Travel Tips: Dealing With Jet Lag

We all hate jet lag, but rather than write a post complaining about it (really, Sacramento to Rome in 14 hours is not worth complaining about), I will share what has (and hasn't) worked for me.

I'll get the one you'll hate me for out of the way first. The single best experience I've had on an airline was when I got bumped to first class for a flight from Toronto to Rome on a brand-new Air Canada plane and slept like a baby for the entire flight, except when I was tossing back complimentary beers. You can read about that here.

The London Eye Ferris wheel seen from a hop-on/hop-off bus
my first time in Europe, when I was trying to deal with jet lag.

Suffice to say that when I got to Rome around midmorning, I was ready to go and almost completely unaffected by jet lag.

Another time I did fairly well with jet lag was when I flew to India, leaving Sacramento at five or six in the morning and arriving in Mumbai (Bombay) about 10 or 11 p.m. (local time, which was about 13 hours' difference). I did not sleep on the flight over, but I was out when I laid down in my hotel room, and I woke up at about 8 a.m. the next day. My sleep schedule was a little messed up for the next three days, as I kept waking up before dawn, but it wasn't so bad.

The best way to deal with jet lag is to stay awake until it is time to sleep wherever you are. On my first trip to Europe, I didn't think that would be too difficult.

Flying to London from the states, the sun never set, though night passed (the fun of flying so far north in summer).

I arrived in London, stood in a long and excruciatingly slow customs line at Heathrow, then dropped my bags at my hotel. I honestly can't remember what I did that first day, other than wander around a bit and try to keep from imitating their accents.

One thing I do know was that I took one of the open-top, hop-on/hop-off bus tours (which I highly recommend, by the way). The photo at the top of this post was taken from that bus, but it was pushing 6 p.m. in London and I had been awake for about 28 hours without really having slept more than a few hours the previous night.

I remember trying to stay awake as the bus lolled along in traffic, and the next thing I knew, I was swearing at the completely unexpected pain in my forehead. Apparently, I had nodded off and let my face fall forward to smack the metal rail on the seat in front of me.

Jet lag affects everyone differently, and the rule of thumb is that for every hour you miss, it will take you one day to adjust. Therefore, on a trip from California to Europe, expect a nine-day adjustment time. I have found that I usually adjust in about four or five days, as long as I stay awake as long as possible when I arrive.

If you can sleep on the plane, do it. I'm somewhat unfortunate in that I can't ever seem to sleep on planes, except the time I flew first class.

Do not get to your hotel at one in the afternoon and settle in for "just a little nap." It ends up throwing you completely for a loop.

On my last trip to Europe, I took advantage of the fact that I was waking up at 5 a.m. in Pragua and not being able to sleep. I went out and explored the city at an hour I am almost never awake for. You can read about that here.

Regardless of how much you are or aren't affected by jet lag, the trip is always worth it. The only real ways to deal with it are to do everything possible to force yourself onto the local sleep schedule and to just give it time.

Photo of the Week: Art in Ranthambore

Since India's Ranthambore National Park is ranked among the top places in the world to see a tiger in the wild, all the shops in the tiny nearby town cater to tigers. The man in the plaid shirt paints all day, and I bought the painting with the black background above his head for the equivalent of $10, which hopefully represents a decent profit to him.

Elephanta Island

Elephanta Island appeared as a phantom through the haze from our boat as we neared the halfway point of the one-hour ride from Mumbai. The island, named by Portuguese colonists after the huge elephant statue they saw when they first arrived, is home to a complex of caves carved out of rock between 600 and 700AD and is today a UNESCO World Heritage site.

My travel companion, Deon, was visiting India to see his ancestral homeland. His father is Hindu, and Elephanta’s caves were carved by followers of the cult of Shiva, one of the most powerful gods in the Hindu religion.

Once our boat docked, we hired Milind, a local guide. He led us down the pier past moored fishing vessels alive with Indians scraping barnacles and weaving nets to the 120 steps leading up to the caves.

On the way up, we passed through a bazaar of vendors all selling items made on the island and included everything from pearl necklaces and silk paintings to carved fishbone elephants and religious statues. A mischievous monkey stole one vendor’s water bottle and finished it off in a tree.

After paying the $5 entry fee, we saw the mouth of the main cave. It appeared as a square hole cut out of solid rock supported by four pillars reminiscent of Greek or Roman architecture, but distinctly different. Milind explained that the whole cave, along with all of its pillars, adornments, reliefs and details, is carved from a single piece of rock.

Inside, we marveled at the artwork, which is a combination of the Gupta and Chalukyan styles. Enough light filtered between the square stone pillars to illuminate the relief scenes carved in the walls.

Standing in the center of the caves, walking in the footsteps of artists who carved them without machines almost 1,400 years ago was a humbling experience. Gone was the oppressive heat of Mumbai, the constant din of honking horns and hubbub of a city at once too large and not large enough. I traced the outline of a small elephant sculpted into the corner of a pillar and asked Milind about the namesake elephant that used to stand on the island, but which is now in Mumbai’s Victoria Gardens.

“The elephant is a Hindu sign of welcome,” he replied. “The Portuguese didn’t know what it was for.” He then pointed to a panel along one side of the cave. Shiva’s arms were missing, and there was some damage to the flat surfaces as well. “The Portuguese did that, too, with their guns.” I leaned closer and felt the rough edges of a hole made by a musket ball centuries ago, trying to picture the soldier who was a long way from home finding small amusement in a foreign land.

I turned to Deon and saw that he was transfixed by the relief on the back wall, portraying the three-headed incarnation of Shiva – Mahesamurti, in which the aspects of creation, protection and destruction are brought together, each represented by one head. Milind told us it is one of the most powerful in the Hindu religion.
Off to the right was a sculpture of the Seed of Life, which Hindus believe sprouted into the lotus flower and eventually became mankind. It sits in its own room, protected by towering stone guards.

In the courtyard between the main cave and one of the smaller ones, we learned there should be a statue of a bull, which Shiva rode, but it was another casualty of the Portuguese colonization.

Another pair of caves whose stone was too soft for sculpting provided housing for the builders of the main caves. Rather than tour those, which are empty, we asked Milind if we could see his village instead. He readily agreed and led us over a barely discernible trail he said is a local shortcut. It eventually opened into a larger path, and we rounded a corner to his village.

I felt like I was the first foreigner to ever set foot within its bounds, although that is highly unlikely. The first building I noticed was squat and no bigger than my bedroom. It had a brightly colored conical dome rising from one end, indicating it was a temple. A low stone wall set it back from the paved footpath and the other pastel buildings around it. A couple of dogs chased each other in front of it.

It turned out to be the 10th anniversary of the temple’s construction, which is dedicated to a local god. A festival was planned for that night, and a woman at the temple’s door handed us each a spoonful of masalah, a mixture of grits, raisin and butter for eating during prayers, when meat is not allowed. It tasted doughy and sweet.

As Milind led us through the haphazard streets of his village to his house, few people were out. Most were working as guides, selling trinkets at the market or fishing. The entrance to his house was guarded by a yellow lab named Lucky. His father sat on a plastic chair in the corner and greeted us in Hindi.

The house itself was only one main room with a small bedroom, but was floored in beautiful tile and well-kept. Silks hung on the walls, a vibrant cloth divided the bedroom from the main room and a family photograph sat on a shelf to one side.

Milind told us he would play the keyboard at the festival that night. We insisted he play for us, and he eventually gave in. After playing a song on the keyboard, he handed it to Deon and pulled out another instrument for himself. Together they played while I sat watching and taking pictures.

After they finished, we thanked Milind and his father, then headed back toward the pier for the next boat to Mumbai. We left Elephanta Island as we’d found it, a specter in the haze. Only this time that specter represented a new cultural perspective for both of us.

Travel Tips: Know Where You're Staying

I know it sounds obvious, but I had to learn it the hard way.

A day that started with waking up in the middle of the night to end up getting conned, surviving the most dangerous car ride of my life and seeing the Taj Mahal ended with my learning the hard way to always take a business card or at least write down the address of the place you left your luggage.
(The swastika, by the way, is very common in India and has nothing to do with Nazis.)

At four-something in the morning, when our cabbie told us he would be available to pick us up at the train station at the end of the day to take us back to our hotel, we got his cell number and thought we were good. We knew we were staying at the Hotel Solitaire Plaza in the Lajpat Nagar area of New Delhi. We thought this information was more than enough to get us back home.

We were wrong.

About 20 hours later, after being on the road for most of the day, we were pulling into the traffic mess that is New Delhi, the driver who had taken us to the Taj Mahal (who wasn't our cabbie from earlier in thed day) having assured us he knew where our hotel was.

Except he didn't.

"Hotel Solitaire Plaza, in Lajpat Nagar," I said in response to his question. I expected him to say somehting like, "Oh, yeah. That one."

He didn't. I still wasn't worried. It's not like the hotel had gone anywhere. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed our cabbie's number. It was late, and he didn't answer.

I suggested we stop at a tourism office. We finally found one that was open after about 30 minutes of driving, and the man behind the counter wanted money to let me look at his poster. I told him I would pay for Internet access instead, but, for the life of me, I could not find the hotel online. I talked the guy into checking for the address, but he didn't have it.

Still not overly concerned, we got back in the car, and I dialed our cabbie again. No luck.

"Just drive to Lajpat Nagar, and we'll ask someone," I said. Believe it or not, this is the best way to get directions in India. My first hotel in Mumbai had the address listed as "Near Gateway of India, Apollo Bunder." I don't like the words "near," "sort of," "close to," or "maybe" in an address, but that's just how it is.

My plan would have worked, I'm sure, except our driver didn't know where Lajpat Nagar was.

I couldn't believe it and tried calling the cabbie again. By this time, we'd been looking for our hotel for two hours. Yes, two hours. All four of us - the driver and my two friends - just wanted it to be done.

The cabbie answered, so I handed the phone to the driver, who pulled over to talk.

In a country where running a red light is 400 rupees ($10) and speeding is 200 rupees, talking on the phone while driving is a 1,600 rupee fine.

The driver hung up, and it was like a lightbulb had come on.

"Laj Putnugger," he said. I frowned, handed him a paper, and asked him to write it. He wrote it as "Lajpat Nagar." I was too tired to argue the intricacies of pronunciation with him.

As it turned out, we were just a few minutes from our hotel.

When we stopped, our driver jumped out and gave us all big hugs, thanking one of the estimated 3,000 gods in the Hindu religion repeatedly. We tipped him and staggered up to our room which, despite its lacking in some areas (like lightbulbs, as Deon proves in the picture below), was the only place I wanted to be.

For the rest of my life, no matter how obvious the place I'm staying is, I will make sure I have the address and phone number of my hotel.

Misadventures: Getting Conned

At only one point in my life have I overtly threatened someone with physical harm and meant it. Unfortunately for the two Indians sitting across the counter from me, they were the target of my anger.

What brought me to that point started the night before, when my two friends and I purchased train tickets to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. In a country where most people we'd spoken to had a basic command of English, we thought buying train tickets would be fairly simple.

It wasn't. Everyone had forgotten to speak English, and we couldn't even guess at the destinations, since the train schedules all looked like the picture below. Add to that the fact that once we got to the ticket window, after cleverly avoiding a pair of pickpockets and pointing them out to everyone in the station, it turned out that only Indian citizens could buy from it.

The window we had to go to was in a separate building half a mile away. Even when we'd paid for our tickets and gotten the receipt, I had no idea if we were actually going to end up in Agra. For all I knew, our ticket was for Srinagar.

About eight hours after purchasing our ticket, my alarm was buzzing and I rolled out of bed. I don't mind being awake at 4 a.m. if I haven't gone to bed yet, but to actually wake up that early really gets to me.

We were at the train station by 5:15 to catch our 6 a.m. train to Agra, having been amazed that, yes, there is a time of the day when New Delhi's streets aren't gridlocked.

Squinting to read the ticket, I saw we were supposed to go to platform one. All I saw were platforms 6-12. I asked a local, and he started to point me in the right direction, but then another guy showed up and took over after a few seconds of rapid-fire Hindi whizzed past my uncomprehending face.

The second guy, pointed at the tickets and told us we didn't have the tourist stamp. Had my brain been working even a little bit, I would have seen through this obvious and time-tested scam, but I, along with my friends, followed the guy we thought was helping us to a tourism office where he said we could get our tickets stamped.

Two elderly Indians pretended to look at a computer screen and told us all the tourist seats were full, and we were out of luck. I argued with them for about half an hour, telling them there was no reason we couldn't ride second class with all the locals, but he made up some lies about laws to protect local passenger seating or something.

Playing the ever-helpful TI staffer, he was able to get us a car to take us to Agra - for the princely sum of $135 each (our train ticket for three people had been $50).

By this point, we'd missed our train, but I remembered reading something in the Lonely Planet guide six months earlier.

"Let me see your credentials," I said.

"We don't have to show them to you," the man said with an air of superiority.

"Lonely Planet says you do. It's a law."

"Let me see this Lonely Planet."

"No. Show me your credentials."

At this, the man turned to his cohort, who was maybe old enough to have met some British colonists when they first came to India, and produced a book full of blank pages with the India Tourism Office seal on them.

"Here you are, sir. You see? We like Americans. We are authorized."

"No. You're a scam artist," I said, mad at myself as much as at him. "Since we can't use the train ticket, you will refund us the money for it."

"I cannot do this," he replied.

"Yes, you can." I sat back and folded my arms, knowing I wasn't all that much of a threat, but the two guys with me, who had jest returned from 15 months in Iraq, might give him pause.

"I can give you half."

"You will give me all of it."

"This I cannot do."

I leaned forward. "You will give me all of it, or I will step over this counter, take every last rupee in your cash register, and if you stand in my way, you're going to get hurt."

The man's eyes flitted between me and my friends before he said something in Hindi and the amount of our train fare magically appeared on the counter.

It was a small victory, but at least it was something.

Back in the hotel room 20 hours later, one of my friends picked up the Lonely Planet guide.

"If you are told you need a tourist stamp on your ticket," he said, paraphrasing a paragraph in the book, "it is a popular scam. There are no tourist stamps. You will be taken to a nonofficial tourism office and pay exorbitant fees for transportation. The good thing to remember is that there is very little threat of physical harm."

"For tourists," I thought.

Photo of the Week: The Taj Mahal

One corner of the Taj Mahal, which is every bit as beautiful as people say. I wrote about it at length here.

An Exotic Wallet

Walking through Goa, India, my friend Deon decided he needed one of the leather wallets at a small store on the main street near Siquerim Beach. Little did either of us know that we were about to encounter one of the world's truly unique items.

While Deon perused the selection, I wandered over to look at the knock-off items on a back shelf. Ookley sunglasses, Doir purses and Calvin Kleen colognes were all remarkably cheap. I was laughing at the spelling when Deon called me over.

He had a wallet in his hand, and I asked him if he was going to buy it.

"I need you to put it in your pocket and sit on it."

I stared at him, trying to figure out if this was an oddball negotiating tactic he needed my help in.

"I need to know if it's comfortable to sit on," he persisted. "I'm wearing a swimsuit, and I don't have rear pockets. You've gotta sit on it and tell me how it feels."

I laughed and did as I was asked, then pondered whether I was level before finally deciding I was and told him it was "probably OK."

That wasn't good enough for Deon, who wondered why I'd said "probably."

I rolled my eyes, took the wallet out of my pocket, set it on the chair and told him to sit on it and pretend it was in his pocket. He did, decided it was OK, then offered the seller half of the asking price.

This was when we found out just how desirable the wallet was.

"No sir," the vendor said. "You must pay full price. This is special wallet."

"What's special about it?" Deon asked.

"It is real Italian camel leather," the vendor offered.

I looked up and frowned. "Real Italian camel leather?" I asked.

"Yes, yes. Finest quality," he answered.

"Where, if I may ask, does one find camels in Italy?" I really wanted to know.

"You must not have been to Italy," he said.

"But I have. Twice. And my sister lived there for three months," I said. "And I never saw a camel."

The seller, unfazed, told me very seriously that I had simply not visited the right places, and had I gone to the spot where there are camels, I would have come across Italian camel leather.

Deon made the seller promise him that the wallet was really made from Italian camel leather, then negotiated a price and bought it. I think he paid something like $5. I'm really not sure if the seller was blatantly lying, or if he truly believed that his wallet was made from leather harvested from slain Italian camels.

Travel Tips: Staying Healthy

Nothing ruins a trip faster than getting sick, and you’re more prone to getting sick when you travel than staying home, depending on where you go.

I never really worried about any health issues when I traveled before I went to India. Europe was (and remains) just like the U.S. where health is concerned. The same restrictions aren’t always in place (the French don’t Pasteurize their camembert cheese, for example), but most developed nations typically don’t pose a threat.
In traveling to India, I went under the impression that I would be sick at some point. That notion was reinforced when I arrived in Mumbai and read an article in one of the newspapers that said a study had proven 98 percent of Mumbai’s water is contaminated.

Call it what you want – Montezuma’s Revenge, Delhi Belly – but it’s not something you need to experience.

Knowing that Kaiser owed me something for the obscene amount of money I have to pay them each month, I went into the travel clinic and stocked up on what I would need before heading to an undeveloped nation.

It turned out that I needed five shots – hepatitis B, tetanus, a polio booster and two others. In addition to the sore upper arm, they gave me a prescription for malaria pills and extra-strength diarrhea medication and a helpful printout showing where malaria is present and what other types of things I should watch out for.

The malaria pills were annoying, needing to be taken daily from the day before I left until four weeks after I returned, but I gather they were much more pleasant than having the disease.

In addition to going to your doctor, there are several things you need to do to stay healthy, wherever you go. I’ll focus mostly on the places where tap water is assumed to be contaminated.

1. Don’t drink the water. Buy bottled water, and make sure the safety seal is intact and that some enterprising local hasn’t just picked up cast-off bottles and filled them anew with tap water (it happens).

2. When you shower, keep your eyes and mouth closed, and brush your teeth with bottled water as well.

3. Don’t eat anything that has been washed in the local water. Salads, fruits, vegetables and even produce on a sandwich can all carry the bacteria of the water in which they were "washed." Many restaurants, especially in the areas catering to tourists, actually have filtered water for that purpose. Ask the server, and hope you get the truth.

4. Food from street vendors is OK, but be judicious in what you order. Sometimes the meat will sit in the stall, unrefrigerated, until it is consumed. Don’t eat what isn’t cooked in front of you from a street vendor.

5. Get plenty of sleep. When I went to India, I traveled for 22 hours, leaving home at 5 a.m. and arriving in India at 10:30 p.m. and then going to my hotel. That takes a toll on your body, and if you’re already feeling ill, it will exacerbate the problem.

6. Bring a selection of over-the-counter medicines for the typical problems you have everywhere. Tylenol and Advil can work wonders, and Dramamine is good if you’re prone to motion sickness and might want to do something like a boat excursion on a cruise.

7. Use hand sanitizer. It's cheap, it comes in small-enough packages to bring in your carry-on, and it weighs next to nothing. A squirt of hand sanitizer before eating will kill most of the germs you picked up on railings, door handles, handholds in the metro and all sorts of places. It's not being germophobic, just cautious.

If you have medical needs, be they pills, syringes of insulin or anything like that, you should bring a note from your doctor on official letterhead explaining what they are and why you need them. Getting locked up on drug charges for something benign would also ruin a trip.

Reading the precautions made me think I would starve at the expense of not getting an upset stomach. The reality is that most restaurant food is probably safe, and even small amounts of questionable food probably won’t pose a problem.

There are also “safe drinks.” Anyhting that has been boiled is OK. The chai (tea) that street vendors carry around in thermoses is not only good, but perfectly fine, as the water is hot enough to kill the bacteria.

I managed to spend two weeks in India without even a hint of sickness. At one point, I wanted a chicken sandwich at an airport. It had quite a bit of lettuce on it, and I saw an American-looking pilot standing a short distance away, so I asked him if it was safe to eat there.

“I thought Americans were brave,” he said jokingly, in an accent I couldn’t quite place.

“Yes well, under the right circumstances, I suppose,” I replied.

“It’s perfectly safe to eat here,” he replied. "I eat here all the time, and I never get sick." He added that he was Polish and flew for one of India’s airlines. I talked with him for a while about India’s domestic air carriers, finding out that most of them have American and European pilots who have a tough time getting into the competitive industry back home.

When I went to get that sandwich I had been eying, the friendly Pole shouted after me, “Be brave, American!”

We both laughed, but I still prefer being a bit more cautious than brave. I ate all kinds of food in India, and I enjoyed it all.

The only worrisome part came when my friend and I ordered Jack and cokes, only to get them in glasses full of ice. We looked at each other and decided guzzling them was preferable to letting the ice melt.

Mumbai - One year before the terrorist strikes

The terrorist attacks in Mumbai (Bombay) Nov. 25 were terrible, and hit home with me, as I was in many of the same spots almost exactly a year ago.

The current evidence points to the gunmen as having come by boat and landing at the Gateway of India.

My first nights in India were spent in the Hotel Suba Palace, which is a two-minute walk from the Gateway. When I took a day trip to Elephanta Island, home of a complex of caves dating back to the 600s, I embarked from the Gateway, which was built to commemorate the British Royal Family’s visit to India in 1924.
The next target for the terrorists was the Taj Mahal Hotel. Close to the Gateway of India, the hotel is one of Mumbai’s icons. Resplendent in fancy decorations and excellent restaurants, it was out of my price range, but the story behind it was fascinating.

An Indian man wanted to stay in one of the nicer hotels. The British operators of the hotel said it was only for whites, so he built the Taj Mahal Hotel next door and eventually put them out of business, then bought their building and made it the “cheap” rooms of his.

On my second night in India, my friends and I ate at what is probably one of the nicest restaurants in India – the Golden Dragon inside the Taj Mahal Hotel.

With excellent Indian wine, a round of cocktails, an appetizer plate of prawns and main dishes of Beijing duck, lemon chicken and lamb, we certainly left satisfied, albeit lighter in the wallet.

Another target for the terrorists was the Chhatrapati Shivaji train station, also called the Victoria Terminus, or VT Station. The building’s exterior is one of the nicest in Mumbai, and combines several styles of architecture. While I didn’t go inside the station, I did spend a fair amount of time walking around it.

On my visit to India, I was struck by how peacefully the major religions lived among each other, without overt tension. In Goa, one of my friends, a Christian, was shopping for his father, a Hindu, at a woodcarver’s shop. The Muslim woodcarver suggested an idol of a Hindu god, explaining the god’s significance and why he should choose that one over any others for his father.

I watched Christians from an orphanage caroling through Goa’s streets, and everyone was making plans to celebrate the Muslim holiday that was fast approaching. My overriding thought was that I wished the religious sects could get along so well everywhere.

Though India has been home to much religious infighting, I get the impression that most of it is due to the extremists on both sides, as well as the tension between India and Pakistan.

When I saw the attacks on TV, I was shocked. Terrorist attacks, by their nature, are always shocking, but the fight in Mumbai took place somewhere I have actually been. The bombings of the London metro system came with a similar feeling, but even though I had used the metro many times while I was there, it didn’t come as close as seeing the attacks in Mumbai.

After all, I had eaten in the hotel, stood at the Gateway of India and walked along the grounds of the Chhatrapati Shivaji station. It was only a year ago that I was there, and seeing all those places I can still remember vividly now being a war zone just makes me angry and sad. Had they attacked a military target, I would have disagreed with it, but at least I would have had some respect for their courage. As it is, they’re just a bunch of cowards, and in using those sorts of tactics, I can’t imagine they will ever win.

Misadventures - When Monkeys Attack

Going to India, I really looked forward to seeing monkeys. I don’t know what it is about them that fascinates me, but I’d always wanted to see one.

Reading up on what, before the trip, loomed as an exotic, wild land draped in stereotypes, I was amazed at some of the stories I encountered, especially those regarding monkeys.

The most ominous of those stories was about a pack of monkeys murdering New Delhi’s deputy mayor. OK, maybe murder is the wrong word, but they pushed him off of his balcony, and he fell to his death.
In other news, I read about the problems New Delhi was experiencing with monkey break-ins. There were several reports of monkeys rummaging through refrigerators, then slapping women who tried to stop them. I couldn’t help but laugh at that one.

Possibly the most intriguing story I read regarding the furry little bipeds was the effect they had on New Delhi’s transit system. Apparently, small, mean monkeys frequently rode in the passenger cars on the trains, forcing passengers to ride on the roof by chucking…stuff…at them.

While many countries would find a way to eradicate the problem with varying degrees of damage to the monkeys, Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god, is sacred, making monkeys protected.

What, then, to do?

The answer authorities came up with was rather creative. A larger breed of monkey was drafted into city service. These larger monkeys, Langurs, are friendly to people, but scare the little tyrants out of the train cars.

I did not see this firsthand, but read on a reputable news site that passengers and Langurs ride the cars in harmony.

With so much monkey mayhem evident in the place I was about to spend two weeks, I read up on how to get them to leave me alone.

Don’t make eye contact, and don’t show your teeth, as these are seen as challenges, and the monkeys simply aren’t afraid of people. If you’re holding food, and the monkey asks, then the monkey should get. The “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” phenomenon apparently doesn’t apply.

Being the conscientious travel companion I try to be, I sent off an e-mail to my friends so they, too, would know how to avoid confrontation.

It was on Elephanta Island, in Mumbai’s harbor, when I learned that my friend, Peter, hadn’t bothered to read.

Home to a handful of villages, a cave complex dating back to the 600s and a colony of small monkeys, Elephanta Island is a must-see for tourists. Its caves are one of India’s many UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Walking through the bazaar on the way to the caves, we saw monkey after monkey. Some sat, some played with each other, one stole a vendor’s water bottle and one attacked Peter.

I tried to warn him. About the time I said, “Don’t—” he was dodging the surprisingly agile little beast.
He managed to dodge the attack and retreat in time, but the monkey then stood in the path like the Black Knight in Monty Python’s Holy Grail. Peter stomped his foot, and the monkey held his ground.

None shall pass, indeed.

After a few seconds, the monkey found something more exciting than the standoff and swung through a tree.

We had no more trouble with monkeys for the rest of the trip. In Ranthambore National Park, famed for its tigers and 10th-Century fortress, we saw several. These ones had apparently “gone green” as they drank from the taps and conscientiously shut them off when they were finished.

Down south, in Goa’s capital city of Panaji (Panjim), I was excited to see the bright orange temple to Hanuman. While the sight was certainly impressive, it was oddly devoid of monkeys.

I got my fill of the little creatures on that trip. I still think their antics are hilarious, like watching a semi-human society acting outside all the laws of civility, but I have a new respect for them. They’re noble in their own way, and, being so genetically close to humans, I can see why so many people choose to study them.

Lodgings: The Villa Ludovici

One of the benefits of traveling in India is the fact that the value of the dollar hovers around 40 rupees. If you can avoid the tourist traps and indiscriminate extravagances, you can travel and stay for a bargain.

The Villa Ludovici in Goa is the perfect example of excellent service with low costs.

When I stayed there with a friend of mine in December of 2007, five nights - with omelets, papayas and toast for breakfast each morning included - the stay only set us back $100.

We arrived in Goa at the middle of a long day that started when the sun was rising and involved a four-hour taxi ride (where our driver got cited for speeding) and a flight, with the necessity of arriving at the airport two hours early so we could hop on a flight that lasted less than two hours.

Not having researched Goa very much – at all, to be honest – we didn’t really know where to stay. We asked a bunch of travelers in the airport, and settled on the Siquerim Beach area, since it was close enough to the entertainment at Baga Beach to the north and the capital, Panjim, to the south.

Cruising through the Lonely Planet guidebook, I selected Villa Ludovici for its economy listing. A quick phone call settled the rates and reserved a room, then it was a 45-minute taxi ride through beautiful tropical scenery juxtaposed with poverty-stricken villages to arrive at our home for the next five nights.

We were greeted by the friendly owner of what turned out to be not a hotel, but a house. It was actually the first house built on that section of the coast a few centuries earlier. The plaster walls, elegant wood doorways and interlocking clay tiles on the roof all attested to its age. The antiquated electrical work running through the interior struck me as having been original to the 1940s or so.

After dropping off our bags, Deon and I decided it was time to hit Goa’s legendary beaches. As “our” house was right across the street from the beach, it should have been a short walk.

Only it wasn’t.

Not sure about trespassing laws, we hunted and hunted for public beach access until we decided it didn’t exist, and we just walked through a neighborhood, past a construction site and alongside a trash heap to reach the strand.

Turning around, of course, we saw an easy access route we’d somehow missed, but would have allowed us to avoid the hassle we’d just gone through.

After filling up on 85-cent beers and a dinner of fried prawns for a few bucks at a beach shack run by British expats, we headed back to the room for bed.

The mattress was nice and firm, and the blankets were light enough to cover up with and not get too hot in the absence of air conditioning. That’s right, there was no air conditioning. I wasn’t worried about that, as I’ve stayed in condos in Hawaii without AC, and it never proved necessary. The same was true for Goa.

Breakfast the next morning was excellent. I’d slept like a rock, and with absolutely nothing planned for the day except gorging on prawns and tossing back several bottles of Kingfisher beer, I was in seventh heaven.

Deon, on the other hand, was suffering from a plethora of mosquito bites. I made fun of him, and incurred some bad karma that ended with my lily-white skin turning a distinctly reddish hue after the SPF 20 sunscreen utterly failed me during the day (Seriously, it’s all they seem to sell over there. If you need your extra protection, bring your own).

Not wanting to end up with an army of insects feasting on my already-abused body, we asked for, and got, mosquito netting. By the next morning, Deon’s bites were in recession and my sunburn was healing.

That night, it poured. I groaned, lamenting the fact that I’d remembered being able to see sunlight through the roof tiles during the day. Sitting on the patio reading a novel, I knew I was in for a rough night.

And I was completely wrong.

Somehow, the tiles from generations earlier kept the rain out entirely. The restaurant I worked in at home in California had been built seven years earlier, and leaked like a sieve. This house proved far better at withstanding the tropical rain it sees so often.

For the next few days, while eating breakfast, Bessie the holy cow stopped by the gate, always mooing to get in. Cows are sacred in the Hindu religion, and traffic will stop for them if they lie down in the road, but their sanctity doesn’t guarantee their admittance to breakfast. Each morning, after several minutes of gawking, Bessie left.

Paying the bill at the end of our stay, I still couldn’t believe it had cost us each a measly $10 per night. Part of me felt guilty at getting off so cheap, but my rational side won out, reminding me that if it wasn’t profitable, they wouldn’t be in business.

For great value, a decent location and friendly proprietors, I couldn’t have been happier with the Villa Ludovici.

The Kindness of Strangers: An Indian Couple from Louisiana

It was almost midnight, I had been in motion for 22 hours, I was alone in a foreign land, and the only word I was reasonably certain I could pronounce in the local language was “salad.” Oh, and if I ate salad, I was almost sure to get the dreaded “Delhi Belly.”

I stood at an anonymous baggage carousel in Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji airport (I can’t pronounce it either) hoping Delta hadn’t lost my bags in New York after a day that began at 5:30 in the morning in Sacramento, had interminable stops in D.C. and New York and had just culminated in a 14½-hour flight to the far side of the world.

A unique smell filtered in from the muggy air outside. It had hints of spice, humanity and exhaust fumes. As I saw my battered suitcase slide onto the conveyor belt, I decided it wasn’t an altogether unpleasant smell.

Once I picked up my bag, I headed toward the family that represented my lifeline. Dossu and Shitakme, the middle-aged Indian couple I had been sitting beside for the past half-day would see me to the Hotel Suba Palace, 45 minutes away.

Eight-hour conversations on 777s are a great way to either make friends or annoying enemies, and these two were the former. Emigrating to the U.S. about the time my parents were starting to date, the Indian dentist and his wife were a few weeks away from getting U.S. citizenship, and were returning to their homeland to attend a wedding. After giving me countless hints on how to keep from getting scammed by opportunistic locals, they asked where my hotel was. Once they found it was in Colaba and not far from their own, they offered me a ride with their friends, who were meeting them at the airport.

As I dragged my suitcase to them and their family, I was warmly greeted with a friendliness that would become happily familiar on this trip. I asked them to wait while I changed some of my dollars for rupees, and Shitakme handed me a 100-rupee note and said that I wouldn’t need any more before I got to my hotel. When I tried to give her the equivalent in American currency, she told me that if I offered her money again, she would slap me in my face.

I’m not one to argue with people in their own country, so I followed them through a security checkpoint and then through the door.

My first sight of India from the ground involved a guard with the curious habit of resting his chin on the muzzle of his rifle in front of a fence crowded with around 250 cab drivers, idlers and people meeting family and friends.

I switched my cell phone on to call home and let the folks know I was safely on the ground, and before I could enter the number, Shitakme thrust her phone in my direction and told me to call on it, since it would be cheaper. I didn’t dare offer her any cash for the call.

Since their car was full, I would ride with their luggage and a second driver. She gave him her phone and told me to call home again when I reached my hotel, and she’d get her phone back later. I thanked her and got into a red compact vaguely reminiscent of a Civic.

The most obvious thing was that there were people everywhere. They sat in dark corners, cooked over open fires on the sidewalk, stood in the cones of light emanating from streetlights, carried goods on their heads, slept on the street beside the Porsche dealership, and drove around in everything from autorickshaws to Bentleys.

We drove on the left side of the road, oblivious to red lights and lane markers someone had painted on the ground in vain. In a series of near-death encounters that would prove to be the norm when traveling by car in India, we skirted past trucks and bullock carts closer than I would ever have been comfortable parking in the United States.

We neared Colaba, and the driver, who patiently answered my myriad questions throughout the ride, asked me for the address to the hotel. I winced and read the only address the hotel has: “Near Gateway of India, Apollo Bunder, Bombay – 400 039.” For me, an address that began with the word “near” was frightening and archaic.

Apparently, it’s all good. Everyone knows where the Gateway of India is, and my driver simply drove near it, then asked one of the ubiquitous people sitting on the street for directions. He pointed and said something I couldn’t even guess at, and we drove another few minutes.

After one more stop for directions – apparently a normal way to locate something – I found myself staring at the familiar image I had seen on the Internet. I called home, grabbed my bag and thanked my driver, asking him to thank Shitakme and Dossu for their kindness once again.

He drove away as I approached the uniformed doorman, who greeted me with a grin and a hearty “Namaste” before leading me up some marble stairs to the registration counter.

I signed in on one of the last pages of a registry that looked like it had been around since India was still a British colony, then rode up the miniature elevator to my room. When I opened the door, I wasn’t sure what I would find, hoping it wasn’t a bait-and-switch differing greatly from the photos of the rooms I had seen on the Internet.

It might have been any hotel in America. Two beds and a chair that folded into a third bed were spaced out in the room, which was complete with a fully functional bathroom and TV. The lights, heater and fan were all controlled by a remote. I smiled and realized I had been uneasy and a little nervous for nothing.

It was my first time traveling alone to a foreign country (my friends arrived 24 hours later). It was my first third-world destination, and it turned out to be a great deal easier to handle than some experiences I’ve had in America.

Of course, I have Dossu and Shitakme to thank in large part for that.

The River Princess

The River Princess sank eight years ago, and has become something of a permanent fixture off Siquerim Beach in Goa, India, as it holds a few mysteries.

My arrival in tropical Goa was refreshing after the chilly weather near Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan. Something about wearing shorts and a T-shirt in December has a certain allure, even for a guy from "Sunny California."

A 20-minute taxi ride (much safer than this one) brought my friend Deon and I to our hotel across from the beach. As soon as we'd finished the check-in process, we headed to the sand and were met with our first sight of the River Princess.

I was initially under the impression that she was at anchor, but realized she was way, way too close to shore for that. She was clearly sitting on the bottom, and repair crews were all over the superstructure working under floodlights in the setting sun. I shrugged, figuring it was nothing more than the result of a helmsman asleep at the wheel.

Eating prawns at one of the ubiquitous beach restaurants the next day, I asked a few British expats about the massive container ship sitting in 20 feet of water.

"Oh, the River Princess? Yeah, she's been there since 2000, when she hit some rocks near Panjim. They towed her over here to sink."

I was astonished. Though not in the market for a container ship, I could imagine they are fairly expensive. "Why haven't the owners done anything about it?" I asked.

"No one knows who owns it."

"How is that? It must be registered somewhere." To that, the Brits just shrugged and told me an Indian company was working on taking her away, but they weren't holding their collective breath, as that was an old rumor circulating for years.

I took a closer look at the vessel and decided she may have been smuggling arms or drugs - hence the reason no one has claimed it. Whatever the case may be, her presence is definitely altering the currents around the beach, and a small sandbar is forming.

"You know, that would make an awesome night club and hotel," I said.

"Yeah, a lot of people say that," a woman replied. So much for originality.

Whether the River Princess will continue to rust away in the sea or will finally be cleaned up is still up in the air. I hope someone had the foresight to remove the fuel and oil and somehow minimize the environmental damage, since a spill would be rather unfortunate. However long the she does sit there, she will be lamentable to the locals as an eyesore, and of passing interest to tourists who naturally wonder at her mysteries.

Or, perhaps, the Brits were having a joke at my expense, and there is no mystery at all.

For the Love of a Woman

I found myself walking down a narrow, dusty road past armed guards and children hawking trinkets. A camel cart was parked to my right, and the camel eyed me suspiciously as he chewed and bared his teeth at me.

Getting there had been the result of a harrowing ride you can read about here.

But there I stood. I was a short line away from entering one of the most fabled places in the world – the Taj Mahal.

I remembered my first exposure to it in a Scholastic News article back in elementary school. I know that, at the time, I thought, “I’ll never see this.” This was one time I was happy to be wrong.

After a thorough frisking at the security checkpoint, I joined my friends inside the outer wall. Not wanting to rush ourselves, we took photos of the exquisite gatehouse. Constructed from red sandstone with marble and precious stone inlay, it is a sight in its own right. I thought of how many people from a multitude of different places had traveled there since the Taj Mahal was finished in 1653, and the number is unfathomable.

Unable to resist any longer, I headed toward the gate and caught my first glimpse of pristine white marble peeking through the arch, the thousands of precious stones inlaid into its surface only hinting at the detail from that distance.

I walked through the gate, and it was like I had entered another world. Built by the Emperor Shah Jahan for his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal, the Taj Mahal is perfect in every way. The turquoise pool lined by trees and full of fountains acts as a permanent red carpet to the fruit of the work of architects representing Persian, Central Asian and Islamic influences.

The main monument, which houses the tombs of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, is flanked by tall minarets on each corner. It amazed me to learn that each side is identical. From a distance, the intricate detail above the main arches looked like fine lacework. As I moved closer, I saw that it was really inlaid precious stones brought from all over India and installed by skilled artisans.

Taking a circuit of the monument, I ran my fingers over the smooth marble and tried to imagine what the area must have looked like with thousands of the most skilled craftsmen in the world toiling on the monument a man created to honor the memory of his wife.

Once up on the upper platform, with protective booties securely over my shoes, I gazed across the river to where, had Shah Jahan had his way, a matching black monument would have stood. Intended to house the emperor after his death, construction was never started, as his son managed to thwart what he saw as wasting resources.

Shah Jahan now rests alongside his wife, inside the Taj Mahal itself. The interior of the mausoleum was breezy, as marble screens took the place of walls to allow air and light to circulate through the room. The ceiling stood impressively high, and I thought it was a wonder that it only took 22 years to construct the whole monument.

The tombs of Jahan and Mumtaz sit side-by-side, and Jahan’s tomb has his royal symbol inlaid in precious stones over his head.

Emerging from the tomb back into the garden area, I took the time to look at the mosque, the Masjid, which is on-site and still used on certain days.

Walking around the Taj Mahal again, I paid attention to how the sunlight played on the marble from different angles. I have heard that the best time to see the light’s effect is at dawn, but even in the afternoon the sight is mesmerizing.

As I left, I couldn’t help but wonder what type of a woman Mumtaz Mahal must have been. To inspire such devotion from her husband, she had to have been something special, and I wondered if she would really live up to the beauty of the building she spends eternity in.

The Perilous Road to Agra

It was on the road to the Taj Mahal that I thought I would die.

If you get nervous passing on the wrong side of the road, do not ride in a car on India’s highways – take a train. Over there, it is not enough to pass the odd camel cart, autorickshaw, elephant or truck. A driver must also pass a car passing a slower vehicle (or animal) if possible. What that works out to is being three-abreast on a two-lane highway.

And the other side is doing the same thing.

My friends Deon and Peter were sharing my experience, but being Iraq War vets, they were taking it better. I eventually settled down as we screamed past fields so thick with the smoke from cooking fires that the trees at their far edges appeared as specters.

I was smack in the middle of third-world nowhere. I found it ironic that to get to one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, I had to pass through ugly poverty, where farmers in filthy clothes with leathery skin sharpened their axes by grinding them on the pavement and camel carts were almost as common as private cars.

But this was one of the reasons I had come to India. It is unlike going to Europe, which is like going to an American city where the inhabitants speak a different language. I wanted to get completely out of my comfort zone, and I did.

Our driver pulled to the side of the road for food. Even out there, Mountain Dew and Doritos were available. We had some of the delicious “ready-made” tea (loaded with cream and sugar), and got back into the SUV.

Unlike most of the vehicles I rode in in India, this one had seatbelts, and I was very thankful for that. Our driver also had an illuminated plastic statue of some god or other on his dashboard, which is a common practice. Maybe it had something to do with my survival.

Deon asked our driver to put on some music, and I cringed at the thought of hearing high-pitched, screeching noises, but it was actually very nice, a mix of current pop music and Punjabi folk music.

We had to stop at a toll booth, and while our driver was paying, a man wearing a beanie, a shawl and a shotgun slung over his back walked up to my window. He stared at me, unblinking, and I wondered if he wanted a bribe. Then his face broke out in a toothy grin and he waved at me. So I smiled and waved back. Light-skinned, blonde-haired people are very uncommon out there, and I wondered if I might be the first one he’d seen up close.

Just after the checkpoint, our side of the road was closed. In the States, that would be cause for a signalman stopping one direction until the other had passed. Not so in India. In India, it’s a free-for-all. And the best part is that there were no signs to warn the other drivers.

Fortunately their trucks are painted bright colors and heavily decorated. They can’t be missed.

Wondering how American drivers would handle that situation, I turned around and saw a bus behind us. The word “Panicker's” was painted on the windshield, and a banner reading, “Welcome” was hung underneath that. I thought it fitting.

We eventually reached the Taj Mahal. It was absolutely worth the trip there and back, especially since I still had a pulse at the end.

(For my experience at the Taj Mahal, keep checking back. It will be up in a few weeks.)

The Taste of Travel: Cooked in the Parking Lot

With a little over an hour to kill in New Delhi, India, we couldn't go see the Red Fort, shop in one of the emporiums or see much of anything. Instead, Feroz Baktoo, who had secured transportation for Deon and me to Jaipur, invited us to eat lunch with him and his staff above his small office.

We jumped at the chance to eat with the five men. A 21-year-old worker we'd befriended and had introduced himself as Mr. Arshad led us up a narrow staircase in the office to the second story, where a blanket was spread over most of the floor. Following Arshad's lead, we took our shoes off and sat cross-legged (dare I say Indian Style?) in a small circle with the others, to whom we were introduced.

Feroz showed up a few seconds later with several stainless steel containers of food his wife had cooked for him earlier that day. He disappeared again and returned with a cardboard box full of chicken fresh-cooked over a fire in the parking lot. The other fare consisted of rice, potatoes and more chicken.

Arshad sitting down for lunch:

Small pie tins and paper plates were passed around, and we all served ourselves with our hands. Since these were Muslims, we weren't constrained from using our left hands to eat, which most Indians consider the "dirty" hand. This was good news for Deon, who was finally able to eat with his dominant hand.

The food was excellent and filling, and we were able to discuss all sorts of things with our hosts. Even though we were almost as far as we could get, geographically, from home, we found that talking to them was not much different than talking to anyone else in America. The fact that they were Muslim Indians and we were Christian Americans never even came up. Feroz told us about his business, and we offered tips on how he could attract more Americans. Deon and I answered his questions about Hawaii and convinced him that he needs to go there sometime.

There were some cultural differences, chief among which was the way our respective societies treat women. Deon and I tried to explain the concept of a double standard, but our arguments fell on deaf ears. Though India is scraping its way into modernity, there are still long strides to be taken in both human and women's rights.

When we got into the car to head to Jaipur, Arshad passed us his business card and said that if we ever traveled to Kashmir, his home, we were to come stay with him. This was indicative of the hospitality we found throughout the subcontinent, from metropolitan Mumbai to sleepy Old Goa.