Full Power, 24 Hour, No toilet! No shower! ... india travel blog

What to do?

Go to katmandu . . .

Play didgeridoo . . .

Full power!

24-hour!

No toilet!

No shower!

That's a Punjabi rock song. Nobody can figure out why you would want to sing about having no toilet, when the toilets you can get are bad enough as it is, but whatever.

Well I got my transit visa out of Katmandu. It sure is prestigious traveling on a journalist visa, but you pay for the prestige, no doubt about it. Like triple-price. The trains were already booked for days, so I had to fly into Delhi and buy a ticket for my guide, Shera, as well. It was definitely worth it. His first international flight. He has also eaten his first pork and rowed his first boat and learned to swim on this trip, so not a bad series of firsts overall. I let him have the window seat and my camera and he took videos of our takeoff and landing, pictures of clouds, and all that good stuff.

"How many flights do you have to take before the take-off isn't exciting anymore?" he asks me. He's thrilled to pieces and I'm sitting there all bored, ignoring the safety lecture, which tickles him pink.

"A lot," I tell him. "A lot."

Then we got a sleeper bus overnight from Delhi to Amritsar. Miraculous. I mean there is no way I can imagine being able to figure this stuff out without him. It's nothing special to him. Just like taking a Greyhound. But you have to cross insane traffic at night, go down this dark street, talk to a shady character in a mosquito infested cubicle who sells you an illegible ticket. A billboard down the street warns you of dengue fever, which is carried by mosquitos. While he bought the ticket, I hid in the even darker darkness around the corner, so the travel agent wouldn't see my pale face and charge what I call the "skin tax." In the dark there I met a rickshaw driver, a Nepali guy, who told me about his friend who has an import shop in Pismo Beach. He was nice, which is pretty cool considering I was standing there in the dark, being white, and trying to look tough but might as well have had a bullseye painted on my wallet. Everything went fine. I got on this bus full of beds with little curtains, and slept my way into the Punjab, which is glorious, green, full of waving fields of wheat. The breadbasket of India, where men wear their turbans totally different from the American Sikhs. They look like carefully tethered flying saucers.

I meet all these westerners who are taking taxis everywhere instead of cheaper rickshaws, eating in the most expensive restaurants since they can't find or don't comprehend the local dhabas, afraid to see a doctor if they get sick, and so on. Basically clueless and I'm so glad I have Shera. He takes me to the best cheap places and keeps me out of tourist traps. Got a friend to loan us his scooter and took me to the doctor when I got sick. He books our tickets online and understands the bus and train schedules, so saves me the travel agent fee, and when we were ready to leave Katmandu, he understood that trying to get on a packed train was going to be too big a pain in the ass and saved us the trouble. Anyhow, now that I'm in Amritsar I have to get down to work and do some serious interviews and research, so I better go do it. Keep the emails coming, and I'll see ya'll soon.