Monday Night/Tuesday Sept 13/14.
After work I asked "Abhiminyu" my driver, if we could stop for some fruit and wine. (Siddharth told me "Marni, tell Abhiminyu about at least 10 times what time you want to be picked up and dropped off, believe me you need to-- he is very strange. But he has been with us 12 years and the most loyal hard worker we have.") So Abhi took me to the fruit stand and got out, leaving me in the car, and bought me apples and bananas. (I did not ask for these--but it was fine!)
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| The roadside fruit stand- i washed them before eating |
The wine store is also a bizarre kind of "secret" store that seems to dispense alcohol very furtively for some reason, don't know why. He took me in for this buy, and since he speaks a bizarre combo of Hindi and English to me that he thinks I understand...."Hinglish" lets call it, I partly understand and partly answer with a lot of "Hmm" "Maybe" "I don't know" "Oh". but from what I could get on this buying trip, he has no money to buy things extra like wine or alcohol (which could absolutely be true) so I bought one bottle for him, one for me, about $7 US each. Not the usual ratio of Indian to US price, so I believe his story, that's expensive here.
I get back to my hotel, and upon entering, the men who work there were lazily sitting around near the office, doing nothing. When I got to my room, it had not been cleaned-- I had lots of food garbage, so I was hoping they would clean so it would not attract....whatever, wet towels in a bucket, flooded indian toilet floor, etc.. I enter my turret patio, and a 4 inch lizard races across the wall. I freeze, completely horrified and now I imagine that of course there must be lizards and bugs in all my open suitcases, my bed, my closet, etc..
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| Outdoor private Lizard turret-- it really WAS a terrarium I guess |
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| When I complained about no cleaning and none of my requests being addressed, they brought me my requested "extra hangers" I don't know if you can tell but they are all bent and rusty. nice. |
There is a neighborhood brick stairway outside my corner upstairs room and the air conditioner in the wall has spaces you can see thru to outside and HEAR as well. For about 3-4 hours that night, a pack of dogs attacked and screamed and ripped and basically gang raped a female that was in heat, right on those stairs outside my room, might as well have been inside my room. I started crying and was really having a breakdown.
The Assi ghat hotels were not as I remembered them, so interesting, and holy feeling and well-attended by tourists and westerners. They were now dangerous and disgusting, lots of men together, very few women anywhere, lots of strange goings on in little huts and side alleys that I could not look at I just felt disgust going on and looked away.....I went to work the next day and even though I had begged to stay on the river through many emails and not a cop-out luxury "western" style hotel, I told them what had happened and I said please Im so sorry but I cannot stay there anymore. First, they called the hotel and screamed at them for not attending to me, which is always nice, then moved me immediately to the Ramada. Oh, thank you, baby Ganesh and Jesus, and I'm sorry I did not believe Mr. Gupta when he told me in emails MANY TIMES that I would much prefer this over a hotel at the Ghats.
At lunch he yelled in fun "I KNEW YOU WOULD NOT LIKE IT THERE, ITS DANGEROUS AND DIRTY NOW, ITS NOT FOR YOU"
Okay so now I am with all the other whitey tourists eating eggs at the continental breakfast buffet. Oh well.
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| Ramada-- no lizards, western toilet, fridge, coffee maker, upper floor, safe, quiet, view of green landscaped garden grounds....heaven. and it costs LESS than the Ghat hotels, they can charge huge rates because of their (past) appeal being right on the river.... |
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