Incredible India (Haridwar, IN)

Try as my kind and patient sub-continent-experienced friends did, nothing could have prepared me. India is fucking mad!

It's everything you've ever read or heard or seen - so crowded, so loud, so dirty, so poor, so many cows - but it just doesn't mean anything until you feel it. The physical sense of such extreme sensory overload can't possibly register until the pollution burns your throat, your snot turns permanently black, 7 people talk to you at simultaneously, and all at once you smell incense and delicious food cooking mixed with urine from the outdoor toilets and the stench of the decaying cow at the side of the road. The clashing and blending of religion, language, class, and culture is fascinating and the color spectrum runs wild and wide.

My flight here alone was an adventure. If you've never heard of Bangladesh's Biman Airways, there's a reason for this and unless total incompetence, overwhelming scents of gasoline and/or burning rubber, and passenger-crew shouting matches in the aisle is what you look for in airline carrier, I suggest you don't ever even begin to consider flying with them. There were about 300 people on board and besides a few poor abused flight attendants, around 4 were women. A solid 14 of the men spent the hours (and I say hours because Biman doesn't fly without delays of at least several hours) pouring each other shots and drinking like fish. This made them loud and easily agitated which led to more than one hostile standoff on the plane. The seat belt sign was purely decorative, like a twinkly Christmas light if you will, and in no way anything to heed. In fact, if a single international standard of air safety was actually followed, I'd be amazed. On the upside, we didn't crash.

miraculously, after an overnight lay over in Dakah, I arrived in Delhi and successfully avoided around 7 scams and pushy con artists before I even made it to my hotel. I instantly decided that after beach paradise, I was in no shape for a long stay in the most chaotic city on the planet so I booked a bus ticket to Dharmashala for the next evening. I spent the morning visiting the Red Fort where I eavesdropped on an Indian primary school teacher's history lesson, and wandering through a mere fraction of the trillion bazaars. When my ADD couldn't handle another second, I took a bicycle rickshaw home which in and of itself was as close to a near-death experience as I've ever had.

Dharmashala is a tiny mountain paradise. Home of the Tibetan government-in-exile, it was sheer luck that the Dalai Lama happened to be teaching the morning I arrived. Sadly, I don't speak a damn word of Tibetan and was unaware of the English translation room until he was finished, but the experience of watching and listening to the man speak in front of a huge audience of mesmerized Tibetans, was phenomenal nonetheless. Expect to be annoyed by my planning of an upcoming Nepal/Tibet trip as soon as I'm home.

From Dharmashala I had my first Indian train adventure, a lovely hypothermic overnight bearing greater resemblance to prison than train, which ended in Rishikesh. If you've ever wondered what happened to the hippies with dreads and woven bags from your 9th grade social studies class, I found them. At least all the ones that didn't grow up into Starbucks-drinking hipsters (not that there's anything wrong with that), they're in Rishikesh. They still have the dreads and woven bags, but now they meditate and take all sorts of alternative supplements, and meditate. It's a beautiful town split by the Ganges where everyone is completely relaxed. One afternoon I took a hatha yoga class in a rooftop studio with hardwood floors and sun streaming in floor to ceiling windows. The mats were pretty Indian rugs instead of blue plastic and I was the only student. It was a fantastic hour and a half of my life and for those of you accustomed for $12-20 group yoga classes in the western world, it cost all of $2.50. I know.

Yesterday I came to Haridwar which is a massive pilgrimage destination. At night there's a ceremony at the river where people come to bathe and drink and be purified. They light little candles and send pretty leaf boats of flowers down the river. Today I visited Indian Disneyland, a rickety gondola up to a holy temple and now I'm waiting for a night bus to Agra, home of the Taj.

One last tidbit for the fashionistas out there... Indian men LOVE the sweater vest. They dig the Cosby sweater too, but the sweater vest is absolutely everywhere. If anyone knows how this happened, I'd be curious.