Samosa in India

Observations From My First Week in India

While many places have real Western toilets, the traditional Indian toilet is a “squatty potty,” which is just a hole in the ground.

There is also a shortage of toilet paper, as the traditional way to wipe your bum is with the left hand and some water. Many Indian people actually find the concept of TP quite savage.

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On our second day in Delhi Carrie sat to pose with a snake charmer…and got poo’ed on by snake.

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Even when someone tells you that the food you are about to eat is not spicy, it still will be

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Every price is negotiable. The first price we are given is always the “tourist price” and is usually 2-3 times more than the real price.

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The shower does not have a separate area and is just on a wall next to the toilet, so your seat and entire floor is always soaked after.

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All the spices in the food make getting full a much easier process.

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I forgot my iPod charger in England and got a new one for $5. Awesome!

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Every morning at 5am all of the mosques signal a call to prayer by blasting loud horns and what sounds like prayers over a loud speaker. Some mornings it wakes us up and we have to put in earplugs and other mornings we are just too tired to care.

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While in Delhi I made my first Muslim friend from Kashmir.

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The most common type of napkin from a street vendor is a piece of newspaper

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The rolls of TP you get at a hotel are the smallest things EVER!

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The swastika is everywhere here in its true, unbastardized by Hitler, form. In Hinduism, the two symbols represent the two forms of the creator god Brahma: facing right it represents the evolution of the universe, facing left it represents the involution of the universe. It is also seen as pointing in all four directions (north, east, south and west) and thus signifies stability and groundedness. For more, check out Wikipedia.