Part 10, Arrival in India: New Delhi

Sunday, 4/9/2017   Sunny.  73F/93F

All along I had been viewing our upcoming visit to India with a vague sense of apprehension. This was due in large part to reading about the currency crisis of late 2016, at which time there was a total change-out of the currency which made it difficult for ANYONE to get cash. This led to lots of horror stories about long lines in the streets at ATMs, limits on cash withdrawals, and about how segments of the economy were in crisis because there was not enough cash to pay people in the mostly-cash economy of India. Mix that in with the visions of India that you get from movies like “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” … the teeming crowds, poverty, and beggars … and you have a recipe for anxiety for folks like us who were not on an organized tour and were making our own arrangements. We had one reason for considering diving into this: to see the Taj Mahal.

Our arrival in New Delhi was at night, as are most international flights for reasons that are not completely clear. Getting through customs and retrieving our baggage turned out to be pretty routine. All of our pre-trip worries about minimizing the size of our luggage to avoid having to check our luggage on flights was overblown; no one ever checked the size of our luggage … it was all based on weight. If your luggage weighed over the limit (e.g. always 5 kg in China) you had to check your bags … no way around it.

Photo 3240, landing in New Delhi at night — looks okay from here

Our first exposure to the ways of India occurred soon after arriving at the New Delhi airport terminal. We stopped for a pit stop after the long flight … when finishing up in the rest room there was a young man standing there who pointed across the room to the sinks and paper towels and walked with me as I went over to wash my hands. Then he held his hand out and wanted some money for showing me where the wash basins were. For pointing me to the sinks? You have got to be kidding! Being hustled for such a non-service service struck me as being very annoying and I waved him off.

We found a working ATM straightaway in the airport, so my worries melted away about not having Indian cash to pay taxi drivers and others who would not accept credit cards.

Then the taxis. When you step into the heavy, humid air outside the airport terminal you are stepping outside the orderly world that we know and take for granted in the States, and into a totally different world. All the dire warnings I had read about what taxi company to use, and how judge rates all went out of the window. There was a line of taxis, but it was not like most Western airports where there is a line of taxis, and people get into line for the next taxi. At the head of the line of taxis there was no discernible line of people. Instead, as soon as we stepped outside of the terminal, we were accosted by a group of taxi hustlers who were pressing us to come to their particular taxi. “Do you charge on a meter?”, I asked. “Yes, yes”. (Well, actually – no.) I picked one of the drivers, and he led us to his car back down the line a ways. But wait, it was not his car. He was leading me to another group of people where there was a man in charge of a group of “his” cars. It was like he was running a car racket … you don’t pay the driver, you pay the boss man. And yes, the other man who led us from the terminal, wanted 100 rupees for leading us to this place  in line. Let’s see how much is 100 rupees (65:1 … divide by 100 and add 50% … about $1.50 … okay I gave the hustler his 100 rupees. I asked the boss man, “how much to Shanti Home (our hotel) in West Delhi? 1500 rupees. Do the math: about $25. It didn’t seem unreasonable, it was late, we were tired and I was in no mood to start this process all over again at back at the terminal exit. 1500 rupees it is. We got in and took off for Delhi. (It wasn’t until much later that we learned that this was about 3 times the going rate.)

By then it was around 11 o’clock at night, so the city should be starting to slow down, right? Wrong! Traffic was still heavy, the driver weaved in and out of other cars, trucks, bicycles, and vendors pushing wagons. There were people hanging out everywhere, some in the dim light of shops, some in the dark. There were vendors everywhere — people were out doing all manor of things: talking in groups, eating, walking, shopping.  We drove by run-down apartment blocks with a few less run-down ones mixed in here and there. We came to what looked like a bus stop. There were people laying on the sidewalk sleeping: men, women, dogs. You could see some makeshift ramshackle homeless shelters off to one side. And the garbage! There was garbage everywhere – sometimes just laying around and sometimes in big heaps. I never saw so much garbage that wasn’t in a landfill! The driver cut in and out of traffic, pulling right in front of other cars and trucks, and other cars pulling right in front of us. It was a battle! All this is was in the dark, mind you, so you could only see so much, and the rest disappeared into the mystery of darkness leaving to your imagination what was out there.

We went past long stretches of what the driver said in broken English were Army bases, then an area that looked like a park … trees and no apartments. We went through an industrial area, and emerged into a slum … lots of people hanging around in an unsavory neighborhood. I was beginning to wonder what we were getting ourselves into.

The driver asked to look at our confirmation paper with the hotel address again, and seemed confused. It dawned on me: this guy doesn’t know where our hotel is! He stopped and got out of the car to ask directions from some of the locals hanging around. Cheryl was starting to feel uncomfortable with us being left alone in the car in these surroundings, but there was nothing overtly threatening going on … no one was swarming around the car or anything like that, so I was not worried … yet.

We drove a little further … and the taxi driver stopped again to ask directions. We kept going … “no problem” the driver said when we asked if he knew the way to our hotel.

Finally he turned down a dead-end street that looked terrible, junky run-down buildings on both sides. My discomfort ratcheted up. We came to a barricade across the street and the taxi came to a stop.  The surroundings were such that I definitely didn’t like the idea of getting out of the taxi here.

A poor bedraggled man emerged from the shadows dressed in rags with vacant look on his face — he walked in front of the taxi and pulled back the barricade and we drove through. Two hundred more feet and the taxi pulled to the curb and he pointed to the left. There was a sign “Shanti Home” — we were there. Thankfully, the neighborhood beyond the barricade was better with reasonable-looking apartments around and our place actually looked decent. The ride from the airport had taken about an hour.

By then it was nearly midnight. I asked the taxi driver to wait a minute because I had visions of the hotel being locked up and no one answering the door at midnight, or worse … what if this was the wrong place?  I sure didn’t want to be left alone on a Delhi street in the middle of the night!! No worries, there was a guard at the front gate of the hotel, and the lights were on. The taxi driver disappeared into the night and we entered the hotel.

Despite the late hour, the hotel manager was there waiting for us with a glass of apple juice and some colored paste that he dabbed on our foreheads as a type of Indian greeting … it was as if there was nothing at all out of the ordinary arriving at a small hotel at midnight.  We sat down at his desk, and after he entered our registration information into a large ancient ledger book, he led us to our room. It was a perfectly nice room with air conditioning that worked. Once again, we were relieved to have a decent place to lay our heads for the night and headed for bed. Whoa, is this happening?

Photo 0537, our New Delhi room at the Shanti Home hotel.JPG

Photo 0540, Shanti Home bath.JPG

My feeling before arriving in India was that after living in Morocco while in the Navy for two years in the 70’s prepared us for any rough conditions we might encounter in India. I was wrong about that … two years in Morocco did NOT prepare us for what we saw. We were shocked by it.

 

Monday, 4/10/2017.      Sunny.   68F/93F (20C/34C)

We had a fairly leisurely morning – got up to the rooftop dining area for breakfast where we were the only guests there. The hostess and waiter were most friendly and accommodating. For breakfast, had custom omelettes, toast, meusli, corn balls (or whatever they were) … all excellent.

Thinking that we’d like to see something of New Delhi while in town (who knows when or if we’ll ever get back) we had the hostess arranged a car for us to drive around to see the high points today. We asked for about 2 hours to go to downtown to see the government buildings and such and the driver, named Marjeet, came around 11:30.

We drove downtown through traffic that was a mild madhouse at mid-day, past big expanses of army bases and some forested parks, dodging other cars, trucks, pedestrians and the ubiquitous yellow and green cycle cabs on the way. It took the better part of an hour to get downtown, where we saw the Parliament building and government office buildings, India Gate in the distance way down the wide boulevard (the “Rajpath”), and the President’s residence, the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Marjeet dropped us off at a barricade manned by soldiers to get some photos of these buildings … the soldiers had no problem at all with us taking as many photos as we liked. Marjeet circled around and came back to pick us up and we continued on our way.

Photo 0624.  The “Rajpath” (India’s “National Mall”) and the India Gate

Photo 0609.  The Rashtrapati Bhavan, Residence of the President of India

We continued on, and Marjeet dropped us off at a crafts shop while he went and grabbed some lunch with the plan to meet back up in 15 minutes. We were given a spiel by a jewelrymaker, but it was very expensive stuff … hundreds and even thousands of dollars, which was out of the question. But the fellow did not seem to mind the fact that any of this was going nowhere, and after a bit he became fearful that he was spending too much time with us … he was supposed to “pass us along” so that we would get a pitch from all the sections of the store. Pretty soon, though, our 15 minutes were up and we had to go back to meet Marjeet, when one of the “minders” was clearly expecting us to go back through other parts of the store. We simply shrugged and said “got to meet our taxi” and that was the end of that.

We had already been out 2 hours, but Marjeet wanted to take us to a very famous Sikh temple, the Gurudwara Bangla Sahib, which we agreed to. It was a large complex with where there was a holy man inside reciting prayers or giving a sermon (not sure exactly), which was amplified throughout the whole complex. Going in we were taken to a foreigner’s room where we were to take off our shoes and socks to go through the complex barefooted as we did, and as did everyone. We were also given orange headscarves to wear while in the temple. As people went past the dais where the holy man was sitting, they would kneel down and touch the step briefly as they walked by.

Photo 3342.  Entering the Gurudwara Bangla Sahib Sikh Temple

Photo 0692.  Holy man chanting in the Gurudwara Bangla Sahib Sikh Temple

We circled around where the holy man was speaking and went back outside to a large courtyard with a big colonnade all around and a large pool taking up all of the middle area. People were going down to the pool and touching various parts of their body with water which was supposed to have healing powers. I doused a little on my troublesome right should just in case it works!

We walked around the pool under the shade of the colonnade getting a few photos along the way.

There were people sleeping, sitting at the edges chatting, other Indian tourists also taking photos … quite relaxing. We came around to a another large hall where there was an operation going on to feed the poor, where we peeked inside briefly through the windows, but did not go in. On the way back to the car in the parking structure, there was a poor woman sitting on the steps begging, and I stopped to give her a small bill. She looked so out of it that she hardly knew that I was there and didn’t acknowledge me.

As we drove, Manjeet expressed curiosity about the States and China, and we were curious about India, and we had an excellent day. He talked about his family, and said that he makes 7,000 rupees a month, and that his rent is 4,000 rupees, so 3,000 rupees a month has to take care of everything else. During our time together, we developed a very good rapport with Marjeeet and enjoyed his company. When we got back, I sent hims a few photos of us together via e-mail … but never heard back whether he got them or enjoyed them.

Back at Shanti Home, the rest of afternoon I entered expenses for the past couple of days; figured out the currency exchanges we did. Sent photos to Marjeeet, and wrote up bullets for today. Whew! Tired.

After dinner got working on photo labeling and culling for a cleaner backup to Dropbox. Once you get into working on those photos forget getting anything else done … you become totally immersed and lose track of time! Before I knew it, the evening was gone and we needed to get to bed to get up for an 0615 breakfast for 0700 car to the train station for our trip to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal, our main reason for coming to India. Good night! It was a better day than we had expected … Marjeet was a great driver. Felt a little better about India after today.

Next: Agra and the Taj Mahal.