August 1, 2006
Catching Up on Some Old Photo Albums
Since yesterday was the last day of the month, I decided to max out the remaining bandwidth in my two-gigs-a-month allotment from Flickr by uploading some photos from my previous travels. Before switching to a digital camera, I used to have my 35mm photos burned to a CD when I got them developed, leaving me with a batch of CDs just asking to be uploaded. So I've uploaded three new sets to Flickr:
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Rajasthan 2001: Our second trip to India, including Jaipur, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, the Pushkar Camel Fair, Udaipur and Chittorgarh. |
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Russia & Estonia: My February 2002 trip to Moscow, St. Petersburg and Tallinn. |
This brings my Flickr collection to 10,364 photos. Wonder how long it'll take me to reach 20,000. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 6:00 PM
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March 7, 2005
Emus, Rest Stops and The Chocolate Debacle
I woke up unexpectedly at 6am Sunday when I received an unrequested wake-up call from the hotel asking me to get up, even though we wouldn't be leaving Baramati until 8am. I was already packed, so I certainly didn't need two hours to get ready. But once I was awake I couldn't fall asleep very well, but I did my best to get a little extra shut-eye, particularly since I didn't know when I'd get a chance to sleep again. Over the course of the day, we'd make our way to Mumbai, then I'd head to the airport in the evening for a 2am flight to Paris. I usually don't sleep well on flights, so I faced the prospect of pulling an all-nighter on the 10-hour flight, then waiting six hours for my connection, then another eight hours to arrive in Boston around 3pm Monday. Not exactly my idea of fun.
Rather than driving directly back to Mumbai, the group would make two stops: one to a milk processing plant, another to an emu farm that also had a wireless Internet kiosk. I could understand why we were stopping at the emu farm, because it provided Internet access to the surrounding farms, but I didn't really understand the milk processing plant. Perhaps I'd find out when we got there.
We had been invited to have breakfast at the milk plant, but during M S Swaminathan's closing speech at the conference the previous night, he noted the problem that India's milk farms have when it comes to keeping their products salmonella-free. That sapped the appetite out of some of us, so we grabbed a quick bite at the hotel prior to leaving Baramati: a simple breakfast consisting of fried eggs, toast and a spicy potato pancake that someone aptly described as a Maharashtra latke.
It took us an extra 40 minutes before we left the hotel, as the group had to split up into a convoy of Toyota 4X4s that would take some of us to the farms and at least one person directly to the Pune airport. Eventually we settled into our cars and began what would be a nine-hour journey.
Our first stop was the milk processing plant. Initially I'd expected to see an idyllic Indian farm with dairy cows joyfully giving milk, while a variety of funky technologies would be used to process and package it. Instead, I only got to see the latter; the processing plant was an industrial complex with nary a bovine in sight. We were led into the plant's headquarters, where we were invited to have breakfast. It was a little awkward because most of us had eaten breakfast, but we did our best to accept modest portions and nosh on their food. Breakfast consisted of couscous and a very salty omelet, accompanied by the only fresh toast I ate in India. We were also served copious amounts of Tropicana orange juice; I politely declined my own carton's worth because I had been suffering from heartburn since leaving Paris, and orange juice would have burned terribly. The waiter took the carton away from my placemat with a dejected look on his face.
After breakfast, we were silently led to a conference room, where a man walked over to a TV plugged in a video tape. For the next 15 minutes we watched the TV, learning that the milk processing plant was one of the largest in India, certified to meeting a long list of ISO standards that meant absolutely nothing to me. We also learned the plant is the exclusive supplier of processed cheese slices for McDonalds (though it was unclear that exclusivity pertained to India, the region or the entire planet), and served as the producer and packager of products ranging from Tropicana orange juices (oops!) and Lipton Iced Tea. The question regarding the scope of their McDonalds cheese monopoly lingered in my mind as the video ended, so when the man returned to eject the video tape, he led us back to our cars without saying a word. No questions, no tour, no cheese. I looked at my watch and wondered if this little excursion would cost me the chance to go into downtown Mumbai later this afternoon.
Our second stop, however, was much more interesting and enjoyable. We drove for some time into the outskirts of Baramati, passing through hundreds of acres of pomegranate orchards and grape vineyards. Baramati, it turns out, is one of India's leading agricultural areas for table grapes. We'd previously seen row upon row of women selling enormous bushels of white grapes on dusty rugs along the roadside, while men generally seemed to sell the grapes from little carts. I wasn't sure how they ever made money of the grapes, since the market seemed saturated with them, yet without any buyers. (Colin Maclay of Harvard's Berkman Center later quipped that they weren't selling the grapes but were waiting for them to turn into raisins.)
Now, though, we arrived at the farm; a pair of women with several young children pumped water from the farm's well. We were greeted by the farmer, who invited us to walk with him to the emu pens. Passing the main house, we found ourselves in front of several large pens. In the first pen, dozens of young emus, no more than two feet tall, frolicked around with boundless energy, emitting a surprisingly relaxing coo noise reminiscent of doves. The emus darted in between each other, some moving in groups, others on their own. I saw one of the emus collapse to the ground and start rolling in the dirt; I cringed in horror thinking it was injured. It then kicked up the dirt, made a playful noise, then darted into another part of the flock. I then realized that emus throughout the pen were going through the same motions, dropping to the ground, rubbing into the dirt, then darting away. Either the dirt was an emu bird bath or part of an unspoken emu game.
Beyond the main pen, there was another large pen, but this one was home to a sole adult emu. While not as large as an ostrich, the emu was enormous. I've heard stories of ostriches being able to kill a person by kicking them; this one, while perhaps not being able to make you meet your maker, it could certainly end your dancing career if it was so inclined. In between the two large pens was a smaller holding pen containing a large cage. Inside, several dozen baby emus, only a few days old, picked at some feed while making that same cute cooing noise.
The farmer then began explaining the history of the farm. He had previously been a chicken farmer, and was invited to host a computer kiosk utilizing wireless local loop technology to connect to the Internet. That way, he and his surrounding farmers could have up-to-date access to agricultural market prices and techniques. Not long after this, he was searching the Internet searching for a local source to buy chickens. He struck up an email correspondence with another farmer who'd started raising emus. He asked the other farmer why he'd want to raise such an unusual bird rather than a more typical farm animal, and he replied that five-star hotels across India were serving emu burgers, emu steaks and other flightless delicacies. Emus, apparently, were as hot as, well, ostrich meat. So the farmer ordered a few emus to give it a whirl. Soon, he was making 10 times more money he could have ever made as a chicken farmer.
Participants from the Baramati conference had visited the farm two years ago, and back then they had a few dozen emus. Now, there were literally hundreds. Besides the emus we met in the outdoor pen, there was an indoor pen with at least another 100 week-old emus running around. We were invited to enter that pen and take a look around; the emus never got too close, but it was pretty strange being surrounded by so many of these cute little birds. Meanwhile, another room contained a high-tech incubator that served as the temporary home to dozens of two-day-old emus, and another incubator reminiscent of a giant rotisserie oven that was used to keep hundreds of enormous black emu eggs warm and cozy until hatching.
As fascinating as the visit was, the experience got a lot of us talking about vegetarianism. "Every time I go on an agricultural site visit, I become a vegan for at least six months," one of the group said. Fortunately, this farm was just the place where they raised the emus, but I couldn't help thinking about their ultimate fate. Too bad the little ones grew up to be enormous animals; otherwise they'd make an adorable pet.
It took us a while to get organized and leave the farm. At first I couldn't figure out what the delay was all about, but we soon learned that the person who'd left the hotel prior to us to go directly to the Pune airport had managed to have his bag stuck in one of our cars. This meant that all three cars would have to make a side-trip to Pune rather drive around the metropolis and proceed directly to Mumbai, adding at least an hour to our drive. I wasn't particularly happy about the situation, but there wasn't much we could do.
Back in the car, we headed off for Pune, only 100 kilometers away, but more than two hours' drive due to the poor conditions of the roads. The roads actually weren't as bad as I would have expected, but we found ourselves having to stop to allow goat herds and the occasional gaggle of buffalo to cross our path. I was sitting in the front passenger seat, so I kept leaning out the window to shoot photos and video clips.
About two-thirds of the way to Pune, we reached a medium-sized village. As we drove through town along a boulevard lined with peepul trees, we passed two bullock carts carrying a group of pilgrims. The bulls and the pilgrims were all covered in reddish-pink dye.
"Are they preparing for Holi?" I asked my colleague Archana, who lived in Mumbai.
"No, Holi is still a few weeks away," she said. "There's a community festival dedicated to one of the local gods, and they making their way to the festival."
The driver offered to pull over the car so we could get out and watch the carts overtake us. I walked back down the road to meet the carts halfway and shot a short video, along with some photos. The pilgrims seemed to be evenly divided among those who wanted to wave and mug for the camera, those who were indifferent and those who didn't want the attention, so I kept the video short to avoid causing offense. But they let me walk alongside the cart for a few moments as they caught up with our car, heading on their way.
Within the hour we arrived in Pune; a city with more than a million inhabitants, it's still considered small and pleasant when compared to India's megacities. Many affluent Indians actually choose to live in Pune, with its lack of humidity and rapidly-growing suburbs, and commute three hours by train into Mumbai. Pune was a bustling town, but didn't seem to be saturated with people in the same way Mumbai is. Rolling down the window, I noticed how dry it was outside; the forecast for the day was to hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit, but the heat wasn't extreme at all thanks to the constant dryness.
Eventually we arrived at the Taj Blue Diamond hotel. For some reason we didn't park in the lot; instead we drove in and out, then park along a busy road, all three 4X4s lined in a row. We then stood around for about 30 minutes, trying to figure out what exactly was going on. Two or three times we were informed that the missing bag in question had been found, but then told it was a false alarm. In the meantime, a poor woman dressed in rags carrying a dirty, malnourished child went from car to car, banging loudly on each window, chanting the sad mantra, "five rupee, 10 rupee." Meanwhile, several of us got out of the car, just to make sure that our bag wasn't accidentally sent to the Pune airport.
Somehow the confusion got sorted out, so we were ready to hit the road. One car's worth of people wanted to stay in Pune for lunch, while the rest of us wanted to make up for lost time and head for the Pune-Mumbai expressway. My bag was in the car that was staying for lunch, but it didn't seem to matter, as all three cars would rendezvous at the Kohinoor Hotel near Mumbai's airport well before 6pm, giving us plenty of time to be reunited with our luggage.
We started our drive out of Pune, passing through the army base of the Bombay Sappers, India's mine and ordinance division. On one side of the road I saw signs for the Sapper's boys school, the other side their high explosives depot. On the outskirts of the town we reached the Pune-Mumbai expressway, the only modern highway in India. Six lanes wide and only a few years' old, the highway was a pleasure to drive, not unlike an American highway. Archana explained that the Indian government was in the process of creating similar highways throughout India, as part of a plan first initiated by former prime minister Vajpayee.
Somewhere between Pune and Mumbai, we stopped at a highway rest stop. Like American rest stops, this place had a selection of restaurants. But thankfully there weren't any McDonalds or Pizza Huts or Arby's; instead, we found a courtyard of kiosks each selling regional cuisines from all over India. Whether you were looking for a snack from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Tamil Nadu or Bengal, you'd find whatever your stomach desired. Archana explained how it worked. First, you went to a central kiosk to pay for your meal. They'd ring it up for you and give you a receipt, which you would bring to the appropriate kiosks. If you ordered everything from one kiosk, you'd be squared away; otherwise, they would rip of part of the receipt representing what you'd just picked up there, then you would go to the next kiosk and pick up more food.
Our group scattered throughout the courtyard. Colin Maclay and I went straight for the Maharashtran kiosk and ordered two potato patties, each placed in a hamburger bun and drizzled with a sweet sauce. They put several chilis on the side as well; I spared my stomach and skipped them but Colin showed no such restrain. Meanwhile, the patties were spicy as hell anyway, so after eating them I went to a small pastry kiosk to buy a selections of sweets to share with the group and negate the burn on my tongue. Colin, still hungry, ordered a bal puri chaat, a spicy snack mix that was custom mixed for him.
We hung out for a little while in the packed courtyard, finishing our lunches and sampling the sweets I'd purchased. The best of the lot was a shredded wheat square that melted in your mouth like cotton candy. My next favorite was a diamond-shaped cookie made of cashew paste, coated with silver leaf on one side; Susanne and I had tried them in Rajasthan two years ago. My least favorite turned out to be an orange ball of semolina couscous, pressed and soaked in a sugary syrup that had no discernable flavor. Meanwhile, Archana showed up with a scorching hot plate of jalabi, an orange syrup dough shaped like pretzels, fried in oil, and served fresh. I'd seen jalabi on every trip to India but had never tasted them before. They were truly sinful, the crunch of the dough contrasting with a squirt of syrup and oil. One jalabi was more than enough.
Back on the road to Mumbai, Archana offered to have us over for tea at her suburban flat. As we approached the city, we veered off the highway towards an enclave of apartments and shopping complexes, all of which had been built in the last few years. The site was an enormous construction project, with most of the buildings still being completed. Eventually, hundreds of thousands of middle-class Mumbaikars would call this place home.
We pulled into Archana's apartment complex, much to the surprise of the other two cars, who had no idea why we'd left the highway and gone here. A quick explanation sorted out their confusion, and we went upstairs to her flat, where we were greeted by her mother, younger sister and two little dogs. We relaxed in the apartment as her mother made masala chai and one of the dogs nipped at me, with MTV India running in the background. It was one of the few times I've been invited into an Indian home, so I was honored to spend part of the afternoon there drinking tea and chatting.
Once we had polished off our cups of chai, we returned to the cars and continued towards Mumbai, crossing a small mountain range that separated the humid megacity with the more comfortable suburbs, then following a long causeway that brought us to the islands of Mumbai. Traffic -- human, vehicular and otherwise -- picked up significantly as we entered the city, slowing down our rate of transit. It took us another 90 minutes to get the hotel, which wasn't bad since we were driving on a Sunday rather than a weekday. Otherwise the drive could have been an hour longer. I recognized much of the last 30 minutes of the drive into the northern enclave of Andheri, home to our hotel, but that didn't stop us from taking a right at the last light rather than a left, delaying our arrival to the hotel by another 10 minutes.
Finally, we pulled into the hotel just after 5pm. In the car we'd talked about going into Mumbai for a few hours before heading to the airport, but as staggered into the hotel lobby, I decided I was in no condition to commute yet another 90 minutes into the city and out just for a couple hours of sightseeing in the dark. Others in our group hadn't spent any time in Mumbai at all, while I had a great day with Rohit and Dina earlier in the week. So while Archana led a small contingent of people back into the city, I commandeered one of the hotel rooms for a few hours, which would give me time to shower and relax before heading for the airport at 11pm.
After settling into our rooms, several people went down to the bar for some tea or beer, depending on how healthy they were feeling. In the meantime, I opened my laptop bag and discovered in horror that the two bars of chocolate I'd bought in Paris and forgotten about had melted some time that afternoon, probably at the rest stop. So rather than joining the group downstairs, I spent the next 30 minutes emptying out my backpack, scraping out as much chocolate as possible, and sopping up the rest with toilet paper and a couple of handtowels that turned black as oil rags. Eventually, I left the backpack directly under the air conditioner, hoping it would harden the remaining chocolate, then went downstairs to join Colin, Tom and Chris. Colin enjoyed his small pitcher of beer while Tom and Chris, who were sick and sicker personified, drank masala chair. I joined them for a cup, then returned to the room to excavate more chocolate from my bag and watch Meet The Parents on Indian cable TV.
At 11pm, Raul, Jen and I shared a ride to the airport. I was able to jump to the front of the line because of my frequent flier status, but my luck apparently stopped there, where I was unable to get a complimentary upgrade to business class. It was a 10-hour flight to Paris, and we wouldn't take up til 2:30am or later, so coach class was probably going to be hellish. I still had a couple of hours before boarding, so Jen and I joined Paul Moritz, a retired Microsoft exec who managed the rollout of Windows. We relaxed in the lounge and compared purchased we'd made over the years on our business trips, from miniature paintings to marble table tops.
After Paul and Jen left for their flight to Amsterdam, I wandered through the duty free shops before settling at the gate, where I joined a group of French students watching a bad Bollywood musical that appeared to focus on a gang of middle-aged Mumbai thugs who dressed like the characters in Michael Jackson's Beat It video. Amazingly, my stars fell into alignment when my name was called a few minutes before boarding. A Delta agent handed me a new boarding pass marked Seat 1B: business class. Walking on a pillow of imaginary clouds, I smiled the whole way down the jetway, settling into my seat next to a Keralan man living in North Carolina, traveling the world as a representative for Ruby Tuesday's restaurants. We chatted and swapped business travel stories until the flight took off just after 3am; I then put on my eye shades, leaned back as far as I could, and drifted into sleep.
Posted by acarvin at 5:08 PM
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An Evening of Drama
At the conclusion of the Baramati conference sessions Saturday evening, the organizers of the conference treated us to a viewing of the movie Shwaas, which was perhaps the most depressing movie I've seen since Schindler's List. The plot: A village boy from Maharashtra and his grandfather travel to The Big City at the urging of their local doctor. They have an appointment with an "Onco Specialist," which doesn't mean anything to them; they just know he is a good doctor and he will know how to treat the boy's failing eyesight.
The grandfather soon learns that the boy has bilateral retinal blastoma, an aggressive eye cancer that will kill him if they don't operate in a matter of days. The problem is that the operation would require removing both of the eight-year-old's eyes. The first half of the movie deals with the grandfather, doctor and social worker agonizing over who is going to break the bad news to the boy, and the second half the audience gets to agonize over the grandfather's indecision as to whether to allow the surgery and take away the boy's eyesight or allow him to die with his vision intact.
The movie had its moments; there were well-done flashback scenes to life in their village, a lush ocean-side paradise where everyone is happy, the coconuts are plump, and the cows' udders overflow with delicious milk. Also, the film did an excellent job at capturing the fear and frustration of an uneducated, illiterate grandfather having to deal with modern healthcare for the first time, including hospital paperwork, strict appointment schedules, and doctors who always seem like they'd rather be doing something else than curing your grandson. However, watching the movie unfold and the struggle the grandfather and the boy go through, including their eventual decision, was quite difficult. There is nothing more unpleasant to watch than a young boy screaming and fighting as he's given MRI scans, hypodermic injections and other procedures. And in the end, you just can't avoid the fact that a decision has to be made. There are several moments in the film that were quite poignant, but still, it was emotionally exhausting to watch, particularly when you can hear a sizable minority within the audience sobbing their eyes out. (Sorry, no pun intended.)
When the movie ended, everyone walked out in silence. Meanwhile, those participants who skipped the movie were lounging under the stars, enjoying their Indian buffet and desserts with a perfect breeze keeping them cool. I came out to the buffet and had a few spoonfuls of banana soufflé and half a piece of naan. For some reason I lost my appetite. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 5:01 PM
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March 6, 2005
Almost Time to Go Home
It's 7pm in Mumbai and I'm chilling for a few hours at the Kohinoor Hotel prior to going to the airport. We had a crazy day today, leaving Baramati for breakfast at a milk factory, then touring an emu farm with a wireless kiosk for local farmers. We then made our way to Mumbai for the next six hours, stopping at an enormous rest stop for lunch and snacks. One of our Indian colleagues had us over for tea, where we got to me her family and two dogs. Eventually, we reached the Kohinoor, where some people quickly left for the airport, others left for the bar, still others left for the city -- and I spent about 30 minutes cleaning up melted duty-free French chocolate that I'd forgotten about in my computer bag.
Since the hotel has broadband, I'm catching up on email one last time before having a quick drink downstairs, perhaps a shower, then off to the airport. So the next time I'm online will either be during my six-hour layover in Paris or in Boston... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 8:26 AM
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March 3, 2005
A Day in Mumbai: The Professor and Sammy Davis Jr.
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A woman looks out over the harbor in Mumbai, India |
Even though I was exhausted from the flight, I was too wired to fall asleep. I tossed and turned for a while; the last time I remember glancing at the clock it was a few minutes before 5am. Nonetheless, I still requested a wake-up call for 9am; masochistic it may have been, but this would be my only free day in India, so I wanted to make the most of it.
I dragged myself downstairs to breakfast just before 9:30am, feasting on a chili and cilantro omelet and a generous bowl of sliced papaya. The coffee was scorching hot -- so hot that I only got to have a few sips of it before going back upstairs to prepare for the day.
I didn't have a detailed plan for the day, apart from contacting Rohit Gupta and Dina Mehta, hopefully getting together with them at one point or another. Both of them are contributors to the Worldchanging.org blog, but I got to know them while volunteering as a contributor to the TsunamiHelp blog, since they were integrally involved in the effort in the days and weeks after the tsunami. I called Dina first; she had clients in from the US, but she would probably be able to get together for coffee after 2pm. Rohit, meanwhile, was free all day, so we decided to rendezvous at the hotel later that morning, then head into Mumbai and play it by ear.
Once Rohit got to the hotel, we caught an autorickshaw to the local commuter train station. Being on the north side of the city, it could take as long as two hours to get into Mumbai by car, but taking a train would cut that time in half or less. The autorickshaw weaved through the traffic, honking constantly while evading other autoricks, pedestrians, bicycles, street children, street dogs, and the occasional cow. I was a long, long away from the orderly streets of Paris and Geneva, and I loved every moment of it.
We eventually arrived at the Andheri train station, which was jammed with commuters coming and going from Mumbai. Rohit bought a small book of ticket stubs, then stamped them in a machine; we then walked briskly across the station in search of the next train. On one platform, crowds of men jammed themselves into a train car. Rohit paused for a moment, looked around, then motioned for me to follow him. "Yeah, this is an express; let's go," he said. We quickly jumped onto the train and squeezed our way in. At first it seemed horribly crowded, but as we worked our way into the train, I realized it was just the usual bottleneck of people crammed around the doors.
As the train took us south to Mumbai, we talked about blogging and podcasting. I pulled out my iPod and demonstrated its iTalk recorder; several men on the train stared at me for the entire ride. It didn't seem to have anything to do with the iPod, since they'd been staring at me since the moment I'd gotten on the train. I'd forgotten what it was like to have people staring at me with such determination. I was the only person in the train car who wasn't Indian, and even though Mumbai is a very cosmopolitan city, I seemed to draw a lot of attention.
We arrived in downtown Mumbai about 30 minutes later. Rohit suggested that we get lunch with his publisher, whose shop was just a few blocks away. It was a hot, humid day -- par for the course in Mumbai, but since I'd just arrived from frigid Paris and snowy Geneva, the heat was a shock to my system. I polished off my first bottle of water as we walked to the shop; I immediately began wondering when I should pick up another bottle or two.
As we walked through the crowded streets, dodging autorickshaws and bicycles, I began to notice random landmarks and buildings that looked familiar. I'd only been to Mumbai once before, but it was only for an afternoon, and my camera batteries had died, so I didn't manage to take many photos to preserve the memories. Nonetheless, I sensed I was in familiar surroundings, somewhere in the southern part of the city. Hopefully I'd get my bearings at some time during the day.
Soon we arrived at the book shop; Rohit and his publisher gave each other a big hug, then suggested we go to a Gujarati restaurant around the corner. We hiked down the street past street vendors selling roasted nuts and plates of biryani rice, once again hugging the sidewalk to avoid getting squashed by an autorickshaw. At the restaurant, we each ordered a vegetarian thali platter featuring a selection of around half a dozen Gujarati curries, accompanied by chappati bread, rice, salted buttermilk and half a ball of gulab jamun for dessert.
After lunch, Rohit's colleague returned to work; meanwhile, he and I began walking to the Mocha Coffee shop, where we planned to meet Dina Mehta. After walking several blocks, I saw a Victorian-era building that looked familiar; across the street was a long grassy maidan, or mall, full of people picnicking and playing cricket. Suddenly, I recognized exactly where I was -- we were next to the Eros Theatre, an art deco movie theatre.
"I've been here!," I said proudly. "Susanne and I saw the movie Lagaan here."
"Are you a cricket fan?" Rohit asked.
"Would you believe that everything I know about cricket I learned from that movie? Pretty sad, isn't it."
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Dina Mehta and Rohit Gupta exchange info on their mobile phones at Mocha in Mumbai. |
"You should bring a shisha home with you," Rohit suggested. "They're very cheap here."
"Yeah, but if I did that, I'd be tempted to use it," I said, "and it's better if I save it for special occasions -- particularly when I'm traveling overseas."
Meanwhile, I pulled out my iPod so we could record a podcast. We didn't have any particular agenda in mind; instead, we just wanted to record some of our conversation. I recorded about 15 minutes of chatting, mindful of the fact that the Internet connection at the hotel might not be fast enough to post such a large file very easily.
Eventually, Dina had to return to her clients, so we parted ways. Rohit and I walked back towards the maidan, following it towards Colaba, the historic heart of Mumbai. Rohit told the story of the founding of Bombay, in which a Portuguese Jewish botanist was working in Goa, south of Bombay, when the Catholic church there decided it was time to bring the Inquisition to Goa. The botanist, who had hid his religion from the authorities, feared he would be found out, so he requested permission to relocate his research to the island of Bombay, so he could study hemp. With that, Mumbai's history as a settled community began.
"So you're telling me that Bombay was founded by a Jewish botanist pretending to be Catholic who leased a piece of land to get away from the Church and focus on studying pot?" I asked.
"Yes, that's pretty much it," Rohit replied, laughing.
Since then, of course, Mumbai has grown into megacity of the first degree, a juggernaut of a metropolis. But walking the streets of Colaba I got a distinctly different impression of the modern city I'd seen so far. Colaba was green, relatively quiet, with old colonial buildings stretching down each street. Small groups of tourists rode by in horse carriages. There was something almost New Orleans-like to Colaba -- the last thing I expected to find here in Mumbai.
We continued our walk towards the Colaba waterfront as Rohit told stories about Mumbai. Along with being a blogger and published short story author, Rohit has worked as a professional storyteller, focusing on the fringe history of Mumbai. He talked about the founding of the Taj Mahal Hotel, the most famous hotel in the city. The founder of the Tata industrial empire was denied entry to one of the city's most prestigious hotels because he was Indian, not British. In response to the insult, he decide to become a hotel entrepreneur, building the most posh hotel the city had ever seen, and one that would not turn away Indian guests. The hotel that dissed Mr. Tata is long gone, but his Taj Mahal still reigns as the grand dame of Mumbai hotels.
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The Gateway of India |
Rohit and I walked clockwise around the Gateway, as the sun began to set over the island. Indian families were now picnicking in the small garden adjacent to the Gateway. "I went to a Greenpeace protest here recently," Rohit said. "It was really cool."
We departed the Gateway and walked northwest to Wellington Circle, then hugged the road north towards Horniman Circle. Along the way we passed some of Mumbai's most important cultural institutions, including the modern art museum and the Asiatic Society library. "This area has some of the oldest buildings in Mumbai, dating to the early 1700s," Rohit explained.
"So there's nothing here from the Portuguese period?"
"No, what you see is from the East India Company onward."
We talked a while about the East India Company, and how they rose from a merchant company to being the de facto rulers of India until the British Crown reasserted its authority. Soon, we reached the old customs house. Rohit started to describe the neighborhood's history when suddenly an elderly Indian gentleman in a tie and dusty dress shirt came running over to us.
"You are talking about history? Let us talk about history!" the man said. He introduced himself as a retired law professor, and he immediately began enquiring into who we were, what we were doing there, and why we were interested in history.
"So where are you from, my friend?" he asked me.
"The USA, I live in Boston," I replied.
"Now that is a city with history, my friend!" he exclaimed. "Tea party, seventeen hundred and seventy six.... a city with history! And let us not forget the Kennedys. I adore the Kennedys... but what a curse they have upon them. One brother, two brother, three brother dead, fourth brother not get White House because he crash and women drowns..."
"At Chappaquiddick," I said.
"Yes, that is it, but I cannot pronounce such silly words," he replied. "Chappa chappa chappa chappa...."
"...Quiddick," I finished for him.
"Yes, it is a silly word that cannot be pronounced....
We spent the next several minutes discussing the Kennedys; he blamed the family curse on old Joe Kennedy's bootlegging. "That man was a corrupt, corrupt bastard, corrupt I tell you," he said, emphasizing each word. "His children pay the price for his bad deeds. And Jackie, too - she pay the price. Such an elegant woman, most beloved by India... So why you in India?"
"I'm here for a conference."
"Conference? Whose conference?"
"It's organized by the Grameen Foundation," I replied.
"Grameen? Grameen? Never heard of them. I hope they are not one of these big, bad companies."
"No, quite the opposite, they do very important work."
"So they organize your conference?"
"Yes, and Microsoft, I believe," I started to say, before recalling his previous comment about big businesses?
"Microsoft!" he retorted. "Oh, they are okay in my book."
Rohit and I could hardly contain ourselves; we had somehow stumbled upon perhaps the most interesting man in all of Mumbai. Knowing I couldn't let any other of his quips go to waste, I took out my iPod and started recording his stories, just as he began telling an Internet joke, as he called it: A woman goes to a curtain store and says, I need to buy curtains for my computer. Curtains? The man at the store asks. Why do you need curtains? It is a computer, ma'am. Because it has windows, she replies.
Yes, it was a terrible joke, but our new friend had us in hysterics. We hung around with him for another six or so minutes, appreciating his unique wisdom and capturing it on my iPod. He seemed to thoroughly enjoy the audience.
Eventually, we parted ways, as we crossed into Horniman Circle. The circle reminded me of Dupont Circle in DC, yet tropical: lush green plants, scores of people reading newspapers or snoozing, it was quite a community hub. Soon, though, Rohit got a call from his friend Matti, a Finnish PhD student who was studying in Mumbai and making a documentary with another Finn on globalization. We made arrangements to meet at a bar for drinks. "We'll see you at the sports bar," Rohit said over the phone.
We jumped into taxi and soon arrived at The Sports Bar. It turns out that was the name of the place, not a general description. Indeed, The Sports Bar was a sports bar; once you got inside past the guard, there was a row of booths on the left side of the room, each with its own flat-panel TV set into the wall. To the right, a long, diner-like bar sported mushroom-like stools and giant TV screens, all showing cricket. To the back, there was a basketball cage in which you could shoot hoops.
Matti and his friend were already there, sucking down two-for-one Kingfishers. We joined them for the evening, talking about documentaries and globalization and psychogeographic mapping and beer, in no particular order. Eventually, Matti's girlfriend joined us, as did an Indian friend whom I was introduced to as Mr. Fear, because he's doing his PhD dissertation on the study of fear. Apparently he spends his days reviewing crime scene reports and his nights visiting actual crime scenes with reporters. And some day he'd become Dr. Fear because of all of this hard work, but for now, he seemed pretty brain fried.
"Usually I try to make light of the basic crimes, just to keep some distance from it," he said. "But once you start getting into cases like Child rape and such, it's not very easy to make light of the situation." I wonder if it's too late to change thesis topics, I thought to myself.
We hung out at the bar for a few hours, enjoying the two-for-one beers and chatting about dissertations, real and imagined. Matti was a really fascinating guy, and his buddy seemed to be enjoying coming down to Mumbai from Finland to make his documentary. By 8pm, we were getting hungry, and I started thinking about when I'd need to head back to the hotel, since I'd have to get up early the next day for the six-hour drive to Baramati. But Rohit and friends were eager to hop to their next favorite joint, a place called Ghetto. Given my previous confusion over The Sports Bar, I didn't know if ghetto was the name or a description.
Ghetto was at least a 20 minute drive away, so we hailed a taxi outside of the bar. "Hop on in, man," an elderly taxi driver said to us, with an odd hipster American accent.
"Where you cats going?" he asked us. Rohit gave him directions while I pondered his accent. The man was clearly Indian, but he'd picked up some unusual speech patterns in his time as a cabby, apparently.
"What is your good name, sir?" Rohit asked him.
"You already know my name, because I've driven you before, but you've forgotten it," he replied.
"No, sir, I don't think you told me the last time you drove me," Rohit insisted.
"I will give you a hint -- my name is the name of an American artist with an eye patch."
"Andy, this one's for you," Rohit said, leaning from the front seat. "Who's an American artist with an eye patch?"
"Uh.... Dale Chilouly?" I replied, baffled by the question?
"Dale who???" the taxi driver replied, shocked I blew the question. "Not that muthafucka. A cool Daddy-O with class, with friends like Frank..."
"Uh... Sammy Davis Jr?" I replied, suddenly connecting the dots?
"You win, my man," he replied. "I look like him, I talk like him, I have the same glasses, I am Mr. Sammy Davis. So are you guys looking to by any hash?"
I nearly wet my pants laughing. Where on earth did this guy come from? Meanwhile, Sammy kept at it for the next 20 minutes, including demonstrating his ability to swear in Finnish, then explaining in dramatic detail as to why he was the best drug connection in Colaba.
Sammy's comedy act continued as we drove north to Ghetto, but then things took a turn for the worse when he decided to talk about politics.
"The US blames Bin Laden for 9/11, so they bomb Afghanistan even though Bin Laden is not in Afghanistan? And why are they doing it? For the Jews, that's why!"
All of us glanced at each other with that last remark. Sammy kept talking and talking, explaining why the war in Afghanistan and Iraq were both done at the behest of Israel. Rohit looked at me apologetically and rolled his eyes. I shrugged my shoulders and tried to brush it off. It seemed harmless.
But Sammy kept at it. Apparently he'd struck his own nerve, and he wouldn't stop talking until he'd had his fill of anti-Semitism. "And you know what about 9/11? No Jews died that day, because they were all warned. Every Jew in New York and Washington was warned by the Israeli consulate that morning so they wouldn't go to work."
"But what about me?" I jumped in. I'd had enough.
"What about you, man?"
"Why the hell wasn't I warned?" I demanded. "I mean, there I was in downtown DC, just blocks from the White House, and no Israeli consulate or anything sent me an email telling me to play sick that day.... So either that means you're totally full of it or somehow I got on Israel's Pay No Mind list! Whadya think of that, Sammy? Do you think they just forgot to leave me a voicemail or something? Why the hell didn't I get that memo?"
I kept at it for a while, stunning Sammy into a relative stutter compared to his previous confidence. Meanwhile, my cab mates were laughing wildly, egging me on to put this small-minded hep cat in his place.
"You know, I just remembered something. Let's not forget who else is Jewish - your main man, Sammy Davis Jr!"
"Yes, that's true, " Sammy replied, "but..."
"But what?" I continued. "Do you think he would have gotten the memo from the Israeli consulate, or do black Jews not count? This must weigh heavily on your conscience, I bet...."
Sammy finally shut the hell up.
A few minutes later, we arrived at Ghetto. I'd been thinking of just catching another cab and going back to the hotel, but my war of words with Sammy Davis had gotten me in a fighting mood, so I figured I needed to settle down with a beer and some food. Inside Ghetto, I found a dark, small bar with black lights illuminating the room; graffiti art of Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix dominated the walls, while Jeff Beck and the Grateful Dead dominated the juke box. Rohit ordered a pitcher while the rest of us got some food; I requested a chicken quesadilla, which fascinated me simply because I found it on a menu in Mumbai.
We hung out for a while, eating our food and picking up the conversation where we'd left it off before Sammy came into the picture. Rohit then introduced me to another friend who makes TV commercials for car companies and other big players in the Indian ad market.
But by 10pm, I didn't think I'd be able to take it much longer. I still had some jetlag and I worried about how long it would take to drive back to the hotel; if traffic were bad, it could be two hours. So I bid goodbye to my new companions and grabbed a taxi, with Rohit explaining the directions. We drove for just over an hour; fortunately, the driver only got lost at the end of the trip, so we only went a few blocks out of the way. I returned to the hotel thoroughly exhausted. My mind flashed back to Ghetto; for a moment the Grateful Dead lyric "What a long, strange trip it's been" popped into my mind, but I quickly dismissed it. Too clichéd. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 10:37 PM
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Arrival in Baramati
After a six hour ride from Mumbai, I arrived in Baramati with the other international participants around 3pm this afternoon. We rode in a large air-conditioned bus, which was very comfortable, though I regret not bringing dramamine with me.
It's now after 7pm, and we're at the VIIT institute, which is hosting the conference. I'm running late for dinner, but i wanted to post a quick hello. I don't know how often I'll be able to post, because wi-fi isn't working for me yet, and I'm not able to upload podcasts either. So that means any recordings I make here will have to be posted from Mumbai or from home early next week. Ah well.
Looking forward to the rest of the conference. Meanwhile, I'll post my journal from Mumbai as soon as I've finished it... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 8:51 AM
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March 2, 2005
Quick Update from Mumbai
It's 8:15am here in Mumbai, and I'm packing my bags once again. In about 45 minutes I'm joining some of the other conference attendees downstairs, where we'll take a bus first to Pune, then to Baramati. I'm under the impression the trip will take the better part of the day, but I could be wrong. I'll find out soon.
I spent yesterday with video blogger Rohit Gupta, exploring Mumbai's long history while discussing blogging, online discourse, ICTs for development and a host of other topics. We also spent time with Dina Mehta; Rohit and Dina are contributors to Worldchanging and were heavily involved in the TsunamiHelp blog in the days and weeks following the tsunami.
It was a long, fun day, and I haven't had a chance to write it all down yet, so I post a blog about it later. I also recorded several podcasts, but it will be a while before I can upload all of them. The bandwidth at the hotel is rather slow, so I don't think I can get any of them online before I leave in 40 minutes. I'll do my best to get them posted from Baramati; otherwise, they'll have to wait until I get home.
Anyway, better finish packing. -andy
Posted by acarvin at 9:46 PM
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March 1, 2005
Next Stop: Mumbai
Hi everyone,
Right now I'm at the airport in Paris waiting for my flight to India. Apparently the flight is running at least an hour late because it originated in New York, which is getting hammered by snow. This means I probably won't arrive in Mumbai until after 1am Wednesday - yikes! That's unfortunate because I really want to spend my one free day in Mumbai visiting some telecentres and several colleagues. Hopefully I won't be too much of a zombie to do this.
Had a wonderful evening last night with Grégoire Japiot of the Omidyar Network and his sister at her apartment near the Eiffel Tower. Grégoire brought several wines from Burgundy, including a tasty Chablis and two wonderful Pinot Noirs. He also brought a sampling of local cheeses to pair with the wines. We had a marvelous time. When I'm on my flight, I will write more about my last day in Paris, which included visits to the Louvre and the Cluny Museum of the Middle Ages. For now, though, I'm paying through the nose for wi-fi access, so I need to focus on email rather than writing my blog. Stay tuned... -andy
Posted by acarvin at 4:23 AM
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February 1, 2004
Rajasthan Photo Gallery Now Online
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| Livestock traders assemble at the Pushkar Camel Fair |
As some of you know, I've spent the last couple of months pulling together some of the photos that Susanne and I took in Rajasthan, India in November 2001. Those photos have now been compiled into a new online gallery called Rajasthan: Land of Kings. This site features five separate photo galleries, including Jaipur, the Puskar Camel Fair, Jaisalmer, Udaipur and Chittorgarh. (I would have also included a gallery for Jodhpur, but unfortunately Ritz Camera somehow managed to forget to scan several rolls of film when I had the pictures developed two years ago, so it'll have to wait until I can scan those pictures myself.)
Unlike previous galleries, I've kept the photos in bins based on who photographed the picture. So if you see a thumbnail of a picture and click on it, you'll be able to look at the URL and see either my name or Susanne's associated with it. It's not the most elegant way of identified who took each pic, but hey, it works and it was a technical cinch, so I won't complain if you won't.
I'm also working on a travel journal for our Rajasthan trip. I recently discovered a journal with dozens of pages of notes from the trip, and I'm using it to write up a more detailed travelogue. Of course, this may take me months to complete, so I can't promise when it will be ready. So stay tuned to the blog and I'll be sure to post a note when you'll be able to visit the travelogue.... -ac
Posted by acarvin at 9:13 AM | Comments (1)
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June 20, 2002
Back from India & Bhutan
I just wanted to let you know that I'm back in DC, having
made the 8,000-mile trek back to the US from India and Bhutan. The launch of
our new collaboration with OneWorld South Asia, the Digital Opportunity
Channel (www.digitalopportunity.org) was a great success. Despite working
last week under 115 degree temperatures (46 degrees celsius) and a stream of
power outages and network outages, the team at OneWorld South Asia and OW
International in London managed to complete the site and launch it in time
for Friday's inaugural event in Delhi. Kanti Kumar and I introduced the
channel to a room full of reporters and local NGO colleagues, and we also
had presentations from OneWorld's Anuradha Vittachi, DFID's Yusuf Samiullah,
among others, including a demo by one of the developers of the Simputer, a
low-cost handheld computer being developed for illiterate and
limited-literate users.
I also managed to make a brief two-day visit to Bhutan, where I met with
officials in the capital city of Thimphu. Bhutan is truly a unique place, a
Himalayan Switzerland caught between ancient traditions and the pull of the
future. Bhutanese citizens dress in traditional local costumes, yet speak
fluent English due to the fact that all schooling is conducted in English
rather than the local languages of Dzongka and Sharchopkha. Several
cybercafes have opened up in Thimphu, though if the nation's one ISP
(Druknet) goes down, all internet access goes down - as I discovered during
my second day in the country.
Among the meetings I had there, I visited the education ministry to meet
with the architect of Bhutan's first national edtech plan. I also met with
staff of Bhutan's directorate of technology, plus the publisher of their
national newspaper and the lead anchor of their tv/radio news service. (The
newspaper's website, www.kuenselonline.com, hosts what is probably the first
indigenous open public discussion on Bhutan ever available to Bhutanese
citizens.) I visited a private school with one of the few Internet pc labs
in the country and met with its principal, who was eager to see the Internet
used more to improve student's English skills. Lastly, I managed to spend
time in Thimphu's first commercial IT training center, where everyone from
local students to civil servants are beginning to master numerous software
packages.
Of course, I'll eventually publish an article about my experiences there,
but first I'll spend some time getting over jetlag and Delhi Belly before
processing the dozens of pages of notes I took during my brief stay in
Bhutan.
If you haven't had a chance to visit our new site yet, please visit
www.digitalopportunity.org and let us know what you think. Additionally,
we're really eager to publish articles and essays about digital divide
issues and ICT uses in global development, especially from local
perspectives in the developing world. If you have any interest in submitting
an article, by all means please email me.
Posted by acarvin at 8:58 PM
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December 22, 1996
My Trip to India and Nepal - Not Your Usual Vacation...
As you may know, I spent most of November wandering the Indian subcontinent. Not for work, mind you - this was strictly vacation. And what an exhausting vacation it was. In 21 days, we wandered northern India, from Delhi and Agra to Varanasi and Calcutta, hiked the hills and meandered the markets of the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal, and braved the monsoon season in Madras and coastal Tamil Nadu. (The gentleman you see to your right, btw, is a Hindu holyman I met at the Kali Temple of Calcutta just before the daily morning goat sacrifice.)
In a nutshell: India is an incredible place. Incredibly crowded and filthy, yet incredibly beautiful and mystical. Whether it was exploring the abandoned Mughal palace city of Fatehpur Sikri or floating down the Ganges at dawn, I was overwhelmed by the life of India and its many peoples, its spirituality, and sadly, the tragedy of it being such an overpopulated and polluted place. Traveling to India was taxing on the soul, but worth it in every way.
Nepal, on the other hand, I found to be a cleansing and peaceful experience, especially after spending a week in the crowded alleyways of Delhi and Varanasi. Though Kathmandu suffers from the same problems that haunt other large third-world cities, I found it to be full of smiling people who worked hard and were immensely proud of what they had. A melting pot of Tibetans, Newaris, Kashmiris, Tamang hillpeople, and many other cultures, Kathmandu was vibrant and alive, always with a new surprise around each corner. I can't wait to go back.
As we do every year, Susanne and I brought tons of film - nearly 25 rolls. We developed around 700 pictures, and I'm now in the process of scanning my favorite pics. To see some of them, please feel free to check out my Subcontinental Slide Show, which includes many of the pictorial highlights of the trip. And for you intrepid readers out there, you can also look at my India and Nepal travelogue - all 40,000 words of it. It's broken down into day-by-day accounts of the trip, and it's interpersed with some of the pictorial highlights of the trip, not to mention recipes of the various dishes we encountered during the trip....
If travel to the Middle East floats your boat, you can also view Andy's Mideast Journal, a travelogue of my wanderings through Egypt, Jordan and Israel in the fall of 1995. From the ruins of Petra in Jordan to the events surrounding the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, it's all in my travelogue. And of course, there are lots of pictures for you to enjoy, so if you want to see some lovely shots of me hanging out in the desert, check it out.
Posted by acarvin at 12:43 PM
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November 28, 1996
A travel day from Madras to Delhi to Amsterdam
There's really little to say today, except that it's been long. Really long. It's entailed lots of waiting: waiting to fly to Delhi, waiting for our flight to land in Delhi, waiting in Delhi for our flight to Amsterdam. This being India, our flight west wouldn't depart til 1am, so we sat in the airport all night and didn't begin the boarding process until midnight. By the time we got on board for the eight-hour flight, we were pretty beat. We slept most of the night away, as our airplane took us north through Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Russia, and then west through the Baltics, Poland, and Germany, before arriving in Holland.
This concludes my original journal entries. I'll try to post our story of our day in Amsterdam, as well as my final thoughts on the trip, a little later.
Posted by acarvin at 7:54 PM
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November 27, 1996
Return to Madras
I still wasn't feeling too great, but I was well enough to travel back to Madras. There was an extended break in the rain that morning, so we hired a taxi. The two hour ride back to Madras was smooth and comfortable. This was to be our last night's stay in India, so we decided to splurge and make it a comfy one. We stayed at the Ambassador Pallava Hotel, one of Madras' flagship four-star hotels. Though it was quite lavish by Indian standards, in retrospect I'm not sure if it would have been worth $100 in the states, but after some of the places we had stayed over the last 21 days, it was well worth it at that moment in time.
We chilled out in the room and at the hotel cafe before heading out to the Sri Kapalashwaram temple. An autorickshaw took us to the temple, which was no more than 10 minutes away. It was a typical Dravidian gopuram-style temple, shooting up into the sky like a tall Remington Microscreen electric shaver. The temple was adorned with thousands of brightly painted statue miniatures, which gave it the appearance of a cross between a Grateful Dead album cover and a Heironymous Bosch painting. The rains had departed for a few hours, but the clouds made it difficult to get any pictures. We also weren't allowed inside the temple (Hindus only), so after 15 minutes or so, we were ready to move on to our next stop, Fort St. George.
The fort was set up by the British in the early 1600s, and was the Crown's first outpost on Indian soil. It's still used today as a military and state administrative complex, and because of all the hustle and bustle, the fort felt more like a modern military base than a piece of Raj history. The fort's museum was a ragged display of British weapons, uniforms and documents. Upstairs, though, we found an old ballroom that had been converted in to a portrait hall. 20 large paintings of former monarchs and local Maharajas filled the walls, including a rather famous portrait of a young Queen Victoria. A few buildings south of the museum, we entered St. Mary's Church, the oldest Anglican house of worship east of the Suez. It was a simple stone church with wooden pews and dozens of small marble plaques and memorials, including one to Elihu Yale, former governor of Madras, as well as the eventual founder of Yale University.
Somehow the day had flown by, and it was getting late. The sun was bearing down on my weary body, so I went back to the hotel and rested. It was an anticlimactic last night in India, but I figured I better rest for a healthy trip back and a fun overnight stay in Amsterdam.
Posted by acarvin at 8:14 PM
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November 26, 1996
My Day of Agony
There's little to say about today, except that I spent most of it in bed with a fever and a stomach ache. I certainly wasn't deathly ill, and I wasn't running to the bathroom every 10 minutes, but still felt like hell. As I kept asking Susanne, "Who will rid me of this dreaded malaise?" as if I were Peter O'Toole complaining about Thomas a Becket (I must have been really ill). So I slept a lot.
The only story worth telling from this day is from when Susanne dragged me to lunch at the Temple Bay Ashok Beach Resort, about a kilometer south on the beach. After eating, we waited in the lobby for the rain to break. I noticed in the bushes outside that a small puppy had run for cover and was crouching under the leaves. So when the rains let up, we eagerly investigated. In the bush we found this poor, drenched puppy, no more than a few weeks old, shivering and looking scared to death. It was very upsetting, so we broke our cardinal rule over never touching animals in India and picked it up. I took it to a sink by the pool and rinsed it clean with warm water, and then we held it for a while to help raise its temperature. Eventually, we saw another dog, one that we had hoped would be its mother. She made eye contact with our puppy and her ears pricked up. We put the puppy on the ground, and instantly, it took on new life, running over to the mama dog, snuggling it and eventually trotting off side by side down the stone path.
I had done my good deed for the day. Back to bed.
Posted by acarvin at 10:24 PM
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November 25, 1996
Exploring Mahabalipuram
We slept pretty late and had a dull breakfast. The restaurant at the Tamil Nadu Beach Resort was horrendous, largely because of its indifferent service. As a state-run hotel, it doesn't worry much about putting the best foot forward, because no matter what, they'll still get subsidized. The staff was slow and lazy, and only tried their best when they wanted to get us to exchange dollars through them or to arrange a private taxi. While at $20 a night, the resort was still a good deal, but its employees left an awful taste in my mouth.
We walked down the beach in the rain. It was a light sprinkle most of the time, so we didn't need to use our umbrellas for the most part. The cold rain actually felt good in the humidity and 90 degree morning temperature. Susanne commented on how strange she felt needing an umbrella on a beach. Being a Floridian who lived less than a mile from the shore, I just felt like I was at home during the late summer rains. We paused for a couple of Cokes at the Luna Magica restaurant, a new place that had just opened on the north end of the beach. We didn't get any meals, but still enjoyed the cozy atmosphere. A fisherman who was temporarily marooned because of the rough seas entered the restaurant and nonchalantly joined us at our table. At first I assumed he wanted us to change money or something, but he turned out to be a really nice guy who just wanted to talk and practice his English. He was about 25, very thin, and extremely dark, with short curly black hair and thick eyebrows - classic Tamil features, I thought. We talked about the monsoon, fishing, and of course, that perennial favorite topic, the weather in America.
As noon passed we left the restaurant and headed down a small street into town. We followed the sounds of a drum and horn ensemble that was playing up-tempo Tamil music. We were curious to see what the celebration was all about. After snapping a few shots of the band as they stood on a street corner, I noticed that to their right was a lean-to attached to a stone and mud hut. There was a group of four or five women in a circle, sobbing and wailing, and in the center of the circle lay a withered body wrapped in garlands of flowers. We had stumbled into a funeral. I was so embarrassed. It wasn't that I minded walking through the street as the funeral got under way - lots of locals were doing just that as well. I just felt awful about how we approached, cameras planted on our faces, snapping away at the band. I hope no one noticed us. We proceeded across the street and were largely ignored by the families in attendance.
We returned once again to Arjuna's Penance, hoping to get a better look at the details of the bas-relief. There was a break in the rain which was nice, but the thick clouds continued to loom overhead, thus once again preventing me from getting any good pictures. The first thing most people probably notice about the Penance is the herd of large elephants on the right panel of the bas-relief. The two adult elephants were life-size, and they dominated the panel. But just below them, you could make out baby elephants as they played, nursed, and even yawned. The realism undertaken by the creators of the Penance is just stunning. I also could make out dreadlocked sadhus smoking hash. One of them was reaching towards the sky, and his ribs protruded under his emaciated flesh. Not far from him, a woman washed her hair in a steam. The relief also had its share of gods, goddesses and epic heroes, but its portrayal of everyday people and animal life was what impressed me most. I'm glad we returned for a second look. There was so much to see, it would have been a shame to have given it only a single chance.
The rains picked up again, but undaunted, we returned to the granite hill behind the Penance in order to explore the small shrines and temples that had been carved into its rear face. On the far west side we found a semi-flooded dirt path that appeared to encircle the entire hill, se we decided to follow it. About half way round, the rains really came down on us, se we took shelter in a shrine whose stone inner sanctum provided ample refuge for us. From inside our 7th century hiding space, we could see a large flooded plain and hundreds of palm trees in the distance. I really began to appreciate what the monsoons were all about as we sat there, watching and listening to the storm.
We remained in the temple cave for a while until the rain let up, and then continued down our mud path. The large pond next to the path was full of frogs, and we stood by its shore for a brief time, watching the amphibians leap through the water and splash around. On the other side of the path, small trees and bushed served as the home for a variety of butterflies. We actually tried to get a few close-up pictures of them. It was an interesting challenge - all the good butterflies would flutter about as soon as you got close, while the plain and ordinary ones seemed more than happy just to sit there on a branch and strike a pose for the camera.
At an intersection in the road, we were approached by a young man. I figured he was just another stone carver trying to sell his goods, but nevertheless, I didn't shoo him away. He decided to start a conversation with us. As I suspected, he was indeed a stone carver, and he claimed he had studied Italian marble carving in Europe. He soon invited us to his studio at his house down the street to see his work. He said time and time again our visit would be "not business" and "only for fun." I seriously doubted this, but then again, it was our first invite to a village home and I was willing to put up with a hard sell just to get the experience.
We walked further down the path, past the lighthouse and an ancient Shiva that stood on the peak of the granite hill. We then weaved through a series of mud and stone huts, naked children, and women washing clothes, before we reached his house. It was a small brick structure, very modest, but quite clean. He asked us to remove our shoes; neither of us felt too hot about it, but once we did take them off, we only had to step around the corner to reach his studio. Inside it were dozens of granite and marble statues, most of them Hindu gods, each no more than six inches high. The workmanship was truly incredible - you could see the tuning knobs on Saraswati's sitar, or a long string of pearls that were frozen in a wind-blown pose around Parvati's neck. As we admired his work, he then began to quote prices, mostly $40 and up. Ouch. If they had been ten bucks each, perhaps, well I might have considered buying one or two. But at these prices, no way. We politely declined, yet he continued to pitch. After a few minutes of these pressure tactics, we stepped outside and put on our shoes. As we tried to leave, he began a typical Indian merchant guilt trip, to which I responded, "Look, you said over and over that this was 'not business, only fun.' I agreed. Now you are breaking your promise to us." This really ticked him off, but at least he gave up, turned around and went back into his house.
Susanne and I continued onward to the Shiva Temple. It was perched high above us on the granite hill's peak, almost parallel to the top of the lighthouse's observation platform 100 yards away. Like most of Mahabalipuram's ancient structures, the temple itself was from the Pallavan period, 7th to 8th century, but was much more worn away than the other temples in town. We admired the view from the top, but the temple's rock floor was wet from the rain, and I didn't feel very comfortable with the traction. So as the winds picked up, we took it as a sign to get back on flat ground. We headed down and started to make our way back to central Mahabalipuram.
On our way to town, that stone carver guy walked by us. I didn't realize it was him at first, until he said, "Go back to your hotel and listen to the BBC. Cyclone is on its wait. It will hit Mahabalipuram tonight." He then walked off. What? We had heard no news about a cyclone, which are the monsoon season's answer to hurricanes. And not unlike hurricanes, they don't just pop up overnight. But just a few weeks earlier, the worst cyclone in 10 years ravaged the coasts of Andhra Pradesh and northern Tamil Nadu, killing thousands, so we were well aware of the dangers. Assuming he was telling the truth, there was little we could do about it, so we decided to go eat and ask the people at the restaurant if they had heard any news about a storm.
We ate at a nice veg restaurant at a hotel in town. The maitre d' assured us that no cyclone was on its way. This only infuriated Susanne. "How dare that jerk tell us that!" she said.
(a side note: two weeks after returning from India, I read a story on the CNN website about a huge cyclone that was battering Bangladesh. The report said the storm had formed two weeks earlier in the south, off the coast of Tamil Nadu, and then abruptly turned north to Bangladesh, and was now heading south again. So perhaps that stone carver was indeed telling the truth. Who's to say...)
We ended up eating a huge dosa platter, and later, some ice cream. I would live to regret it, though. Back at the hotel, I felt like crap and went to bed.
Posted by acarvin at 10:21 PM
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November 23, 1996
A relaxing day in Calcutta; rainy arrival in Madras
The Old Kenilworth didn't serve breakfast, of course, so by 8:30 or so we were at the New Kenilworth - a modern hotel down the street. They had a price fixe breakfast for three dollars a person, all you can eat buffet. It was more than we normally spent in India for food, but it was worth every rupee, since we could safely enjoy juices and fruit, along with everything else. Before we left the New Kenilworth, I made arrangements with the doorman to watch our bags for the afternoon - the Old Kenilworth would charge us RS50 per bag, which was outrageous. Before going to check out and get our packs, we first headed to south Calcutta to visit the great temple of Kali, the Kalighat.
Kalighat is the namesake of Calcutta, and is its most important temple. We reached it by taking Calcutta's metro - the only metro in all of India. It was eerily reminiscent of Boston's T system, except this one had the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore scrawled on the walls. From the Kalighat metro stop, we walked up and along Temple Road, which was filled with pilgrims and merchants who bought and sold goods of all kinds, from walking sticks to sunscreen to even small goats for sacrifice. The temple itself was surrounded by dozens of stalls which were linked together in a series of covered markets. Thousands of Hindus were queuing up to enter the sanctum sanctorum of the Temple. Since we weren't allowed there anyway, we entered through a minor gate which brought us into the main inner courtyard. We couldn't get inside any further, but we were at least in the middle of the action now.
Sadhus were pacing all over the place, begging for alms and smoking enormous quantities of dope. Men sheathed in orange garlands stood transfixed in front of mini-shrines of Kali. Women marked each other with fresh tikas. Such commotion, in every direction. Photography was strictly limited to certain areas, but we still managed to get some shots of some pilgrims. I got a great close-up of a sadhu - I'm really pleased with it. We then saw a large crowd gathered around a small walled enclosure. A woman was pouring water onto three small goats which were tied to Kali shrines. A man walked in, wielding a large scimitar. It was time for the morning goat sacrifice. Susanne didn't want to have anything to do with it, and when I saw the size of the sword and heard the goats begin to shriek, I figure that was enough for me. I could leave the rest of it to my imagination.
We briefly explored the market stalls surrounding the temple before crossing the street to Mother Theresa's Home for the Dying Destitute, a hospice for Calcutta's dalit population. Susanne wanted to make a donation, so we entered and found a room with several dozen beds, most of which were filled with emaciated, gravely ill Untouchables. A group of sisters told Susanne that they couldn't accept traveler's checks here, so we had had to spare cash rupees in order to give. After leaving a donation, we returned to the Old Kenilworth to check out, making a quick stop at the local KLM office to reconfirm our flights to Amsterdam and Washington. We dropped our bags at the New Kenilworth and then walked through the Chowringee neighborhood to the maidan, Calcutta's central park.
Our first stop was St. Paul's Cathedral. Not an impressive cathedral by European standards, but a fascinating place nonetheless, especially considering its location in the heart of south Asia. So we made our way to our next destination, across the street at the southern end of the maidan - the Victoria Memorial. The memorial is a massive marble monster of a tribute to the good queen and Empress of India, who died in 1901 after decades of British rule. It reminded me of an English version of the Reichstag or something. We made a circuit around the memorial, trying to stay cool under the hazy, oppressive Calcuttan sun. Eventually, we retreated inside the memorial, where we were moderately entertained by a lackluster museum on the rise and fall of the British Raj.
The museum grew old fast so we started the walk north through the maidan up to Sudder Street, which was where the Fairlawn hotel was located. The maidan was an odd place - wide gravel paths, fields of grass, gardens, memorials, and fountains, with highrises looming in the distance. Susanne and I agreed that it was a dusty and humid clone of Grant Park in Chicago. Very strange. As we walked along, we passed what appeared to be a military ceremony welcoming some brigadier general as commander of some division. It seemed quite British, with all of the pomp and circumstance, though one group of soldiers were parading around on short stilts. Further afield, we saw match after match of cricket. Whether it was a bunch of ragtag kids using tree limbs as bats, or a club of young professionals in freshly pressed uniforms, the cricket matches dominated the activities on the maidan. I just wish I understood how the bloody game was played.
We crossed east back into the northern end of Chowringee to reach Sudder Street. After a brief search, we found ourselves back at the Fairlawn. Since we couldn't stay, we figured we'd at least stop by for some tea or even lunch. After the concierge from the night before recognized us, we were soon greeted by the hotel's owner, Violet, and her husband. She profusely apologized for the mixup. She then said if she had been there the night before, she would have physically prevented us from going to the Old Kenilworth. "It's a disgrace," she lamented. "50 years ago, it was a jewel of a hotel, but when the owner died, her daughter Joyce inherited it and hasn't bothered to fix any of it since. She's ruined it by letting it fall apart. A disgrace." We talked for a while over a cold drink, and she then suggested we stay for lunch, which would be served in about 20 minutes (a uniformed waiter would announce lunch by banging a small gong - how quaint).
At the sound of the gong, we sat with an English couple from Yorkshire who had been traveling around India for two months. They had just returned from a lovely stay at the beach resort of Kovalam, on the southwestern coast in Kerala state. They strongly suggested we go if we got the chance. We were then joined by a fascinating older gentleman from Ireland named Andy. He looked as if he were in his late 70s, his face weathered and unshaven - oddly reminiscent of Timothy Leary in his last year. Andy had ben traveling to India regularly since 1964, and talked at length about Varanasi and the cities of Tamil Nadu. Susanne mentioned she was from Chicago, and Andy said that he had worked with Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1940s. He had traveled the US extensively (probably more than we had), back in the days when "you could hitchhike your way for weeks at a time through Arizona, trading places with the driver and taking shifts while one of you would steer while the other would hold the loaded pistol - just in case..."
Andy was a great fan of the States: "Even though it's changed much over the last 50 years, it's still a place where strangers will help another person in need when they really need it." This, he added, was quite unlike India, where he thought, that there was little regard for human life, sadly. He cited the suffering of street lepers in Calcutta, and how they are ignored by everyone as an example. Andy also discussed the short-sightedness of Jawaharlal Nehru and Muhammad 'Ali Jinnah when they decided to partition the subcontinent into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. "It was the greatest and most foolish political tragedy of the century," he lamented. "India has never recovered from it. It probably never will. They were arrogant men and their countries paid for it." Lunch, desert, and tea were long gone by this point, but Andy kept talking. He was wise and reflective on history, and loved to argue over the course of events - I respected that. As we finally departed, he said, "Andy, Susanne, my dear, if we ever meet again, and I hope we do, I may no longer be able to remember your names, but I promise that your faces and this conversation will be committed to memory. I promise you that." Upon these words, he put on his hat and walked away.
We lingered a while longer at the Fairlawn, sitting in the sunny garden courtyard. I couldn't believe we were in Calcutta. I had expected a city as dismal as Delhi, but instead, I've found it to be a relaxed, cultured, and dignified place, with wide boulevards and green gardens. Of course, poverty ran rampant around the city, but yet there was still something in the air which had everyone smiling. I always thought the nickname "The City of Joy" was a joke. It certainly isn't.
Back at the New Kenilworth, we picked up our bags and taxied over to Dum Dum Airport (whose name comes from the local Dum Dum Barracks, where the infamous dumb-dumb bullets were made). Leaning over to pull my backpack out of the trunk, I hit my head on the trunk door, right on a rusty corner. Good thing my tetanus shot was up to date, because it was a nasty gash. We then entered the domestic terminal - a clean, modern facility that was by far the nicest airport in India. Check-in and security was a breeze, and there was plenty of time for me to wash clean my new wound. We then wrote in our journals as we waited, until the plane was ready to depart. We left on time, just before 6pm.
It was pouring rain when we arrived in Madras, just after 8 o'clock. Unlike the rest of the subcontinent, which had tried out the month earlier, Madras and Tamil Nadu state were just hitting the peak of their second monsoon of the season, averaging about half an inch of rain a day. Because of the storm, the taxi drivers all wanted to charge us an extortionate RS250 for the trip to our hotel, the Broadlands. There wasn't much we could do about it, so we grabbed a cab and headed north. It rained on and off throughout the drive, but when we pulled into the street that led to the Broadlands, the driver told us to get out and walk because the street was too flooded for him to drive down it. Soaked to the bone, we slogged our way through the running rapids that had once been a street til we entered the hotel.
Once there, we were lucky in the sense that we got the last available room. Then again, we were unlucky in the sense that the rooms improved as the number of the room increased, and we were stuck with Room 1. It was dirty, damp, and the toilet wreaked. It was only five dollars for the night, but I was beginning to question how LP goes about choosing hotels for recommendation. Susanne and I were both in a pissy mood from the rain and the lousy accommodations. We decided then and there to get outta Dodge as early as possible the next day and head south to Mahabalipuram, the small fishing village and beach resort famous for its 7th century temples. It may be raining there, we figured, but at least we might get some peace and quiet.
Posted by acarvin at 9:34 PM
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November 13, 1996
Arrival in Varanasi; a lazy day of recovery
I awoke around 7am, just as the train had pulled into Lucknow. I asked someone how long it would be until we got to Varanasi. Six hours, they said. So much for the promptness of Indian express trains.
I tried to write in my journal for awhile. Susanne was asleep, dead to the world. I took it as a good sign - at least she wasn't up and around puking her brains out. I too drifted back and forth into sleep for a few hours, but was fully up and running by 10am. Susanne eventually got up, not long after that. She looked exhausted. We were both puzzled by her illness - we had only been in India for a few days, and the so-called Delhi Belly usually takes at least a week to incubate. We chalked up the incident to a combination of her generally weak stomach and bad luck.
I spent the rest of the train ride reading and munching on some sponge cake that had been my only nourishment since Agra (I purchased it at the Mathura train station). We finally pulled into Varanasi Cantonnment Station around 1pm. Susanne was feeling pretty weak, but managed to lug her backpack down to the exit. Getting to a hotel, though, would be trickier than that. We knew that Varanasi's rickshaw-wallahs were notorious for receiving high hotel commissions, and if you ask one of them to take you to a place that wasn't on their commission list, they'd tell you excuses such as "Hotel full," "Muslim problems," or even "Burnt down," and refuse to take you there.
We didn't have a reservation anywhere, but we wanted to stay in the Old Town along the Ganges. The LP guide suggested a few hotels in this area, even though it warned that the accommodations there were much more spartan than those places closer to the train station. But Old Town was where all the action was, and we thought it would be nice to actually have a place to stay with a view of the Ganges down below. So for kicks, just to see if the rickshaw-wallahs would play along, I went up to the first one I saw and said, "Scindia Guest House - how much?" To this, he responded, "Full booked, you should stay at..." We walked away quickly. Our next rick-wallah agreed to take us there, but his autorickshaw wouldn't start. After two or three minutes of him desperately trying to remove the crud off of its spark plug, we climbed out. Susanne was beginning to look really sick, and the cab was so hot, it seemed ludicrous to wait any longer.
Finally, we found a bicycle rickshaw-wallah who offered to take us there for 10 rupees, about 30 cents. We climbed aboard, backpacks on our laps, and started the leisurely ride through the crowded streets of Varanasi's New Town. The roads were filthy and noisy like any other Indian city, but as we got closer to the Old Town, the streets began to thin out. Taxi's couldn't fit through the narrow roads of Gadaulia, the area which separated New and Old Towns. Then, it appeared that even our small bicycle rick wouldn't fit through the twisting alleyways that were up ahead. We must be close to Old Town. Even stranger, the road was eerily silent - at least by Indian standards - apart from the jingling bells of the bicycles.
After a few more minutes, our driver pulled up to an alleyway and said, "Bicycle ends. You walk." Indeed, the alley ahead of us was so thin that you practically had to walk single file just to fit through it.
Once we paid the wallah, a short, bearded man who looked more Armenian than Indian approached us and said, "Where would you like to go today?" Clearly he wanted to take us to a hotel of his choice for a commission, but nevertheless, I replied, "Scindia Guest House. Only Scindia." "No problem, no problem, let's go. You will not be able to find it yourself," he said, as he began to walk and wave his hand for us to follow him. I didn't like the idea of following this guy, but then again, he was right. We had no idea how to get there, and the map of Varanasi in the LP guide would not offer us the detail needed to figure it out on our own. Besides, if he was going to cause problems, there were certainly enough people around in the alleys for us to stir trouble back in his face if necessary. We agreed to give him a chance.
The three of us winded our way down the alleyway from one passage to another. The streets had a truly mediaeval character to them, with paan-wallahs, incense-wallahs, crockery-wallahs, and every other kind of entreprenurial-wallah you can imagine, were crammed into one stall after another. The alleys were never more than four or five feet across, so we had to compete with all the cows, goats, dogs, beggars, and kids that served as obstacles along the path. We walked for five minutes and Susanne was obviously getting tired. The man then said, "First, I show you my hotel, Puja Guest House," to which I retorted, "No, you promised to take us to Scindia. Do not break your promise." "No problem, no problem," he muttered, again motioning us to follow. I was getting a bit concerned since I never figured the walk would take this long. We probably hadn't covered that much distance, but Susanne's illness and my growing impatience were making the walk feel longer and longer.
Then out of the blue, the alleys opened up and ahead of me, I could see the water of the Ganges. We had reached one of the ghats, the ceremonial stone steps that lead down into the water, which allow people to perform their bathing rituals and pujas. This particular ghat wasn't very crowded - perhaps eight or nine Hindus were bathing and chanting. But at last, I thought, I had made it to the Ganges, the sacred river of India and one of the most famous bodies of water in the world. Even though we still hadn't reached our hotel, our proximity to the river allowed me to get my bearings on the map, so if we needed to, we could figure out the way to our hotel if something went wrong.
We started up a dusty, debris covered hill, and we could see the words "Scindia Guest House" on a white brick multistory building above us. The top floor must have been 150 feet over the Ganges - a tough walk up, but undoubtedly worth it for the view, I figured. Indeed, the steep climb exhausted me and damn near killed Susanne, who had to drop her pack and sit in the hallway of the hotel while I examined the room.
To call the room that was shown to me 'spartan' would be generous - it was about 10 feet square, twin bed made out of a slab of wood, half-painted walls, toilet without toilet seat (at least it had a bowl), and moths fluttering around the one working light. Asking price: three bucks a night. We'll take it.
Susanne was really ready to crash as this point, so I decided to hike around and find some bread for her to eat. I had no map of the Old City - I'm not sure if even one exists - so I tried to backtrack along the route from whence we came. It was late afternoon, but because Varanasi's alleyways were so long and thin, very little sunlight was getting through to the pavement below. Cows were everywhere, which made life somewhat difficult, as I tried to climb around then on the common occasions I found them blocking the entire path (and of course, the cow patties they left in their wake were an endless obstacle in their own right). I found a cafe at some crowded guest house near the center of Old Town. I ordered a naan to take back for Susanne, and a pakora for myself. A few minutes later, I was handed a plate with a piece of naan sliced into a dozen thin pieces (not very handy for carrying) and a plate of eight pakoras. Whatever. I ended up eating about half of the pakoras and a couple of Teems to boot.
It was getting even darker outside so I returned to the hotel. The sun was just about to set, so after checking in on Susanne and getting her the naan and something to drink, I climbed up to the rooftop terrace to check out the view. The panorama of the Ganges was spectacular, barren and sandy on one side, and crowded with ghats and temples on the other. Directly in front of me, about 100 feet down river, were the cremation ghats, whose funeral pyres billowed smoke upwards in an endless puff. Sitting on the roof was a Korean man whose name I never got and an American from New York named John who had met the Korean guy the week before in Agra and had been travelling together since. John was a TOEFL instructor who had taken off a few months from work to see India. They had been in Varanasi for six nights, so they were very helpful in offering some suggestions on how we should budget our time during our brief three-day stay.
Once it was completely dark outside, I decide to wander down to the cremation ghat. I figured I would get lost if I tried to go anywhere further afield, so the cremation ghats seemed like an interesting and convenient choice. As I left the rooftop, I could see that the number of cremations had increased, for the plumes of smoke were getting thicker. I could hear metal bells hammering away repetitively in a ceremony that sounded a lot like Indonesian gamelan music, but without a distinct melody.
While I walked, I noticed that I was the only westerner around. There were many people about, hanging out and talking, smoking hash, chewing paan, even playing chess. No one seemed to take notice of me as I passed along through the piles of fresh timber that were stockpiled just behind the ghat. I climbed up to an octagonal tower, where the only other occupant was a large brahma bull that appeared to not mind my company as long as I allowed it to chew its cud in peace. From the edge of the tower, I could look directly down at the main cremation ghat, about 20 feet below. A dozen or so pyres were burning at any given time, some with corpses still wrapped in silk over piles of fresh wood, others not more than a pile of cinders. Other corpses were in between these phases, and you could clearly see and smell the bodies burning away. Arms and legs, torsos and heads carbonizing in the moonlight, with the sounds of pops and squirts breaking the steady crackle of the fires. It was like a group protesters were burning effigies, but I knew better. These were real people that were probably alive just a few hours earlier.
I could only stand about 15 or 20 minutes on my perch above the pyres. The smoke and ash were blowing my way and the sulfuric clouds became unbearable after awhile, so I returned to the hotel to get ready for bed. Susanne was fast asleep, so I treaded as quietly as possible. Tomorrow would be another early morning for us, as we planned to take a boat out on the Ganges before dawn to watch the sunrise. I then looked down at my clothes and realized I needed to step outside for a moment. I gave my shirt a shake. A rain of ash fell to the ground.
Posted by acarvin at 10:31 PM
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November 12, 1996
The train to Agra; a tour of the Taj Mahal, the Agra Fort, and Fatehpur Sikri; Mr. Toad's Wild Ride to Mathura; the overnight train to Varanasi
4:30am. God, I didn't want to get up. Of course, if we missed the Shatabdhi Express train to Agra at 6:15am, our plans would be severely tripped up. We needed to get to Agra early enough to see all of the major sites, catch a ride of some kind to Mathura, the home of the Hare Krishna movement, and then hop on the overnight train to Varanasi at 8:55pm. It was gonna be a tight schedule. We took no chances and got to the New Delhi Railway Station by 5:45 or so. The train arrived at six, and left promptly with us securely on board. I talked with a few Brits who had been to India and Agra before, and they seemed confident that we could accomplish all of our day's plans and still have enough time to catch our train from Mathura.
The Agra Cantonnment Station - I had been told that this was the most dangerous train station in India, at least in terms of getting robbed or ripped off. Despite this reputation, we felt that we were clearly in control of the situation. Now we just had to check our backpacks in storage, find a tour that was suitable to our needs, and get started with the day. Baggage check was a breeze at the left luggage facility - nice and bureaucratic, with lots of paperwork - I felt at ease that our bags would survive the day there. We then started to talk to the man at the inquiry counter, but I couldn't understand a word of his English. I then saw another westerner, a man in his mid- to late 20s, with a big backpack in hand. We struck up a conversation quickly - his name was Philip, he was a computer programmer from Boulder, and he had been in India for about as long as we had. We decided that three's company would provide us with better leverage in organizing a private tour, so we checked his bag and prepared ourselves for walking the gauntlet of tourguides, touts, and pickpockets.
We were soon approached by a group of men. One of them said, "Let us be your guide - fixed prices, set by the Agra government, we promise, no problem..." He handed me a laminated card off of the inquiry desk counter - a private tour of the Taj Mahal, the Agra Fort, and Fatehpur Sikri would be 550 rupees for all three of us. About 20 dollars, or seven bucks a head. The price was higher than the standard tourist bus excursion, but this way, we had private transport and could potentially control the time of our return. To be sure that this guy was legit, I asked for his registration as a tourguide licensed by Uttar Pradesh Tourism. He gave it to me. He offered us a private car and driver, with us calling the shots of how much time we wanted to spend at each place. I was prepared to agree to it, but first I made it very clear that we would pay 550 rupees total, for all three of us, and not 550 rupees per person. "No problem, no problem," he said. I repeated my concern, and said that if he asked us for anything more than 550 rupees, we would walk away at the end of the day and pay nothing. "550 rupees, promise," he said, and grabbed my hand to shake it. The man behind the inquiry desk handed him a signout sheet and asked me to initial it. Susanne, Philip and I huddled for a moment and decided to go for it, but we made it clear with the man one last time that there would be no funny business. "No problem," he repeated again, this time with a wide smile on his face.
We exited the train station and climbed into his driver's white Ambassador as we began the short drive to Shah Jehan's masterpiece, the Taj Mahal. After about five minutes, the driver pulled over and our guide, who had finally introduced himself as Bobby, said we would now change cars. Another Ambassador pulled alongside. I looked at our gas gauge and saw we were almost out of fuel, so it appeared we were filling up by changing to a new car. It felt more like a getaway strategy, but we elected to not be overly concerned.
Ten minutes later, we pulled up to the outer gate of the Taj. Bobby, a keen talker whose commanded a strong English vocabulary despite his thick accent, spent a few minutes going over the history of the Taj. He said the Mughals were Persians from Tehran. Whatever happened to them being Mongol/Turkic descendants of Ghengis Khan from Central Asia? Well, I didn't feel like starting an argument. Bobby then surprised us with a warning: "The Taj has many bad people who will rip you off. Hide your valuables under your clothes, hold your camera tight, and don't let anyone touch you." Comments such as these from Bobby were making us feel a lot more comfortable with him, and as the day would progress, we'd recognize that if anything else, he was always sincere and upfront about everything.
We purchased our tickets and headed down a stone path that opened into a garden. Ahead and to our right we could see a large red gate, beyond which lie the Taj Mahal itself. We joined the queue to pass through the gate, where we had our bags searched and had to walk through a metal detector (which seemed somewhat pointless, since each and every one of us set the thing off with our metal-laden cameras in hand). And then there it was, the Taj Mahal. Its status as a national symbol ranks as an equal to the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, or even the Pyramids of Egypt, but unlike those structures I never actually figured I'd have the opportunity to visit them in the foreseeable future. It was in marvelous condition, even by western standards - too many of India's great monuments have withered because of neglect. It may be almost 350 years old, but the Taj still carries the luster of a modern structure.
The morning had turned very hot and rather hazy, and soon felt the oppressiveness of the sun as we walked through the charbagh garden down the Taj's all-white marble (and highly reflective) stone path. I kept stopping for pictures, while Susanne repeated her mantra of the morning: "I will not take 100 pictures of the Taj. I will not take 100 pictures of the Taj..." Philip wisely suggested that we work our pay to the inside of the Taj first and then get our pictures on the way out. That way we wouldn't waste precious visiting time til near the end.
The closer we got to the stairwell up to the Taj's main platform, the more dense the company around us became. There were hundreds of people jammed up front - mostly Westerners in large tour groups, with the occasional large Indian tourist family. I felt like I was at Disney world or back home in Washington lining up to see the Hope Diamond at the Smithsonian. I didn't like it.
We left our shoes outside as we ascended the stairs to the main platform and entered the Taj's tomb chamber. Unfortunately, the basement entrance to the cenotaph of Shah Jehan and his wife, Arjumand Banu Begam (better known as Mumtaz Mahal, "Elect of the Palace"), were closed for renovation, so people prostrated themselves on the floor to get the best angle down the basement steps into the cenotaph. If I didn't no better, it would have looked like people were paying devout respect to the dead emperor. With the real cenotaph closed, we had to satisfy ourselves with the false tombs that sat directly above the cenotaph basement. Hordes of visitors paced the bogus mausoleum clockwise, pressed together as if we were visiting the Mona Lisa. The false tomb was surrounded by a thin, almost translucent wall of intricately cut pietra dura inlaid marble, sparkling with thousands of gems. The costs Shah Jehan spent to build this tribute to his favorite wife must have been enormous (he was probably driven by guilt over her death, for she died in trasit while pregnant with their 14th child, having been dragged by Shah Jehan on one of his many Deccan campaigns in the south). No wonder legend has it that his son Aurangzeb overthrew him when he suggested he'd build a second Mahal (a black one, no less) for himself and his next favorite wife. Wasteful spending gets you every time.
The three of us exited the Taj and walked around its platform, getting a marvelous view of the mosque of Shah Jehan, a stunning red sandstone building just to the left of the Taj, as well as the Jamuna river, which passed behind it, and the hazy, blurred image of the Agra fort, several kilometers upriver. After having our fill of wandering the Taj and its grounds, we headed back to meet up with Bobby. I picked up a few postcards, including a picture of Mother Theresa and a shot of the erotic art at Khajuraho, to the southeast in neighboring Madhya Pradesh.
We then made the short drive up to the Agra Fort, the older brother of Delhi's Red Fort. The Agra Fort's construction was begun by the emperor Akbar in 1565, but additions were made through the time of Shah Jehan 100 years later. It was in marvelous condition, with long courtyards that lead to numerous citadels and hidden chambers. After pausing for some Pepsis, we wandered past the massive Diwan-I-Am and across to the fort's main wall facing the Jamuna river. On the left corner of the rampart was the Mussaman Burj, or Octagonal Tower, a marble, open-air apartment built by Shah Jehan for his beloved wife, the aforementioned Mumtaz Mahal. Ironically, it was here that Shah Jehan died in 1666, having been imprisoned there by his ruthless son Aurangzeb eight years earlier. Aurangzeb is probably best known for his puritanical interpretation of Islam and his wild intolerance of Hindus, who he seemed to slaughter with relish at the drop of a hat.
In an attempt to torment his father, Aurangzeb held Shah Jehan under house arrest inside the Mussaman Burj during his father's final years, so the old emperor could view his masterwork Taj Mahal, but never visit it again. Even though Shah Jehan got the best view in the house, the wily Aurangzeb must have enjoyed knowing that Dad would never be allowed to set foot in the Taj again except for burial. He even sent his father a well-wrapped present with a message: "King Aurangzeb, your son," said the eunuch who brought in the package, "sends this plat to Your Majesty to let you see that he does not forget you." "Blessed be God," Shah Jehan responded, "that my son still remembers me." But inside the inlaid box the old king found the severed head of Dara Shukoh, his favorite son, who had been his heir apparent until the coup. Shah Jehan was so upset he went into convulsions and lost several teeth from a collision with a table. The gruesome prank was thought up by Roshanara Begun, a sister of the two brothers who had sided with Aurangzeb. (To quote Katherine Hepburn in her role as Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter, "What family doesn't have its problems?") Another daughter, Jahanara, responded by nursing him back to health and remained as his nurse until his death. Aurangzeb reigned for almost 50 years; by the time he died in 1707, the empire was in chaos and would not recover until the British co-opted it 150 years later. So even though the Mughals would reign in north India until the end of the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857-58, Aurangzeb was essentially the last Mughal emperor with any effective control of the country.
To the right of the tower was another complex, Jehangir's Palace, the Jehangiri Mahal. Akbar built the palace for his son, crown prince Jehangir, who eventually reigned for a generation following Akbar's death in 1605. Jehangir was later followed by his own son, Shah Jehan, in 1628. Unlike much of the rest of the fort, which typifies Mughal architecture and its Central Asian roots, Jehangir's Palace was influenced by elements of Hindu and Jain art, with the incorporation of elaborately carved buttresses and domed chattris. Adjacent to the Palace was a large courtyard which contained an odd octagonal pit. We couldn't figure out what it was for, but I joked it was His Majesty's Mughal Hibachi.
We wrapped up our trip to the fort and rejoined Bobby and our driver, whose name I never managed to get. Once again, our car had been switched and the original Ambassador from which we first departed had magically rematerialized. Bobby suggested we head to Fatehpur Sikri, an hour's drive to the west. We dissented and requested a lunch break. I wanted to choose something from the LP guide, but Bobby insisted on making his own recommendations. I assumed he'd be getting a commission for it. As it turned out, the first two restaurants he suggested were my first two picks out of LP anyway, but neither of them had opened yet. Bobby then suggested a third restaurant that wasn't listed, but we decided to go with his idea and give him the benefit of the doubt.
Bobby made a pretty good choice. The restaurant had a lovely grass lawn set up with tables, chairs and parasols. It wreaked of English high tea, but we thought that might be kind of cool and worth a try. As we sat outside, a family of Rajput musicians, including an adorable four-year-old in a big red turban, played Central Asian and Rajasthani folk songs. The food was quite good - we ordered afghan chicken (ground chicken with spices on skewers, grilled in a tandoor oven), a mutton curry and potato curry, as well as a selection of regular and stuffed naans. We feasted for an hour in the shade, and as we departed, Susanne got a few shots of the boy in the turban, who seemed delighted by the five rupee reward he received for posing.
We climbed back into our Ambassador and started the long drive west to Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar's mythical abandoned palace city. To get there, we first had to wind our way through the congested, colorful streets of Old Agra. It was an incredible experience, hard to put down in words. Thousands of people in markets and stalls, wearing the brightest colored saris and dhotis imaginable. Scattered pockets of Muslim women, wrapped in black or blue chadors. Little girls draped in yellow, pink, green silk. It was almost like we had been transported back to the time of Aladdin - Agra must have been an amazing crossroads between the heart of Deccan India, Central Asia, and even Afghanistan and Persia. We were also overwhelmed by Diwali candy stalls covered by swarms of flies, brahma bulls lounging around as if they owned the place, motorcycles carrying a full family of five, dogs, hogs, and the occasional monkey wandering the streets for scraps. We tried to get as much of it on film, but no photograph could ever capture the life and color that radiated from the streets of Agra that sunny afternoon.
The traffic began to thin out and we soon found ourselves along a rural path heading due west to Fatehpur Sikri. Fields of anise and other spices were almost ready for harvest. And with each passing vehicle, it always felt like a near miss - we would pass on the right of a donkey cart with ten kids packed in back as a truck barreled towards us, with have the road washed out by monsoons, and cows napping on what was left of the pavement - and yet we would hurl past each obstacle with only inches to spare. No wonder Indian vehicles don't have rear-view mirrors on the sides of the windows, or they'd be knocked off on their first drive through an intersection. Barely a minute went by without us holding our breaths as we avoided another near miss. At one point, Philip said to Bobby, "Tell him he drives very well." The driver, an older and darker man who had yet to speak the entire trip, smiled and said "Thank you. I understand few English." They were the only words he ever uttered.
After an hour of driving, we reached the outer walls of Fatehpur Sikri. I wondered what the circumference of the walls were - they extended as far as the eye could see. We then drove up a hill for half a mile or so to reach the main palace entrance. Akbar had built the palace in the 1570s as a happy response to the successful fertility of one of his wives. For years, they had tried to produce a male heir, so when they finally did, Akbar decided that a new palace was in order. Incredibly, Akbar and his court occupied Fatehpur Sikri for only 14 years, abandoning it for a new capital much further north in Lahore, now in Pakistan. Local storytellers will repeat the tale that Akbar was forced to leave because Fatehpur Sikri had no sustainable source of water. Modern historians now dispute this explanation as apocryphal, though; instead, it is now believed that military pressures from kingdoms to the north forced him to move to Lahore, a strategically located city that would afford Akbar a better perspective of his border situation.
From the gate, we could see a high red sandstone wall that blocked our view of what was beyond it. To the left was the Sikri Mosque - equally enormous, equally red. We headed into the main gate and around the corner of the wall to the main palace area. I know I keep using the word 'red' a lot in my descriptions of India and its stone monuments, but 'red' can't even begin to describe the absolute ruddiness of everything here - the masonry, the towers, the pavement, all a beautiful, dark, almost ochre red, truly unlike any other red I've ever seen.
We headed further into the courtyard and climbed through a small gate. This opened up into an enormous square with a series of pavilions and miniature courtyards extending in several directions for hundreds of feet. To the right, a pool of water shimmered - it had a rectangular platform in the middle of it, with four stone planks radiating out of it in order to connect it to the rest of the courtyard, sort of like a earthen charbagh in reverse. I stood at the center of the island platform while Susanne stopped to take a shot or two of me. I reciprocated and got a good picture of her on the other side of the pool, with an upside image of her reflecting in the green water.
We lost Philip for a while as he wandered off on his own. Susanne and I climbed to the fifth floor of the Panch Mahal, the highest pavilion on the plaza. Akbar apparently used to sit at the top of it to watch performances from it or to play hide and seek with his harem, who would hide within its seven stories. Akbar was also partial to playing games of pachisi or even chess in the adjacent square, using his eunuchs and harems as human chess pieces. He'd even use some of the enclosed courtyards as hunting grounds - wild and exotic beasts would be released, while he perched himself atop a pagoda or other tower with flintlock in hand. Ah, it's good to be the king.
Climbing down from the Panch Mahal, Philip reappeared, so we continued to inspect the grounds, trying to take in all of its splendour. Here was a palace city, built by perhaps the greatest of the Mughal emperors. Parts of it even had an uncanny similarity to the Forbidden City in Beijing, but on a smaller and more compartmentalized scale. Eventually, though, we started to work our way out of the palace. There was a small passageway we had neglected to visit earlier, so Susanne and popped her head in to see what we would find. A few seconds later I could hear her say, "Andy, you want to take a look at this." Inside, the gate opened up to a beautiful courtyard, about 100 feet square, with marvelous tiers of balconies on all sides. I looked to Susanne and said, "The Last Emperor," in reference to the Academy Award-winning Bertolucci film on the fall of China's final imperial dynasty. She simply said, "Uh huh," as she gazed around in wonder. We had discovered Jodh Bai's Palace, the principal residence of Akbar's harem. It was truly incredible what could be hidden around any corner at Fatehpur Sikri, let alone India itself. We would have to be mindful of avoiding other near-misses.
The mosque on the other side of the gate was getting crowded with people for mid afternoon prayers, and the descent of the sun had created a prohibitive glare for our cameras to get any acceptable pictures of it. So after a quick look of the building's entrance, we found Bobby and our driver and headed off. The ride back was quite, for we were all very tired by this point. It was 4pm by the time we reached the train station to reclaim our bags. Bobby, however, insisted that we stop to see "the fine Mughal art" before departing to Mathura. Of course, we knew immediately that this was going to be a sales pitch of some kind or another. Surprisingly, though, Bobby was open about it and admitted that he would get a commission on anything we bought. We told him up front that there was no way we were going to buy anything, but if he wanted to make a quick stop - no more than 30 minutes or so, that would be find. Just as long as we were on the road to Mathura by 5pm, we were game.
The workshop and store he took us to was called the Cottage Industry Emporium, Ltd. Very Indian, I thought. We were led to a room where eight boys, probably around 14 or 15 years old, were making pietra dura inlaid marble platters. Admittedly, the workmanship and the delicate patterns of the inlaid semiprecious stones was impressive, but I kept on seeing child labor laws flashing before my eyes. I asked them how long a single piece, about 15 inches in diameter, would take to finish. "One month," the emporium manager said. I assumed these kids weren't allowed a 9-to-5 lifestyle, so I can only imagine how many hours were put into each platter.
After being taken through a series of rooms full of stones, silks, saris, silver, jewelry, pottery, carvings, carpets, and perfumes, we politely thanked them but declined any purchases, citing the enormous price tags of hundreds and even thousands of dollars per item. We then headed back to Bobby's home base, where all the drivers hung out while waiting for their next assignment. We parted company with Philip and exchanged email addresses so we could get copies of each other's pictures. After taking a picture, we said goodbye to Bobby and our anonymous, quiet driver, as were to now take a minibus to Mathura while they headed home for the night. We paid RS 550, just as he had original quoted, but we threw in another 200 rupees for good measure. All in all, at about eight bucks a person, it wasn't a bad way to spend the day.
Susanne and I hopped into the minibus with our new driver and hit the road. The first hour of the 90-minute trip to Mathura was pretty dull, apart from a brief stop at a train crossing which allowed us to get out for few minutes and watch men on bicycles play chicken with the oncoming locomotive. But once the sun set around 6pm, the real adventure kicked into high gear. While driving Indian-style in the daytime was fun and exciting, at night it was terrifying. Indian drivers, apparently, aren't big fans of using their lights at night, except to flash other cars while passing them for driving too slowly. I felt like I was playing the old Atari 2600 game Night Driver, but instead of hurling down a pitch black, semi-deserted highway, we were hurling down a pitch black, traffic-laden, occasionally paved road that included horse-drawn carts, autorickshaws, bicycles, pedestrians, dogs, hogs, and cows. To top it all off, once we reached what appeared to be Mathura, our driver got lost. He had no idea where the train station was. If it had been any closer to our train's scheduled departure time, I think I might have lost my cool. But since we had three hours to kill there, I relaxed and hoped for the best. Within 20 minutes or so, the driven had gotten enough assistance from the locals that we made it to the train station with plenty of time to spare.
Mathura Railway Station is a swarm of people, luggage and animals coming and going all over India. It was refreshing compared to the Agra and New Delhi stations, for Mathura attracted few westerners apart from the occasional Hare Krishna pilgrim, so there were no touts whatsoever to harass us. The ticket windows had hundreds of people, if not as many as a thousand of them, jammed inside the covered courtyard that made up the entryway into the station. Though the locals stood their ground when it came to queuing for tickets, the lines were occasionally broken up by a chai-wallah offering hot tea or a wandering cow that had made its way into the station.
The train information board was all in Hindi, and the man behind the inquiry desk couldn't speak a word of English, so I made a feeble attempt to find our train number listed on the board, just to see if I could spot a time listed with it. I couldn't find it. I was getting a little concern at this point, so we wandered around until we found someone we hoped would speak English. We eventually did - a large man in a Nehru jacket, Congress hat and thick black glasses. He wore a large gold class ring on his right hand. He kindly helped us and explained that our train would come in on schedule just before 9pm on platform one, just out the next door.
As we walked the platform in search of a place to relax, I was struck by the clothes of the people waiting for the trains. I guess they were dressed just like everyone else in Uttar Pradesh, but now that I had a few hours to sit back and people-watch, the character and style of the local dress began to make sense before my eyes. So many people in heavy shawls and scarves wrapped around their heads. If you had shown me a snapshot of this scene, I would have labeled it as a train station in Kabul or Isfahan. The continuing Persian and Central Asian influence on northern India was everywhere, it seemed. I could hardly wait to see what the south of India would be like, since the Aryans, Persians and Mughals never conquered those cultures.
We sat in the First Class waiting room where we talked to a nice family from Bhopal. Their little girl, who looked around 11, spoke very good English for her age. We talked about where we were going, where she had traveled in India, and what her favorite places were (Gujerat, in western India - interesting choice). After they left for Bhopal, I went outside on the train platform, plopped myself down, and made a feeble attempt to capture the scene in a drawing. My rough image of the platform was pretty good, but I lack the artistic talent or the motor skills to draw details of all the animals and people that were there. So not wanting to ruin the drawing with lots of stick figures, my platform picture is much less crowded than the original scene that night.
At 8:30pm, 30 minutes before the train's schedule departure, an old man who was also going to Varanasi said that the train was running an hour late. No biggy, I thought. At just before 10pm, we headed out with our backpacks to platform one. We waited for a while, but there was no sign of the train. Meanwhile, a crowd had gathered next to us. Clearly we had become the main attraction at Mathura Railway Station that night, being the only westerners there. Soon we were approached by a well dressed young man, about 20ish. Being the suspicious person that I am, at first I was cautious about the questions he asked us. Soon enough, though, it became quite apparent that he was just a typical Indian college kid interested in America and wanting to practice his English.
We talked to him and his friend for about an hour (yes, the train was getting later and later). They were both juniors at Benares Hindu University in Varanasi, studying engineering. We talked about the US elections, world politics, Chicago, and other things, though Susanne and I did most of the yakking. They commented on our big backpacks and how uncomfortable they looked - "Why do you Americans and Australians wear them? They must be bad for your back," one of them said. I insisted he try mine on. "Not bad," he said, after walking in circles with my 25 pounds of clothes and junk on his back.
Finally, our train arrived soon after 11pm. Our university friends first took us to the end of the train, where they had thought our reserved berths were. It turned out we were all the way on the other end, and fearing that the train was about to leave, we made a mad dash for it. We hurdled along, steering around crowds, cows, and luggage, but just before we reached our car, I accidentally collided with a large metal dolly that was being used for loading the luggage on board. I smashed both of my shins into it and nearly did a forward flip over the thing, but I somehow managed to keep both feet planted on the ground (good thing my backpack provided ample ballast to keep me down). As my legs throbbed with pain, we jumped onto the train as it began to roll away from the platform. That was a first for me.
We found the assistant conductor, who started to review our tickets. "One person only," he then said, to our complete shock. I showed him the part of our ticket that said "Persons: 2," to which he responded by pointing to his manifest. Indeed, my name was listed, but not hers. Meanwhile, I began to notice a warm trickle down each leg - apparently the collision with that dolly had done more damage than I had thought initially. Thank god I was wearing jeans or I might had split my skin through to the bone.
Meanwhile, I began to argue persistently with the conductor. "Look, I paid for my two sleepers. What do you want to do, throw one of us off while the other goes solo to Varanasi?" He then started to scribble something down in Hinglish. "40 rupees," he then said to me with a straight face. I knew there were space on the train, but this guy was going to insist on a kickback just to keep our asses from getting tossed of the train at the next stop. "40 rupees, problem solved," he repeated. I then realized that 40 rupees was the equivalent of about $1.10, so if it was going to take a measly $1.10 bribe to avoid unnecessary misery, so be it. 40 rupees.
After our conductor extortionist completed his paperwork, he led us to our sleepers. Unfortunately, we didn't have our own compartment as we had assumed. Instead, we were in a pair of two-tiered bunks that lined the passageway down the train car. Only a curtain separated us from passengers as they walked back and forth down the car. We were given sheets and pillows, but the bunk itself was a little too firm for comfort. It was like camping on a sheet of tight rubber. I was reminded of the Star Trek: Next Generation episode where Data and Picard were getting a ride on a Klingon destroyer. Their compartment was bare, apart from a slab of steel protruding from the wall, which served as their bunk. "This is not a pleasure craft, Picard," the Klingon captain hissed. "This is not a pleasure craft, Sahib," I could hear that damn conductor say to me in my head. I made my bed, washed off my wounds with some handy-wipes and neosporin, and settled in for the night.
Yet despite the hustle and bustle from other passengers skimming by my bunk, I slept rather well. At first, the sleeper was unbearably hot, then cold, then hot again. I became adept at removing and replacing my shirt and sheets as necessary, depending on the current conditions. Then, at some god-awful hour of the night, I awoke to find Susanne plopped on top of my legs. It took me a second to regain consciousness and recognize her, so my first instinct was to give her a good swift kick to get her away from my backpack. Fortunately, I restrained myself for a second to figure out who she was. Once I got my bearings, I asked her what she was doing there. "I am sooo sick," she moaned, apparently after having spent the better part of the evening running back and forth to the Indian-style squat toilet. There wasn't much I could do besides give her some water, and a few Peptos, but I then remembered I had packed some Imodium AD for emergencies. She took one and climbed back into bed. I fell back asleep quickly.
Posted by acarvin at 8:33 PM
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November 11, 1996
Qutub Minar, Humayun's Tomb, and a taste of Indian bureaucracy
Susanne and I woke up with a clear plan of being out the door by 7am, seeing some sights for a couple of hours, and then getting to the railway station and the Indian Airlines offices to purchase tickets and reconfirm flights. Task number one was foiled by one too many hits of the snooze bar on our alarm clock. By the time we got our act together it was 8:30am, so we autorickshawed directly to the New Delhi Railway Station, an immense concrete sprawl of rickshaws, coolies, beggars, would-be tourguides, stray dogs, stray luggage, stray children, and lepers, not to mention the thousands of travelers actually trying to go someplace else.
We had been told to go to the tourist office for tourist quota tickets - regular reserved tickets were booked solid for at least two weeks. Traveling during Diwali wasn't going to be simple. I approached the inquiry desk to ask where the office was, and the man behind the counter motioned at me to meet him at the entrance to his office. He asked where we wanted to go, and we said we wanted to reach Agra first thing Tuesday morning and then catch a train to Varanasi later that same night. He shook his head as only Indians do - a left-to-right wobble that means OK - and said, "Acha, give me money and I will arrange it, no problem..." At first I was more than a little suspicious for obvious reasons. He then told us to think about it, and he returned to the inquiry desk, getting back to his regular duties for a couple of minutes.
He soon returned with forms labeled 'VIP Quota Reservations" and then started to quote train schedules and times that I knew were correct, according to that day's commuter schedule in the local English paper. Being that this man came from behind the inquiry desk and not from out of an autorickshaw, I went against my better judgment gave him some cash for the tickets. He sent another man from the office scurrying up the stairs to who-knows-where in order to work a reservations miracle for us. I concluded that the odds were in our favor, because the man went back to work, well aware that we were waiting outside the only exit to his office. If I had to wait all day to get our tickets or our money back, I would do just that.
30 minutes passed. I started to give him dirty looks while he gesticulated apologetically and mouthed the words "No problem, no problem." Susanne tried to strike up a conversation with three Japanese girls, but to no avail - she overestimated their English skills. After another 10 minutes or so, just as I was ready to give this guy an all-American tongue lashing, his young friend returned with our tickets. I took some time to review them and make sure everything was in order, while the man and his gopher waited anxiously for my approval. I told him everything was fine and I gave him 20 rupees as thanks, while he looked back proudly with an expression that screamed "I said you could trust me."
The only minor snag was that the Agra-Varanasi train was full booked for days, so the only chance we'd have to get there would be to backtrack from Agra to Mathura, an hour to the north, and then catch an overnight express to Varanasi by way of Lucknow. There were plenty of ways to get to Mathura from Agra, so our big concern was whether or not there would be time for us to get to Agra, see all the sights, and finally reach Mathura in order to catch the train.
We took an autorickshaw back to Connaught Circus and the Indian Airlines office. We had been warned that the lines for reconfirming tickets were often horrendously slow, so I was prepared for the worst. Instead, we found ourselves in a spacious office with no less than 10 separate counters. I quickly got to an agent who began to look over our tickets. He then developed a puzzled look on his face. "Where are your tickets to Agra, Jaipur, Dhaka, and Amritsar?" he asked. I said we hadn't purchased any. He said we had reservations, and wanted to know why were weren't going there. It turns out that our travel agent in the US booked reservations for every city we brainstormed a trip to, but never bothered to cancel them after we had settled on a final itinerary.
The agent was not pleased. He started to cancel the incorrect reservations, but then he said that there wasn't a flight from Kathmandu to Calcutta on the 21st of November, despite what it said on our tickets. Somehow, our travel agent had booked us on a flight that didn't exist on that particular day. We were potentially stranded in Kathmandu for another day. The reservations agent was clearly irritated by all of this. To make matters worse, he said he saw no trace of our other tickets to Madras and then back to Delhi, but if I wanted it, he would book them for us. My blood began to boil as I considered the prospects of having to repurchase over $700 worth of tickets all over again. But we had little choice but to do whatever he asked, so I frustratingly said, "Just do it." At this point, the computer network crashed. It was almost funny. In fact, I somehow remained mostly unstressed about the situation and patiently sat down with Susanne, who was enjoying the antics of a small French boy.
The computer terminals were up and running 15 minutes later. I occupied myself with a young Sikh boy sitting on the counter. We started to make funny faces at each other, but once I ran out of all the contortions I could think of, he got bored and looked away. Susanne was always better at this kind of stuff. By now, though, the agent was wrapping up his work with us. He handed me my tickets with some new printouts, and then told us to have a pleasant journey. That was it. No more reissued tickets, no new credit card bills. It was almost noon and the morning was wasted, but at least we had the peace of mind knowing that our travel arrangements for the rest or the trip were secure.
We hired an autorickshaw driver for a couple of hours to shuttle us around to some of Delhi's more distant sites. The driver took us south through the heart of Sir Edwin Lutyen's New Delhi - India Gate, Rajpath, and the Secretariat Buildings, all of which looked oddly out of place, perhaps more at home in Washington DC, Paris, or even Nurenburg. The marbled Edwardian grandeur of New Delhi was distinctly un-Indian - another clear reminder of the immortality of the British Raj.
Our first stop was the Qutub Minar, a 12th-century mosque and mausoleum complex best known for its minar, a gargantuan 240-foot tower, the tallest stone tower in the world. We could see the minar in the the distance as we drove closer - the workmanship and detail was magnificent. The minar was constructed by Qutub-id-din Aibak, the Afghan slave-general who sacked Delhi in 1193 for his master, Muhammad of Ghur, and became its sultan upon Ghur's death in 1206, thus beginning an Islamic reign of north India that was to last until 1858.
The ticket line to get in the complex was long, but a woman's only line helped speed up the process. After squeezing through a crowd of autorickshaw-wallahs, postcard salesmen and snake charmers, we entered the site. It was lush and green, with hundreds of Indian tourists and school groups meandering the grounds. We first approached Qutub-Id-Din's mosque, the oldest in India. Much of it was in ruin, but certain sections were still in impressive condition, with several dozen columns gracing the courtyard. In the center of the mosque was a 30-foot iron pillar, estimated to be at least 1500 years old. Yet the pillar has never shown any signs of rust - its iron composite still baffles scientists today. To the right of the mosque lay the ruins of an unfinished tower, the Alai Minar, begun by one of Qutub's successors, Ala-ud-din Khalji, about 100 years later. Apparently Ala-ud-din planned to build this monument twice as high as Qutub's, but he died suddenly and interest in the project soon waned, leaving a huge stump of stone that looked a lot like a replica of Devil's Tower in Wyoming.
We went to the left through the mosque's mausoleum complex. The style of the stone cutting and archways was very reminiscent of an English abbey, it seemed. We then visited the Qutub Minar itself. Up close, it looked like an ancient stone lighthouse - I kept on thinking of the Pharos of Alexandria and whether or not it might have looked similar. Qutub-ud-din's name literally means 'axis of the faith' - an appropriate choice considering how central this tower was to his newly founded sultanate. We weren't allowed to climb inside the tower, due to a stampede incident a few years back that killed several schoolkids. A shame, really, for the view must have been magnificent.
After wandering through the gardens with our driver (a nice enough man but with questionable profit motives), we left for the tomb of Humayun (reigned 1530-1540, deposed 1540-1555, reigned again 1555-1556), the second of the six great Mughal emperors, which therefore made him a direct descendant of Timur and Genghis Khan. Just outside the tomb complex we drove around a small circus, in which stood a large blue domed structure, the Sabz Burj (literally, 'blue tower'). The ancestral link between Mughal architecture and its Central Asian and Turkic forebears was obvious here - its dome and beautiful blue tiles could have just as easily graced the the Registan of Samarkand or the mosques of Bukhara.
Entrance to the tomb was a dollar, most of which went to the outrageous camera fees, as usual. We could see the dome of the tomb jutting out beyond a secondary entrance, and to the right were several temple structures that appeared to be several centuries older than the 16th century tomb (turns out I was wrong - they were contemporary mosques at the time, but had fared less successfully over the centuries). We continued ahead through the next entrance gate and then found ourselves confronting the tomb itself, 100 yards ahead down a gardened path. The tomb was splendid, with red and white sandstone and intricate geometric designs of stars of David and swastikas, both ancient Hindu symbols adopted by the Mughals. The domed tomb complex was on a raised platform which required one to climb a dozen steps on a steep incline. The angle became the obvious butt of jokes, for old Humayun himself died when he tripped down the high steps of the library which stood just to the right of the tomb.
We walked clockwise around the structure until we found the tomb's main entrance on the south side. The tomb itself was a simple marble slab lying directly below the dome. The acoustics inside caused all sound to echo well, which Susanne tested with a short soprano burst when no one else was around. We then climbed down the south side stairs and checked out the aforementioned library of Humayun's unfortunate demise. No one seemed to be going inside of it, but we soon realized why. We poked our heads in and saw scores of bats perched on the ceiling. An unusual rotten smell that we quickly concluded was bat guano permeated the air. Not feeling very welcome, we turned around and strolled back towards the exit, getting a nice picture of a brahma bull munching on some grass in front of the tomb.
We lazily continued along the gardens on the perimeter of the tomb and made our way to the exit. It was now 3pm, and we were quite hungry and parched. A quick bottle of coke helped quench our thirst so we decided to walk down the road to find the tomb of Nizamuddin, the great Sufi saint who died penniless after giving his wealth to the poor of Delhi, including Hindus as well as fellow Muslims. At first we couldn't find the proper side street that lead to the entrance, so we backtracked and turned at the first alley we could find. If we couldn't locate the tomb quickly, we'd skip it, give into our stomachs' demands and return to Connaught for some grub.
We were not prepared for what we found down that alley. Despite the fact we were in New Delhi, we stumbled onto an alleyway that was more tragic and destitute than anything we had seen in Old Delhi. The streets were teaming with Sufi worshippers heading to mid-afternoon prayers at the Nizamuddin shrine, which lay somewhere further ahead. But along the gutter was one wretched leper after another, missing arms, legs, ears, and other indescribable deformities. A small girl, no older than four, filthy and in tatters, began to follow us around trying to grab my hand with every step, while crying, "For food, sir; for food, madam," over and over. No matter where we walked, she followed, inches from my side.
Even though we were a mere dozen or so yards from Nizamuddin's tomb, Susanne and I knew that were not up for the stressful task of visiting it today. So we walked as fast as possible to the closest autorickshaw stand. The little girl followed. We climbed in the rickshaw. She tried to reach in through the side of the cab, grabbing my leg. We began to drive off. She ran along side the rickshaw as fast as she could, until we finally speeded away at too great a speed for her to keep up. We soon arrived at Connaught Place, stunned and silent. I couldn't believe how much the scene at the shrine had affected us. Connaught was such a different world compared to the third world slums around Nizamuddin - now we were among clothing stores, cafes, travel agencies, banks, and upscale shops. I couldn't believe that only a couple of kilometers separated these two existences.
It was now about 4pm. Lunch had turned into an early dinner, so we decided to try the United Coffee Shop. It was a lovely place with high ceilings, large mirrors, and chandeliers, with every table packed with upscale Indians and a few westerners thumbing through Lonely Planet guides. We were soon seated, so we ordered a paneer dosa, rogan jhosh, and a plate of naan. I even broke down and had my first beer of the trip - a large bottle of Kingfisher. Not exactly tasty, but thoroughly refreshing after a long and hot day.
The food was marvelous and the ambience was relaxing, but then they started to play a song that distinctively sounded like the Macarena. We didn't recognize it at first, for it was faster and more techno-sounding than the popular American version. But the CD continued into what was to be an hour-long international Macarenathon, with at least a dozen versions I didn't even know existed. The restaurant's other patrons continued to enjoy their meals while Susanne and I were transfixed by the music. We concluded it was conspiracy of some sort, how the Macarena had successfully penetrated every culture in the world. I was now time for the invasion to begin.
Because we knew we'd have to be at 4:30am the next day to catch the train to Agra, we lazed away the evening back at the hotel. Susanne napped while I returned to Nirula's restaurant for a yogurt and some tea that never arrived, despite several attempts to receive it. I worked on my journal for a bit, but I ended up secretly enjoying the company sitting next to me. There was a thin German man, with specs, a goatee, and covered in sweat - a spitting image of John Hurt in Midnight Express. Next to him sat a tall Tamil man, dressed in a red sweater, who said nothing and did little the entire time except play with his food. And the best of the lot was an honest-to-goodness sadhu - a Hindu holyman - about 50 years old, in saffron robes, shoeless, with long fingernails and dreadlock wrapped up into a vertical beehive. The German talked quickly in Hindi, chugging black coffee and scratching what had to be over 100 mosquito bites on his arms. The Tamil played with his food, still not saying a word. And the sadhu, of all things, chainsmoked while drinking a bottle of Black Label beer and eating two personal pizzas at once. I had found my amusement for the evening.
I returned to the hotel room around 7pm. Susanne was out cold, and when I woke her up, she ordered me away for another hour. I grabbed a Teem from the fridge (yes, they still drink Teem in India) and sat out in the veranda on a wicker sofa under a slowly spinning fan. As I sat there and wrote, I felt as if I were a guest of some dying vestige of the Raj. By 8pm, I returned to the room and Susanne began to stir. We watched the news and some hilarious British children's puppet program that had been redubbed into Hindi. Bedtime was 10pm - that would give us a good six hours to sleep and dream of a successful lightning raid on Agra the next day.
Posted by acarvin at 9:13 PM
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November 10, 1996
Getting to know Old Delhi
We got up to the sound of street traffic around 9:30am. I felt I had had a good night's sleep, but Susanne argued otherwise - apparently I had awoken in the night, completely startled and confused, and then began to talk about the FBI in my sleep. She guessed that it had something to do with watching "The Rock" during the flight. I surmised it was some kind of X-Files thing.
Susanne didn't have much of an appetite yet, but I insisted on getting something to nosh on, so we stopped at Nirula's sweet shop. I got a "cheese biscuit," which I soon discovered was a biscuit of cheese-flavored dough and hot chilis. Not exactly what I was used to for breakfast. We walked around Connaught Circus to the Indian tourist bureau, where a nice Punjabi man gave us suggestions for purchasing train tickets to Agra and Varanasi, as well as what reasonable taxi fares around Delhi should be. He also confirmed a rumour I had read somewhere on the Net - the Taj Mahal was closed on Mondays for renovations. This now meant we'd have to go to Agra on Tuesday with our backpacks, store them somewhere, and then catch an overnight train to Varanasi. I wasn't looking forward to figuring out the logistics for that.
We left the tourist office and had a couple of delicious masala dosas for brunch at the Kovil restaurant. From Connaught Circus, we hailed an autorickshaw and headed north to Old Delhi to visit the city's Jama Masjid ("Friday Mosque"), the enormous 17th century Mosque of Shah Jehan, the Mughal emperor best known for building the Taj Mahal. Our timing was quite poor, though - noon prayers had just begun, and the mosque would be closed for the next hour. We decided to hike down and across the crowded streets of Old Delhi, through the maidan (Delhi's equivalent of a Central Park) to Lal Qila, the Red Fort. The fort is an immense red Agra sandstone complex built by Shah Jehan just before 1650. It took us 20 minutes just to walk alongside the fort's western wall and moat to reach the main entrance. While Susanne stopped to tie her shoes, we were accosted by two women in saris who pinned flags of India on our shirts and demanded a donation for their "school." Just to get them to go away, I handed them two rupees, about six cents, to which they responded by saying "Americans must pay paper money," which I ignored as we walked towards the ticket office.
We purchased our passes and entered through the enormous Lahore Gate. Inside we walked through a long covered bazaar, the Chatta Chowk, which was packed with touristy gift shops (interestingly enough, the Chowk was a bazaar in Shah Jehan's time as well). At the end of the bazaar we reached a small roundabout which was followed by another red sandstone building, the Naqqar Khana ('the drum house'). In the Mughal years, the khana was a musicians' quarters, who would perform the the emperor five times a day from its second story. Now, though, it was an empty shell.
I was beginning to wonder when this would get interesting, but finally we found ourselves exiting the structure and entering an elongated grassy courtyard, at the end of which was the Diwan-I-Am, the emperor's hall of public audiences. In its prime, the Diwan and the Naqqar Khana were connected by an ornate covered hall, but the centuries had taken their toll and at that was left was the walkway and the greenery which graced both sides of it. We admired the Mughal architecture of the Diwan, a hypostyle hall nine bays wide and three bays deep. The emperor would use the hall as the place where citizens of the empire could come to redress for grievances and settle disputes. The Mughals prided themselves on their sense of justice, so they would always maintain a Diwan-I-Am at each of their palaces. Eventually, we made our way round to the back of it, where we found acres of grass and gardens, dotted by several white sandstone complexes. The gardens were in the Persian-influenced charbagh style - square grids of grass bisected by marble irrigation channels. It was a peaceful and relatively quite place to relax, so we lounged in the grass for awhile to take in the scenery. As we sat there, we noticed the echo of a feedback-riddled PA system that was emanating from a large circus tent on the northeast corner of the maidan. The effect of the sounds floating over the green pastures of the Fort and its gardens was quite surreal, but yet seemed totally normal for Delhi - a city of so many contradictions and oddities.
Susanne and I spent about 45 minutes wandering from hall to hall in the gardens. At the far end of the fort was the Diwan-I-Khas, the hall of private audiences, where Shah Jehan would sit on his legendary Peacock Throne- that is, until it was hustled away to Tehran by invading Persians in the 18th century. As its name would suggest, the Diwan-I-Khas was where the emperor would meet privately with his ministers and members of his court. The interior of the Diwan was covered with complex pietra dura inlaid engravings of bejeweled flowers. And along the edges of the walls read the famous Mughal exclamation:
"If there be a paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here."
A paradise it must have been, but even today it is an insular one, for just behind the Diwan and beyond the moat we could see an enormous open-air bazaar crowded with thousands of Delhi-wallahs. We could tell from our view next to the throne platform that this bazaar wasn't the type hoarded by throngs of tourists; instead, it was a true-to-life south Asian flea market where everything from carpets to camels could be hocked for the right amount of rupees.
After a brief visit to a dark and dank museum of Mughal art, we paused for a couple of cokes at a refreshment stand. We relaxed for about 20 minutes, which was time well spent for people-watching. The vast majority of visitors going by were Indian tourists, apart from the occasional westerner, who could easily be spotted with a copy of the Lonely Planet guide in hand and that damn paper Indian flag pinned to their chests (as an aside, I should probably point out here that Sus and I had earlier removed our flags, for we concluded they were the equivalent of us wearing badges that announced to Delhi's many touts, "We are tourists, please take advantage of us.")
We headed out of the Red Fort and crossed the road to Chandni Chowk, the largest bazaar in Old Delhi. The Chowk ran east-west for about a mile, with dozens of tributary bazaars radiating down its many alleyways. In Shah Jehan's day, Chandni Chowk was the central commercial thoroughfare of Shahjehanabad, the vast capital city he built after abandoning his other great capital, Agra. Today it is still just as alive with activity, hopelessly congested with buyers, hawkers, and gawkers, though it appeared that most of the items being sold were day-to-day things like shoes, mops, even TV sets. Susanne and I had planned to work our way west and then southeast back to the Jama Masjid, but first we took a side trip down one of the many alleyways extending south of the Chowk. The alley was alive with people preparing for tonight's Diwali festivities, lighting candles, stringing garlands of orange carnations onto strings. A woman began to sing and dance as a man drummed a tabla. A crowd soon formed. It seemed like such a timeless moment, reminiscent of the winding alleyways of Cairo's Khan-al-Khalili or some other eastern market.
As we returned to Chandni Chowk and hung a left towards the road to Jama Masjid, I started to develop what I soon realized was a caffeine withdrawal headache. It became worse with each rickshaw horn blast and with each cry of the chai-wallahs passing by - a tortuous cacophony that was devoid of any potential relief. After ten minutes or so of this, I noticed that my aches were affecting my concentration, and that we were becoming somewhat lost. I felt like we were heading in the right direction, but the distance we needed to travel was much further than I had imagined. Our solution to our dilemma literally ran over my foot - a bicycle rickshaw. We hopped on board, sitting on a thin rubber pad that clung precariously to the bicycle. As we rode along, I could tell that my concerns were justified, for the trip to Jama Masjid took 15 minutes, even by bike.
At the mosque, we climbed the steps once again and started to walk in when we were reminded to take off our shoes. As fate would have it, by the time we bared our feet, the muezzin called out to announce the beginning of late afternoon prayers. Once again, we had been beaten by the tenets of Islam. Before a mullah was able to tell us to leave, we got a brief look at the immense courtyard inside the mosque, which easily held over 25,000 people in prayer. If we had time, we'd try again tomorrow.
Now in an autorickshaw, we rode south into New Delhi and into Connaught Circus. With the passing of each kilometer, we could here more and more cherry bombs and firecrackers going off as the evening Diwali celebrations were warming up. Fireworks, candles and other incendiaries are an intregal part of Diwali, which in Sanskrit literally means 'a row of lights.' For Hindus, Diwali commemorates the mythical return home of Ramayana hero Rama with his wife, Sita. Rama had been long exiled in the forest by the trickery of his stepmother, Queen Kaikeyi - these were his wilderness years, or vanvaas. As a subplot during this exile, Sita was kidnapped by Ravana, the evil god-king of Lanka. After a fantastic battle, Ravana and his troops were destroyed - it was a pyrrhic victory for Rama. When he returned home with Sita to take their place as King and Queen of Ayodhya, the streets of the city were lined with candles and lamps - hence Diwali, a row of lights. Today, Diwali serves as a reminder of the event, as well as the beginning of the Hindu new year and a celebration of success and prosperity.
Back at the hotel, we decided to nap for a while and then head back out around 7pm to get some dinner. When the time came, our plan was to cross over Connaught Place to the southern side of the circus, where there was a string of cheap, yet well-recommended restaurants. Exiting the hotel, we were greeted with mouthful of sulphur as the smoke of dozens of firecrackers drifted down the street. Small explosions occurred all around us, but we didn't comprehend the extent of it until we reached the center ring of the circus. It was, in all honesty, like a war zone - continuous, indiscriminate concussions exploded in every direction. Very few fireworks could actually be seen in the sky; only the incessant thunder and the billowing clouds of smoke were present. It was like a big-city 4th of July celebration, yet without all the bombs bursting over a centralized point. It was festive anarchy.
All of Delhi, both Hindus and Muslims, were celebrating from the rooftops - and that turned out to be a small problem for us. After a full circle around Connaught, we couldn't find a single open restaurant. Apart from the occasional small crowd experimenting with a 50-foot string of cherry bombs, not a soul was in sights. We did, however, manage to pick up a new friend in the form of a thin black dog that followed our every step for 20 minutes. It was eventually scared off by a poodle that started to bark at me as it was being walked by a large family.
Having completed the circuit round Connaught, we found ourselves back at Nirula's whose four restaurants were open (Nirula's, it turns out, is sort of a weird Indian hybrid of Howard Johnson's hotel/restaurant chains, but with better accommodations). The smoky cafe of their main restaurant was filled with upper-middle class Indians, enjoying late night beers and dosas. I ate a mixed tandoori platter, while Susanne attempted to enjoy what had to be the worst French onion soup ever made. Her meal was saved with a nice piece of naan and some curried dal that had come with my dinner.
As we sat there, eating our dinner and observing the restaurant's other patrons, we both had simultaneous flashbacks to two-in-the-morning munchy runs at the local Village Inn or IHOP back in high school. Except at this IHOP, the locals munched on samosas and Zen pancakes (regular old pancakes, but made out of lentil flour, I think). The West had arrived with a vengeance in India, and it was beginning to give me heartburn. Time for a couple of Pepto Bismols and a good night sleep.
Posted by acarvin at 10:18 PM
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November 9, 1996
The Marathon Plane Trek from DC to Delhi
Going to work on Friday morning seemed almost laughable. As everyone at CPB knew, today was the day that Susanne and I were going on our latest worldly adventure. This time around, we chose India and Nepal as our destination, both of which had been on our short lists of must-see countries for quite some time. Having spent six months planning and organizing this trip, we were now rearing to go. My only obstacles were a long morning at work and intolerable weather in the afternoon. So because I didn't have to be at the airport before 3pm, I figured it was worth going into work for at least part of the day, if only to avoid wasting a precious vacation day.
Despite beginning that Friday morning with several productive meetings (wrapping up Civic Networking Grant affairs before I left), inevitably the morning slowed to a snail's pace as I set there in my office, staring at my backpack and worrying whether or not the trip would even get off the ground due to a severe storm that was expected to hit DC mid-afternoon. By the time noon came around, I couldn't take it anymore. I strapped on my backpack, walked the halls of CPB saying "I'm outta here" to anyone who cared, and left for the Metro with the dwindling hope that I would at least get to Dulles before the storm broke wide open. I was wrong.
Thanks to a rare case of forethought the night before, I had sprayed my backpack with layers of waterproofing, so I managed to keep it relatively dry en route to Dulles. The rest of me, unfortunately, was soaked. Upon arrival at Dulles, I checked in, headed to the gate where I was to meet Susanne, and began the process of drying off with a fresh pair of socks.
Because of the storm, Susanne's plane from Denver was a little late. It was now 4:30pm, and our flight was to start boarding at 5pm. We hustled over to the gate, sat down, and began what was to be an infuriatingly long wait. One fateful mishap befell another - our plane was two hours late because of the storm, the new crew was late because their minivan died on the way to Dulles. By the time we boarded the plane and started to taxi, it was 10pm. We had assumed that our scheduled five-hour layover in Amsterdam would have been sufficient. Needless to say, the massive delay at Dulles put us into a mild panic, which was made worse by the computer-generated arrival time that was flashing on the plane's TV monitors: 10am, then 10:10am, 10:15am, 10:20am. The longer we taxied, the later our projected ETA got, and our flight out of Amsterdam to Delhi was scheduled to depart at 10:55am. Potentially, this still gave us enough time for us to make it, but it didn't exactly quell the acids in my stomach. Finally, once we took off and started on our path towards Newfoundland, the monitor's ETA stabilized at 10:22am, Amsterdam time. For the rest of the flight, the arrival time remained stable, so we felt somewhat better about our chances of making it to Delhi this weekend.
Saturday morning, the plane arrived at Amsterdam Schipol Airport at 10:24. Close enough. By the time we pulled into the gate and left the plane, it was 10:30 and we were ready to make a run for it. But as we entered the terminal, we were greeted by a KLM rep waving an "875-Delhi/Calcutta" sign. She informed us that she was there to escort us and about two dozen other travellers to the Delhi flight, which was being held for as long as it would take to get all of us on the plane. My loyalty to KLM began at that moment. Thanks to them, we made it on board - a 747 seemingly packed with hundreds of Indian American kids going back to the old country for Diwali, the five-day Hindu festival of lights that began the next day. I felt like I was on a really big field trip. Glad I remembered to get my note signed by my parents.
During the eight-hour flight, we enjoyed delicious Indian food for lunch and laughed our way through an edited-for-inflight-entertainment viewing of "The Rock," starring Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage. I cannot begin to stress the sheer awfulness of that film. Perhaps the highlight of the flight, though, was the flightpath itself. Thanks to the use of global positioning satellites and our TV monitors, we could observe our plane's journey down the Balkans, across Bulgaria and the Dardanelles into Turkey, east through Anatolya, skimming the northern Iraqi border into Iran by way of Mount Ararat. As sunset approached, we could see the red, snowcapped mountains of northwest Iran - the light refracting through the dense atmosphere on the horizon created a dazzling array of colours. Leaving Iranian airspace, we squeezed just under southern Afghanistan into Pakistan, eventually descending into northern India. We landed at Delhi around 11:30pm local time - for Susanne, a 12 1/2 hour time zone difference. We were exhausted.
Immigration took 20 minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. I was concerned that our hotel in Delhi, Nirula's, wouldn't hold our reservations this late (they had already been cancelled once due to a misunderstanding by way of email). Fortunately, outside customs there was an information desk that kindly called the hotel and reconfirmed for us. Everything was ok. This made the rest of the trip into New Delhi a breeze, with the stress of insecurity and loss of shelter having been lifted from our tired shoulders.
The Delhi taxi port was a horrorshow. Hundreds of people jammed themselves behind a railing, all trying to vie for our transport needs. Thanks to some solid advice from other India travelers over the Internet, we ran the gauntlet of touts and successfully found the official cab stand, which offered flat rate rides to New Delhi for RS 190. Hiring the cab was easy. Getting to Nirula's wasn't. First, the cab wouldn't start - the driver had another cabby push us while he cranked it up. Then, the front passenger-side door began to open every time we took a left turn. I offered to hold it closed, but the cabby insisted that he stop and relock it each time, as if his pride would hurt by a concession to my assistance. Halfway to New Delhi, he stopped the taxi again, but this time he opened the front hood. At first, I worried that this was all an act - a "give me 1000 rupees to fix car" scam - but after a minute or so he closed the hood and we were on our way, sputtering along at 30 kph.
When we arrived at Nirula's, which was located at the L Block of Connaught Circus in New Delhi, we were approached by three large men who informed us that Nirula's would no longer accept reservations after 1am. It was 1:05am. Therefore, we would have to stay elsewhere. Susanne and I looked at each other, and I could tell that both of our scam alarms were sounding in our heads. I excused myself, squeezed through the men with Susanne in tow, and walked to the door of the hotel. As one of the men began to plead "But sir, wait, I am the manager, and you cannot stay here," Nirula's doorman let us in and the concierge greeting us with "And how many nights will you be staying with us?". Aha. I was glad to see that our suspicions were correct.
We signed in, climbed the stairs to our room, and unpacked fresh clothes to sleep in. We were on the other side of the globe, almost 10,000 miles from home, and I realized that 15 hours of air travel and an 11-hour time shift had left us pretty beat. Time for a good night sleep.
Posted by acarvin at 10:18 PM
