South Asians think I'm a pimp
Trip Start
Jul 01, 2004
1
42
89
Trip End
Jan 03, 2005
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Ajanta and Ellora, India
Monday, October 4, 2004
The train had no trash can. The train employees encouraged us to toss everything out the window, like it was going to magically disappear. The whole country appears to be like that. Very few trash cans anywhere in India. People wandering barefoot through nasty smelling puddles. People urinating in the street at all hours. Smells that induce nausea emanating from everywhere. Very little order to the traffic patterns, combined with cars that clearly don't meet any sort of emission standards. They even had signs in Mumbai telling everyone to boil their water in order to keep healthy. Not good.
Indians kept coming up and asking me for permission to take my photo, but then really they wanted to take photos of Claire, Abbey, Lauren and I. They never addressed the girls, always me, like I was their pimp. We were probably approached 8 times in an hour. At one point, Abbey agreed to take a different group's picture. Afterwards, 3 of them came up to me, thanked me and shook my hand. None thanked Abbey. It was pretty strange.
The Ajanta and Ellora caves are magnificent. The intricacy of the carving and the size of the buildings is on par with Ankor Wat, but the overall footprint is much smaller. I was very impressed.
Bobble Head - people don't nod normally, they move their heads like the bobble head dolls given out at sporting events. They just sort of bob them around from side to side with a little forward and backward motion mixed in for good measure. It's pretty amusing to watch.
Net/Net I'm enjoying the food, the attractions and the company, but I find everything very depressing and I can already tell that a month will be plenty of time to have spent here.
