Hello, Delhi

Kathy Hornbach
August 1, 2004

What are we getting ourselves into?

Getting There is Half the Fun

We bid adieu to our friends the Nichols-Henrys in Chiang Mai and packed for our trip to India. We wanted to be sure we made the connection so we decided to change to an earlier Chiang Mai-Bangkok flight, only to find out we don’t actually have any reservations from Chiang Mai to Bangkok.. We’ve got tickets, the tickets say “OK” (i.e. confirmed not waitlisted) — but it seems that the travel agency neglected to provide the airlines with a ticket number, so as far as Thai Airways goes, we were never ticketed — so we don’t exist. We had paper tickets and they were quite surprised to hear that — once I rattled off the ticket numbers to them, they appreciated that it indeed was not our fault our ticket numbers hadn’t been entered into their system — except perhaps to the extent that we chose a lame Travel Agency. And, being the end of a holiday weekend, all the flights were completely booked until rather late in the afternoon, putting our connection at risk.
But, not to worry, we made it standby on an early connection, and arrived at Delhi Airport after a short 4.5 hour flight. . We get through Immigration (which has improved since Scott was last to Delhi), then waited for our luggage. And waited, and waited. No bags. We start scanning the airport horizon for the “Lost Luggage” claims office, in anticipation of having to spend an hour or three there… when we spot a sign that says “Star Alliance Priority”. Our bags had been removed from the belt, and important travelers that we are, was waiting patiently for us — and might well have been for the 3/4ths of an hour we’d been looking for the bags.

A Quick Introduction to Life in India

The airport is only mildly crazy, and we’ve both seen this kind of madness before (taxi, Boss? transport?). Our guidebook has recommended a specific spot to get a prepaid taxi, we finally find it and get into a painlessly-short queue. People try to cut into line but Scott’s seen this before and is not bashful about body-blocking the perpetrators. None succeed.
We get our taxi’s plate number (that’s how you find out who you’re going with — they give you the license plate). Helpful boys are nearby to hoist our luggage the 3′ it needs to go from the ground to the back of the taxi — but each one wants to get paid for this “service” (which we didn’t ask for). One gets some spare change, the others stern looks. We didn’t ask you for help, and we didn’t offer to pay you. Welcome to India.
The driver has the address of our first “tour” hotel. It’s a neighborhood north of New Delhi (more on the “New Delhi / Old Delhi” thing later), nearby but not in the backpackers’ part of New Delhi (where rooms — and life — are cheap). We’re looking for a place called the “Good Times” hotel, in this Karol Bagh district.
The first inclination that this is going to be… entertaining… is the driver says “Karol Bagh… very big”. Now, we’re traveling on a prepaid taxi fare, so it is not in the driver’s best interest to feign not being able to find the place. He gets paid when we leave the taxi — and we ain’t leaving till we see a sign that says “Good Times Hotel”. So maybe he really doesn’t know where we’re going. Well, after quite a number of stops to ask direction, we get there eventually; turns out that taxi drivers in Delhi lack the navigational skills of those in say, London. To put it mildly.
We wouldn’t exactly call the Good Times hotel “charming” – serviceable would be the kindest description we could muster. Dingy, uncomfortably thin beds, moth balls in all the drains, 15 watt bulbs — think $20 motel in rural Alabama. But, the staff was friendly & it was a place to lay our heads. The flight from Bangkok to Delhi was short, but after that ticket hassle in Chiang Mai, Customs, baggage, Immigration, taxi, money change, an hour of taxi-driving that could curl your hair… it’d been a long day. But we were to know many long days. But first, we had some people to meet along the way (old friends and new), and a couple of days to explore the sites — and sights — of Delhi. (Ironically, on our return to Delhi after the Rajasthan Adventure, we were very appreciative of the many comforts and conveniences of the Good Times – seriously)

It’s Nice Having Friends in the Right Places

Without going into the (interesting but verbose) details, Kathy had met Asha Pant… at a funeral in Boston. “We’re headed for India in a few weeks”, Kathy says. “We live in Delhi, you must come visit”, says Asha. So we do. Asha and her husband, who winter in Delhi and summer in Boston, are lovely hosts, infinitely helpful and patient with our neophyte ways in Delhi. Shortly after our arrival, we were invited to a party in our honor where we were introduced to a fascinating circle of friends and relatives; Scott was not at his health-best at that point (“Delhi belly”, its called) so he had a little trouble being outgoing and cheery with the crowd (“Just let me go somewhere and die” was his prevailing thought). Kathy did interact with a lot of interesting people; it was a but more difficult for Scott. Nonetheless a great start.
One of the party-attendees was Athena. Athena is a long-time friend of Asha’s from shared days in Paris. Athena is having her mid-career crises having recently left a position with the US State Department in Washington.. She’s been in Delhi, staying with Asha for a couple of months, so she too is a Delhi veteran and this proves both useful and entertaining as we go about our ways in Delhi.

Tea with Nigel, Thali with Hirendra

Athena has connections everywhere and one of them happened to be an older gentleman, Nigel. Nigel worked the British High Counsel in Delhi until he retired a few years ago and started giving tours to people referred by the High Commission. He has been a Delhi resident since the 1940s, and as you might imagine, was able to offer a unique perspective. He took us all around Old Delhi and New, giving the “British view” of the myraid events that have taken place between the English colonization of India, to the present independent countries of India and what is now Pakistan.
The tour included:

  • A visit to Matahma Gandi’s residence (there had very recently been a commemoration, so it was particularly festive)
  • Wandering through Chadni Chowk, the market of Old Delhi. That’s a story in itself… for a later time.
  • Traditional Indian funeral pyre. Hindu custom calls for a dead person to be cremated soon after death — and this is performed at outdoor locations around the city. Doing our best to be unobtrusive (no pictures, for example), we visited on and observed the rituals
  • A lovely lunch at a venerable old hotel (Oberoi Maiden)
  • Visited a Sikh temple, and the spot where King George proclaimed that a “New Delhi” would be built (“but, what shall we call it?”)

Rajasthani or Gujurati?

Scott had been do India perhaps a half dozen times, each time in the kind care of Hirendra Gupta, who was Ascend/Lucent’s Sales Manager for India at the time. A competent, successful, perpetually-upbeat guy, Hirendra is always a delight to be with. Not your typical Sales Manager (not to pick on anyone in particular). Kathy had also met him and family, at a distributor get-together in Thailand. We really wanted to see him outside a normal business context. We exchanged emails and moved dates back and forth, but ultimately connected. The two of us, Hirendra and his wife got together in our Karol Bagh neighborhood, and had an excellent traditional thali dinner. Thali is a set meal which comes in a large, flat-bottomed, stainless steel bowl in which are placed multiple small courses. We got the choice of thali in the styles of the Indian states of Rajasthan, or Gujurati. We took one of each and “compared notes”.

This is no time to be a member of the “Clean Plate Club”

One of the traditions for thali meals, is they’re “all you can eat”. An Indian tradition in general, we found, was that visitors are encouraged to eat… and eat… and eat. Indians are wonderful, gracious hosts and food is an intrinsic part of friendship. The rub is, when you’re trained from childhood to “finish everything” (“there are children starving in…”), and as soon as you finish something the Waiter comes and gives you more… well let’s say we didn’t lose any weight in India!

Preparing for the Intrepid Tour

We knew from reading the Intrepid literature, that we’d been needing to hoist our own luggage around — on and off buses and trains, in and out of hotels. Since there were more than a dozen stops along the way, we wanted to minimize what we took on the trip. Asha gracefully agreed to keep our un-needed stuff; we pared down to one carry-on-sized backpack each, plus a rucksack each. It was great to be rid of our surplus “stuff” — including the PC Scott’s using to write this website (that’s why the content is less contemporaneous than in past trips).
Around 6pm on the evening before the tour, we met our Guide, Jenny, and the people who were to become our fellow-travelers and ultimately, our friends. Having already met Athena; that night we met the other seven new mates.
We got the basic “rules and regulations”, and as the tour unfolded we received short descriptions of each site and maps (which usually weren’t that great). The first day of the tour covered ground we’d already seen, so we did some other touring and had a relatively simple day in Delhi.

Next: A Little Background on our Tour

Copyright(c) 2024 Scott Blessley & Kathy Hornbach
dot-circle-o