Shillong in the state of Meghalya India is the jumping off place for a visit to Cherrapunjee, which claims to get more rainfall than any other place in the world. As much as 320 inches falls during the peak monsoon month of July... that's an average of 10 inches everyday in the wettest years! A bumpy three hour Jeep ride got us to an area of bare volcanic rock near the border with Bangladesh where monsoon downpours occur during early summer months. On the mountain roads around Shillong huge cargo trucks stop in the middle of their lanes for any number of reasons forcing traffic to detour around them in both directions. In one five minute period I counted eight trucks blocking traffic. I can only imagine the mess this must cause during the monsoon.

Shillong is the site of an old British "hill station." Built on several knolls and intervening gullies it reminds me a lot of Assisi in Italy. Walking the busy part of the city called the Police Bazaar is guaranteed to provide significant exercise. It also is the cleanest of the Indian cities I’ve visited, though far from meeting Western standards of hygiene and sanitation. Hill tribes market their crafts and produce along the crowded streets of the shopping area.  Giant, sweet and exotically flavored "tangerines" are called oranges here. So easy to peel and delicious: I love ‘em… at ten cents each, they are a bargain. Evenings were unexpectedly chilly and when I saw a pile warm jackets being offered for a mere 150 Rupees ($3.40) I grabbed one thinking I'd just toss it when I left the mountains. As you can see from the picture, it is an excellent down filled ski jacket worth perhaps a hundred dollars . I also bought the wool turtleneck I'm wearing in the other picture for an additional 120 Rupees ($2.70). 

My hair will hang to my waist by the time I leave India. Here, like Turkey, beauty shops are reserved for women and often carry a sign warning "No Men Allowed" or "Women Only." The saloons (barber shops) offer quick electric clipper jobs that guarantee to turn out one version or another of the standard military cut. Indian men rarely wear their hair long.

People are chewing a concoction of a green leaf smeared with a white "lime" paste with bits of Betelnut sprinkled on top. On chewing, one's spit turns red making both male and female chewers look like they have done a sloppy job of applying lipstick. When one smiles, the stained teeth give them an appearance of a wild beast in the middle of devouring a recent kill. Apparently no one swallows the tasty saliva as everyone spits the red juice wherever the urge occurs... including onto the marble walks of some inside shopping arcades. I am often amused when watching a store keeper with a mouth full of red juice ready for spitting trying to carry on a conversation with a customer. It must be quite a trick to hold their mouth is such a way as to retain the juice and make intelligible sounds at the same time. Their contorted faces are a sight to remember.

Betelnuts grow in clusters like coconuts on palm trees that resemble the coconut palm. While they seemed to be growing wild in many places, I also saw a number of densely planted groves, attesting to the popularity of the chewing habit. 

Outside the city I see a strange variety of bamboo growing. It looks like the ordinary species except the growing tip turns vine-like, bending over like a Weeping Willow branch that often reaches the ground. I imagined people cutting a pole and using the long thin string-like tip as a natural fishing line. 

Bamboo reinforced, mud covered walls are used in building construction. Where concrete is used there is little obvious quality control. Mixed on a flat surface, a quantity of cement is added to a pile of sand and aggregate with water added to a depression in the middle. It makes concrete, but the quality varies from one batch to another, something obvious from the uneven wearing of walkways.

I read a newspaper article about the Indian elite who live "bubble lives," moving from one bubble of hygiene, affluence and comfort to another, hardly making any contact with the pervasive squallier between bubbles. I realized that is exactly what I have been doing with my excursions into the streets where no one can avoid the real India. If I didn't have my ready first class hotel "bolt holes," I probably wouldn't find such adventure so appealing. Fortunately, luxury hotels are relatively cheap in the parts of India I've so far visited: $40 to $70.

Reading my description of the uneven sidewalks in Kolkata, a friend sent me an article which claims walking on uneven surfaces provides better exercise for the elderly! I've been doing the right thing all along and didn't even know it. That probably accounts for my tightening belt, now cinched up a good four inches from when I left in December last year.

Making a telephone call is like performing the "who's on first?" routine. They say "hello." I reply "hello." They say "hello" again, etc. Eventually I say something like "I've already said hello twice. Are you there?"  Waiters always think you are going to order several servings of anything requested, because they always ask "one?" After carefully pointing to several menu items and confirming the waiter understands what I want, they will read back the order in a totally mangled form of English that defies deciphering, waiting for a confirmation before they will scurry off to the kitchen to place my order. More than once what I got looked nothing like what I thought I had ordered. 

Restaurant tipping is a confusing matter here in India. Cultured Indians are said to tip in upscale restaurants. Some of the better establishments add a 10% service charge. However, watching closely I have never seen an Indian leave a large tip. Once, a father collected the paper change from his payment leaving the coins. His teenage son saw the oversight and pocketed the windfall. I have experimented with leaving and not leaving tips and see no difference in the quality of service: always obsequious during the first few visits, deteriorating as staff becomes familiar with my presence. The old British axiom "Familiarity breeds contempt" seems to hold in this former British colony.

During my stay in India this time I have seen numerous newspaper articles about government censorship. Criticism of major government officials and Islam is not tolerated; people are arrested! On the other hand, respected citizens do write guest editorials criticizing poor performance of government departments and the atrocious lack of hygiene and sanitation in the cities and poor road maintenance. One article mirrored my own observations perfectly, concluding by urging citizens to take more pride in their city and clean it up.

Arvind, a Kolkata industrialist I met on the shared taxi tour of Cherrapunjee says Indian professionals are paid about 20% of their American counterparts. Ordinary unskilled laborers make 150 to 300 Rupees per day ($3.50 to $7.00 per day), he says. Government employees make a bit more, perhaps 400 Rupees a day. A doctor I later met in Kaziranga says the actual laborer wage is closer to 50 Rupees per day! That's a little over a dollar a day.

There is 30 minute helicopter service back to Guwahati. The fare is a mere 725 Rupees or about $17. That is around what I paid for a private four hour taxi ride to get me here. Of course one must add the outrageous $7 Guwahati airport taxi ride back into the city. The option seemed tempting until I discovered the new "Super Sonic" bus service. While the comfortable seats made the riding enjoyable, the bus eventually became overcrowded and noisy towards the end of the journey.
 

Peace,
Fred L Bellomy

PS: For anyone following my wanderings it will become apparent there often is a significant delay in getting out the postcards. At the moment I am in Dhaka Bangladesh.