, that's illegal!!!!!!!
$3 & you've got yourself a deal.
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