The photo.net guide to India

by Philip Greenspun

Here are the first of what we expect to be a growing list of sections:

• Delhi
• Agra (Taj Mahal)
• Jaipur
• Mumbai
• History timeline

Quantum Mechanics

Close your eyes and imagine a photograph taken in India. Perhaps it is a woman with a red scarf over her head. She's looking straight at the camera. Perhaps it is a beggar. He is looking straight at the camera. Perhaps it is a group of children. All are looking straight at the camera.

When you arrive here you'll realize that these Indians have not been looking at the camera. They've been staring at the big fat rich white foreigner. The big fat rich white foreigner happened to raise a camera to his eye. The Indians kept staring.

It is impossible to observe the phenomenon that is India without disturbing it. The instant that you step onto the street you will become the focus of attention for beggars, mercants, and the merely curious. This makes it very tough to get photos of Indians merely going about their lives. What's worse, the begging-money-from-tourists culture means that as soon as you find an Indian doing something worth photographing, he or she will drop whatever it is and try to do something that seems to them more likely to result in a typical happy tourist photo and a typical happy 10 rupee baksheesh.

An odd way to work through this problem might be to go on an organized tour. You are more likely to be ignored if you're one of 30 rich foreigners than if you're the only one. And every block in India has enough beggars to surround one photographer and prevent him or her from working. But very few blocks in India have enough beggars to surround 30 foreigners.

Cultural Background

In touring the United States and understanding its people and appreciating its art, music, and architecture, you will draw on many elements of the standard Western liberal arts education:

• Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
• Ionian pre-Socratic philosophy
• Athenian philosophy, art, and literature
• Pre-Christian Jewish history and beliefs
• 2000 years of Christian thought
• Roman history, art, and literature
• European history, art, and literature
• specifically English history, including the Norman Conquest, and literature such as Shakespeare
• American history, art, and literature

(Plus Native American culture, history, art, and religion if you want to have any hope of understanding the original occupants of the continent.)

In visiting India, none of the preceding is of any use. You'll feel like the worst educated person in the whole country. And guess what? You probably are.

Ideally, before leaving for India you should familiarize yourself with the most important literature of the subcontinent: Mahabharata and Ramayana (both available in translations, as videos, and as abridged English books on tape). Read at least one book on the history of India (see below). And try to become familiar with the main tenets of the Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, and Jain religions.

Despite your best efforts you'll probably find yourself continuously hungry for more knowledge. One way to deal with the situation is perhaps to take a trip with your college's alumni association. These are often lead by scholars of Indian history and literature. As noted in the "Quantum Mechanics" section, traveling in a group might not be such a bad thing.

Adjustment Period

You might want to allow at least one week to adjust to the cultural differences between India and the West. The noise of car horns, the dirt, the worries about food-borne and water-borne illness, the constant onslaught of beggars, aggressive merchants, and scam artists in the street, the language barrier. Your natural first reaction may very likely be to retreat into yourself and into a comfortable hotel. Especially if you've flown directly from the US and are jetlagged, it will probably take you at least one week to come out of your shell.

It is pretty easy to understand what an American would find difficult about India. But when you encounter Indians who've traveled West it is interesting to ask what they found hard to accept about the West. Here are some of the things that I heard from Indians:

• formality -- they feel like they've got to put on fancy clothes to sit in a restaurant, call a friend before dropping over to his or her house, etc.
• insincerity -- why do Americans say "Have a nice day" if they don't care one way or the other?
• violence -- accepting with equanimity violence in schools, movies, etc.
• the assumption that everyone has a car and the third-class citizenship of those without cars; in India there is always some form of public transport available from Point A to Point B. You might be riding in a truck but you'll get there without having to hire a taxi or depend on someone else

Architecture

India's civilization goes back 5000 years but the climate and construction techniques did not favor preservation. The oldest extant buildings are generally from the 13th century. Most of the best-known tourist attractions date from the Mughal period, around 1600. These Muslim conquerors destroyed many of the Hindu and Buddhist temples within their realms. Therefore you won't find too many old Hindu or Buddhist sites unless you travel south beyond the areas once ruled by the Mughals.

Camera Gear

If you're in India to photograph architecture, you really ought to pack a perspective correction lens. Even though some sites ban tripods it really would have been nice to be able to bring back some undistorted images. The Canon 45 and 90mm lenses would be fabulous for capturing doorways and detail. Just hire a guide for $1 to carry your gear!

If you're interested in photographing people, keep in mind that the scenes change fast. Indians are in constant motion. Even if your subject is stationary, in the half-second that it takes for a point-and-shoot camera to focus a pedestrian has very likely walked in front of your lens. A 35mm autofocus SLR is a good tool for people photography in India. But the bigger and more expensive-looking it is, the more disruptive your presence will be.

In the cities, you might want to consider working in black and white. Given the crazy quilt of paints that are used on the various building you're very unlikely to get a balanced color composition. Furthermore, a lot of buildings are gray unfinished concrete. Farms and national parks can be very lush, especially during the late summer monsoon season. Here working in color would probably be a better choice.

If you're using a digital single-lens reflex with interchangeable lenses, e.g., a Nikon D1 or a Canon D30, keep in mind that India's dust will eventually work its way onto the CCD sensor. Make sure that you carry the necessary knowledge and tools with which to flip up the mirror and clean the CCD (if all else fails, set the camera to manual and a shutter speed of 30 seconds or Bulb, remove the lens, lie down on a bed, hold the camera body lens-mount facing down, release the shutter, blow gently into the body).

Be careful with contrast. India is a very sunny place. If your digital camera offers adjustable contrast, pick the lowest setting. If using a film camera, try low-contrast film. In black and white you can adjust the contrast by shortening developing time and increasing exposure. With color film you'll have to buy the right film. Fuji and Kodak both make ISO 400 professional color negative film intended for weddings. These would be good choices (see the photo.net film recommendations article for specific emulsions).

Planning Your Trip

The best time to visit India is in the winter: October through February. If you go early there will still be some water left over from the July through September monsoon. Migratory birds stopping in various sanctuarys are at their peak in December and January.

Try to give yourself a week to adjust to the time change and, more importantly, the cultural change. Though he brought a copy of the Bhagavad-Gita with him to his cabin at Walden Pond, it seems doubtful that Thoreau would have adjusted quicky to mainstream Indian life. Peace, quiet, and solitude are mostly impossible in a country crammed with 1 billion people. It seems that Indians have given up on the idea. Public spaces such as restaurants are filled with blaring music from loudspeakers within and blaring horns from cars without.

Unless you're young and intrepid, you might want to budget a day of relaxation for every two days of photography and sightseeing. India has some fabulous "heritage hotels" where you can sit by the pool, tour a wildlife sanctuary, eat elaborate meals, etc.

Beginner India tourists generally restrict themselves to the "Golden triangle" of North India: Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur. These three cities contain many of the finest sights and the surrounding countryside includes tiger and bird sanctuaries, pilgrimage towns, and agricultural villages. You'll fly into Delhi. Two or three days is enough to see the principal sights. From there I recommend driving to Bharatpur and staying for two nights. You can spend your days at the bird sanctuary and also visit the abandoned Mughal capital of Fatehpur Sikri. From Bharatpur go back to the chaos of Indian city life in Agra. Two nights there will give you enough time to visit the Taj Mahal twice plus the other main sights. If you're pressed for time, head west to Jaipur and the Rajasthan countryside. Perhaps bracket your trip to Rajasthan with stays at Sariska National Park and Ranthambhore National Park. If you fly out of Jaipur you'll need to choose a connection through Delhi or Mumbai so for variety you might consider stopping in Mumbai for a day or two.

Frank Kusy's Cadogan guide to India (see below) is very useful for identifying interesting regions.

Survival

Almost everyone, including American citizens, needs a visa to visit India. Check the Indian consulate's Web site in your country for the location that handles residents of your area. It is best to allow two or three

The time in all of India is GMT+5.5, i.e., five and a half hours ahead of London and 10.5 hours ahead of New York. Thus if it is 9:00 am in New York, it is already 7:30 pm in Paris.

Electricity in India is 220V at 50 Hz. Most laptop computer and digital camera power supplies can function on this power and at most you'll need a mechanical adaptor, which fancy hotels are accustomed to supplying.

The country code for India is 91. If you're European or are an American GSM tri-band mobile phone owner, you'll find sporadic GSM coverage throughout India. Keep in mind that they use the European frequencies of 900 and 1800 MHz so an American Voicestream phone won't work unless you've had the foresight to get a special multi-frequency model. I was able to make long-distance calls with my Orange UK mobile only from the following cities:

Money is the rupee. You can get rupees with an American ATM card from some bank machines in very large cities. Don't rely on ATMs, however. The tourist capital of Agra, a city of 2 million people, only has one ATM and it isn't equipped to handle foreign cards. Carry US dollars in cash and/or traveler's checks. Government-operated tourist attractions generally charge an admissions fee of $5 or $10 and prefer to be paid in US dollars. So it is useful to arrive with a wad of five dollar bills. The exchange rate in March 2001 was about 47 rupees to the dollar.

Oh yes, speaking of money... most people in India don't have any. This is a country where wealth is primarily based on land. India's population will soon be larger than China's but the country is only 3.2 million square kilometers in size (China is 9.5 million square km) **** of China's size. The railways and other facilities built by the British colonists were sufficient for the population of the time: 200 million. With more than 1 billion people crowding the subcontinent today, these facilities are now woefully overtaxed.

Physical Survival (Health)

Visit tripprep.com **** to figure out what immunizations you ought to have before visiting India, or any other country for that matter. Personally I think you ought to have the new Hepatitis vaccines and maybe rabies if you intend to offer some comfort to the stray animals that you encounter.

Carry an anti-diarrhea medicine such as Immodium AD to treat symptoms of stomach upset and also the antibiotic Cipro to treat the causes. Brush your teeth with and drink only bottled mineral water. Drinking tapwater, even in the biggest cities, is by far the most likely way to give yourself dysentery or cholera. Food at reasonably clean restaurants is likely to be reasonably safe. Still, if you want to absolutely positively avoid emergency trips to filthy Indian public restrooms, follow this regimen:

• only vegetarian food
• no salad, fresh fruit, or uncooked vegetables
• only expensive restaurants ($10-20 per meal per person), preferably inside luxury hotels, or McDonalds

If you're worried about crime you might be comforted by the words of B.M. Chopra: "We believe that those foreigners who come to India and hire a pre-paid taxi or authorised tourist operators are seldom duped or murdered."

Indians are not averse to crime per se, as evidenced by a government filled with corrupt and wealthy officials. But most Indian cultures discourage violence and, in any case, it would be tough to get away with a violent crime in such a crowded country. There is simply no way to be alone on a city street. So if you keep your passport and most cash in a neck wallet and stay in better hotels, you're unlikely to suffer from crime.

Probably the easiest way to get killed in India is to walk down the street and not listen for car horns. Drivers expect pedestrians to jump out the way, in predictable directions, and within a predictable amount of time. If you violate these rules, none of which will be familiar to you, you'll be flattened by a huge bus or truck.

Language

Suppose that you want to be able to communicate with the average person in India. You'd have to learn dozens of languages, none of which is more related to another than French and German are to each other. Indians from different regions must communicate in either Hindi or English but the vast majority of Indians are fluent in neither language. More young people these days are attending schools where 100 percent of the instruction is in English, especially in the south. The bottom line is that you can get by quite nicely in larger towns without learning any Indian languages.

Literature

Some of the best young authors writing in English are Indian. For a modern perspective on the country, read The Romantics by ****. If you've got a lot of patience and yearning to dwell on the children of Partition, dip into Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children.

The classics of English literature regarding India include Kipling's stories of India and Kim, E.M. Forster, ****.

Important travelogues include Area of Darkness (V.S. Naipaul 1964). May you be the Mother of a Hundred Sons -- A Journey Among the Women of India (Elisabeth Bushmiller 1990).

In case any Cultural Studies professors are reading this we'd better not neglect the cinema, starting with, of course, the great auteur Albert R. Broccoli, producer of the James Bond series. Octopussy is partially set in India. Perhaps the photo.net readership will alert us to other Bond sightings on the subcontinent. Also see Heat and Dust, Passage to India. Film connoisseurs would tell you not to miss the entire output of S**** Ray, India's answer to Akira Kurosawa.

Guidebooks

Frank Kusy's Cadogan guide to India is good for background, history, cultural education, and picking a region and route.

Budget travelers seem to like the Rough Guide and Lonely Planet.

The Dorling Kindersley Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur is useful for its inclusion of photographs of every tourist attraction. Unless you're staying at five-star hotels, you'll find the book weak on preparing you for the practical realities of traveling through India.

Shopping

When shopping for souvenirs keep in mind that the Indian economy produces two classes of goods. Mostly you'll see stuff that is so cheap and tacky that it isn't worth the space in your suitcase. It only costs 10 rupees but you'll have to throw it out when you get home. If it isn't hideously ugly and cheap you'll probably find that you can't afford it. The Taj Mahal cost $1 million to build. And that was 400 years ago, when $1 million would have been real money. Businessmen, corrupt politicians, and foreign connoisseurs sustain a market for $10,000 inlaid marble tabletops, $3,000 carpets, and $200 pashmina shawls.

If you're going to buy something expensive be prepared to be, uh, doing your share to contribute to India's economic development. Unless you're an expert there is probably no way to determine the fair price for an item. In the better shops you probably won't be defrauded but the price tags only indicate what the Indians think a rich foreign fool might pay. The real price is probably one third to one half of what the tag says.

Getting There

Air India is essentially part of the Indian government where civil servants make your local department of motor vehicles look like a gold standard of efficiency. Indians avoid Air India unless the price is much lower than foreign carriers.

Flying from the US, you'll generally have to connect in Europe or the Far East and then proceed to Delhi or Mumbai (Bombay). From the east coast of the US, British Airways has a pleasant schedule. From the west coast, you might prefer to connect through Japan or Korea.

See the photo.net international airline guide for general recommendations. For domestic airlines, see below.

Getting Around

A camel train slogs along in the slow lane. A cyclist going the wrong way comes toward you in the fast lane. A stray cow rests on the median. In the opposite lanes you gaze upon a truck filled with gravel that is in turn topped with four families. The back of the truck says "Horn Please" and in fact the double-ridden motorcycle passing it obliges by honking several times.

Where are you? National Highway 2, the best interstate highway in India, going between the nation's capital (Delhi) and the tourist capital (Agra).

If you're like most upperclass Indians and tourists, you've got a driver. With an International Driver's License, you can rent a car and then you'll only need the three standard things for Indian driving: good brakes; good horn; good luck. Professional drivers get into an average of two or three accidents each year so definitely take the collision damage waiver!

Driving at night makes the daytime seem tame. Oncoming cars will not dim their highbeams for you. Heavy trucks drive at night to avoid encountering policemen who'll demand bribes to overlook their various loading and safety violations. Everyone swerves to avoid bicyclists, none of whom have reflectors or reflective clothing.

On balance, hiring a car and driver is a great way to see India. Most of the life of the country is spread out along the roads and you'll see unforgettable things from your car windows. Furthermore, as long as you stay in the vehicle, your presence is unlikely to disrupt the locals' behavior. Taking pictures from a car window becomes an attractive idea but just remember that Garry Winogrand's artistic career went into a rapid decline as soon as he relied on this crutch. Finally don't plan to go more than about 200 km. per day by car. Even with someone else driving, car travel in India is slow and tiring.

For long distance travel the train offers scenery through a dusty dirty window and an authentic Indian experience. Speeds are somewhat slower even than America's benighted rail system. The schedules are geared for Indian business travelers who may wish to make a day trip out and back. Thus you may find yourself having to get out of bed at 0500 to make the train. Get your ticket from a travel agent. You don't want to be waiting in lines, maybe for hours while the railway computer systems come back up. Hard to argue with the prices, though. For the US cost of a big bottle of mineral water, two cups of tea, a Coke, and a light breakfast, you get ... big bottle of mineral water, two cups of tea, a Coke, and a light breakfast, plus a 310 km 5-hour train ride to Jaipur from Delhi on the Shatabdi express.

Despite the low prices, in the end it may be easier to fly. For example, suppose you wanted to go 600 miles south from Agra to the tech city of Hyderabad. This takes 24 hours by train but a 4-hour drive back to Delhi and a 2-hour flight can get you there refreshed.

Almost any domestic destination can be reached by jet in under two hours; India is, after all, a fairly small country. However, you'll find that flights are infrequent and only available from a few hubs. Mumbai (Bombay) is the major hub with Delhi not too far behind. Calcutta, Bangalore, and Chennai also offer a variety of flights. As far as domestic airlines go, you've got India Airways, the domestic arm of the dreaded Air India, and Jet Airways. The latter airline is greatly preferred. Jet Airways has a fleet of Boeing 737s with an average age of three years. Service is efficient and business class has very comfortable four-across seating.