When I lived in Dubai as a child, we’d visit India once a year and dreaded coming through the airport. When we got off the plane this time, I was mentally prepared to fight my way through huge crowds, of people with cardboard signs up, and chaos all over the place. I was relieved to see everything inside was rather calm. There weren’t any aggressive taxi drivers forcing us to haggle with their already high prices, or elbows being thrown in our faces just to get to baggage claim. There was even a sign for a pre-paid taxi stand.
India Travelogue: Batta Trouble in the Alleys of New Delhi’s Patel Nagar
After sleeping most of the day away, we decided to explore West Patel Nagar a bit. We made a pit stop at an internet cafe via cycle rickshaw. This turned out to be not such a great idea because landmarks whizzed by us. The only thing I remembered was a bar. Sona remembered Sharma Sweets. The internet connection wasn’t the greatest, but it was fast enough for us to check email. We wanted to go for a quick exploration around the area so we wrapped up our email-checking and randomly decided which direction to go in.
We walked by some very tempting food and juice stalls, but we didn’t wind up getting anything. The first couple stalls we went to selling juice had pomegranate juice which I am always down for, but only had mango shake (not juice as Sona would have liked). And then it started getting dark. Our stroll until that point had been for perhaps an hour or so. My big plan was to enjoy my anar juice on the walk back to Munna Mamaji’s flat and let Sona frown at the juice-wala for not having mango juice. This did not happen. My alternative plans of eating ice cream, having an ice-cold Limca and eating gol guppe also did not happen.
India Travelogue: The Four Hour Layover Fiesta!
At 4 a.m. my sister made us a snack of samosas and tea to go while my bleary-eyed brother-in-law drove us to the airport to catch our Continental flight to India via . . . Newark, New Jersey, where we had a four hour layover, during which mayhem ensued, as the photo above indicates! Continental is one of the few airlines that still feeds you both on domestic and international flights, but we sure are glad we had those samosas and cha in the morning. Airline food has never been known for its culinary genius, or for being all that edible, and Continental is no exception. But the fact that they still feed you and don’t charge extra for bags is nice.
The night before, alongwith some single malt whiskey, my brother-in-law offered me two great tips for traveling with Sona in India:
1) Go straight to Amritsar and buy a kirpan (dagger). When using it in a tight space like a bus or a train compartment, make small and incisive swings to inflict the most damage while protecting Sona.
2) Buy a really thick karra (steel bracelet) also from Amritsar. This can be used like brass knuckles to beat someone with before using the kirpan.
As soon as we stepped off the plane, we were whisked away to India Palace Express for the best layover food ever. On the short car ride to Edison a..k.a. Little India, Sona’s mum got busy making calls to the chef, Rahim, a friend of theirs (his kids grew up with Sona), and ordered a variety of dishes–from the masssive family naan, which Sona ate all by herself (picture above explains it all), lamb chops, tandoori fish, malai chicken, mutter paneer, and of course, daal. The second we stepped into the restaurant, everything was ready to eat! After washing everything down with a refreshing glass of mango lassi and some mithaa paan, we headed to Sona’s parents’ house.
Navdeep: Our Kahani 2007
Sona and I started “talking” on the internet with no intention of getting married or even pursuing a long-distance relationship. She put up her ad on indiandating.com out of curiosity. I put mine up to spite an ex-girlfriend who wanted to “see what her options were.” I never got very many responses though. It may have had something to do with the eye-catching log line I used: Hairy Indian Male Seeks Financially Independent, Attractive Woman. Ugliness and caste no bar. Neither of us had actually paid for an account so we hid our email address in the free messages and then started writing each other rambling, long winded letters. Because we weren’t looking for anything, we let our guards down a bit and just let things happen. It started with letters, late night phone calls and ended with three weddings, an engagement, a pre-engagement, two receptions (one in california, one in New Jersey!) , and plenty of bhangra . . .
Oyy, Rickshaaaa! That Time Navdeep’s Parents Visited Him in China
When I taught English in the small border town of Dandong, between China and North Korea, I was also a rickshaw-vallah. This is a photo someone took of me with two completely random people I have never seen before. They were not good tippers.
Travelogue India: It’s Almost that Time!
Sona’s list of places she’d like to see in three months, in addition to seeing her family and my family, is getting more erratic and more in lala land. And her reasons for wanting to go to places is getting more amusing. Last night, she decided she wanted to go to Dareeling because it had tea plantations and a toy train, but wanted to skip Calcutta. The spot directly before reaching this hill station is Amritsar, all the way in the North, a good 80 hour train journey. And then there’s the slight transportation issue of getting to Darjeeling directly from Amristar! Then from Darjeeling, we’re shooting off like a bullet to a houseboat in Kashmir. My hair is standing on end just thinking about it.
I’m looking forward to the trip, but there are loads of things to think about. The first and foremost is certainly where we go, and the second is how we end up traveling. I’m a true believer in the spirit of independent travel, where the mere act of being in a place does not constitute having been there. To truly experience a place involves chilling out and taking walks that can’t be included in any itinerary. But I also realize that we do have to make some form of an itinerary, or we’ll really frighten all of our family. “We’re off then. We don’t know where exactly, but we’re going to catch a train somewhere.” That would instill a lot of confidence in my qualifications as a husband!
But putting that aside, there’s also the hectic-ness of wrapping up classes and making sure there aren’t any loose ends while we’re on the road. Little things give me the biggest headaches. Each thing would take probably five minutes or so to get sorted but when there’s a billion of them to do, eating potato chips and watching Dr. Phil sound like an easier alternative. I do need to sort out things like paying my credit cards, sorting out school loans and recurring bills, deciding on some kind of a route to take, and stopping Sona from packing everything in sight.
Three months does sound like a long time but when tackling something as gigantic as India, you don’t even scratch the surface with three months. Especially with Sona’s erratic list of places she’d like to see: Kashmir all the way in the North, Kerala and Kunyakumari on the Southern tip of India, Punjab and Delhi are givens but within the three months, there are tonnes of family to meet. And we can’t just pop in for tea and be on our way. We have to go visit everyone. Even though Sona has quite a massive family, they’re all in Delhi. I have no idea how big Delhi is, but it doesn’t seem like it would take more than an hour or two to shuttle between the different areas. Punjab, on the other hand, is going to take a bit of time. My family is scattered all over Punjab. We also have a farm in U.P. and a chacha (my dad’s brother) who lives in Dehra Dun, Uttaranchal. So no, we can’t pop in for lunch and be on our way!
Photo Friday: Going Bonkers at the Gilroy Garlic Festival!
As soon as we heard about this festival, we knew we had to go. I like garlic. Sona likes garlic. And that’s pretty much all there is t it. Since we were already married, having stinky garlic breath was also not a hindrance. We had major plans to stink it up. And boy did we ever. I skipped the pseudo garlic stuff, like onion rings that have been mildly rubbed with garlic, and went straight for things like garlic fries, garlic ice-cream, pungent garlic flavored prawns. Sona wouldn’t go near them because they reminded her of insects (as do many things), but they were delicious!
Our First Active Volcano: Popocatépetl, AKA El Popo, in Puebla, Mexico
Our last few days in Puebla, we read about Popocatépetl, one of Mexico’s most active volcanoes, and decided it would be romantic to go for a little stroll there. Instead of spending 600 pesos on a shared van, or triple that for a private cab, we take a local bus up there for a couple pesos. With the money we’re saving, we have big plans to buy a piece of bread and share it like street children in a Disney film.
Lucha Libre: The Art of The Mexican Smack Down
When me and Sona left for our Mexican cooking honeymoon in Puebla, I had no idea it would be quite so much fun. While I would have been perfectly content with cooking mole, roaming through the colorful streets of Puebla, eating spicy corn, and drinking horchata, Sona decided to amp it up. We were wandering through a tiny little side-street and picked up a flier with the names of random luchadors. I knew this word because I’d just watched Nacho Libre last month, and considered myself an expert on all things lucha related.
Sona Burning a Tortilla in Mexico (AKA: the Usual)
When Sona first told me she’d booked a week long cooking honeymoon to Puebla, Mexico, I thought it was going to be a bit dull. But it was so much fun. After getting to Mexico City, we took a bus to Puebla, navigated the subway system to the airport on the way back, and even took a quick trip to El Popo, an active volcano. We stayed at a boutique hotel called Mesones Sacristia, with a dark blue exterior, large archways, and gorgeously designed rooms.
Navdeep’s Take: Deciding to Go
Much like asking Sona to marry me when I didn’t have a job, or any remote interest in the possiblity of attaining one – I was in the middle of an MFA in creative writing program while living with my parents in Fresno (and she still said yes!)- the decision to drop everything and go backpacking through India wasn’t a difficult one. When I asked Sona to get married, all I knew was that it felt right. And that is how I feel about this adventure, despite Sona’s tendencies to overcomplicate everything, from simple recipes, to packing, I knew it would be an adventure that I couldn’t pass up. Sona has great work ethic, which is not a good trait in a traveler. So, when she suggested the act of vagabonding for a couple of months before settling back into reality, I knew I couldn’t pass up my one opportunity to infect her with the travel bug.
We had the whole world at our disposal, but we ultimately decided on India because, well, it’s India. There is no country in the world quite like it and we both think we can speak the North Indian languages of Hindi and Punjabi, relatively well (numbers higher than 10 are a bit tricky though).It is a land of contradictions with its breathtaking beauty, vast areas of ugliness in the sheer level of visible pollution, majestic architecture, squalid tin-roofed make-shift neighborhoods, perilous roads, home to some of the world’s most exciting and dangerous places.
For Sona, it is also about embracing a country that she has never properly explored as an insider. She’s always been on the outside with sheltered 2 week family trips involving lots of shopping, and being shuttled from one relative’s house to the next. The first time I went on my own was when I was 20, as a reward for myself for failing all of my classes at community college. Yes, community college. That trip really made me focus on my studies, perhaps not exactly for the right reasons: I wanted to be done, so I could go travel some more!
The second I graduated with my Bachelors degree, I went gallavanting off to China, and ended up living there for 2 years. I eventually made it back to the United States, but not before backpacking from China into India via Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Tibet, and Nepal. I took the scenic route.
Our Big Fat Desi Wedding!
For our first official post, we thought what better way to start things off than with a photo from our Big, Fat, Desi wedding! We’d like to tell you the significance of what we’re doing in this photo, but the truth is none of us know. It’s such a fun photo though, especially Sona’s dad off on the side, smiling away. I assumed Sona’s family understood what was happening during the Hindu ceremony, but it turns out, the whole thing was in Gujarati, a language nobody in attendance spoke!
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