It's been a real hot day here in Guwahati. This is actually how I remember this city from 15 years ago - hot and dusty! The difference is that I can now escape to Mom's house, her cooking and at least one room with AC!
Had a couple of India adventures yesterday with Nic Olson who is hanging out in India for a few months. Nic wears size 12 shoes and his flip flops had developed a hole in the heel so it was time to shop for new sandals. Some bartering and a few auto rickshaw rides later were were in the thick of the dust and shops of central Guwahati searching for the impossible - no India wears size 12! This place has a gizillion shoe stores and we visited a large of percentage of them! No size 12 was found, although the store owners kept urging him to push his feet tighter into their size 10's - it was humourous the first few times. Finally we bailed on the idea and decided to look for a piece of rubber and some super-glue to fix the shoe ourselves- which led to some more adventures, store owners, rickshaw trips and confusing non-english communications. After a long period of time we tried another tact and decided to find one of the many shoe repair guys that squat near intersections and fix all kinds of shoes. But of course when you are looking they are almost impossible to find! After some time we found a guy that ignored Nic's flip flop for the longest time and then in about 3 minutes he scraped it and glued on a hard rubber heal to each sandal. Nic paid him $50 rupees and now has a heal on his flipflops and they should be good for at least a couple weeks - he now has custom made high heel flipflops. These are the 3 hour kind of experiences that India provides!
Our second adventure was to find an internet cafe. But I don't have time tell that whole story - just let me say that involved a lot of walking, a hair saloon, a guy who tried to seduce Nic and it ended up in a very creepy cafe that cost $20 rupees/hour - the letters a and j didn't work on my keyboard.
Finally got to bed late but didn't sleep until after 3:00 because of the bugs (not sure if they were ants, bed bugs or mosquitos) that devoured me - I was one big itchy welt! Today Dad fumigated my room so there is no longer anything living in it! No bugs but breathing is difficult at the moment!
And the adventure continue...
Trying to get some pictures into the photo section of my site, but not sure the internet will let it happen
How amazing! Your trip sounds like a whirlwind, but massively impacting you. Can you give a slide show presentation or something when you get home? We're all missing you.
Posted by: Sara | March 25, 2009 at 07:43