Seat of Our Pants » India

You’ve Been on the Road Too Long When…

Jaime — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 12:07:59 +0000

You know you’ve been on the road too long when you’ve checked into a five star hotel and the following conversation takes place:

Jaime: “Is it embarrassing that we’ve just checked into this hotel carrying our own toilet paper?”

Martin: “Not any less embarrassing than checking out with the two from our bathroom. Did you see that there’s two rolls in there?”

Jaime: “Score!”

When you’re on the road for as long as we’ve been, you learn that the one thing you cannot do without is your own roll of toilet paper. You never know when disaster will strike…

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This Luxury Calls for a Muumuu!

Jaime — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 12:02:08 +0000

Is this a Delhi monument? A museum, perhaps? Or maybe it’s a palace?

No, actually its our hotel in Delhi. Travel has been rough and dirty for the last few months and we couldn’t get excited about staying in a backpacker guesthouse during our two days here – so we went five star.

Pool side at the Maidens Hotel in Delhi

Thanks to a wedding present promise by my friend Alessandra, we’re living in style and doing things we haven’t been able to do in months. Taking a bubble bath has never felt so good. Splashing around in a pool is like a little piece of heaven. Crisp white sheets wait for us on our huge king-size bed – and get this, they change the sheets daily! It’s madness.

Granted, we have to sneak out of the hotel at mealtime to eat street food (we can’t afford much else), but playing rich feels good, people. So good, in fact, that I broke out the special muumuu in celebration. It’s my fancy one – the one with mirrors sewn into the collar.

The five star muumuu

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India Beer Review

Martin — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:55:59 +0000

Our time here in India is winding down, and it’s time to review the local beer brands. Let me begin by saying that this is by no means a comprehensive review: India is a huge country, and we’ve only visited eight provinces. Also, I haven’t tried all the beers around here. For that, I believe my liver and wife are equally grateful.

The above beer is perhaps the most well-known Indian beer: Kingfisher Premium. It can be bought in dedicated beer stores around the world. I wish I could say that this is only the starting point for the greatness that is Indian beer, but no. Sorry. This is just about as good as it gets. This Kingfisher is a well made lager with a slight consistency problem from bottle to bottle – it is all right, and I have no problem drinking it. Sometimes, it tastes a bit off: no doubt this problem stems from impurities in the water used in the brewing process.

This is a Kingfisher Blue. This is where Indian beer begins to take a wrong turn: since people generally just buy one or two beers per night, they prefer STRONG beer. The Kingfisher Blue is a compromise between strong beer and good flavor: at six percent alcohol it is still drinkable, but with a malty edge that makes it more of a sipping brew than something you drink to quench your thirst.

Next on the Richter scale is the Kingfisher Red. Like its blue brother, it is malty and strong. Flavor wise it tastes a bit like an ale, but at the same time it is fizzy as a lager. At seven or eight percent alcohol, one will make me tipsy and two will make me regret it the morning after. I don’t like it.

Here’s another strong contender for the award ‘Fewest Beers to Make a Grown Man Drunk’: Godfather. Taste-wise it is another malty, semi-dark story. On a cold and dark night in Ladakh, I foolishly had four bottles of this brand. I woke up the day after with a monumental headache. I normally don’t get headaches. What the heck do they put in these beers, alcohol? Yes they do, Godfather checks in at 8-10%.

The only thing noteworthy with the Hayward’s 500 is its name. In flavor and alcohol, it ranks somewhere in the vicinity of Kingfisher Red and Godfather. The 500 is the lowest of the ‘number beers’ that I’ve found: there are a lot of mediocre but super strong beers that has a number in its name. Let’s skip most of them, they are equally horrible. An honorable mention goes to this beer:

The 10000. At a fuzzy 9-13% alcohol, it doesn’t make much sense. Nor do you, after drinking a few. Unfortunately, this is the only brew in some parts of the country, and to my further chagrin it was actually not too bad tasting. Like an alcohol free beer spiked with six shots of vodka.

OK, Let’s talk about some drinkables for a change. This one is called Sandpiper, and it was the only light beer we could score in the Karol Bagh district of New Delhi. It is watery and excessively hoppy, but we drank it with cherish. I mean, five percent, that’s like real beer!

Finally, here’s my winner: Royal Challenge. It is typical that the best beer I found in India is made by a whiskey maker, and sold under a whiskey brand. I can’t say that it is a great beer: its strength lies in the fact that I drank it after a long day, sitting at a rooftop restaurant overlooking the sunset at Taj Mahal. I only found it that one time. Where were you when we needed you, Royal Challenge?

I do feel a little bit bad for writing such a negative review on Indian beer, but seriously: the strong stuff badly fits the hot and sticky climate of this part of the world. I think Mexican or Central American beer would do great around these parts, but at this time in history, India is stuck with the Thunder 10000′s and the Super Strong Godfathers.

It’s enough to make a grown man sigh.

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Our (Unsuccessful) Exorcism Temple Outing

Jaime — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:52:18 +0000

Our Lonely Planet guidebook said that “people bring their possessed loved ones (to this temple) to have bad spirits exorcised” and that “the street outside feels like it’s hosting a Hindu rave.” Sounds like an amazing place to see, right?

The temple they referred to was in Balaji, just three hours drive from Jaipur. We had a half day to spare (we’d already shopped until our bags were stuffed), so off to Balaji we went.

Was it the quintessential Indian experience (the one that has alluded us, though we’ve gone to all the hot spots)? Well, no. It was rather more sterile than we expected. There was no rave. There were no “possessed” people; just a well formed (if somewhat uncomfortable looking) line of people waiting to enter the temple.

So, with our hopes of fitting in a last minute intense Indian experience dashed, all that was left to do was shop. So, shop we did. We’ll be seeing friends and family members in a week and our gift list is long.

Balaji shopping

Unless you don’t mind standing in a Disneyland-style line while 300 Indians push you from behind, we’d suggest giving this town a miss.

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Martin Finally Gets His Wish

Jaime — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 17:48:02 +0000

Before leaving for this trip I asked Martin what souvenir he most wanted to bring home. Yes, I know it was an unfair question, since he had no idea what we would come across, but there was a method to the madness. I was trying to get him used to the idea of buying things because, well, I buy things.

His answer (without even thinking about it, I might add): a marble mortar and pestle.

What? No swords or beer logo shirts? No. A marble mortar and pestle would be all he wanted. (I guess it’s time to reveal that it is, in fact, Martin that does the cooking in this family). Well, it’s taken us almost eleven months to find one, but Jaipur provided us with exactly what he was looking for.

The real beauty of it was that we were able to custom design it as well. We gave the shop the dimensions we were looking for and were able to pick it up twenty four hours later. The boy pictured above most likely polished it for us (he’s a happy one, no?)

The cost for such a beauty? $10. I love India (sometimes).

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Tourist-less Jaipur?

Jaime — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 17:39:15 +0000

The man pictured on the left in this picture literally pulled us over to his vending table so we could pose for a photo together. He then ran to the nearby store to grab a card, insisting we send a copy of the photo to the address on the card.

I tell you this story, which is just one of many encounters we’ve had in Jaipur, to show the unexpected attention we’re receiving here. True be told, it’s caught us off guard. We were under the impression that Rajasthan was one of the most heavily touristed states in India. If that’s so, then where the heck are all the other tourists?

It may be off season. It’s bloody hot here right now and people tend to avoid traveling in arid places in the wrong season. Jaipur also seems a bit like a transit city. It’s not the desert that people want when they come to Rajasthan – they find that in Udaipur and Jaisalmer and other cities to the west.

So what the heck are we doing here, you ask? Well, true to form, we made a last minute decision to take a trip into this state. We had three extra days before we needed to be in Delhi. The time was too short a time to get to the desert (Udaipur & such) and too long to stay in rotten ol’ Delhi. So, Jaipur it was.

We made the best of it, though. I can count six new souvenirs stacked around our room, and that’s just from today’s shopping. I think it’s time to start calculating how much we’re going to pay in overweight to fly all this back to Germany then Sweden.

Psst…don’t tell Martin…but the shopping is nowhere near done.

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Personal Space Revisited

Jaime — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:49:32 +0000

It was ten days ago that I reveled in Martin’s encounter with a cuddly Indian man. I laughed. I thoroughly enjoyed his awkward half-smile, half-grimace when it was happening. I made fun of him for days.

Well, karma is a b-tch. I just spent our two hours of our bus ride from Miao in Arunachal Pradesh to Tinsukia in Assam with this grease-ball on my shoulder.

I believe that makes us even. Hear that, universe! Personal space is now officially reinstated.

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Arunachal’s Tibetan Village

Martin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:06:14 +0000

This is a sight you don’t see every day: a Tibetan settlement, complete with gompas and prayer flags, transplanted onto the sweaty plains of eastern Arunachal Pradesh.

The village has been around since 1976. It was originally set up as a refugee camp for people that fled the madness that was the Cultural Revolution in Chinese-ruled Tibet.

Nowadays the refugees are pretty much settled into their new location. They are focused on building a life for themselves in this far-flung corner of the world – odd as it may seem: a proud high-altitude mountain culture 30 meters above sea level.

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Lake Disappointment

Martin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:53:58 +0000

Much to our disappointment, we didn’t make it to the Lake of No Return. Here’s Jaime explaining why. (Above: the check point where we were turned back by the Assam Rifles).

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Getting Into Arunachal Pradesh

Martin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:49:35 +0000

Traveling out here sure has its quirks and oddities. Like the other day when we tried to cross into Arunachal Pradesh from Assam. To the horror of the border guards, we attempted to do this on a public bus. This could simply not be permitted: nay, we had to have our own vehicle. Unlike the usual foreigner out here (mostly oil men and missionaries), we could only afford a scrappy little auto rickshaw for the last 25 kilometers to Miao.

Bump-eee.

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