Reductio Absurdio: The Trip In The Ever-Popular Listmania Format

John's India 2005 Top and Bottom 10

Bottom 10
10. All manner of biting and infesting bugs.
9. If the old slogan "honk if your horny" is true than India is perhaps the randiest nation on earth. There is an everpresent cacaphony of noise, often loud.
8. Trashy streets, trashy yards, trashy lots and no trashy lingerie. How bad is it? A wastebasket has to be dressed up like a 5 foot rabbit to get any notice and thereby use.
7. Slow, insidious death by rupee. At every interface there seems to be someone trying to get those rupees from your wallet by all manners and means (begging, services, etc). And whatever you thoughtfully deliver is never quite enough. This seems to happen over and over again as you go through your "errands".
6. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust; Mother India is Dust Bowl champion again.
5. Teeming masses and seething poverty - reminiscent of Dante's imagery of hell with thousands of desperate, wailing souls in foreground and background.
4. Caution: when traveling the rough and bouncy roads of India it is helpful to not look forward. Why? Because it is too emotionally draining to constantly have your entire freakin' life flash before you eyes. How many close encounters with the grim reaper do you need in one trip to the post office? If you haven't gotten it yet, these guys drive like Matrix wannabees, that is, totally nuts and risk-taking.
3. Welcome to St. India's Nationwide Rehabilitation Hospital. Its bold concept is to actually have no physical plant or patient rooms: all the deformed, mutilated and paraplegic patients will have the freedom to roam or slither everywhere. We call it patient empowerment.
2. Last I checked seeing the air you breath is not a good thing. I might be funny that way, call me a renegade, I just feel that air should be breathed and not seen.
1. Yes, lets march to free the farm animals; lets not forget that you can't free the animals without freeing the animal poo too. Needed road sign in India: Watch for falling cow dung. One false step and your up to your ankles in warm, soft, slippery and stinky stuff. Now that makes for a lovely day, doesn't it?

And now the top 10.
10. Where else can you get a full and tasty breakfast for 23 cents?
9. They love flowers and put them everywhere - cars, food stalls etc. Its a very nice touch.
8. Truly awesome tea or chai, as its known there.
7. The blessing of just about everything all the time.
6. Yogis and yantras, pundits and puranas, mantras and mudras, Ganeshas and gurus.
5. The desire to please is so prevalent, almost to the point of being displeasing. They, the Indians, really seem to care that you are enjoying their services and goods. They don't "mail it in".
4. Real Pilgrims. Thousands walk hundreds of miles often barefoot to the holy shrines for their spiritual sadhana. Inspiring to say the least.
3. Smiles. There, there is mainly the Now, they live in the present which increases the Presence and its byproduct: smiles.
2. Living life in the symbolic realm, so much so that one loses the distinction between the map (symbol) and the territory (material reality). This can lead to intoxication... God intoxication.
1. Yoga.