THE HAIRY GIRAFFE… IN RAJASTHAN
After three weeks in Rajasthan, it’s time to reflect. How did we experience this journey? What were our joys, disappointments, questions, doubts, and discoveries? This is not merely an assessment of a country but rather of a trip—how we perceived it individually and subjectively.
 We are François and Benjamin, Canadian and French giraffe hairstylists and travel enthusiasts. On this blog, discover our travels, tips, moods, and everything you need to become a giraffe hairstylist and embark on travelling the world. An honest blog with photos guaranteed 100% unfiltered and untouched. |
Benjamin’s Travel Reflections
The names of the cities in Rajasthan resonate like promises from the tales of 1001 nights. Jodhpur, the blue city, Jaipur, the pink city, Jaisalmer, the golden city. Yet, India is often described as a dirty, noisy, overpopulated country, and traveling independently there is said to be exhausting.
They say you either love or hate India. I wanted to check for myself, to see if I would love or hate it. After three weeks in Rajasthan (including a few days in Delhi and Agra), I can’t say I love or hate India. I chose Rajasthan as my destination because the region seemed the most alluring, full of palaces, colorful houses, and carved temples. On this aspect, I can only be somewhat disappointed.
Yes, some sites are very beautiful, but the cities are several hundred kilometers apart, and each city individually has only a handful of interesting sites. Many sites are not restored, and one can only guess their former splendor. Usually, a day is enough to explore them, and I had often planned three days per city!
And then, all the nicknames are deceptive: only a few streets in Jodhpur are partially blue, the buildings in Jaipur are orange, and Jaisalmer is sand-colored. And all the cities, even the small Jaisalmer, would seem like nightmarish megacities in any European country.
Of course, comparing countries and travels is always a somewhat perilous and often unfair exercise, but the more you travel, the more it becomes a reflex. And I can’t help but think that in two days in Mandalay, Myanmar, we saw more wonders than in two weeks in Rajasthan.
So, my assessment in terms of purely tourist interest is quite mixed. I exclude the Taj Mahal, which alone is worth the trip and whose pure and elegant beauty makes it truly unique.
But I believe that India’s appeal lies elsewhere. I don’t think people who love India love its palaces. I believe they are fascinated by the rest. By the noise, the chaos, the intensity of stimuli constantly bombarding our senses. At every moment, our senses are besieged from all sides.
When we chose the destinations for our world tour, we wanted not to focus on a single region of the world but, on the contrary, to be able to touch the diversity and complexity of the world. Going from the United Arab Emirates to Delhi, from a nearly sanitized environment to the dramatic sanitary conditions of India created the expected cultural shock. We entered another world.
Do I love or do I hate this atmosphere? Neither.
The constant noise, the uncontrollable levels of pollution, litter everywhere, cows in the streets, goats tied to balconies, magnificent but poorly restored palaces and forts, the constant harassment of street vendors and tuk-tuk drivers, the total lack of soundproofing in hotel rooms, sometimes unbearable smells in the alleys – all of this makes the experience terribly exhausting. Annoying. Irritating. But inevitably fascinating too.
Because nowhere else in the world do we find such a level of sensory stimuli. And nothing can prepare us for such an experience. A trip to India is a total and permanent experience, perhaps more than in any other country. And that’s what I both loved and hated.
And then, of course, there is the extreme mass poverty. In itself, this poverty questions me about the possibility of loving India. Certainly, in major European cities, there is poverty. But in Indian cities, not only is this poverty extreme, but it is mass poverty.
In Delhi, wherever the eye looks, one sees people who are hungry, living on the ground, sometimes along the rails, people eating from garbage cans, those who have settled on mountains of rubbish, or those shaping cow dung cakes with bare hands to sell and try to survive.
More than any other country, this trip to India has been for me an experience that has deeply questioned my place as a Western tourist.
Faced with this extreme mass poverty, what perspective can I have? If I had come on a humanitarian mission, my place would have been obvious, natural. But can one visit India like one visits Thailand, Peru, or France? Because the harsh reality is that this misery, combined with the noise and intensity of the cities, even the smallest ones, makes the experience fascinating. But am I entitled to find fascinating a country where so many people die of hunger?
Is the Western tourist in India necessarily a voyeur? A privileged person satiated with misery, photographing it to bring back exotic and picturesque shots of India?
Contrary to my expectations, foreign tourists were in a very small minority in the region, even at the Taj Mahal. And in the midst of so many Indians, the Western tourist never goes unnoticed. Requests for photographs are not uncommon at every tourist site. And then the contact becomes more timid, more smiling, more authentic. These fleeting exchanges with Indians who often stutter only a few words in approximate English are bubbles of humanity that protect us for a moment from the surrounding noise.
Unfortunately, pecuniary solicitations quickly take over. The country practices a dual pricing system: an ‘Indian price’ and a ‘foreigner price,’ much higher. So, inevitably, the foreign tourist is often seen as a walking wallet, an easy way to make two or three times more money for the same service. These are constant solicitations, sometimes close to harassment, with some tuk-tuks going so far as to follow us for several tens of meters or inventing stories to scam tourists.
Again, these situations reflect my condition as a Western tourist. When women, who are not begging, approach us and extend their hand, repeating “rupees,” when children run to us asking to be photographed for 100 rupees (1€), when a guide scolds us because we didn’t want his services and tells us “it’s only 2€, it’s nothing for you,” when a woman shows us her young child’s belly with a pleading look, I question my place. Should the Western tourist be a substitute for the failing social services of the world’s 5th economic power?
While the excessive inequalities of Brazil, and its corollary, insecurity, had created in me simple feelings of revolt and fear, the extreme mass poverty of India, and the unsanitary conditions at levels I had never imagined, often made me uncomfortable. The poverty of Indian streets has provoked in me curiosity, annoyance, fascination. Indignation too when I see a tourist giving 0.10€ to a distressed woman to take a photo with her baby. This voyeuristic tourism deeply unsettles me.
And always the same ambiguity, the same discomfort that India has caused in me: how am I supposed to react to so much misery when all my senses are constantly besieged, and the cultural differences are so immense that I will never fully understand the culture of this country, now the most populous on the planet?
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