November 26, 2006 by o.wiltshire.

One interesting phenomenon many tourists encounter is the fear of being scammed. Its fine getting ripped off once or twice, but eventually the constant haggling and negotiation can be tiresome. At some point its just not worth bargaining anymore - but knowing when the line is reached is very difficult. To complicate matters further negotiations are handled differently in each area.

 I had another one of my famous spazzes just the other day in Ahmedabad - when a rikshaw driver tried to charge us double the normal fair. I started yelling at him, freaked out, and eventually after 5 minutes of yelling and spitting another person came to help us out and the rikshaw driver immediately cut the price in half. The total fair: 75 rupees. He wanted 150 rupees. In order to save 1 dollar and 50 cents canadian I had to yell for 5 minutes.

 Definately not worth it.

 To top things off, this entire fiasco occured in front of Gandhi’s ashram/museum! Very embarassed, I had to walk off my anger before entering the museum. Should I have just paid the rikshaw driver 150 rupees? Could I have somehow applied this concept of ahimsa (non-violence) into negotiating a fairer price?

Alice is studying fair trade cotton production in the area around Bhuj. Fair trade works to improve levels of education, water quality, etc. by having foreign markets pay more for the products, and by helping organize local development in terms of education, sustainability, etc. (more on this to come). Should foreigners from rich countries pay more for everything when they travel abroad, as a means of helping the poor? (Nepal has seperate tourist prices in restaurants for example).

Paying more for a rikshaw ride isn’t quite the same as fair trade, but its obviously going to help a poor guy out! The question is, should you let yourself get ripped off to save yourself the aggrevation, and to help the guy out, or is it more a matter of honesty and principle - whereby arguing with the rikshaw driver will make him think twice about double charging the next tourist?

Alice thinks I could have negotiated a better deal without having spazzed on the guy. I think spazzing worked very well (and twice we have had rikshaw drivers spazz on us demanding more money then was marked on the meter… I have to admit it was these two previous incidents which made me go into spazz mode as a bargaining technique. Believe me, that rikshaw driver will think twice of ripping someone else off!).

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

November 23, 2006 by o.wiltshire.

It feels wrong to leave the blog riddled with comments of earthquakes and head on collisions - and so as badly as I need to pee here are a few more pictures to show that we are in fact having a wonderful time!

Camel advertising, dosa feasts, martial arts, relaxing, eating again, more commentary to come!

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

November 23, 2006 by o.wiltshire.

We have finally arrived in the town of Bhuj - where Alice will be spending the next two months researching fair trade cotton practices in the region. We spent the first month and a half visiting the south (visiting Mumbai, Goa, Hampi, Mysore, Ooty, and Kochi). Now that we are aclimatized its time to get down to some real research, and hopefully some blogging (some attempts were made earlier but they were lost when I installed this wordpress blog software). I hope to restore them soon.

Bhuj is a nice quiet town that was devasted by an earthquake in 2001 (and 2 others earlier in the century). 5 years after the quake there remains a lot of evidence of the destruction. One of the old palaces was heavily damaged, and while there remain beautiful pieces of art inside, no attempts have been made to restore it. Pidgeons have taken over the palace, and its quite the site to see old paintings, chandeliers, mirrors and statues all covered with bird poop!

Anyways, enough of the boring stuff - on our way here we experienced our first near death experience (aside the normal rikshaw ride).
On our way up from Kochi our bus collided head on with a transport truck. It was enough to knock me out of my seat, but didn’t initially seem so bad.

Firefighters arrived fairly quickly (under 10 minutes, which is impressive since we were an hour away from any big city), but I’m not sure if the driver of the opposing truck made it.

No one in our bus was hurt. I hesitated to take pictures long enough for the rescue workers to finish - but ‘had’ to take these as the whole experience was quite shocking!
I’d have to say seeing death, and feeling mortal is one of the things that wake you up in India. I cant say its a good thing, but with so many people driving insanely on poor roads its no wonder over 20 people die each day in car accidents here.

(Opposing truck above, after the rescue?)

(Our bus above, again after the rescue)

(Opposing truck somewhat inside our bus before the two were seperated)

Ill try and balance out the next blog with more pictures of the great time we’ve been having. Its a real shock to see so many poor dying starving sick and wounded individuals, but thats only a small part of the experience. As one wise’ish person told us, “India is everything good and everything bad.”

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »