Friday, September 15, 2006 Train to Indore, Buses, I'm the Cheapest Man Alive

On the overnight sleeper, I met a middle-aged guy from Indore, the train’s destination. He works for GE in Gurgaon, and said he wanted to visit America. He said he had clients in Alabama, Missouri, Texas, and Vermont that wanted him to come. If he pays $2,000 for airfare and goes only to these places, I pity him. The train ride was long, so I had to use the restroom (luckily they have a Western toilet, the cleaner alternative to the piss-covered Indian-style). Still, it was weird going; it’s still just a hole to the tracks below, and it’s windy from below. Indore is a dirty, dusty, crowded town, just like any other large Indian city. It’s a terrible transition from the beautiful greenery of rural Western Madhya Pradesh. I took a rickshaw to the bus stand, and I didn’t have to haggle over price because the rickshaws here actually use their meters! As I hopped on a bus to Dhar, the landscape changed. The verdant green plains of central India supported an agricultural base of everything from corn to flowers to rice. Pink, purple, and blue saris and yellow turbans punctuated the range of green hues along the way. People here lived simply, and Western dress became common only for men, as Hindu women wore their colorful saris over their faces as purdah, a sign of modesty. Houses were small, and made of mud, tarp, aluminum, and brick. The ride to Dhar was followed by another bus ride. This ride, well, sucked because we had to stop for a flat tire, schoolchildren were figthing around me over seats, and my right headphone stopped functioning. I finally arrived at Mandu, a sleepy town, around six. When I got there it was almost dark, so I set out to find a hotel. In India, it’s always been easy to find a hotel. They are everywhwere, even in the tiniest cities. Apparently Indian people just like opening hotels, as proven by the fact that half of the hotels in the United States are Indian-owned. I looked at one that was $4 a night, but, being the extremely miserly cheapskate that I am, I walked away, refusing to pay a penny over $2.50, which unfortunately meant I had to check into a hotel whose lobby was a Ram Temple, and my room basically a prison cell. In addition, check-out time is 8 am. The doorway had a huge gaping hole in it, so that mosquitoes and wandering eyes could enter at will. The entire night I spent worrying about mosquitoes, lightning, and random people watching me. I admit that I have officially sunken to an all-time low in cheapness and laziness. The extreme excess of labor means I’m so used to people doing everything for me in this country that when I have to do it myself, I just don’t. It seems as if the only time I’m not lazy is when I’m cheap. Take tonight’s case; I’m willing to walk literally a mile to find a cheap hotel, after refusing to pay the exorbitant $4 for the nicer one. This country is so cheap that it’s made me extremely cheap, too. I don’t know whether this is good or bad; I think bad, but whatever. I like having money and don’t like not having it. I’ve managed the impossible, and have become even cheaper than my Asian mom who shops in Oregon to avoid sales tax, or my former roommate Jon Carnes who went out to eat maybe five times all year. I won’t pay more than $4 for a hotel, I will pay $3 maximum for a meal, I will take a 50-hour train rather than flying for $100, in trains I prefer dirty sleeper class instead of sheets and air conditioning, I take the dirty rickety public bus instead of train or taxi, I won’t patronize internet cafes that charge over $0.75 per hour, I won’t call home for $0.10 a minute, and I won’t buy bottled water that costs over $0.25 per liter. In conclusion, if you thought I was cheap then, you should see me now. And I wonder why no one wants to travel with me...