Goodbye India

Well its our last day in India and we are sitting waiting at the airport, we didn’t do much today just slept in and then walked around near our hotel and got a couple of tiny last minute souvenirs.

Impressions of India:

The Good
- Very friendly people
- Amazing historical sights
- Beautiful arts & crafts
- Yummy food
- Cheap alcohol
- Animals everywhere!
- Everything looks broken and yet it still works, the people are very resourceful and fix anything and everything
- 75% of our hotel rooms (for other 25% see ugly)
- The sense of freedom compared with Australia (anything is possible in India)


The Bad
- People constantly trying to sell you things
- Not being listened to when for the 10th time you say NO
- The dust & dirt
- Treatment of stray animals
- Womens role in traditional India
- Lack of education
- Almost all the people we have meet have been lovely but the ones that are rude are very good at it! Generally they are either rich or work as security guards.
- People using religion to try and extort money from you
- Chewing tobacco, almost all the men chew it and then spit it out, the streets are covered in what looks like red/orange vomit
- The morning ritual of cleaning the nose/throat combined with the vomiting noises
- Having to climb a tree in the desert for wifi

The Ugly
- Extreme difference between rich and poor, eg. Ram Babu is what we would consider quite poor but there are people here who have a lot less and live in appalling conditions in comparison
- Blatantly being charged 10x for anything and everything from entrance fees to monuments (5-10 rupees for Indians, 250-750 for foreigners) to rickshaws, to drinks where we are always without fail charged the maximum retail price (if a shop doesn’t have something we want they will go down the street and buy it from their competition for the local price and then resell it to us for maximum price)
- The Caste system which whilst not officially legal in my opinion still exists and is practiced
- Police corruption
- Traffic
- Pollution
- 25% of our hotel rooms
- Our mates on the train! VERY UGLY!