Things must know before travelling to India

"I got cheated..." 

While we were having the last breakfast at a hotel in Varanasi, India, my poor husband mumbled this and I nodded without adding any comments. If anyone, any books or any travel guides informed me about India honestly, I would have considered our trip to India more seriously and perhaps I wouldn't stay at this hotel in Varanasi, India at this moment, and I wouldn't decide to write about this negative and critical blog.

I do not deny that India is one of the most spiritual countries in the world and it has plenty of special and unique things to offer to the outside. However, very unfortunately I have been finding that reality of India is not that exotic nor magical as many people, movies and media described and advertised. I am very sorry for the truth, too. Any reason, they have missed writing or showing the reality of India and focused on fantasizing and exaggerating about the cultural differences. 

I am going to write my personal views of India as an ordinary person who lives ordinary life with ordinary wishes from now on. I am ready to get blamed for my personal but truly honest views about India. Maybe some people wouldn't agree with my views but I believe my live experiences of India and honest opinions will help someone can make a right decision on travelling to India. We have been in India for 19 days so far and travelled to 6 main cities recommended, New Delhi, Dharamshala, Amritsar, Varanasi and Goa. 19 days definitely can't be long enough to travel and see such a big country, India but I truly feel that I have seen enough and don't want to see more to disappoint myself. 'Things you must know about India' are based on my personal experiences and honest observations. Therefore, I hope this blog can be a helpful information to you (which I wish I could have had before I decided to come to India). 

Let me start with the traffic in India. It is simply HELL. I regret that I have to use this unfavourable word but I can't find any other word to describe it close to real. Both of us like walking around and seeing how the local people are living so we can experience and see more than tourists who are moved from one place to another by tour buses. I have been always proud of our style of travel. However, we had to realise that it is simply impossible from the first hour in India. Unless you try to kill yourself or don't mind to get injured, walking freely and safely is impossible in India. People are permanently in danger. Truly everything is on the road. Cars, overloaded trucks, moto rickshaws, motobikes, bicycles, carriers, cows, dogs, goats, donkeys, elephants and millions of people are on the road and trying to cross the road at the same time. Can you imagine? Worst thing is there are absolutely no rules. They may argue that they have their own rules but I haven't found any rules so far. Whoever wants to go faster (everyone does), use the horns as loud as possible. The noises from the horning are terribly loud and stressful that you can get a headache. There is no care about people who walk. No cars stop for pedestrians. You need to look after your own life here. Not many cars have rear mirrors because they drive too close to each other and break the mirrors so people don't even bother to have them. We have been 6 cities in India so far and seriously I haven't found even one traffic light for pedestrians. There is simply no space for people to walk safely and driving is also not safe. All my life, I have never experienced this much chaotic and disastrous traffic conditions. I refuse to accept this as a livable condition. I finally found out why India is famous for the number of people killed on the roads. When people can't walk on the streets without fear of being killed or injured, I can't think the country is livable. I feel permanently in danger whenever I am out. My stress level is going up even thinking about the traffic. I feel terribly sorry for the people who live in this unacceptable conditions. 

India itself is like a big rubbish tip. I was extremely disappointed by the reality as all the photos taken by photographers and movie scenes have never shown the truth. I couldn't believe my eyes. Piles of rubbish are everywhere. You can't simply miss the mess. People throw away rubbish everywhere and live in the mess. Streets are full of rubbish and animal drops. Cow poo, dog poo, donkey poo, goat poo, bird poo are nicely mixed with human rubbish everywhere. I couldn't see anything around as I had to try VERY hard to avoid stepping on the drops and piles of rubbish. Men are openly pissing anywhere on the streets so streets smell like toilet. Just imagine that thousands of people are sitting or lying in this disgusting mess and eat their delicious Indian cuisines, and walking on the dirty streets with their barefoot. Hard to imagine? It is still hard to believe for me even though I see them every day. You need to be careful not to step into the open sewages. There are no proper sewage systems so everything(?) flows into the main sewages and they are flowing sides of the streets and roads wherever you go. It is not pleasure to walk as the unbearable smell comes along with the mess. Quite often I felt my stomach got stressed by all the unexpected mess and dirt that I didn't feel to eat anything. The beauty of the magical attractions and historical monuments are very often being faded by this unbelievable mess. I can't tell myself as a tidy person but I believe there is certain limit of messiness for humankind and India's messiness is far over the limit. The level of messiness is unacceptable. I believe this mess is destroying the country and it's own people's lives. India is the dirtiest and messiest country I have ever been to and I refuse to go anywhere worse than here. 

India is absolutely polluted. You can easily guess how India would be so much polluted by imagining the chaotic traffic. Pollution from the cars, motorcycles, old trucks, rickshaws, incredible dust from the roads, uncleaned smoke from factories, dirt from the piles of human rubbish are totally mixed and harming people. I never thought that Muslim women's burka would be a proper dress code for myself. However, I have to wrap my face with a scarf whenever I am out. The air is not breathable. Sunglasses are necessary to protect my eyes from the dust and nose and mouth need to be covered to avoid unbearable smell and polluted air. Every evening when we come back from outside, I can't believe how dirty myself is. Our clothes are totally black from the dust and pollution. I love to walk or run outside but I can't recommend anyone to try them in India as they will harm you instead of making you healthy. Please correct me if I am wrong but I haven't seen any rubbish collections since I came to India. What I can see is people start burning the piles of rubbish around sunset time. You can't see anything else but the smoke from the burning at the time. I don't know who to blame but I certainly know the pollution is killing people here. 

If you see how Indians live and where they cook with what kind of water, I am sure that you will lose your appetites. It looks to me, they have definitely lack of common sense regarding the hygiene standard. I don't want to blame the ordinary people who live unacceptable living conditions. I assume that the Indian government doesn't provide even basic services such as clean water, regular rubbish collections, proper public toilets. Therefore, it would be extremely hard to keep even minimum standard of hygiene. However, I was also very disappointed by the ordinary people's attitudes. They don't seem to mind the messiness or dirty conditions. They sit and watch the mess instead of cleaning and they add up the mess without any thoughts. When I know many people got sick in India and I witnessed how people clean the dishes in what kind of water, we tried not to eat any street food and put efforts to find clean restaurants. However, it is very difficult to find the right ones as there are not many available here. When we came to Varanasi, we couldn't believe how Ganga River was polluted. All human rubbishes and raw sewages are going to the river directly. As you know that Ganga river is a holy place to Indian so they burn their loved ones when they passed away and leave the ash or parts of body in the water. Hundred times of the burning ceremonies are being held a day at the river and people are bathing and even drinking the incredibly polluted water. I was supposed to be impressed by the holiness and spiritual events but unfortunately I was totally shocked by the people's unreasonable attitudes. Would you drink or bath in the water that is one of the most polluted and contaminated water in the world? Am I not spiritual enough to understand this? No, I am not but I know I shouldn't drink the dirty water which makes so many people get sick. When I saw 'Loundary services' people were washing for the customers in the Ganga river and drying the clothes, bed sheets and towels on the floor next to the cow drops, I was almost devastated. OMG... 

You need to have ENOUGH time and patience for anything here. It took us to buy train tickets from Jaipur to Agra and Agra to Delhi more than two hours, and on the top of that we didn't get the tickets for Agra to Delhi. First thing, we had to get a form to fill in all the trip details including our home address, train name and code, departure time, arrival time, etc... I still don't know why they need all the details and people have to fill in manually. However when we are in India, we need to follow the Indian law, don't we? We had to be in a queue for more than two hours to get a ticket as the officer had to enter all the details for each person. Their inefficiency tested our patience but we had to think that we were lucky that at least we had tickets for one direction. When you flew to Varanasi, Goa and Jaipur, we had to stop over in Delhi and Mumbai for transfers but each time we had to completely go out and start again from the security check as there are no transfer gates or entrances. These are one of the biggest airports in the country and many people use the airports to go somewhere else which means everyone have to go through from the beginning each time. I couldn't get the logic but what could we do? One more thing I can add is very often the clocks at the airport and stations are not correct so you need extra care of checking time. Each time we move to a new hotel, the staff opens a huge notebook in front of us and we had to write down all the details such as, when we came to India, where we are from, where is our next destination, nationality, age (why?) sex(why?), when we going to leave India, home address and signature. I believe that there must be reasons to check every single traveller's movement but I was not really convinced about the usefulness of the checking procedures. You certainly need to be ready for enough patience here in India. 

Frankly, as a woman, I didn't feel safe in the most of cities in India. Especially, Delhi I felt even worse. First reason is there seems to be gender imbalance in Delhi. There are too many males than females on the streets. Most of shops are being managed by males and significantly less number of females are even walking around. Subways are full of male passengers and most of time there is not enough personal space for female passengers. One more thing made me feel uncomfortable was staring eyes. Obviously, we look different from them so it could be acceptable to be glanced but being stared unreasonably long time made me feel very uncomfortable. Indian government provides separated train carriages for female passengers and separated quese for only female so females can be protected. However, I had to question why female needs different treatment in India. 

Thousands of people are killed by dog bites every year in Amritsar only one city in India but no one seems to do anything about it. I am a dog lover but I have been trying to avoid the dogs in India because sick dogs are everywhere. Many street dogs are sick so getting a bite from the dogs can be fatal. Based on cultural and religious beliefs and strong tradition, people here live with all the animals. How wonderful story it is? Human and animals are living harmoniously. However, I have found that can be only in a dream. Reality is a disaster. Sick animals are everywhere. Half ton cows are walking between cars and people and poo anywhere. They are searching rubbish bins for food. Sick dogs are lying on the ground everywhere. 1.2 billions of people are living in the country with billions of animals and their mess. It is absolutely disaster. I do believe that keeping the tradition and understand religious beliefs are important but they shouldn't be more important than people's safety.

I have never seen so many poor people in my life. I knew India's GDP is not great but I didn't expect what I would see here. Countless of people including kids are begging everywhere. You can't give any money to anyone as thousands of beggers will come to you with their empty hands. Countless people are living on the streets and unacceptable housing conditions. It is absolutely heartbreaking to see these many people live in poverty. People are lying on the streets without any hope and kids are searching plastic bottles from the rubbish tips. I can't count how many times I have to ask what Indian government is doing for these people. I don't know. Existence of cast system also disgusted me. Who can be born to be lower and poor? I can't accept this lunatic system and the fact that it is still working here at this moment. 

I know I have been so negative and critical but as I told you earlier I wanted to tell my honest views which you can rarely get from others. Of course, there are not only bad things in India even though my blog looks like that. Our second and forth destination, Dharamshala and Goa were very impressive. Even though there were still common problems such as messiness, chaotic traffic and lack of hygiene awareness but these places offered us a beautiful nature and peaceful spaces from the crazy world. 

Dharamshala (McLeod gangi) was very spiritual place where many people from Nepal including Dalai Lama have come and settled. It offers fantastic mountain tracks to enjoy views of lower Himalayas. Goa is another place we felt released after visiting Varanasi. It was under the Portuguese rules until about 50 years ago and many foreign tourists' favourite place to visit. Therefore Goa is very different from other states in India. Normally we try to avoid touristic places but we were quite happy in Goa as cleanness standard was higher than any other places we have visited in India. Goa has many beautiful beaches so anyone who wants to go to India, I would like to recommend Goa to relax. Please avoid Callangute beach as the beach is very popular to Indian tourists so it can be too busy to relax. 

One more thing I shouldn't forget to mention is Indian food. Even though we have been a hard time travelling in India, we could not stop appreciating Indian food. Indian food is absolutely divine. Especially, vegetarian dishes seem to be unlimited. It has full flavour of fresh vegetables and herbs. Ingredients are so fresh that we didn't need to look for any other meals and enjoyed each time. However, I really ask you to choose a clean place to enjoy the food. Hotel restaurants and restaurants recommended by travel guides would be a better choice. Price of food is unbelievable cheap even in the better restaurants so don't risk your wellbeing because of the little difference in price. 

We have got only 2 more days in Agra, India and I am glad it is ending. I knew it would be challenging but definitely I was not ready for the current stage of India. I am very sorry that people who lives in poverty without basic human needs and left in the mess. Also, all the historical monuments that are left with lack of care. The messiness and chaotic surroundings diluted my curiosity about India. Holiness and spirituality seem to be destroyed by people and the unreasonable belief seems to destroy the people. 

Indian government has announced that they are extremely proud of being the forth country to send a space ship to Mars. I am rather sorry than be proud of the news. When their own people don't have their own toilets and clean water, when millions of people are begging on the streets for surviving daily life how it can be highly recognised to waste public's money for the unreasonable show off business.

I can't stop... 

Hope my review can show the reality of India and make you to be ready for the trip physically and mentally. It was challenging and difficult to accept the real situations here (maybe I am not spiritual enough or too emotional). I am standing the last stage of the trip in India and glad it is over soon. If anyone asks what I am thinking about the plan on travelling to India, my answer will be very simple. "Nope!" 

P.S. While I was competing this long and skeptical (sorry) story, I came to Agra by train from Jaipur. It was our first train trip in India and lucky the last one. It took us 7 hours for 200km and the train was called an express line. It was delayed for 1 hour and stopped for about 1.5 hours near Agra without any information. No one really knew why but they told us it was very normal.

Taj Mahal was absolutely amazing and magical looking. However, the river next to Taj Mahal was incredibly polluted. Unfortunately, Taj Mahal smells like a toilet. It was absolutely disappointing to see one of the most precious monuments is surrounded by the sewage. I am truly sorry...

Taj Mahal

Water around Taj Mahal

Laundry Service at the Gang Ga river

Snowed mountain view from The Tround, Dharamshala

Delhi traffic

Walk to the station

Anjuna Beach, Goa