My trip to India (04/10~04/21).
My shooting crew and I finally finished our 11 day tour in India. After spending 12 hours on the plane and airports transferring, we've just landed home about 4 hours ago. My impressions about India were: great food, awesome culture, passionate and warm, incredible heritage from the ancient time... However, some things about this country and the people are just disturbing. Here's a brief report of my journey:
We applied and got accepted as journalist visa to India. For every famous location and spot we were going to shoot, such as Taj maha, the royal palace......etc.,we were accompanied by a licensed tour guide, drivers and the work permits from Indian gov (which cost us a few thousands dollars) of all times. And then we thought, OK, this should be a pretty smooth trip. However, when we got there, all the permits turned into a piece of crap. Cameras, if the size is bigger than [what they imagined] a home video camera should be, is not allowed to operate on spot. The funniest part is, there's no official regulation for the measurement.
Jaipur is one of the oldest cities in India and is full of big wholesale markets of spices, textile, crops, even jewelry. We first went to shoot at a shoe store. The store owner couldn't speak English so he had to get his friend, also a store owner of a jewelry shop, to help filming. They were all very nice at first and then after awhile they started bitching about taking too much time and gave us terrible attitude. The jewelry shop owner suddenly stopped and told us to take a few minutes to shop at his store otherwise he will not continue the filming. So I told him that maybe I'll go to his store after shooting. And this was when he and all the other locals started giving us a hard time. They made fun of us out loud, tossing around the shoes I bought for the shot and lots of crap. People with short temper like me simply couldn't hold it back and went off on them on the streets. I mean, someone's gotta regulate those people!
Indian streets, whether in the big cities or small towns, are full of human wastes, cow dung etc. So watch every step you take!
