India

Cities

We have seen two large Indian cities - Delhi and Kolkata. I did not particularly like Delhi. It did not seem to have a soul and left the impression of being just a badly assembled collection of buildings. Some architectural monuments (Qutub Minar and Safdarjung Tomb) were great, but visiting them was like being in a sanctuary separate from and not related to the rest of the city.

Kolkata on the other hand had a good vibe. It is much better than "dirt, crowds and poverty" image travel books lead you to believe. It does have all three, but not any worse than any other place and they do not define what the city is about. People there were great - very open and always happy to talk, sell you something (in a surprisingly nice way), and request their picture taken. This picture taking business made walking around rather slow - we were stoped every five minutes and had to take pictures of the locals and then let them admire their portraits.

One of my strongest impressions from the Indian society is that there are so many people who are not needed by the society that some basic social rules change and understanding how things work becomes quite difficult, at least to an outsider. The streets are full of people spending their time just sitting on the pavement staring at you. They do not appear to be homeless living on the streets; they are "just there". Every restaurant we have been to had three times as many staff as seemed reasonable to us, often including a dedicated dust sweeper near the entrance. I know that the country as a whole has too many people, but I could not understand why individual businesses do not try to run efficiently.

A word of warning: in order to really enjoy India you need to have a true interest in its culture. If you are after a sightseeing trip (especially a mountain sightseeing trip), you may want to consider New Zealand or South America instead. Scenery there is just as spectacular, but the climate is better and the annoyance factor is lower.

Mountains

Himalayas are very scenic, but the roads are bad and driving in this area is slow and tiring. We averaged around 20km/h for the duration of our trip, which unfortunately made for a lot of sitting in cars. Indian road authorities seem to compensate for the bad road quality with numerous signs giving advice on how to survive driving on the said roads. Here are a few gems:
- Be gentle on my curves
- For mountain pleasure, drive with leisure
- Speed thrills, but often kills