Hello. Hello. Money?

The whole first ten days of the trip I kept wondering where all of the poor kids asking for money were. Before you travel to India, this is something that other previous India travelers tell you about: the poor kids that swarm you and tug on your shirt and how you feel bad for not giving them money because you know they haven't eaten but if you do give them money they won't leave you alone - they'll just want more and all of the sudden the group multiplies and you have to run away.

Ok, that's not what they say, but it is what I anticipated in my brain. And, it wasn't that far off from the truth.

So, this did not happen to me ONCE while we were in Siliguri or while we were traveling to Jaldapara for the elephant safari or during the couple of days we were in Gangtok.

When we got to Jaipur I realized that we were just lucky for that first leg of the trip. Jaipur and Agra are on what I am calling the Tourist Loop. And, these poor kids are *$^&#ing everywhere. They are just begging or trying to charge you for a magic trick or they are trying to sell you postcards or pens or tiny Taj Mahals for next to nothing. Srsly, one girl was going to sell me 15 glass pens for about 2 dollars.

Dawn broke the rules once and gave two kids 10 rupees (25 cents) a piece, at which point a third kid materialized out of thin air. She was nearly tackled by the two who were now demanding money for the third. If she would have loosened her purse strings a second time, I am convinced that three kids would have become seven.

BTW, kids: 4 feet tall. Dawn: like, 6'4 or some shit. Kids win.

These little kids installed some fear into us...I'm not sure how I would've been able to handle a whole two weeks bombarded by them. Some of us even fell off of walls while trying to escape the perceived notion that they were rushing us. Ahem.



It doesn't do it justice to explain this experience to you on this blog. You have to understand our frustration: these kids followed us for at least ten minutes while we tried to get away from them.

The worst part was that you simultaneously felt so bad for them and also wanted to scream in their faces to leave you alone. It left you feeling pretty heartless, but also feeling justified in your heartlessness. Does that make sense?