Fuso in India
- Thread starter kerry
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dhackney
Expedition Leader
When people ask about India, my usual response is:
"India is, in a word, intense. It is intense in sound, color, smells, numbers and experiences.
Because of that intensity, I find that for most people, India is a love-it or hate-it type of place."
For instance, we met a female motorcycle overlander in South America who had traveled India solo. The ever-present compression of the Indian people and lack of privacy finally wore her down and she had to move on to another country.
My wife was less enamored of India than I was. I would welcome the opportunity to see more of India; she is decidedly less enthusiastic of that prospect than I am.
A notable exception to the sensory and societal intensity of "mainstream" India is Sikkim, a former Himalayan Bhudhist kingdom that India annexed in the '70s. Sikkim can be intense in its spirtuality, but is otherwise a welcome respite from the all-senses crush of the typical Indian experience. Highly recommended.
"India is, in a word, intense. It is intense in sound, color, smells, numbers and experiences.
Because of that intensity, I find that for most people, India is a love-it or hate-it type of place."
For instance, we met a female motorcycle overlander in South America who had traveled India solo. The ever-present compression of the Indian people and lack of privacy finally wore her down and she had to move on to another country.
My wife was less enamored of India than I was. I would welcome the opportunity to see more of India; she is decidedly less enthusiastic of that prospect than I am.
A notable exception to the sensory and societal intensity of "mainstream" India is Sikkim, a former Himalayan Bhudhist kingdom that India annexed in the '70s. Sikkim can be intense in its spirtuality, but is otherwise a welcome respite from the all-senses crush of the typical Indian experience. Highly recommended.
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dhackney
Expedition Leader
These scenese are not atypical of developing economies.
India's massive population often overwhelms civil services, such as illustrated in the photos.
You'll find the same scenes in many, if not most, developing economies.
Grinding poverty and total lack of what people from post-development economies take for granted in the way of municipal and government infrastructure and services are part and parcel of the developing world.
Those realities are things you must come to terms with or they can influence, if not define, your experiences there, causing you to miss many of the other attributes the cultures have to offer.
dhackney
Expedition Leader
We very much enjoy overlanding via motorcycle. It's a completely different way to experience another culture, primarily because the vehicle itself becomes an instant ice-breaker in interacting with the local people.
No matter where you are, everybody had a friend or relative who had a scooter or motorbike, so they can relate. When Steph pulls off her helmet, the women are all fascinated with her traveling by motorcycle. It leads to instant and easy interaction.
In contrast, traveling by truck is very conducive to cocooning inside the vehicle and just driving on through to the next waypoint. Interaction requires instigation and initiation. It's a completely different experience, challenging to fully articulate.
dhackney
Expedition Leader
These types of vehicles are also common in rural China, where they use the "universal engine," an open bath (water cooled, but unsealed reservoir) diesel fueled motor that powers literally everything in the rural areas. In every sense of the word, the country was built on that motor.
Doug, I agree with most of what you have to say, given my short experience in India. My wife and I also had dissimilar reactions.
One question given your wider travels than mine; is river and stream pollution as bad in the rest of the developing world as it is in India. I traveled in South America back in the 70's and I don't remember it being as bad. However, I was not a canoeist back then so may not have been looking at the waterways with the same eyes.
One other comment; As troubling to me as the pollution of the waterways was the social pollution of the caste system. It seemed all pervasive and to my mind, a crucial component of why India is the way it is. The vast and overwhelming difference between the rich and poor is justified by caste/karma/religion/philosophy. Marx thought 19th century England was bad. India is worse. I lost considerable respect for south Asia's cultural traditions in my trip to India. Did you have a similar experience?
One question given your wider travels than mine; is river and stream pollution as bad in the rest of the developing world as it is in India. I traveled in South America back in the 70's and I don't remember it being as bad. However, I was not a canoeist back then so may not have been looking at the waterways with the same eyes.
One other comment; As troubling to me as the pollution of the waterways was the social pollution of the caste system. It seemed all pervasive and to my mind, a crucial component of why India is the way it is. The vast and overwhelming difference between the rich and poor is justified by caste/karma/religion/philosophy. Marx thought 19th century England was bad. India is worse. I lost considerable respect for south Asia's cultural traditions in my trip to India. Did you have a similar experience?
dhackney
Expedition Leader
It's not as bad in India once you are out away from the large cities or if you are not downstream of a major city or industrial area, at least in the rural areas we were in. We spent most of our time in West Bengal and the Himalayas, so what we saw of India is about the same as visiting Rhode Island and saying you've visited the U.S.
For the rest of the developing world that we've visited, water pollution (trash, chemicals, etc.) varies widely by region. Again, much worse in and downstream of major cities and industrial areas. Rural areas are not so bad to very good to pristine depending on the area. China was incredibly polluted everywhere we were in the rural and urban areas, but again, we've only been to a bit of China. Hope to return there as well.
Your experience is not uncommon for visitors, and not just those from post-development economies in developing economies. It's more about anybody visiting a foreign culture.
Consider your cultural norms and your accompanying expectations as a pair of goggles. When you've got them on, everything you see and experience passes through those goggles and gets compared against everything you've ever experienced and everything you've been taught that represents what is "normal" and "right." When you're wearing your cultural goggles everything you see and experience gets tinted.
To truly experience another culture you must remove those goggles. It's the only way you can see and experience that culture for what it is, without passing through a filter that colors everything.
It can take some time to get there. It can take some visits to multiple places. And it definitely takes work, every single day, to pull those goggles down and just experience a place that is radically different than what we consider "normal."
It's not easy to adjust to a place where beating a mule savagely is OK or a place where every child's life path is determined at birth or a place where inter-generational sex is normal. It's not easy to keep those goggles down in those places.
But if you can, it gives you a chance.
For me, I just try to approach every new place, every new culture, with an outlook of learning, of just being there to learn.
gait
Explorer
thanks Doug. Having achieved that perhaps an unintended, but IMHO good, side effect is to sometimes look at one's own "normal" in a different light, and potentially from the perspective of those other cultures.
dhackney
Expedition Leader
You do have to be careful what you wish for.
We've been back in the U.S. for one year and I'm still struggling in some ways to adjust.
I'm not sure if it's this way for everyone, but for us, spending a few years in developing economies seems to have permanently changed our outlook on some things.
gait
Explorer
I can understand the difficulty of adjusting, any change of culture is challenging, but I'm totally convinced that on balance we are better off for having traveled extensively.
I'm biased as I've lived and worked for long periods in 4 countries and travelled in lots from backpacking to first class. Scary moment was when I doubted if I could still work effectively in a developed economy. But I seemed to re-establish myself ok. A change of countries to live in typically takes me at least a year to adjust.
Some things that used to be important simply aren't any more. And vice versa. Travel broadens the mind which tends to make parochialism occasionally hard for me to deal with. I'm often out of step with those around me.
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I agree with a lot of that. Deliberately taking off one set of cultural values to see things another way is definitely an important practice. I've certainly done that with many cultural ideas over the years, including Indian. But I don't think it ultimately avoids a difficult and challenging process of judgment that is necessay unless one adopts an unlimited cultural relativism. For instance, I was in Turkey a couple of years ago. For all the problems that I see in Islamic culture, it's relative egalitarianism gives it a big leg up over Indian caste based culture.
yabanja
Explorer
I am in rural India now. Lots of Eicher trucks all over the place. They really do look like carbon copies of the fuso. Having spent a fair amount of time in Turkey in the past I must say that while the caste system is deplorable, the place of women in India's culture is much better than in an Islam country. In the six months spent in Turkey it was almost as if women didn't exist! They were all hidden behind closed doors(barring the fairly modurn Istanbul). I guess what I am getting at is that what I love about traveling is that each culture has it's positives and negatives and the differences help us examine ourselves and perhaps see areas in which our own culture has room for improvement!
I concur about the woman's issue in Turkey. Last week Turkey permitted the wearing of headscarves in parliament which had been banned since Attaturk. Not a positive sign for women there.
And I just read in today's NYT that Erdogan has proposed abolishing co-ed college dorms.
And I just read in today's NYT that Erdogan has proposed abolishing co-ed college dorms.
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