Wife Kim, youngest daughter Elizabeth and I left Boston Logan airport at 9pm on Thursday Oct 24. We changed planes in Zurich and landed in New Delhi midnight Friday. Elizabeth managed to change some money. My wife correctly figured that we would be wasted and so had booked a room at a close western style hotel. They came and picked us up and we went to sleep.
I was the first one up and with a little help from the concierge, headed out to find a bank. It was a long stretch of road in a wasteland area.
Soon I got to the major intersection where google maps said the bank was.
Everything is total caios as I hope you can get a first impression of from this video.
I got to the bank but blew the transaction. It asked how many rupees. I said 1000 which is like $13. When I tried to reenter the card and get more, I was blocked. It took both daughters and a couple days to get unblocked. Take a look at my post about money if you want to read more!
This fancy hotel, Holiday Inn New Delhi International Airport, had a wonderful breakfast spread.
The only other picture I took shows the pool out the window. We never sent near it. I did take another walk to check out how easy or hard it was going to be to buy beer.
At noon our tour company provided a driver who took us to our normal hotel in Delhi and then we set off, probably first to lunch and then the National Museum. I’m pretty sure we ate at Lazeez Affaire. It was our first eating out experience in India. There are no pictures unless Elizabeth has one. It was interesting that another couple at breakfast at our hotel said that their driver had also taken them to Lazeez Affaire! I did not know the name of the place we ate but was checking the credit card usage, saw this name and had no idea it was a restaurant until the other couple said told their story!
We probably did the Cell Phone booth. The interesting thing was that everyone gathered around. One had no idea if they worked at the establishment or were just on the street. The store looked more like a storage locker than anything else. You stood at a counter that was in the same plane as the garage door that closed over the whole room when it ended business for the night. The real test was that we had to call Elizabeth’s work phone and that succeeded. The idea of course was that now we could break into 2 groups and have some hope of eventually finding each other again. Probaby calling E.izabeth’s phone required international minutes so that took an extra step.
I had read that getting a cell phone in India is hard. One has to show up with not only the passport, a picture they can keep and also an address, it can be a hotel, that has to be verified, hopefully with a phone call. We started down this path but the driver and Cell Phone agent decided it would be better to just cheat and have the driver pretend to register the phone. He could of course give all his information and even was finger printed. It worked. We returned once to make sure we had enough international minutes to help with the money problems, calling Bank of America. Credit cards say to call collect but that again is a catch 22. How does one make a collect call in India. More than one person assured us that there is no such thing in India. The internet seems to confirm that international collect calls are not really free.
I’m sure that our first tourist stop was the National Museum. Kim has a wonderful story about the “turkish (no seat) toilet” that can only be delivered in person. We really enjoyed the museum. Spent a couple hours. I think Kim had an audio?
The signage was good:
A typical statue:
We next went to Akshardham. I think there is one picture unless Elizabeth has others.
This is a Hindu Temple completed in 2005. The following story is one of our goto standards from India. We pull up and our driver says they will take everything from you, wallet, passport, phone, camera, so just leave it all in the car. They also take our shoes. Now we have been with this driver less than 4 hours and we are in a temple with nothing but our cloths, not even our shoes. He was there when we got back. The temple does not look new but was very impressive. Somewhere in the day, probably on the way home, we stopped and got beer and wine for me to drink before bed.
Our host at the hotel, Villa 33, had recommended a restaurant just a couple blocks away in a area called SDA. We walked over and enjoyed dinner at Scooter on the Wall. We always eat only cooked items and ask for no spice. I at least checked out the local Beer Cafe but I think I was pretty tired and just had a beer back in the room watching TV. As was true the first night in the Holiday Inn, Elizabeth was happier sleeping with Mom. That was especially true as her assigned room in Villa 33, when I now slept, had it own door that appeared to be accessible from the grounds.
Sunday, as was usual for the next several days, I awoke at like 4am and managed to keep myself in bed until 5. Then I would go out and walk.
You can see that the streets were pretty deserted:
Even the Metro was shut:
There was a park near by with this great sign:
Even a dog eating a monkey on the street!
And finally the hotel as I returned.
You can see why, as we had a little trouble finding it the first day with our driver, Kim said that she would have no trouble recognizing it once she saw it.
Breakfast in the hotel was always a high point for me. It was not scheduled to start until 8am but I often showed up a little early and enjoyed getting to meet the other guests and hear what they had been doing.
By 9am, we were off for our days round of sight seeing with our driver. The first stop was a Tuctuc ride in Old Delhi.
We even have a little video
The normal wild traffic scene. Our driver had arranged the tuctuc ride, had negotiated that we would not be taken on the normal run of “you must buy something here” show rooms and would be dropped at the Red Fort.
Below is the famous sari picture. Kim and Elizabeth agreed that this woman laying bricks had a more festive sari than either of them had bought for the wedding.
This day, like others in Delhi, was a confusion of one masterpiece after another. Kim had some idea what we were seeing but generally I just tagged along, enjoyed the sites, ate wonderful meals, kept the phone working and planned the beer buying.
Below I assuse we are leaving some temple?
A few cows on the traffic island.
The Bahai Lotus temple. Quite a structure. We did not go in.
And lunch at Lutyens.
The Craft Museum follow lunch. Old wheels, wonderful painting.
The dogs on the street get a chance to rest
We then went back to the hotel An early end to the sight seeing as Kim and Elizabeth were off to a Bollywood extravaganza. I always love the challenge of using the local transportation, tuctucs and metro. I was free to try my hand at taking a tuctuc to Hauz Khas Village for dinner. It is just a couple miles up the road. First of all, you have to be able to communicate to the driver where you want to go. Not because you want to go there, just because you can not haggle the price unless the driver can quote on some place. Luckily the Beer place I was after is in a well known local area called Hauz Khas village. I go to the tuctuc stand and once someone approaches me, I tell them where I want to go and ask how much. In this case they say 150. Its like $3. I might offer less or just take it. I always give a fairly large tip.
I ended up having dinner at Beer Cafe. They are a chain and have a couple of the best Belgium beers. I always have to negotiate for something that is cooked, no salade, and no spice.
This is the Budist temple on the way back to the hotel.
And this is the kind of bicycle kick stand they all have.
Monday Morning October 29. I am again up crazy early but today the metro is running so I take it one stop, turn around, and come back. The great challenge was buying a one day pass. I first tried at the machine, no luck. But then asked a young fellow passenger and she directed me to a maned booth where I had success! These are just the morning commuters flowing through the next station where I got off and headed home.
Great excitement as I approached the hotel. I could hear something going on and Elizabeth called to say there was a protest of some kind in full voice outside the hotel. It turned out to be a special morning exercises at the adjacent catholic school.
Having recovered from this loud wake up, we are off to New Delhi. The Rajpath, called the King’s Way before independence, stretches in a straight line from the India President’s residence, Rashtrapati Bhaven
to India gate.
With the government buildings on either side.
Note the women sweeping the field, always in saris!
And of course the hood ornament that I saw more than once and have no idea of the purpose?
One last set of buildings before lunch. They are all a blur but I think these are in what is called the Nizamuddin Complex.
Below is Humayun’s Tomb.
A couple os tourists
And one last fisade.
Finally to lunch. Hard to keep track but this could have been Urban Palatte. Certainly has distinctive plates!
Next we are off to Connaught Place where Elizabeth scraficed herself and after a long 15 minutes was able to cash 500$ in travelers checks at Thomas Cook!
Next Was Lodi Gardens that we all enjoyed.
I got to look at the birds.
And this damsel appeared on the balcony.
One last sight to see, a tower and then dinner and onto Taj Mahal tomorrow.
