What You Missed, What We Miss and What We DON"T

As many of you already know, we didn’t have reliable access to the Internet in Leh and didn’t have any access in Srinagar. The last week has been surreal. Even more surreal than usual! I will start with today and yesterday and go backwards. I figure that suits the way things work in India. Backwards.

Lies. Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

July 11, Sunday. Shortly after crawling out of our cozy twin beds on the houseboat we had all to ourselves for our entire stay, we decided to brave swimming in the lake. I had spoken to several sources and was assured that sewage was not dumped in the lake. Proof was provided when I noticed that locals ate the fish, swam in the lake and grew vegetable gardens right on the water. They even had water skiing for a small charge. We ordered a yummy breakfast of omelet, porridge, Kashmiri bread and milk tea, the same as the day before. Like every meal in India, you never get the same thing twice, even when the order hasn’t changed. The omelet was half the size of the day before, the porridge was substantially better, the bread came buttered, not plain and the milk tea was strangely unsweetened. After our quick gutsy swim, I knew we were in for some trouble, bargaining our final bill. Although the price per day including meals had been set ahead of time, we quickly learned that Lonely Planet: India, was not exaggerating when it claimed Kashmiri’s would squeeze every rupee possible. Sure enough, our room rate had a undisclosed "luxury tax" of 10%, the Shakara boat ride we had arranged was overcharged by 200 rps, some bagged Kashmiri tea that we were practically forced into taking was added for the sum of 220 rps and the taxi we had requested in order to take us the airport was a whopping 450 rps. We were overcharged by nearly 900 rps ($25). I told Jeni to put on her poker face and I prepared to dance.

We got out of there without paying the fictitious "luxury" tax, paid the original Shakara rate, we gave back the tea and solemnly agreed to pay the outrageous "taxi" fee (they drove us in their family car). There was no way we were walking through a slew of muddy ally-ways with our backpacks in order to bargain with another man who knew we HAD to get to the airport one way or another. The houseboat owner was angry and made lucid comments about Americans, but his brother, who drove us to the airport did damage control talking about how money is no issue, singing Tina Turner songs to us and asking us to refer business to their houseboat as often and as soon as possible. The entire stay they played this game of Good Cop, Bad Cop to try to get more money and then be our best friend.

"We Should Have Rode the Bus" – Comment by Jeni at the Srinagar Airport

Considering there was a landslide and the road to civilization was blocked, we were fortunate to have pre-booked plane tickets out of Srinagar. We even met an American-Indian who was panicking about how to get back to Delhi to catch his flight home to the sweet USA. The airport was a smelly zoo. We had to lug our own luggage around to several different x-ray machines, take the batteries out of our cameras, open and eat crackers we had packed, watch as women read the packages of every little thing (hand sanitizer, chap-stick, contact fluid, urrrr), fight to take our small bags on the plane with our personal belongings and we were felt up, I mean searched in these women only boxes a gazillion times (before going into the airport, when we checked in with our ticket, when we registered with the foreign registry, when we went to our terminal, when we left our terminal and finally out on the runway before climbing to our plane).

I thought I had reached my twilight zone point when they took my teddy bear from my carry on, bagged it, gave me a claim ticket and offered only the explanation of "security risk." They took my stuffed polar bear that I use as the perfect neck pillow on planes, but let me carry on the sharp metal pipes to the Abli Gobli (Hooka) I bought in Kashmir??? However, just after we had yet again identified our luggage, I was standing in line to exit the terminal to the bus that would take us to our plane. I was bumped from behind, which happens all the time in India. I quickly looked to make sure it wasn’t a pervert and caught a well-dressed upper class Indian woman with her hand halfway down inside the side pocket of my bag. I almost broke her wrist. The only thing that stopped me was the military man 7 feet behind her with the machine gun. I held on to her for an extended time, gritted my teeth and let go. Fortunate for her, she wasn’t on the same plane.

Smelly Delhi

We were happy and sad to be back in civilization. Sad to say goodbye to the vistas, interesting people and the cool weather, happy to have luxuries like the Internet, phones, near-by hospitals, no overt military presence, no noises that sound just like shelling and gun fire (but that our houseboat owner dismissed and pretended he didn’t hear) and to be on our way to our next destination…. The Taj Mahal!

We choose a budget hotel in a good location, right next to a Barista (Indian Starbucks) and a Baskin Robbins. Upon arrival, we hauled our luggage up the four flights of stairs, careful not to touch the wet paint the entire way up. For the first time on our trip we were forced to pay in advance for our room. We asked to see the room first and it wasn’t nice, but it wasn’t bad either. Or so we thought. We were blinded by the promise of air conditioning and HBO. The TV worked, but the static and snow made watching it impossible. The circuit breaker kept popping and turning off our ac. I complained 3-4 times in the first hour. We took off to get some coffee, beer and grub, in that order. When we got back, I tried in vain to get them to change the cable wire to the TV. As I was wiggling the messed up wire so we could maybe watch Lord of the Rings, our first taste of TV in three weeks, I was forced to used my pink flip flop to kill a very scary black bug. Within a few minutes I had killed 5 more! I could never be a Buddhist.

We went to complain about the bugs and we were reassured with about seven different excuses. Rainy season, bla bla. I wanted and needed to believe any of the excuses in order to sleep that night. We ended up sharing our beers with some cool Scottish girls who were on a three-week holiday; we sat around talking on the patio for a couple of hours. When we finally got back to our room, I was floored. Those five bugs had brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, etc. They were all sizes and colors, flying, jumping, crawling their way mainly on our bed where we had neatly laid out our sheets which we had sprayed with 100% Deet (bug repellant). Our sheets were like Deet flavored candy to them. I discovered that the hideous tapestry hanging on the wall above our beds was AKA bug central. It was filled with nests of all stages, sizes and scariness. Within seconds I was bundled with my PJ pants pegged 80’s style, then tucked into my socks, I put on long sleeves even though it was in the upper 90’s and was more creeped out than I can ever remember. I am not that squeamish when it comes to bugs, unless they are earwigs or roaches. I have even raised THREE tarantulas (hey dad, how’s Terry doing?). This was unbearable, unacceptable and apparently unrefundable.

"Refund" – not in the Indian dictionary. India has never met Jeeni and Jeni!

For the next four to five hours we battled with the only staff on duty. A small, 19 year old, boy with no authority to give refunds and "managers" on the telephone. "It is not possible Madame." At first I was firm, but nice. Next I demanded to talk to the manager, even if by phone. She hung up on me. I called her back and talked to her boss. He threatened to call our Embassy, which I invited him to do. I assured him that they would love to see the pictures we took of his filthy room. Next we did "Good Cop, Bad Cop" like we learned in Srinagar. Jeni (Good Cop) broke the Manager’s Manager will a little when she started talking about rights and used legal jargon. Said it was against the law to lock us in (we discovered this after we went to our room and packed up) with a metal gate and pad lock, "fire hazard." Also, she warned him that we had paid for services that were not rendered, such as ac, TV and most importantly, safe sleep. Rounds and rounds we all went. Why we deserved a refund, how they lied, dodging their offers like spraying our room with insecticide. We told him we would rather have bugs than poison. The most ridiculous and popular claim they threw at us was that if we would just turn off the lights in our room, they would magically go away. The bugs were only there because of the light!

In the end, it was my empty threat to go over to the balcony and call out to a police officer on the street that got us our refund. At first it was a partial refund… two, three steps towards the balcony and suddenly it was a full refund, minus the "luxury" tax! Four, five steps, almost there, almost about to have my bluff called…Full Refund. In the mix, I also had to negotiate the release of my laundry I had turned in right when we got there. "It is not possible Madame." I climbed up to the roof and pulled down my damp clothes myself. Huh!

YMCA – Previously thought to be overpriced! Now thought to be Heaven on earth.

At 2:30am we made our way via rickshaw to the YMCA. We had stayed here on our first visit to India and were shocked at the prices, especially considering we didn’t have ac. In retrospect, our refund for the Roach Motel was about twenty bucks. By the time we did the math, we were way past monetary value and had dug our heals into Principle. We are now paying about five bucks more a night each and although it is not "really" in our budget, it’s worth it!

So for a reward for our self-professed heroism, making it through an international war zone (Srinagar and Drass) and spending weeks taking bucket baths, we treated ourselves to a day at the spa. I paid less than $16 for a pedicure, facial, neck and head massage, hair cut, wash, conditioning and blow dry. We needed to wash and massage away the nasty memories of all those creepy crawling critters.

I feel sorry for the Scottish girls…

More to follow, sending my love, Jeeni