Dear fhegner
I am sure India looks wonderful and is very exciting to the occasional visitor who can depart again after a few weeks or even the next day after an airline layover.
I have however lived here in a small dusty, dirty mining town in the south since july last year and am very ready to leave and never come back.
Haircuts? almost every month I go to my small barber shop (30 rupees) and have my hair cut. I'm sorry but when he touches my cheeks with his filthy hands I cringe or I see the roaches crawling in the cracks of the wall or the grime dripping off his counter let alone his razor!
But let me not continue on this negative path. As i said before the money is good and the people are friendly. Nature is beautiful. Ofcorse nature is beautiful everywhere and anyway beauty is highly subjective.
As I am writing this, in my neighbors garden behind my house, a small travelling band is singing and beating their drums (like they do every full moon it seems)...divali is over and after 2 weeks of incessant firecrackers and loud explosions that could rival Baghdad or Kabul, I get good nights sleep again. This afternoon I am going to my Sikh friends temple for the celebrations of their 1st guru...
This morning my boss rode his lamborghini or maserati or even his rolls royce to the office 2 kms away getting stuck in potholes or behind an ox cart...spider man, like somebody called him because his extremities are so crippled that he "walks" on all four like a spider, shuffles along in the dust and **** on the side of the road...
I'm sorry I have lived in Indonesia, Thailand and Laos plus a bunch of developed countries, but in my opinion India steels first price in being a complete f**k up as a country. Bridges collapsing, fuel depots ablaze with no ability to stop the fire, a bureaucracy that can fry your brain to a sizzle and people toiling away with no dignity or prospect for a better life. Corruption is so rampant that it, along with the afore mentioned bureaucracy, swallows up 90% of all human endeavour. Nothing gets done. And if something does get done it gets done half assed. I have dealt with it for over a year now. It was difficult in the beginning and it still is difficult.
I am living right in the thick of it guys not in a swanky layover hotel in Delhi or Bombay with escursions to the colorful countryside.
So my friends pls don't take my experiences into acount and keep coming to india for a holiday, if you must...but remember that a society can be judged by the way it treats its weakest (somebody smarter than me said that once) I have seen how the weak are treated here: like **** by the side of the road, literally
Enjoy the tigers