Sunday, Sept 22: Delhi
Arrived in India! Safe. My HTC mobile WI-FI doesn’t work yet… not sure if its our location. WOW! This is like a dream and I can’t believe i’m here. India is “mind-blowing”, as they say in Bollywood films….
Air India.
It all started with my Air India flight. Women in saris & your own TV set monitor with a choice of Hollywood & 3-hr long Bollywood films (Om Shanti Om, Life in a Metro, Welcome, etc…)! 14 hrs went by pretty quickly b/c of this. They give you a small bag of earplugs, eye-blinds, socks? & breath-freshener. And 2 meals were served…of course,.. Indian meals!!! It was an experience of its own! What a way to travel to India.
Namaste!
Delhi has got so many things going on at once and its hard to choose what my eyes want to see. The drive in from the airport took us through congested roadways, pollution, congested roadways occupied by cars, trucks, auto-rickshaw taxis, cows and pedestrians walking, squatting (people are just hanging out)and selling snacks, fruits and chai, all along the roadside. People and animals are allowed to share the streets or walk on the sides of the highways!
The area our hotel is in, Paharghanj, is at a bit like Fez in that its a bit “backwards” in time, crowded, poor. Rickshaws, auto-rickshaws, motorcycles and pedestrians all claim the same small streets… which means “noise pollution”. A lot of high-pitched honking and beeping! LOTS OF BEEPING which makes NYC traffic seem mousy in comparison. A lot of homeless dogs…everywhere (vs the cats in Morocco). Cows… like bulls. It is quite an experience in our neighborhood. Small hotels are squeezed wall-to-wall together and mixed in with the bustle here and nearby local internet/STD shops allow for emailing and making calls. STD signs are very noticeable and the abbreviations are misleading different from the US. These are places where you can place phone calls from at cheap rates, not contract diseases.
In India, there’s a certain lack of efficiency. It takes many people to do one thing. In our hotel, one man washes the window and he’s got 5 guys watching him…. helping him w/ their eyes!
While our hotel rooms “appear” clean, all the silk liners still went out over the beds nevertheless. Power chargers went into the outlets (And brilliant me, I brought a 6-socket extension outlet for all my tech artillery!)
Regina is my roommate, while Margaret and Dan share the other room. Regina met up with us after we arrived at the hotel as she took the route via Hawaii. She has friends in Delhi and will join our itinerary through certain legs of our travel but then go to alternate cities. Wonderful R also picked up Vodaphone SIM cards for her, myself and Margaret (costing us 250Rs or $6), to which I’m very grateful as it is said there’s a lot of jumping through document-hoops in order to get them. Leave it to someone from Hawaii to be that thoughtful of others! Tonight we will go into CP or Connaught Place for dinner and to get our cards “topped-off” (we pay money for minutes to be added to our cards so that we can make calls). I think here, the rate is 1Rs a minute for a local call… which is like a 1 cent/min.
OK… we are underway. Early day tomorrow… I’m excited! I can’t believe I’m actually here.
