Pune, India = Stinky Gorilla Armpit

Warning: this is not a cheery blog post. You may have guessed that from the title.  Do not read this if you want to be made happier.  Reading this may have the opposite effect. I know my blog posts usually produce that  happy, happy, joy, joy feeling when they are read but this is not that. Anyway,  it’s about time for me to be a bit negative.  

Arrived in Pune, India 2 days ago to visit an ashram. The plane decended through a thick bank of what I initially thought was dense fog. What a welcome relief to all that heat in Bali.

No, it was not fog: make that thick, thick smog.

Lovely.

Ugggh…What a culture shock after gorgeous, lucious nature-filled Bali.  Pune (at least the part that I’m in) is dirty and smelly. Think the worst part of the Tenderloin in smoggy Los Angeles.

I’m doing my best not to try to change India. In my head. I’m really trying not to have India be Bali, which it will never be, not now or a million years from now. This way of accepting reality is so metophoric for my life. To accept people, places and things exactly as they are; not what I want them to be.

I stayed at a slum hotel last night to save some money (not realizing it was a slum in the daytime).  In a word: hellish.

Was kept up by my neighbors in the next room: “Ack! Ack! Adjahdlja kdalfkjal kdalad kdall.Ack!”

Then when they finally shut up (excuse me, I’m feeling more than a bit snarky after the lack of sleep and generally irrititability having arrived in the most horrid place on earth) I was then kept awake by the drone of what sounded like a helicopter taking off below me. All night. Still don’t know what that was given that I was on the top floor and there was a room below me?!

Then there was the elevator from 1856 which clanked and bonked with each new arrival to my floor (which was maybe every 5-10 minutes from 1am-6am). Where were all these people coming from? There were only 10 rooms on my floor. What the hell?!

Lord have mercy.

Then, there was the dog that would NOT stop barking. I love dogs. Ya’ll know how much I love dogs.
I did not love this dog.

In fact, truth be known, I was thinking of smart ways to get the dog to stop barking, some of which involved force.  Sorry, it’s true.  Only in my head, mind you. But still, there were absolutely NO  loving thoughts going through this animal lover’s mind at 4am.
Did I mention that whenever the hotel phone rings a phone rings on EVERY floor (including of course, my floor). Holy. Cow.

At about 3am I figured out an ingenious way to drown out the noise from all these $#%*&^^ people. I could have the fan on in my bedroom to create white noise.
Kristin! You are brilliant, I said to myself. Ultra-creative. You rock girl. Only problem: the room key has to be placed in the light switch for the fan to work (which I thought was such a clever thing when I moved in yesterday: no key equals no lights so they save on electricity. BUT the lights have to be on in order for the fan to work.

So the question then became: ‘sleep in full lit room with white noise’ or ‘sleep in dark room with basically the whole of Pune inhabiting my room with their noises?

Dark room with noise.

Not a happy camper am I. Which is basically what I was doing last night.

Camping in the middle of the Tederloin in LA.

$40 for a slum room in India = Not a happy Kristin.

Considering hopping on a train/plane to Southern India.

Did I mention that the internet woman keeps looking over my shoulder? I have this devilish delight in her seeing my title and my rant about her city and how much I detest it. Normally I’m much kinder but I’m feeling ultra irritible am crabby and not wanting to be in this city.

I’m going to give the ashram one more day to see if I resonate with it (right now I’m resonating with nothing except my dislike for Pune so not the right place to make a decison).

Will check in later when I’m not as snarky.