All Things Ubiquitous In India

1. Spitting.

2. Spitting betel juice.

3. Men peeing. Like just "right there"...!

4. Men teaching their sons to pee "right there"...!

4. Dogs.

5. Cows. (They get free rein in India to go whereever they please...the train platforms, the temples, crossing busy streets, hovering near a shop... Notably, though, they were completely missing in Darjeeling.)

6. Honking. (Good grief but for one motor vehicular ride - one walk down a street! - without the incessant honking!!)

7. Question of "Where from?"

8. Question of "Taxi?" "Rickshaw?"

9. Question of "Married?" followed by "Why not/never married?" after the initial shock/disbelief/puzzlement upon finding out that I'm 37.
(By the way, I found something in "The India Times" newspaper that may be apropo to insert here: "Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience." ~Anonymous Somehow, though, I don't think the people who've asked me about my non-marital status would be satisfied with that answer...

10. Lack of personal space/boundaries. They take literally of "give an inch, take a foot."

11. Chinese food. Everywhere. It is served everywhere. I kid you not.

12. Power outages.

13. Lonely Planet's India Guide.

14. Garbage, piles and mountains of garbage, alongside the train tracks. It's so unnerving to watch people just toss out their wrappers, plastic bottles, etc. out of the window. A huge bummer of this is that the deeply impoverished people that live along the tracks within city boundaries that are the recipients of this garbage dumping...

15. Did I mention spitting?