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166 responses total.

So you had your Indian stay.
Hasn't it left you with the urge to go back?
(But not on a working basis).
Concerning your bare shoulders I can say the following:
bare shoulders are considered as being offensive in being decent, or
not. A woman does not show legs or shoulders. But looking at the women
wairing saris that show the belly that's not being offensive.
So I concluded that local standards in being properly clad or not
differ from western ideas. (for that matter: a man doesn't wair
shorts).

Another thing: I've get a vegetarian dish somewhere. I'll look it
up for you and post.
Oh yes, I don't know whether I said something about the t-shirts:
they arrived sound and safe at my home, and I'm sure to wair them
in summer.
Last thing: I think Indian people are very beautiful.

As for the cows: loose cows are, as I heard, once given as an
offer to a templ and then discarded. Which makes this cow entirely
free, nobody owns such a cow and it's being left to itself.
Cows being holy I did not understand. Since they were considered
being holy I kept my distance to them. But locals easily hit and
pushed them when they stood in their way (which is in the narrow 
streets near the banks of the Ganga in Varanasi, quite possible).

CU

Sigh... wish I were travelling now... Europe would be nice...

What airlines did you use, Valerie? A friend of mine went to Kenya. He took
Delta (i think) to London and then some other city. It was  some sort of
African airline... after the doors were closed, they flight attendants sprayed

bug spray all in the cabin. <cough!>

  I've heard the far east is nice.  A friend of mine took a trip to
Thailand and fell in love with the place.  Now he's taking a leave of
absence so he can go live in Thailand, Singapore and that general
area for a year.  I'm envious but on the other hand it sounds like it
gets awfully *HOT* over there.

Valerie, Thanks a lot for sharing your experience with us.  I have never been
to India, but would like to someday.  Very interesting.

What a neat travelogue! Any considerations for jet-lag in either direction?
  
Is the 8-hr day in effect? With 4-5 hrs of travel everyday did you see
any farming, general agriculture, retail shops, other business/production
activity? Any walking around the city/countryside? any photographs?

When I flew to London I was jet lagged for almost 2 days. It was an 8 hour
flight overnight, and I didn't sleep on the plane. We got there at 8 am London
time and I felt/looked like death warmed over. We were advised to stay awake,
or face the inconvenience of being asleep all day and wired at night (London
seems to close up at 11 pm). I spent the first day in a caffeine haze but felt
a little better once I slept that night. But it was odd, since breakfast felt
more like lunchtime. I wasn't ver hungry at dinner time because it felt like
eating at 5 am.

Coming home was a 10 hour flight, all day/evening. By the time I got home at
8 my time, I had bascially been awake since 1 that morning.  But I went home,
crashed, and was ok within a day or two.

Incidentally, if anyone is thinking of an island to travel to, Bermuda is
excellent. Very clean, scenic, lots to do. Not as much of a tourist trap.

Grrreat! that you liked India (Bombay/Mumbai in particular!) 
I wonder if you are aware that bombay is also called Bollywood?!
what you missed probabally was an Indian regional movie! (m,ay be 
Hindi!) 
do you plan another  trip sometime?

That was quite an experience.  Thanks for sharing it.

Yes, thanks, Valerie. I ran into the nodding problem when I trained
two gentlemen from Bangalore. One in particular would shake his head yes from
side to side. It was a bit disconcerting at first, but easily understood once
I knew what he meant.

It's a very interesting head movement. Not the same as our "no", because 
in addition to moving the head from side to side, the head is alternately
tilted at the same time. It's quite unique to India, I believe, and 
may even be regional.

I was also quite aware of the Indians' passion for cricket. I learned from
my friend Bill (wfh) Hester who lives in NZ where they have a similar passion,
and from my friend George in the UK, who spent a lot of time in Bangalore
supervising the work we had contracted out there, and who did a bit of bowling
on the side (cricket bowling, not American bowling - it's like pitching, only
very different).

I have never been to India, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect you would
find, but I was not surprised to hear about cows and oxen. I was also 
aware of the acute power shortages throughout the entire country. But I 
was very surprised to hear about the lack of sidewalks and about the air 
quality.

  India also has a HUGE *TB* (tuberculosis) problem, so its a good thing
you werent breathing too much of the air!

Now who gave you that? (I mean both the TB as well as that equally 
infectious rumour item!) Its like associating every Americam wit
h AIDS ......

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  It's maybe a Good Thing(tm) that I didn't go. I would've had about 1000
pictures, and the WORST luck in the world. I love to travel, but the gods of
travel must not like me. ;)

Funny how cultures differ in little things. In London I had room service for
breakfast, and was grossed out to find warm milk for my cereal. Ptooey!

A good travelogue!! I had been there some time last year. Walked a lot to get
all sorts of experiance. Lot of vaiety in lifestyles to languages. 

Re 14: you can expect to take as much as that in pictures. I took,
in my month's stay more than 400 (and I'm not a photographer that
much).

Thanks, Valerie.  I enjoyed reading about your trip.  Your descriptions are
so vivid.  I can relate to your experience of having to call a doctor to your
hotel room.  That happened to me in Rome, and it is definitely scary when they
prescribe mysterious pills.  I'm glad it all worked out so well for you.

I know a woman who broke her leg in Rome. She ha dto go to the hospital and
was lucky to find some nuns who spoke some English. She said the hospital was
dirty and none of the painkilling drugs worked. She got the American Embassy
to fly her home.

Most Americans in Europe think everything is dirty. I avoided Americans
when I lived in Europe, as most of them were insufferable. I enjoyed
your travelogue very much, Valerie. You had a real advantage in being
there to do a job, and not be just a tourist - people undoubtedly took
you more seriously. Did you encounter any evidences of sexism, appart 
from clothing conventions?

Yes I think it was a good travelogue. But Valerie you did not experince much
of india as you were obviously restricted to Bombay(Mumbai) and that to
between your hotel and work place. There is plenty of variety and India ia
a very diverse country. If you travel say 200Kms language both written and
spoken languages changes in one way or the other. A typical indian will be
well conversant with atleast 3 to 4 languages whichare quite different.
But still we manage to remain united which is a great thing indeed.

It was a great read, Valerie.  Sounds like you had a good time overall.

I am currently ntalking with vasant in Bombay a few mornings a week.  he is
a software engineer in Bombay.  He did not know about out conferences and I
just encouraged him to log on to Agora and see what it is like.  If he reads
this, I hope he responds.

My friends in Bangalore have told me the same thing a jbalakri writes in #21.
There are so many languages, that the people of India must learn at least 4
completely different languages to get along.  At least in most places
(1) English (2) Hindi (3) Local language
But then there are 26 local languages. Hindi is the official government
language, and also the local language near the capital.
Someone from India should please correct me if I made any errors.

My friends are software developers, and they told me they knew 5 languages.

Of course, a visitor to India would hardly notice the languages were
different, while traveling. This is not, of course, unique to India,
or even big, multicultural countries. It is true in the Netherlands.
There are several different country dialects that are nearly
mutually incomprehensible, and the official "Rotterdam" Dutch. Most
educated people also speak at least 4 languarges (Dutch, German,
English, French) and often the local dialect.

That's severely exaggerated. Our reputed knowledge of 
languages is not that vast.
Let me explain: at high school taking lessons in mentioned
languages is obligated for the first three years . After that one
specializes in a certain way (e.g. languages,history, economics; or
chemistry, biology, physics, math, economics and two languages).
So, only if one specializes in languages, that person may get
some years education in these.
If not, well....
For me I had three years of German, six in English, three in 
French and Dutch all of my life (haha). 
I've graduated for some time now, and to say that I speak
French...German is not that difficult for me (as Germans might
say that Dutch is merely a dialect of german).
This situation is not exemplary.
So, Rane you're giving too much credit to the Dutch.

Well, maybe by half a language or so :-).

I guess that everywhere some people are better at languages than others.
All I can say is that I met many quatralingual Netherlanders when I lived
there. (I was introduced to this when my landlord was making a phone
connection for me to Belgium, and was speaking French to the phone
operator, Dutch with his wife, German to a visiting friend, and English
with me, essentially simultaneously.)

   So did I, when I was doing work in a little town called
Alphen ann den Rijn.  It was nothing short of amazing, the
number of people I met who spoke Dutch, English, German,
French and Spanish.  Many had knowledge of other languages,
too.  I'd say of the people I met in the Netherlands, about
50% really were fluent in four languages.  The most amazing
folks I met were some financial types in Rotterdam, who on
the average spoke 10 languages.  Older (50's and above)
women seemed to be the least fluent in other languages,
although there were several times that I tried dealing with
one of them in a shop, and she'd not be able to understand
English, but could parse my laughable German.

I think tourists are more likely to meet truely multilingual people in the
Netherlands, just because people working in jobs where they contact a lot of
tourists tend to have more opportunity to exercise more languages, and so
maintain more fluency.

It did seem weird to me that I could get along so easily in a country without
speaking a word of the native language.  Everyone seemed to speak English if
you addressed them in English.  It's like they were only pretending to be a
foreign country.

Like, in Canada?

I frequently talk on the phone with someone who's an employee of
the European Space Agency, which is in Holland.  People will wander
into his office to ask him about something or another (he's a system
administrator), and usually they'll speak to him in English.  He
himself speaks Italian (he's a native Italian), English, Dutch, and
can get along in a couple of other languages.

While we are drifting...when I was living in the Netherlands I met an
Israeli who had recently arrived. He spoke fluent German, French, Spanish,
and some other languages (as well as Hebrew). In six months he was fluent
also in both official Dutch *and* the local dialect - he could pass as a
native in either. His Dutch friends liked him along when they crossed into
Germany because he spoke better German than they did. By now, he has
probably visited India, and picked up Hindi and a dozen local dialects.
(After two years there I once passed briefly as a Dutchman during a brief
conversation with someone in a train station (who, after ten minutes,
asked if I was from Gronigen, where the local dialect has an English-like
accent). 

Never heard that one before. It even might have been that the 
person asked you if you were from Frysland, since Frysian and Gaelic are
related, but Groningen...

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You are probably right, clees. Its been a while, and my geography may
have drifted. I never visited either, anyway.

Anyone  coming to Madras, India do get in touch with me. Is is awonderful
place

That's fine, I was afraid this item was drifting.

to Madras eh? ... a continental drift!

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