What Lonely Planet Didn't Tell Me. I was wide awake, but I stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling.

The blowing dust and blaring traffic pressed on relentlessly, muffled by the double- paned glass. I felt trapped in a bunker in the comfort of my hotel, unable to face what waited for me outside. What have I gotten myself into?

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I had managed to delude myself into thinking I’d be able to just bop along through India unaffected by the crippling population density, apocalyptic pollution and sheer chaos. I’m tough, I thought.

I can totally handle it. I’d thought I was prepared for the culture shock after hearing stories from my Indian friends, reading blogs about India – Garren and I even watched a Bollywood movie – for research purposes, of course. My Lonely Planet guidebook even made it seem easy. But no, I was woefully unprepared. The culture shock didn’t fully hit me until I was hanging out of a tuk tuk filtering air through a kleenex.

Was India an enlightening experience that opened my mind to a fascinating part of the world? Sure. But don’t think for a second that it was all beautiful temples, photogenic cows, and cardamom- scented markets. Ok, there was a lot of that. But India tested me, India was tough, and there were times I just wanted to book a flight home. With some practice and some time, I started to get it. I even began to understand why people get hooked. I’ll be posting a survival guide later on with all the tricks I learned to help make the culture shock easier (update: here it is), but before we jump into the good stuff I’m going to be brutally honest. There were some things in India that drove me crazy, starting with…Trash.

Every street was lined with garbage that was often swept into piles and lit on fire. The pungent smell was everywhere we went. Smoke hung in the air. How did it all get there? I felt like I was the only one who noticed it. Would it really be so hard to put out a few trash cans? The trash bothered me so much, that when Garren and I had some empty ice cream cups and couldn’t find a trash can anywhere, I belligerently insisted we carry them back to our room despite the truck- loads of trash we passed by on the street. Smog. Blue skies were elusive in India. Mumbai’s skyscrapers dissappeared into fog smog.

The forecast for the day was – I kid you not – “smoke,” a result of pollution in the air from exhaust and the burning of trash. Lovely. Mumbai skyline disappearing into smog. I didn’t edit this photo at all.

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This is exactly how it looked. Sunsets were consistently anticlimactic with the sun dropping into a dark grey band before escaping below the horizon. Curious about the phenomenon, I learned from Wikipedia that there is such a thing as the Asian brown cloud, a massive brown cloud of air pollution that hangs over South Asia and is visible by satellite. Eww. The things you learn when you’re bored and jetlagged at 4am…Beautiful sunsets turned sour as the sun fell into a grey band of smog. Rides through the streets of India meant weaving through auto rickshaws, mopeds, and cars, all spewing grey fumes that hung in the air. I played the game of taking a big breath whenever we emerged from a cloud of exhaust, then holding my breath as long as I could until the air cleared again. Often it didn’t and I begrudgingly inhaled.

I may as well have attached a breathing tube to an exhaust pipe. Commutes ended in a pounding headache. Bring ibuprofen. Traffic. It often took an hour to travel just a few miles. Indian roads and highways were a jumbled mess of every possible vehicle from cars and large trucks piled high with cargo to pedestrians, bicycles, cows, goats, and chickens. Here we have a hand- pushed cart, an auto rickshaw, a truck with an overflowing load of grass, a moped, and a bicycle- pulled cart. The family of goats was behind me.

Cars drove on the left side of the road except when they didn’t feel like it. I also found that the only way to stop a motorbike from passing us was to point my camera out the back window. I’ve watched this video of the show- stealing moped driver dozens of times and every time I see something crazy I didn’t notice before. See the mopeds driving the opposite direction? See the trash on the side of the road? The big cloud of exhaust? There’s not a dull moment on the streets of India.

Nowhere else have I heard so much honking and such variety of horns! Imagine what it would sound like if you dropped an ice cube down the back of someone playing a trombone. That’s what some of the bus horns sound like.

And they’re honking all. Each night I drifted off listening to the circus symphony of sounds occurring outside my window. Watch Swingers Download there. Bring earplugs. Impossible Logistics. I’ve never had so much trouble getting from place to place as I did in India. One particularly bad example was when we tried to get from the center of Hyderabad to the outskirts of the city to meet my sister’s boyfriend’s family. Andrea’s boyfriend, Sid, spoke both Hindi and the local language, yet we still could not get a taxi, auto rickshaw, bus, or private driver to take us. Empty taxis refused us because we hadn’t booked in advance, so we downloaded the taxi booking app (using precious data) only to find that we couldn’t complete a booking because we didn’t have an Indian phone number. Sigh…You might say, “OK, so get an Indian sim card.” We tried and failed.

Apparently you have to be a current resident, not just of India, but of the Indian state you’re currently in. For hire? Yeah, right. Still trying to get to Sid’s family, we tried to catch a bus but there weren’t any buses heading that far outside the city. We finally found an auto rickshaw that would take us as far as our hotel and then we tried to hire a private driver from there. No luck. No one wanted to take us out and wait around to bring us back. Why was it so difficult to hire a cab?

Transport woes inspire me to take pictures of garbage. Poverty. The USA has its share of slums, but they are so isolated that I’ve never seen them. Americans either don’t know they exist or forget they ever knew. But in India, the wealthy, the poor, and everyone in between live in such close proximity that the contrasts were glaring. Opulent skyscrapers and regal palaces stood across from crumbling concrete buildings and houses made of corrugated metal and tarp.

Wealth was displayed openly and proudly, perhaps as a memory of the Old India before imperialism robbed the country of its riches. Mercedes gleam in luxurious storefronts facing decrepit concrete buildings. Mumbai’s real estate is some of the most expensive to afford in the world. Slums fill pockets of Mumbai while new construction displaces families and businesses. The wealthy look on from tall skyscrapers. There weren’t as many people begging and hassling us as I anticipated, but it did happen and they were quite insistent.

I had to turn my heart to stone to ignore some of their pleas, but I knew the darker secrets behind many of the beggars. The sad reality is that children are sometimes snatched from their families and trafficked by a begging mafia, sending them out in troupes to beg on the streets. Children are forced to hold babies that aren’t their own, or are sometimes maimed to make people feel sorry for them. I knew throwing money at the problem would only perpetuate it, but I was kept awake wondering what their lives were like. Many adult beggars would try to get our money through Sid (who is Indian, if you didn’t catch that). Assuming he must be our tour guide, they’d demand he give them our money, saying “You’re getting paid by them, don’t be so selfish!” It never crossed their mind he might be with us as a friend.

Respect. I was out to get sunset photos of the Chinese fishing nets in Kochi. Some guys operating the fishing net contraption encouraged me to take my photos from out on the rig.

I was suspicious they wanted something in return so I asked, “is it free? You don’t want any money?” They replied “Yes, free! Please don’t pay us!

French- English Food Dictionary Chocolate & Zucchini. Cabillaud(m) cod. Cacahuète(f) peanut. Café(m) coffee; when ordered in a café or restaurant: espresso. Café allongé(m) espresso with added water.

Café crème(m) coffee with milk. Cake(m) a cake baked in a loaf pan. Calamar(m) squid. Calisson(m) an almond shaped confection from Aix- en- Provence, made with almond paste, sugar, and crystallized melons, with wafer paper at the bottom and a crisp sugar glaze on top. Canard(m) duck. Canelé(m) (alternate spelling: cannelé) a small cake from the city of Bordeaux, caramelized and crusty on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside.

Cantine(f) school or office cafeteria, it is sometimes used to mean a restaurant that has a laid- back and relaxed atmosphere, and where you could see yourself having lunch or dinner everyday. Caquelon(m) fondue pot.

Carambole(f) starfruit. Caramel au beurre salé(m) salted butter caramel. Carbonade flamande(f) a stew of beef, beer, and onions; a specialty from the French Flanders and Belgium.

Cari(m) curry (in créole cuisine). Watch Detours Online (2017). Carré(m) rack (as in a rack of lamb).

Literally: square. Carte(f) menu. Carte des vins(f) wine list. Cassis(m) blackcurrant. Cassonade(f) a soft brown cane sugar. Cassoulet(m) a stew from the South- West of France, involving white kidney beans and various meats cooked in goose fat.

Céleri- rave(m) celery root. Cèpe(m) porcino mushroom. Céréale(f) grain. Cerfeuil(m) chervil. Cerise(f) cherry. Cervelle de canut(f) fromage blanc flavored with herbs and garlic; a specialty from Lyon. Literally: silkweaver’?

Lyon). Chalumeau(m) blowtorch; can be used to caramelize the sugar topping on crèmes brûlées. Champignon(m) mushroom. Chapelure(f) dried breadcrumbs. Charcuterie(f) a store halfway between a butcher’s shop and a deli.

Also, the variety of sausages and pork products (jambon, saucisson, salami, mortadelle, pâté…) sold in such stores. Charlotte(f) a no- bake dessert in which the mold is lined with ladyfingers, then filled with layers of fruit, and layers of custard or fromage blanc.(f) a variety of small potatoes, tender- fleshed and sweet.

Châtaigne(f) chestnut. Chatini(m) créole chutney. Chaud(adj) hot (temperature). Chauve- souris(f) bat. Chèvre(f) goat.(m) short for fromage de chèvre, goat cheese.

Chichi(m) an elongated donut similar to the Spanish churro, usually sold by beach- side vendors, rolled in sugar and served in a paper wrapping. Sometimes called chouchou. Chicorée(f) chicory. Chipiron(m) small squid.

Chocolat(m) the best edible thing on Earth. Chocolat au lait(m) milk chocolate. Chocolat blanc(m) white chocolate. Chocolat noir(m) dark chocolate.

Chocolatier(m) an artisan who makes and sells chocolate confections. Chocolatière(f) like a teapot, but for hot chocolate. Chou(m) cabbage. Chou rouge (red cabbage), chou blanc (white cabbage), chou frisé (Savoy cabbage), chou- fleur (cauliflower)…Chou à la crème(m) cream puff. Choucroute(f) sauerkraut.

Choucroute garnie(f) sauerkraut served with assorted sausages and cured meats. Chouquette(m) a golf- ball- sized pastry puff sprinkled with pearl sugar. Ciboulette(f) chive. Citron(m) lemon. Citron vert(m) lime.

Citronnade(f) lemonade. Citronnelle(f) lemongrass. Civet(m) stew. Clafoutis(m) a simple, grandmotherly dessert in which a pudding batter (usually made of flour, sugar, milk and eggs, sometimes butter) is poured over fruit (most commonly cherries, to make clafoutis aux cerises) and baked. A specialty from the Limousin region. Clou de girofle(m) clove. Cochon(m) pig. Coco- fesse(f) a coconut shaped exactly like a pair of buttocks that’s unique to the Seychelles and is said to have aphrodisiacal virtues. Cocotte(f) a heavy (most often cast- iron) pot with a lid.

Cocotte- minute(f) pressure cooker. Coing(m) quince. Cointreau(m) an orange- flavored liqueur. Cointreau is a brand name.)Colvert(m) mallard. Literally: green neck. Complet(adj) full (for a restaurant), or whole (for a grain). Compote(f) a dessert made of fruits cooked slowly with sugar or syrup.

Also used, by extension, for vegetables or meat cooked the same way. Comptoir(m) counter. Comté(m) semi- firm cow cheese from the Jura, a mountain range in the East of France. Confit(m) applies to any preparation that’s cooked in its own fat, or cooked slowly until very soft.

Confit de canard(m) a duck leg, salted and cooked slowly, then packed in its own fat. A typical dish from the South- West of France. Confiture(f) jam. Confiture d’oignon(f) onion jam. Confiture de lait(f) milk jam. It is the French equivalent of dulce de leche, i. Confrérie(f) brotherhood.

Coque (à la)(f) in the shell. Oeuf à la coque is a soft- boiled egg served in the shell. Coquetier(m) egg cup. Coquillage(m) seashell, or shellfish. Coquille Saint- Jacques(f) sea scallop.

Coriandre(f) cilantro/coriander. Cornichon(m) gherkin. Côte(f) rib, or chop. Côtelette(f) chop.

Courge(f) squash. Courgette(f) zucchini. Couteau(m) knife. Crème anglaise(f) vanilla custard sauce.

Crème brûlée(f) a custard- like dessert served in a round and shallow earthenware ramekin, and sprinkled with a layer of sugar that’s blowtorched into a caramel crust just before serving. Literally: burnt cream. Crème de cassis(f) blackcurrant liqueur, typically blended with white wine to make a kir cocktail. Crème de marron(f) sweetened chestnut purée.

Crème fleurette(f) also: crème liquide. Whipping cream. Crème fraîche(f) thick, slightly sour cream, that doesn’t curdle when heated (it’s the fat content, you see…). Substitute heavy cream or sour cream, preferably a mix of the two. Crêpe(f) large and thin pancake. A specialty from Brittany. Crêperie(f) restaurant that specializes in crêpes and galettes.

Cresson(m) watercress. Crevette(f) shrimp.

Croquant de Provence(m) a crunchy almond cookie from Provence. Croque au sel (à la)(f) a style of eating raw vegetables, with salt as the only seasoning.

Used for radishes especially (radis à la croque au sel). Croque- madame(m) a croque- monsieur with a fried egg on top.

Croque- monsieur(m) a grilled sandwich of cheese and ham, sometimes topped with a béchamel sauce. Croustillant(adj) crisp.(m) any crisp preparation. Croûte(f) crust. Cru(adj) raw. Cuillère(f) (Alternate spelling: cuiller) spoon.

Cuisse(f) thigh. Cuit(adj) cooked.