Long Road to a Ghost Town – Fatehpur Sikri, India

As I write this, I’m suffering from a cold, so if I seem even more whiny than normal, you’ll know why. It’s difficult to feel sorry for oneself when one’s surrounded by so much poverty and hopelessness, but through perseverance and innate talent, I’ve managed to do it.

Through the mucus steaming down my nose, and the tears flowing from my eyes, I was glad to see the back of our hotel, in spite of the small family of beetles that came out from under the bed to say goodbye to us. I was also, I must admit, keen to leave Agra, and wanted to head away from Taj Mahal tourists into the Indian hinterland.

The trip took about five hours, and I amused myself by sneezing, blowing my nose and complaining to my wife about how sick I was. In between, I admired the lush countryside, utterly verdant in the monsoon season, and flat as far as the eye could see. It is an immensely rich agricultural zone, and small farmers use every inch of it to its full effect. India is still a land of small farmers and 60% of the population continue to live off the land. When you bear in mind the population explosion, with every woman bearing 2.8 children, it’s difficult to see how even lands as fertile as India’s are going to provide a decent living for all of them, or even feed them at subsistence level.

Even now many farmers cannot make ends meet, and get into debt just to buy seed, and year by year, the debts mount and mount. Suicide is a common cause of death in many rural areas, as impoverished farmers take the ultimate escape from hounding creditors. And below the small farmers and their tiny plots heaves a mass of illiterate agricultural labourers; landless, penniless and prospectless.

The agricultural revolution and mechanisation mean that this area could be far more effectively farmed by far fewer people. Perhaps only one in five of these people could be supported comfortably on the land, and although a farmer’s life may look pretty from your car window, it is in reality a backbreaking, repetitive grind, and one many will gladly leave for the slums of the big cities. At least you can hope for a better future there.

I put these thoughts aside when, about an hour outside Agra, we stopped at Fatehpur Sikri, an abandoned city, and possibly the only great folly of Akbar the Great. It means ‘city of victory’ and he built it to celebrate his many victories in battle.

With the overconfidence that comes from conquering northern India and building an enormous empire, he built a new city in an area that suffered repeated water shortages, and his canals and irrigation systems proved powerless against the drought that periodically befell his new city, and shortly after he died, the city was abandoned.

I was expecting something along the lines of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, but all I found was a palace and a mosque, which although impressive did not look significantly different from the other palaces and mosques I’d already seen in India.

I’m sure I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t had a cold. As I write up these notes, on a dull cloudy Sunday in Paris, I cannot believe how interesting Fatehpur looks in my photos. Indeed, as strange as it sounds, I cannot even remember having seen a lot of the places in the photos. A lot of my mind had turned inwards to the war being waged inside my own body between my immune system and the viral hordes, and the external world was barely registering on my consciousness mind, and a matter of complete indifference to my unconscious mind.

Most of what I do, however, is a matter of complete indifference to my unconscious mind. It busies itself finding things to obsess about and building complexes, like children build sandcastles, shaping them into anchors to weigh me down, and keep me stranded off the island of Malaise.

Apart from the internal struggles with viral invaders, there was also an external struggle with mercenary touts to contend with. If I had had time to sit and quietly contemplate it all, I might have been able to clear my mind of the flotsam and actually see what I was looking at, but as I’ve already mentioned, you cannot really stay in one place in India, partly because of the ever oppressive heat, but mainly because of the omnipresent touts.

Although they lacked the finesse and polish of Delhi touts, they made up for it in sheer numbers and perseverance. On the ten-minute tuk tuk ride up the steep hill to the city, an unwanted passenger sat beside the driver and insisted we needed him to fight off the other touts inside the city. The more I said that I didn’t want his services, the more emphatically he tried to sell them to me, and the more unpleasant the two of us became.

By the time I got to the city walls, I was already fuming. Shortly afterwards, having reached the mosque, it was hard to take 10 steps without another tout taking his shot at you, utterly oblivious to the amount of other wannabe tour guides you’d already fended off. No matter how many touts I dealt with, there were always more and more of them, coming at me from all directions, each one smiling at me, wanting to know what country I was from, and each one insisting they were not just a guide when, in fact, that is exactly what they were.

Throughout the holiday, Sandra said I should be a little more ‘chilled’ and ‘zen’ about the whole tout thing, and demanded that I stop snarling at anyone who even looked like they were about to approach me, but I’m just not a ‘chilled’ kind of guy. I simply cannot bear to have people in my face trying to ‘work’ me, trying to play me like a pipe, feigning an interest in me so they can later exploit me. And if necessary, I was prepared to let one billion Indians know this, even if I had to tell each one individually. I mean, all I was asking was that the rest of the world adopt the norms and mores of the society I was brought up in. Surely that can’t be too much to ask, can it?

Back in the bubble of the car, and a few hours into the drive, our driver wanted to bring us to a temple known as the monkey shrine, but thankfully I had the foresight to say no. I’d seen it on TV, and it’s full of aggressive monkey touts who want you to give them a banana, and they can get very upset if you don’t hand them one. They also have a penchant for stealing shiny objects, like jewellery and cameras. Most worryingly, they have been known to scratch and bite, when the mood takes them, and when we got the India vaccinations, we had been warned to avoid all contact with monkeys, as rabies is still quite common in India. In fact, India has been reported as having the highest incidence of human rabies in the world. I wasn’t having any of it.

Although it did occur to me that you could probably train a troop of monkeys to attack touts, but then I worried that the touts might become infected with rabies, and India was difficult enough to travel around without rabid touts to contend with.

Instead, the driver took me and my snotty tissues to our hotel, and tried to worm a kickback out of the reception staff, who treated him with undisguised contempt, no doubt feeling hotel receptionists to be superior to mere drivers. The driver treated the bell boys with disdain, and the head waiter liked nothing more than to throw his weight around in front of the waiters under him.

The caste system may have been officially abolished, but this is not a land of equality and solidarity. Over and over again in India, I was struck by how keen everyone was to demonstrate superior rank and station at every opportunity. People seemed to bark orders at each other, rather than politely request. Everybody looked like they were jostling for position, marking their place in the hierarchy.

In the West, we have gone to the opposite extreme, and everyone from the President or Prime Minister down likes to make out they are the same as everyone else. We are all men and women of the people now, or at least we must appear to be. Even the ex-president’s son manages to portray himself as an ordinary Joe, and Oxbridge educated Prime Ministers feign an interest in football.

To be different in the West is to be a snob. In India, people still like to show you their place in the pecking order, and to demonstrate status in a clear and obvious way.

The hotel, by the way, was the Holiday Inn, normally way outside my price range, and don’t ask me how Mr Kumar and his agency managed to wangle it for the pittance we paid him, but I was very glad he had. I settled on the sofa, cracked open a Kingfisher beer, blew my nose a lot, and dealt with weighty philosophical issues, like which of the hotel restaurant to dine in.

Sandra watched the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics on TV, but I’m opposed to all forms of sport on principle, so I wrote day six’s diary entry instead.

Photo by Norma Desmond on Flickr

Paris on Less Than $100 Per Day: Enjoy the City Without Breaking the Bank

I think I was born with some sort of cheap traveler gene. Or more likely, it was something cultivated during my youth as I was raised by an expert traveler mother who know how to stretch a tight budget, and a cheapskate father who really just hates spending money in general.

Being raised in this kind of household taught me a few things about the importance of a dollar, but it also taught me something essential about travelling on the cheap: whether it be out of necessity (a limited budget) or out of a reluctance to spend, the fact remains that the better you budget your money while traveling, the more you get to see, do, eat and experience.

For me, the main motivation in being a tightwad when traveling is that if I budget well, I can afford to do 2-3 great trips per year versus one. The better you budget, the more you get to travel. It’s as simple as that. Traveling to Paris with my family as a kid (with said expert budget traveler mother) and later living in Paris on a very small student budget also taught me the best ways to enjoy the city without spending a whole lot of money.

Paris is an expensive city and is certainly not a budget destination. However, with a little know-how, some planning and a willingness to do things the cheap way, it actually is possible to not only SEE Paris on less than $100, but also enjoy it. Sure, you may not be spending time on the balcony of the Plaza Athenee or other hotel with a few of the Eiffel Tower, or sipping trendy €20 cocktails at night—but you still can take in all the best sights, eat well and experience all the romance of the City of Lights has to offer without emptying your bank account.

>>Get more tips on conquering Paris on a budget in the Cheap Paris Guide

Finding Cheap Accommodations in Paris

Paris is certainly not a city full of cheap hotels. Even “budget hotels” in the city can still cost you as much as €80-€120 per night. This means that, especially if traveling alone, you’ll probably want to look for other accommodation options if you are hoping to keep your budget under $100 per day.

Hostels and Couch Surfing

Luckily, there are a ton of hostels in Paris, some of which are actually very nice and some which also offer private rooms if you aren’t so keen on the idea of dormitory style accommodations. Whether you are looking for a raging party hostel in Paris, or something a little more subdued, there are enough options that you’ll probably be able to find the right fit. You can also often spend about €10-€20 for a private room.

>>Check out the complete Paris Hostel Guide to get an idea of which hostel in which neighborhood fits your needs. You can also compare Paris hostels and get an idea of what to look for to give you a better idea of which one may be the best fit for you.

Another option is to couch surf. If you aren’t one of those lucky people with friends who live in Paris and can beg off their hospitality, going on the site couchsurfing and getting a free place to stay will certainly loosen up your budget and allow you to spend more money on other things, like drinks out or a few souvenirs.

Plus, Couchsurfers tend to be a friendly and hospitaliable bunch of fellow budget travelers and world nomads, so you stand a good chance at even making some new Parisian friends, getting a glimpse into life as a local and may even get to practice your rusty high school French.

Budget Hotels

If you are you are traveling with at least one other person, you can more easily afford to get a room in a budget hotel—since you’ll be splitting the price of the room. Most of the hotels within a tight price range (under €100 per night) are 2-star hotels. While certainly not luxurious, some of these budget hotels are better than others, so it pays to do a little research before you book your room.

You’ll also find that hotels in certain areas of the city are almost always cheaper, so you may get more room for less money if you opt out of some of the trendier and tourist centers of the city. Hotels in Montparnasse tend to be more affordable in general.
Keep in mind that some budget hotels in France will also not have private bathrooms and several rooms or even an entire floor may have to share a bathroom.

Here are a few lists of budget hotels in various neighborhoods around Paris:

• Budget Hotels in the Latin Quarter
• Budget Hotels in the Marais
• Budget Hotels near the Louvre
• Budget Hotels near the Eiffel Tower
• Hostels and Budget Hotels in Monmartre

Eating Cheap in Paris

Luckily, eating well on a tight budget isn’t too big of a challenge in Paris. While you could certainly spend a small fortune going out to a fancy and very expensive restaurant in Paris, you certainly don’t have to spend a lot to eat great in the City of Lights.

Avoid other tourists

Generally speaking, the more tourists there are milling around an area, the higher the menu prices. Vendors know that most tourists aren’t going to venture too far from the main path, so they can charge what they like. Finding cheap – but good – food in Paris sometimes means ducking down odd streets, taking wrong turns, and more or less following the locals to where they eat.

Paris Street Food

There are a huge range of options for finding filling and delicious meals in Paris, will while sticking to your budget. There are plenty of cheap street food options in Paris—whether you are in the mood to snack on a fresh crepe, a Panini, a kebob or even a gyro—that can make for a cheap snack or meal on the go while you are sightseeing.

As is often the case in big cities with many different ethnic populations, some of the best cheap eats in Paris aren’t French food. Couscous is a popular late-night snack for many Parisians, but it’s a filling meal in the day, too. You’re looking for the word “couscoussieres” on a sign, or an indication that it’s a Lebanese or Moroccan restaurant. You can also find cheaper Asian restaurant and delis, falafel stands and a variety of other cheap foreign eats.

Paris Picnics

However, you don’t have to eat foreign food in Paris to stick to your budget. For your morning meal, it’s good to know that many hotels charge extra for a continental breakfast. If your hotel does, and it’s more than €6-7, then you’re probably better off buying your own breakfast away from the hotel. You can get a typical French breakfast of a pastry, a coffee, and an orange juice for as little as €5-6. You can also always pick up a croissant from a local patisserie and eat it at a café with your café au lait (usually €1.50-€3).

For lunch, my family would often spend our mornings shopping at the Paris outdoor food markets, picking up a baguette (usually around€1.40), a few slices of ham or salami or pate, a piece of cheese and a €3 bottle of wine and enjoy a very French, and cheap, picnic lunch in the park.

Bakeries also often offer simple sandwiches on baguettes, which not only taste pretty damn good (I’m partial to the classic jambon fromage), but also only cost a few Euros.

Eating out

Also, while there are plenty of ways to get a meal on the go or pack a picnic for just handful of Euros, as I wrote in 12 Things You should Know Before you Visit Paris, eating a three course meal in France can actually be quite affordable. David Lebovitz, a Paris based pastry chef and author of the book a Sweet Life in Paris writes:

“There’s lot of top-notch restaurants in Paris where you can get a terrific…no, make that superb…three-course meal for 30€ including tax and tip…. I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of any restaurant in San Francisco or New York that offers a three-course meal with wine for less than $50pp, including wine, tax and tip. If you avoid the high-end places, there’s great bargains in Paris.”

>>Read more about figuring out a daily food budget in Paris and how to eat on the cheap in Paris

Drinking Cheap in Paris

There’s just no way around it. Alcoholic beverages (that includes beer) tend to be really expensive in Paris—meaning those who like to indulge in numerous cocktails on occasion may find getting your buzz on in Paris a costly affair. Drinks can easily cost anywhere from €7-€20 for a single cocktail or mixed drink. However, there are some ways you can drink up without spending all the money you had allocated for food the next day.

Before you stop reading this thinking, “If there is no drinking to be done for cheap in Paris, I’m not going,” there are other options for boozing on a budget.

Wine is free-flowing in France and is almost always an affordable option. You can easily get a €2-€3 bottle of wine in grocery stores and down it before hitting the club. Wine in restaurants also tends to be cheap. You can get carafes (pitchers) of house wines at most restaurants for a very affordable price.

There are plenty of Paris happy hours (restaurants and cafes will usually advertise their happy hours in the windows or on chalk boards outside), where you can find drink specials and half priced beers. Happy hour sin Paris tend to last from about 5 pm til 9 pm (then it’s dinner time).

If you want to experience the Night Life in Paris, but don’t want to spend your weight in drinks out at the nightclubs (where a standard cocktail can easily cost €10 or more), than investing in a bottle or two of wine at dinner or after dinner before you go out is a cheaper way to go.

Cheap Ways to get around Paris

The first rule to sticking to your budget in Paris is to skip out on the rental car (I won’t even begin to delve into the hundreds of reasons why driving—and trying to park—is a nightmare in Paris). With a fast, efficient and affordable metro system, there is also no need to have a car when exploring the city.

You should also avoid taking Taxis in Paris. Taxis in Paris tend to be on the expensive side. A ride that is only a few kilometers long can end up costing you a small fortune. This is especially true late at night, when taxi fares go up even more. This means if you are stuck after the Metro shuts down (at 1 am), you may find yourself having to part with a fat stack of cash just to get home. Stick to the metro or be prepared to pay hefty taxi fees if you decide to travel above ground.

You can also save money on Metro tickets by purchasing them in bundles. A carnet is a packet of 10 metro tickets, and useful for those visiting the city for less than a week. If you plan on being in Paris longer than that, you can also buy week-long and month-long metro passes that’ll save you money if you plan on spending a lot of time going from one place to another.

>>Read more about how use the Paris Metro

Cheap and free things to do in Paris

Enjoying the sights, smells and sounds of Paris doesn’t have to cost one penny, which makes it easy to enjoy this city and stick to a tight a budget. You don’t need to even get out your wallet to stroll through the Jardin de Luxembourg, snap photos of Notre Dame, or soak up the sun on the banks of the Seine.

Get a cheap view of the city

The best way to really soak in the spectacular views of Paris is usually to climb up something that’s tall. While paying to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower doesn’t cost a whole lot and is definitely something everyone should do at some point, it isn’t necessarily the best view of Paris (you don’t get the image of the iconic tower itself in the skyline).

My personal favorite view of the city are on the lawn of Sacre Coeur in the Montmartre neighborhood (which is perched on top of a large hill in the city).

Sit at a cafe

One of the quintessential Parisian things to do is spend an afternoon people watching from a sidewalk cafe in Paris. Luckily, this will never cost you much money. For a few euros, you can take a break from a morning or afternoon spent exploring the streets and checking out Paris attractions, and have a coffee, enjoy watching stylish Parisians stroll by.

Cheap and free museums

While you will usually have to shell out anywhere from €5-€15 to get entrance into many of Paris’ famous museums, there are ways to enjoy these institutions for free with a little planning.

The first Sunday of every month, museums around Paris open for free (including the Louvre). In May, you will also find the Nuit de Musees (Museum Night) opening the doors of the museums in the city for free after sunset.

In September, France celebrates its cultural heritage with Les Journees du Patrimoine, which opens all of the city’s museums, galleries, monuments and other buildings to the public for free. Nuit Blanche in Paris takes place during the first weekend in October and is an all-night FREE celebration that includes free concerts and shows, as well as many huge art installations, free admission into museums, pools, monuments, galleries and other public buildings, along with being one hell of a great party. And none of it will cost you a dime.

Also keep in mind that some of Paris’ unusual museums are also always free–no matter the time of year or day of the week.

If none of the timing for these free nights does not coincide with your trip, you can also save money on your museum entrance by getting a Paris Museum Pass or looking into other Paris discount cards and passes.

Free Walking Tours

You’d think you’d have to spend a bunch of money to get great walking tour routes of the city, but it just isn’t the case. I recently interviewed Paris blogger and resident Adam Roberts about his new series of free-to-download themed walking tours.

These walking tours take you through different areas of the city and can help you discover hidden corners of the city discovered by a local.

Free Wi-Fi

If you’d rather not spend a few precious Euros of your budget at an internet café or paying for your hotel, you’ll be happy to know that in 2007, free wi-fi would be available in many public places around the city.

This means, you can check in on those emails from more than 260 free internet zones scattered around the city for FREE. Read more about free wi-fi in Paris and find local hot spots.

>>Check out more great, free things to do in Paris and read up on other tips and money-saving techniques in 30 Paris Tips from a local.

photos: View of Paris by Taylor Miles, Cheap eats by Batigolix, formules by Yorch, Paris wine by Ruth L, Paris hotel by Logical Progressions , Metro by pedrosimone7, Montmartre view by ed from Ohio, Paris wi-fi by Fee-ach

A budget traveler by heart, Julie Blakley loves the challenge of conquering not-so-cheap cities on a small budget. As the resident francophile at BootsnAll, Julie also spends much of her time writing the Paris Travel Guide with all of her tips for how to best enjoy the beautiful City of Lights.

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Mate: Drink up the Culture – Buenos Aires, Argentina

The entire city of Buenos Aires seems to drink mate. Families lounging on blankets pass it around in parks. Friends sitting on benches sip it while chatting. Beach-goers break out mate tote bags. Some devotees even juggle thermoses while biking or lug around special mate backpacks. My professors sipped it in class, and students gulped it while cramming at the university library. Argentines even use the verb matear, meaning “to share mate.”

The cosmopolitan capital heavy with European influences brings to mind wistful Tango, elegant cafes and plastic surgery, but the ritual consumption of an ancient indigenous brew is perhaps its defining characteristic.

Mate (mah-tay), the beloved national drink of Argentina, transcends all borders. Dreadlocked, hemp-wearing types in plazas and suit-wearing, briefcase-toting types in offices both slurp the infusion. Packs of flirting teens with mullets and piercings take turns downing it, as do circles of chuckling grandparents with furs and pipes.

Some studies have reportedly found that 90 percent of Argentine households consume the beverage, making it profoundly more pervasive than any coffee or tea predilections stateside. Many fuel stations and restaurants offer customers hot water specifically to prepare their mate. The city’s many heladerias even deliver mate-flavored ice cream on motorbikes.

At first I feared joining in to sip the hot mixture, which drinkers pass around and share from a communal straw. It looked like murky lawn water, and I have germaphobe tendencies. But after trying the earthy liquid I wanted to pick up a package of Cruz de Malta and buy my own equipment. I asked my Argentine friends to teach me how to make it — They all demonstrated differing variations of the procedure.

I soon became obsessed with the mate ritual, preparing it myself for study sessions and serving it to houseguests. I imagined the refreshing drink contained an army of antioxidants and left me glowing. Many enthusiasts claim mate gives them the boost of coffee without the jitters. I found an overload of the caffeinated beverage to be my only means of surviving the all-night Buenos Aires weekend scene.

Mate, popular in various regions of South America, is made from dry yerba leaves resembling powdery grass that are steeped in hot water. It tastes like bitter tea, especially the green variety. People often add sugar. Some mothers even serve it to their children with milk or juice. Countless variations and brands of mate yerba (pronounced zsheer-buh by Argentines) tower the shelves of grocery stores, touting the drink’s supposed health, energy and weight loss benefits.

A special gourd container, also called a mate, holds the beverage. Many stores sell ornate mates, often embellished with silver. Every Argentine I met owned a well-used mate that they never washed in order to protect the flavor. In Iguazu, I bought a leather-covered mate made from a wood that only grows in the surrounding rainforest (or so said the owner of the shop off the red-orange dirt road). I cured my mate before using it like all my Argentine friends insisted. That involved scraping it, soaking it in yerba water for 24 hours and leaving it out to dry.

Mate drinkers sip through a straw called a bombilla (bom-bee-zshuh), usually silver or the cheaper Alpaca. The small holes and sieve in the bulbous end of the bombilla filter the yerba from the water. First-time drinkers must resist the urge to stir the bombilla and instead let the mixture float to prevent particles from clogging the straw.

Mate is more than a social pastime – some Argentines consider mate preparation and service an art with all sorts of rules. Making mate involves a controversial process involving shaking, piling, and arranging the yerba before pouring in cold then hot water and packing and tapping. The water must never be boiling, or it will scald the yerba. The person serving the mate, the cebador, must drink the first cup, which is the most bitter. After washing it down, the cebador then refills the mate cup with fresh hot water and passes it to the next recipient, who also drains the cup until the straw makes a slurping sound (this isn’t rude). Everyone continues taking turns, handing the mate back with the straw facing the cebador for the next person’s refill until the mate is lavado, meaning it’s lost its flavor. All the sharing lends an intimate element to the proceedings.

I constantly served mate with my Peruvian roommates. We heated water in a kettle on our gas stove and sat it on a coaster in the floor of our unfurnished apartment in Barrio Norte. We’d sprawl out and pass around the mate while we shared travel photos, munched galletas, listened to cumbia or watched translated episodes of Sex and the City. When it came time for me to return to the U.S. after my seven months in Argentina, I ended up hailing a taxi to the airport in a manic rush, dragging my two overstuffed suitcases. I bemoaned to the characteristically friendly taxista that I’d been kicked out of my apartment early and hadn’t finished my souvenir shopping. We chatted about my trip to Iguazu Falls, and he pulled out a photo of his family. When we drove up to the departures gate, he helped me unload my bags from the trunk. “Wait,” he said, rifling through the glove compartment to dig out a worn mate. “Take it. Remember Buenos Aires. It’s my gift.”