Marisa's Thoughts on First 9 Days
Mood:  surprised
Topic: Asia Trip
I wanted to supplement Molly's journal with my own additions. We left the US 9 days ago, and we are just starting to get used to India. Probably because we are settled into a groove of a now-14 day car trip through Rajasthan. The first few days in India were very trying, and I wondered how we would make it through the trip. We finally met westerners for the first time yesterday, and have enjoyed speaking english in full sentences -- almost no one in this region of India speaks english. They are all surprised that we began our trip in India -- many of them have been traveling for months through the countries we will go to next in SE Asia, and therefore are seasoned travelers, but they still find India to be the most difficult.

We've been traveling by car for 5 days now through the desert of northwestern India. The land is as dry and empty as the most deserted parts of Nevada in more ways than one -- the Indians also use this region for military testing/training. After all, we are 150 km from the border of Pakistan. But even though we are in one of the most remote parts of this country -- there are people along the side of the road most of the way. They are super poor and the land is too dry to grow anything. Camels are the way of transporting most goods -- but yet, the occasional motorbike and autorickshaw appears out of nowhere even in the quietest parts of the road. The women are all dressed in the most colorful, beautiful traditional saris with their faces veiled. We went on a camel safari yesterday, visited remote desert villages where water is fished out of a tiny well dug in the sand. They use a leather bucket and string to fill metal water jugs which the women then carry to their huts on their heads.

We have conflicted feelings each day about being able to escape the hardships of the desert heat and poverty as we duck into our air-conditioned car or hotel and eat clean, nutritious food. Our guide book gives the population of each town we visit, but how can they possibly know how many people live in these towns and villages? In the US, most babies are born in a hospital or medical center and are registered and given an identity even if just simply with a social security card etc. But in India, there are millions and millions of people living in extreme poverty with very little of anything -- it seems impossible that the government even knows that many of them exist, or even cares that they exist -- let alone be able to count them. Perhaps it's just my American experience that makes it so unbelievable to think that the government could know people exist in such destitude and not do anything to help them.