Vacation in India

As the smell of cardamom and coconut fades from my nostrils, as the taste of parotta and jaggery dissolves away, as Humayun's Tomb and the Taj Mahal slip into misty memory, as the sizzling sound of dosas and appam dissipate sadly into the past, I thought I would share some highlights of our recent vacation in India.

New Friends Like Family

By far, the best thing about India was the people we met. The impetus for our trip was an invitation from my colleague, Vineetha, who hails from God's own country, otherwise known as Kerala, the tropical state in the southwestern corner of India. Two years ago, we sat next to each other on a bus tour of the upper Colorado River and chatted for a couple of hours. By the end of the chat, she'd invited me and my wife, Angela, to stay with her family in Kerala.

Vini and her family were beyond generous. She and their driver, Sunil, met us at Kochi's solar-powered airport and whisked us to her family home in Kodannur, near Thrissur, an hour-and-a-half away. Soon after arriving, her mom served us brunch, which we ate one-handed, sans utensils, from leaves clipped from their banana grove. When Angela's knees bothered her, Vini's family invited their aryuvedic doctor to make three days of house calls for massage and herbal medicine wraps. Vini took us on a day trip to the impressive water falls at Athirappilly. By the end of our time in Kodannur, we felt like family.

Our time in northern India was similar. Four years ago, our youngest daughter, Liv, made a friend named Pratik at Cal State University Northridge. Pratik stayed with us over Thanksgiving four years in a row, despite Liv leaving CSUN after a year. When he heard we were traveling to India, he insisted we stay with his folks in Delhi.

Pratik's mom, Jyothi, and their family's driver, Prakash, picked us up at the airport, sped us back to their stylish flat in New Delhi, and fed us delicious southern food (his parents are also from Kerala). Jyothi and Pratik's dad, Unni, took us out to fancy restaurants, joined us in touring their city, made their car and driver available to us, and let us pay for nearly nothing.

After a few days in Delhi, we went to Agra and got a bit sick. ("Delhi Belly"? More like "Agra Niagara".) Angela needed supplies, so I texted Jyothi in Delhi about what to look for in an Agra drugstore. Within ten minutes, and without my asking, she'd had the supplies delivered to our hotel room through BlinkIt—one of India's hot new instant-delivery services. When we returned to Delhi a day early (my turn to be sick), Unni had me at a doctor's office within five minutes of calling for an appointment.

And it wasn't just our friends' families who made us feel welcome. I'd heard stories of hard-selling tuk-tuk touts who drive you to not-your-destination where they get a commission for delivering foreigners. And I'll admit, the sales pressure coming off the train in New Delhi from Agra was intense. But even the touts would eventually take no for an answer. One driver saw me walking in Agra, pressed me twice about a taxi, and, after my second refusal, smiled and asked me where I was from. He chatted me up, and on I went, without a further pitch.

I'm not saying everyone's kind in India or that there are no bad actors. But our hotel hosts, drivers, tour guides, flight attendants, wait staff, and even most strangers were incredibly warm and generous with us, exceeding anything we'd get from people in the same roles in Western Europe.

Food

The food. My God. The food.

As I type this, Angela is in our kitchen blending batter for dosas—crispy-thin, savory, southern Indian crepes made of fermented rice and lentils. I could not be happier. Literally.

Most food you get in Indian restaurants in America is from the north, so a big surprise was the array of mouth-watering southern Indian fare. Dosas, for sure, but also appam (a delicate rice-only version of the south Indian crepe), idli (savory rice cakes), parotta (flaky fried flat bread, like naan only better, and the best friend of honey and vanilla ice cream), coconut chutney, sambar (lentil and veggie stew), fish and egg curries, and pazham pori—irresistible banana fritters that may or may not account for the five pounds I gained on this trip!

Lunch on a backwater boat tour in northern Kerala.

Before we visited Unni and Jyothi in Delhi, we had lunch with Unni's extended family in Kerala, though I use the term "with" loosely, here. Apart from Unni's nephew, Angela and I were the only ones eating. The women of Unni's family served us from the edible mosaic of dishes hiding the table, ensuring we tried and loved everything (no problem there). According to Unni, they'd been cooking for days. When we asked if they would eat with us, the ladies waved us off ("later, later") and continued to hover, delighting as we scooped bite after bite with our clumsy hands.

Bidets

I've heard South Asians complain about American toiletry on many occasions. ("If you had poo on your face, would you smear it off with a piece of paper? No, you would wash with water.") In the past, I mostly chalked such comments up to a lack of skill with toilet paper. But having spent three weeks in a country where even the most rugged gas-station toilet has a hand-held bidet and may or may not have toilet paper, I'm a convert.

At home, our master bathroom does not have a bidet in it, and I've found myself refusing to do business in there, choosing instead our main bathroom that has a toilet seat bidet. Even that feels a bit crude; I'm thinking about installing a hand-held in our master bath. I mean, it's just cleaner, folks. Toilet paper is for drying, not wiping. No going back.

Cars and Drivers

On the pre-trip advice of some friends, we didn't take public transit much. We did fly from Kerala to Delhi, and we took fancy fast trains to and from Agra, but otherwise we rode in private cars and tuk-tuks driven by other people. Having a driver at your disposal seems common in India. If we lived there and had jobs equivalent to the ones we have in America, I imagine we'd have a family driver too, which seems the height of luxury.

I'm guessing this cultural difference has something to do with Indian traffic and the skills required to navigate it. Here's a description from Reddit that gets things about right:

In a major metropolis like Delhi..., you have cars sharing the road with slower moving vehicles like auto-rickshaws, bicycles, hand-pulled carts, pedestrians,...stray dogs and cows...Two wheelers have a habit of...pulling u-turns in any direction on a dime. Pedestrians can cross anywhere... Dogs start chasing two wheelers out of nowhere. Cars are parked on the side of the road haphazardly ignoring any parking restrictions. Public buses stop before or after the designated bus stand because the auto-rickshaws are blocking two lanes in front of the bus stand. Trucks sometimes carrying heavy and oversized loads break down anywhere, often due to overloading, causing major snarls and traffic hazards in the night.

In light of the vehicular madness, it makes sense to have skilled professionals do as much of the driving as possible. I certainly wouldn't brave it. Sitting in the back seat was wild enough and generally quite fun, though I did worry a bit when a tout at the Red Fort passed us to a drunk-looking tuk-tuk driver with bloodshot eyes to take us to the Jama Masjid. Fortunately, Old Delhi traffic kept us under five miles per hour most of the way.

Ancient Churches

Before visiting Kerala, we learned the state has the largest proportion of Christians in India—around 18% of the populace. Christianity came early to Kerala, likely within the first two centuries CE and perhaps as early as 52 CE when tradition holds that St. Thomas, one of Jesus's twelve disciples, arrived in Kerala and founded seven churches.

Angela and I visited three of these churches, in Palayoor, Kodungallur, and Kottakkavu. One of them (in Kodungallur) seemed past its glory, cowering in the shadow of an elevated freeway under construction just yards away, but the other two were thriving. All three were worth the visit.

Most interesting to me was the use of the words, "My Lord and my God," inscribed in and on the churches in many places. These words, of course, are the culminating line of the disciple Thomas's big scene in the Gospel of John, the moment he shifts from doubting Thomas to believing Thomas (John 20:24-28). The quotations mark out the St. Thomas heritage of the churches.

Church in Kottakkavu, Kerala, with St. Thomas's words from John 20:28 over the arch.

Beaches in Northern Kerala

At the midpoint of our travels, we stayed four days at a magical beach resort in Nileshwar (northern Kerala). Staff greeted us with glasses of sweet lime at the reception desk. A porter carried our luggage to a two-room cabana, which had folding louver doors opening onto a deck beside a lush lawn, infinity pool, coconut trees, and bright tropical flowers, mere steps from the pristine beach bordering the bath-warm Arabian Sea. There were ten cabanas at the resort and maybe five were filled during our stay; we had it almost to ourselves.

Sunset over the Arabian Sea

The place was so relaxing it almost felt like a burden when the manager of the open-air restaurant came by an hour before lunch and dinner to take orders. The menu was packed with delicious food, but must we really make decisions? Four days of reading, beach-walking, swimming, body-surfing, eating, and sleeping felt both deeply restful and deeply insufficient.

Indian Creatures

Angela's favorite creatures in India were the feral dogs. In both rural and urban areas, there were hordes of them, half of them pregnant, sleeping or roaming as they pleased. Vineetha urged us not to pet them—some are rabid—and told us stories about a pack that recently occupied her family's driveway for an extended period, howling and barking throughout the nights.

The dogs on our hosts' street in Delhi were different. Apparently, someone from a non-profit group had adopted them, spaying, vaccinating, and feeding them, so they were docile and quite friendly, something like community pets (I had to restrain Angela from petting them).

A street dog sleeping outside the Red Fort in Delhi

But, of course, dogs aren't the only animals in India. After walking to the falls and back on our day trip to Athirappilly, we found a sizable monkey sitting on our car and several others nearby. I was hesitant to get in the car—monkeys in India have been known to bite and scratch—but Angela assured me that if I challenged the monkey, asserting my alpha dominance, it would get out of our way. I put my hands up and took a few sudden steps forward while looking the monkey in the eye. (I also might have growled.)

What my monkey-whisperer wife failed to tell me is that monkeys are not like dogs in this regard: they don't shrink back when confronted with a show of "dominance"; they imitate it ("monkey see, monkey do," literally). The monkey hopped down from the roof of the car, bared his teeth, and started prowling toward me. I don't recall how I made it into the car unscathed—the fog of fear has erased that memory—but I do remember Angela and Vineetha somehow already inside the car, laughing and reaching for their phones to capture my terror on video.

As we drove home from Athirappilly, we came across a herd of wild elephants, strolling through the forest a few hundred feet from us. We stopped to watch, but after a couple of minutes an official who was monitoring them told us to move on: they'd begun to flutter their ears, indicating they were irritated and could charge.

Discovering the Mughal Empire

On our second day in Delhi, Jyothi took us to Humayun's Tomb, a huge complex of buildings and gardens from India's Mughal era, which began in the early 16th century, extended into the 18th, and was formally dissolved when the British took over in 1858. Although the Mughal rulers were Muslim, at least initially their rule was marked by tolerance and even integration of the other religions represented in their conquered territory. This embrace of religious pluralism is evident in their impressive architecture, which includes Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Hindu symbols.

Humayun's Tomb in Delhi, India

The Taj Mahal was especially impressive. Yes, yes, the hype, etc. But it is truly amazing. It was completed in 1648 as a memorial to Mumtaz Mahal, wife of Shah Jahan, ruler of the Mughal Empire at the time. Essentially, it's a grand love letter from Jahan to Mahal. According to our guide, every day of the 22 years over which the Taj was constructed, Jahan sat in front of the construction site and wept over his departed wife, who had died in childbirth.

The Taj is also an architectural and engineering wonder. It's made of white marble inlaid with semi-precious stones. The towering minarets at each corner of the main building lean slightly outward so they'd fall away from the building in an earthquake (a theory not yet tested, happily). The Taj's gatehouse has eleven domes across its top, one for each two years of construction, indicating that the architect, Ustad Ahmad Lahori, knew, in advance, that the project would take 20,000 workers 22 years to complete. Precision project management. In 1648. Mind-blowing.

Three Weeks with My Lady

While writing my dissertation back in 2014, I read some research suggesting couples can nurture their relationships with "novel and arousing" activities, such as hiking, active sports, card games, and travel (yes, that other arousing activity also helps). This research lingered in my mind as we planned our trip. Although our 27-year marriage is solid, my hope was that India would inject it with fresh "in-love" feelings.

My wish came true. The whole trip felt like a second (better) honeymoon. Navigating awkward moments like eating with one hand, interpreting broken English, or avoiding aggressive monkeys; encountering majestic architecture like the Taj and the marvel of wild elephants walking in the forest; absorbing the infinite differences of a foreign culture; even getting sick for a few days together—these adventures gave us new things to talk and laugh about, and stirred feelings of sympathy, exhilaration, and wonder that helped us see each other anew. The three-week absence of daily responsibilities also didn't hurt. We just felt free to enjoy each other.

Dreaming of India

Yesterday, as I rode the train to work, almost two months since returning from vacation, I found myself daydreaming of India again. I've been listening to a lot of Indian music lately, and not much else.

In part, my lingering feeling must be the romance of the traveler, the experience of a well-treated guest having received the best of a place. My feelings would be different and more complicated if I lived there, I'm sure. But I've traveled many places, some for extended periods: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, China, Vietnam, France, Spain, Italy, England, and Scotland, to name a few. They all had their charms, but India felt qualitatively different.

The country is so huge and diverse—ethnically, culturally, politically, religiously, geographically—it feels like you could spend a lifetime exploring it and barely scratch the surface. Maybe every country and culture is a bit like that. Maybe as I get older I'm coming to see with fresh eyes the wonder of this world and its people. I don't know.

But I do know I can't seem to shake my time in India. It was intoxicating. It pulls at me like a magnet. It feels like a country of the heart, for me, a place I didn't realize was home until I went there. I'm already planning to go back.