As my first time outside a first world country, India had its trials for me. This was my first noble task:

After 30 hours of weary travelling (14 hour flight from LA to Hong Kong, 4 hour flight to Kuala Lumpur, 8 hour stop in KL which was not explored due to not wanting to further contribute to my general ickiness with 95 degree weather, and finally a 4 hour flight to Hyderabad), I needed a shower, 1 am in the morning or no. So, my first real introduction to transitioning into developing nation mentality was in the bathroom.

In Hyderabad, we stayed at my friend Kalyan’s office. The office is actually an apartment which was only somewhat converted into an office, so this wasn’t as bad as it sounds- it actually wasn’t bad at all. There were beds with extremely hard mattresses the way I like it (weird, I know), blankets, a random shrine placed precariously above the head of one of the beds - I didn’t take that bed - all in all, fairly comfortable. Plus the location had perks. India is notorious for random power outages, but they make sure this doesn’t happen at crucial facilities. Luckily for us, the apartment was near a water treatment facility, so we were basically guaranteed power 24 hours a day. Unfortunately, this didn’t apply to the water. The irony there is not lost on me.

We only had running water about twice a day, invariably only when we needed it least. To combat this problem, we had a large steel drum in both bathrooms sitting underneath a tap. These taps were usually left on all the time, even if we were going out. If the water came on while we were doing our thing, the steel drum would fill up, and any excess would drain away- Indian bathrooms are built with a slight grade towards a drain in a corner. This water is used for everything while the water is off- washing your hands in the sink, filling up the toilet reservoir so you can flush, etc. To shower, rinse and wash with that plastic cup you see neatly attached to the side in that picture up there.

To the uninitiated, perhaps it’s an intimidating way to shower. To the man coming off a 30 hour travelling binge, it’s a cleansing, watery utopia. It was probably the second best shower of my life. (The best was a shower I took after two days hanging out on a dusty, grubby ranch without shower facilities. In the latter case, the water was freezing cold, but so, so welcome.)

After a couple days, water management and gathering became second nature. If we noticed one bathroom had running water and the other didn’t, we took advantage of the situation by using plastic buckets to fill up the drum in the bathroom without running water. To the western observer, it might have looked a little odd- the three of us sitting in a room quietly reading while a bucket fills up, checking every few minutes on the water level, switching off to transport buckets of water from one side of the apartment to the other.

After a welcome night’s sleep, culture shock number two was getting used to the power dynamics between servers and served.

The apartment/office had a housekeeper come each day to carry out various tasks. He’d mop the floors, do all the dishes, tidy up each room, and if you had laundry, he’d wash your clothes. What got a little weird though was when he didn’t have anything to do. He’d just sit on the floor and wait patiently for something to require his attention.

In India, the gap in the served-serving relationship is fairly pronounced. You’d notice it especially in restaurants when the waiters brought the dishes to the table and served it onto everyone’s plate. If you tried to do it yourself, you were quickly stopped and assisted by a waiter. That took a little getting used to, being accustomed to the laid back ‘help yourself’ mentality of the States. The feeling was even stranger when the servers would come back and help us to seconds without our asking. The food was almost always excellent (and spicy… even breakfast was spicy), but also extremely filling. If I was full, do I dare reject the offer? Will they take it as an insult to the cooking? Do I really want the next party’s dish to be flavoured with the tears streaming down the chef’s face as a reaction to my inconsiderate, brutish and all too foreign rejection of this fine dish?

OK, I’ll have seconds.

(Note that I actually lost weight on this trip. A lot. It was mostly thanks to Hong Kong. More on that later.)

So as this guy sat patiently on the floor waiting for potential disaster to be tidied, I felt a little bad. But in the end, it was something I just had to get over and used to as part of the culture. That, or I could have thrown stuff on the floor. That could have been taken the wrong way though.

Speaking of food, this brings us to perhaps the greatest culture shock of all- the Domino’s Pizza in India nothing less than phenomenal.

I am by no means a Domino’s Pizza fan. I find the crust rubbery and the cheese of inferior quality. However, Kalyan recommended we get Domino’s pizza delivered one night, and after seeing the topping choices, we agreed on a half Peppy Paneer (as the website describes it- ‘chunky paneer (Indian cheese) with crisp capsicum and spicy red pepper - quite a mouthful!’) and half Khasta Kebab (’Delight your taste buds with this exquisite combination of vegetarian khasta kebab and onions, flavoured with exotic Indian spices.’). Below you can see a couple khasta kebab slices and a peppy paneer slice.

Sublime.

Both halves were excellent. The crust was fluffy versus rubbery, and the cheese was very good. The peppy paneer was a bit spicy from the peppers but extremely tasty. The khasta kebab was an unlikely combination- those little balls you see are basically falafel, but on this pizza it was delicious. It was also probably our most expensive meal in India- it ran us around $8 US. That’s not atypical either of Western chains in India- Kalyan told us that in India, Pizza Hut is a relatively expensive sit down restaurant.

On the next update- photography in India.