New Delhi, India
December 8, 2012
Altitude: 730'
I finally escape Varanasi on the 11:30 train bound for Bombay. But unlike the others on the train for whom this would be a 26 hour ride, for me it was only three. My destination was Allahabad, a city famous as the birthplace of Jawarahul Nehru, India's first PM, and his daughter, Indira Gandhi.
But by the time I arrive I'm sick--physically as well as psychically. So I check myself into a good hotel, assess the situation, start a regime of antibiotics and ride out the fever. Behind the doors in a three star hotel with a good restaurant makes life in India more tolerable.
I ask the guys at reception where I can find a travel agency. It's still early in the day and there's plenty of time to get an air ticked for the next day. "OH, Sir," they tell me. "We can arrange that for you."
Yeah, right! For three hours, battling a fever and multiple trips to the bathroom, I approach the front desk. "Ten minutes, Sir," they tell me. Ten minutes. Ten minutes. Ten minutes. By the end of the day I still have no ticket and, looking back on it, I suppose I didn't give them the bribe money needed to get this done. Just deeper confirmations what these people are really like.
But the ball truly is beginning to roll and during my first night there I have to maintain contact with home to secure a seat the following weekend out of Delhi...still a 14 hour bus ride away. Because of the time difference, decisions have to be made at midnight and 2:00 a.m. All of this is OK. I'll do what I have to do go get out of India.
Day two in the city I realize that I have to get myself out and can't rely on anyone else in India. So I take a cab to the airport, wrangle a one-way ticket on Air India to Delhi. It's only then that I could sit back and try to enjoy this city. Which I did...with a good lunch at a good restaurant, with a visit to the lovely and very historic Nehru home and with a visit to four Mughal tombs that predate the Taj Mahal.
The city was a loud mess, with the usually assortment of cows in the streets, cows lying in the middle of public highways, cows on the highways. But at least here I didn't smell pee and at least in the places I visited didn't have to navigate piles of poo. And, even more remarkably, this was a city that was relatively free of in-your-face harassment from vendors and the like. That's probably because in my three days I was the only foreigner I saw. Allahabad does not attract lots of out of country visitors.
It was a real relief to board the flight and land in Delhi an hour and twenty minutes later.
I have three days in the city. Steve and the travel agency in Montreal have been able to get me home on Sunday. And I have this deep, deep feeling that I'll never return to India, so I want to see the Taj Mahal one last time. So I buy a tour, on the Thursday morning, the driver pulls into the hotel. I find I'm the only one.
As we leave the city on a newly built toll road the sun rises. It only takes two hours to get to Agra where I meet my guide. Once we get out of the city, it's a lovely ride. A low mist hangs above flat fields full of yellow mustard--a plant that's been a constant and pleasant companion for the past six weeks.
But the Taj! Another example of possibly leaving past memories intact.
In 1998 I timed my visit to this amazing building to be there during the time of the full moon. I'd spent the day there, with tourists of course, but not that many that made the place uncomfortable. That evening I returned and revisited the site--a site softly bathed in a full December moon. It's one of the great travel images of my life.
But this year! It's full of tourists--mostly Indians--who are now able to see their own country. I have to wait in line to get my photo taken in front of the building. It's hectic and loud and even though the Taj is still the most magnificent building in the world, the pleasure I experience is nothing like the first time.
One of the most endearing travel images of my life involves the Taj. It's December 1998, and I step behind the building and face the Yumana River. Few people are there. Faintly, in the distance, I hear what sounds like an aria. Then I see a marigolds floating downstream followed by a man in a boat. He's singing and his voice fills the air. I sit and watch as he sings he way along the river until voice and man fade out of distance.
Sadly that was not the case this year.
By late afternoon we head back to Delhi and arrive as the sun sets. It's a massive red/orange disk that drops gorgeously into the heavily polluted sties of India's capital.
I spend my last day wrapping up loose ends, going to Qatar Airways to be absolutely certain I'm on the list to get home and shopping. But that's not easy. I'm want a very specific shop--a government run souvenir shop that sells products at set prices, where no one will pressure me. But can I get there? No! I walk, but rickshaw driver stop me,lie to me, tell me it's closed (I know it's not), that I'm walking in the wrong direction I was, so I take up one guy's offer. "Twenty rupees." Seems like a decent fellow. Stupid me. We end up at his shop--a shop with some of the words in its name that the shop I want has. Then I walk...and walk..and walk. Of course no one knows where it is because no one will tell me what I want to know, because there's no commission to be made. They're pigs, I think. Thank heaven for the Xanax that my doctor gave me. I've been on it twice a day since Varanasi. I ultimately do get to the shop I want--and it's no more than a ten minute walk from my hotel. At least going back was easy.
Sometime back I'd wanted to write a fun piece, full of puns. And it's only a week after being home, as I write this a week before Christmas, on a day with new snow on the ground, with my body fully back in this time zone, that I can find the humor in India to do so. So here goes...
I wasn't sari to leave India. I felt burned, singhed at the edges. Whatever it was I was sikhing I certainly didn't find. The country was uttarly frustrating, beyond agravating. Maybe it was bad karma, maybe it was a bad decision. I don't know. It's not that I want to caste bad light on a country and its people, but this time India was too over-the-top for me. I'm a good traveler and can flow with must about anything. But, ghee, this place.... Too difficult, at least at this juncture in time. Maybe it's the new travel-normal. Maybe it was just a blip in travel. Who knows.
I became bone weary of saying..."I khan do this, I khan keep going, I khan do another day." But there was no pleasure. None at all. It all really ghat to me by the end. I mean...if ya have live on Xanax just to get through the day.... What does that say!
And so I left and was very glad of it.
December 8, 2012
Altitude: 730'
I finally escape Varanasi on the 11:30 train bound for Bombay. But unlike the others on the train for whom this would be a 26 hour ride, for me it was only three. My destination was Allahabad, a city famous as the birthplace of Jawarahul Nehru, India's first PM, and his daughter, Indira Gandhi.
But by the time I arrive I'm sick--physically as well as psychically. So I check myself into a good hotel, assess the situation, start a regime of antibiotics and ride out the fever. Behind the doors in a three star hotel with a good restaurant makes life in India more tolerable.
I ask the guys at reception where I can find a travel agency. It's still early in the day and there's plenty of time to get an air ticked for the next day. "OH, Sir," they tell me. "We can arrange that for you."
Yeah, right! For three hours, battling a fever and multiple trips to the bathroom, I approach the front desk. "Ten minutes, Sir," they tell me. Ten minutes. Ten minutes. Ten minutes. By the end of the day I still have no ticket and, looking back on it, I suppose I didn't give them the bribe money needed to get this done. Just deeper confirmations what these people are really like.
But the ball truly is beginning to roll and during my first night there I have to maintain contact with home to secure a seat the following weekend out of Delhi...still a 14 hour bus ride away. Because of the time difference, decisions have to be made at midnight and 2:00 a.m. All of this is OK. I'll do what I have to do go get out of India.
Day two in the city I realize that I have to get myself out and can't rely on anyone else in India. So I take a cab to the airport, wrangle a one-way ticket on Air India to Delhi. It's only then that I could sit back and try to enjoy this city. Which I did...with a good lunch at a good restaurant, with a visit to the lovely and very historic Nehru home and with a visit to four Mughal tombs that predate the Taj Mahal.
It was a real relief to board the flight and land in Delhi an hour and twenty minutes later.
I have three days in the city. Steve and the travel agency in Montreal have been able to get me home on Sunday. And I have this deep, deep feeling that I'll never return to India, so I want to see the Taj Mahal one last time. So I buy a tour, on the Thursday morning, the driver pulls into the hotel. I find I'm the only one.
As we leave the city on a newly built toll road the sun rises. It only takes two hours to get to Agra where I meet my guide. Once we get out of the city, it's a lovely ride. A low mist hangs above flat fields full of yellow mustard--a plant that's been a constant and pleasant companion for the past six weeks.
But the Taj! Another example of possibly leaving past memories intact.
In 1998 I timed my visit to this amazing building to be there during the time of the full moon. I'd spent the day there, with tourists of course, but not that many that made the place uncomfortable. That evening I returned and revisited the site--a site softly bathed in a full December moon. It's one of the great travel images of my life.
But this year! It's full of tourists--mostly Indians--who are now able to see their own country. I have to wait in line to get my photo taken in front of the building. It's hectic and loud and even though the Taj is still the most magnificent building in the world, the pleasure I experience is nothing like the first time.
One of the most endearing travel images of my life involves the Taj. It's December 1998, and I step behind the building and face the Yumana River. Few people are there. Faintly, in the distance, I hear what sounds like an aria. Then I see a marigolds floating downstream followed by a man in a boat. He's singing and his voice fills the air. I sit and watch as he sings he way along the river until voice and man fade out of distance.
Sadly that was not the case this year.
By late afternoon we head back to Delhi and arrive as the sun sets. It's a massive red/orange disk that drops gorgeously into the heavily polluted sties of India's capital.
I spend my last day wrapping up loose ends, going to Qatar Airways to be absolutely certain I'm on the list to get home and shopping. But that's not easy. I'm want a very specific shop--a government run souvenir shop that sells products at set prices, where no one will pressure me. But can I get there? No! I walk, but rickshaw driver stop me,lie to me, tell me it's closed (I know it's not), that I'm walking in the wrong direction I was, so I take up one guy's offer. "Twenty rupees." Seems like a decent fellow. Stupid me. We end up at his shop--a shop with some of the words in its name that the shop I want has. Then I walk...and walk..and walk. Of course no one knows where it is because no one will tell me what I want to know, because there's no commission to be made. They're pigs, I think. Thank heaven for the Xanax that my doctor gave me. I've been on it twice a day since Varanasi. I ultimately do get to the shop I want--and it's no more than a ten minute walk from my hotel. At least going back was easy.
Sometime back I'd wanted to write a fun piece, full of puns. And it's only a week after being home, as I write this a week before Christmas, on a day with new snow on the ground, with my body fully back in this time zone, that I can find the humor in India to do so. So here goes...
I wasn't sari to leave India. I felt burned, singhed at the edges. Whatever it was I was sikhing I certainly didn't find. The country was uttarly frustrating, beyond agravating. Maybe it was bad karma, maybe it was a bad decision. I don't know. It's not that I want to caste bad light on a country and its people, but this time India was too over-the-top for me. I'm a good traveler and can flow with must about anything. But, ghee, this place.... Too difficult, at least at this juncture in time. Maybe it's the new travel-normal. Maybe it was just a blip in travel. Who knows.
I became bone weary of saying..."I khan do this, I khan keep going, I khan do another day." But there was no pleasure. None at all. It all really ghat to me by the end. I mean...if ya have live on Xanax just to get through the day.... What does that say!
And so I left and was very glad of it.
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