Well, as predicted, we kind of sacrificed Saturday to the
Gods of travel. We flew to
Eventually, we were on the plane, an eight-hour flight
from
Our flight took us quite close to
We arrived in
We stood in the
It’s a beautiful hotel, but
it was then
After breakfast, we had our orientation meeting next to
an annoyingly loud waterfall. We
complained about the noise to Sujay, who asked the hotel if we could use a
meeting room. The hotel said no, so we
huddled in a less-noisy corner of the hotel until staff decided we were
blocking their way, then they graciously agreed to move us to a meeting room
anyway!
After the orientation, we did a short 20-minute walking
tour of the area. I think they’re taking
it easy on us because we are still all jet-lagged.
Now it is about
Evening: At
We went to the Big Mosque, supposedly the largest in
The courtyard was big and the
facade was too, but strangely enough, there didn’t seem to be a large indoor
building like other mosques we’ve visited in
Sujay had somehow persuaded
(bribed?) the caretaker to open the structure and reveal its holy
contents. Inside, he showed us several
holy relics of Islam:
two ancient verses of the
Koran, written down near the time of Mohammed,
a hair from the beard of
Mohammed, one of Mohammed’s sandals
and one of his footprints in
rock, supposedly a miracle.
Before we were finished, a crowd of devout Muslims had
gathered around us to see the relics.
Many of these relics were one of two such relics, the other being in the
After the mosque, we went for a rickshaw bicycle ride
through Old Delhi.
I tried to get photos of some
of the people, which was very interesting.
However, we were almost always moving so the photos didn’t turn out very
good.
The ride did illustrate how some companies prefer to wash
dishes: literally in the streets with a vat of local water and a heater.
I packed a bunch of sanitizing
alcohol wipes, and I think I’ll start using them on my dishes before meals!
During our ride, we got caught in a minor traffic jam,
and also we got into a minor accident with another rickshaw in which our rear
wheels became intertwined. Pretty soon
spokes were broken, and it took some time to sort things out. We took a shortcut to get back to the bus,
but by then everyone was onboard waiting for us.
After that, we drove to the grave site of Mahatma Gandhi,
the great political and spiritual leader of
This was a special occasion because today happens to be
Gandhi’s birthday, and because of that, the place was crowded with people and
there were special flower arrangements at the site.
Driving around
We took the bus back to the hotel, and after an hour
break there, we were taken to a fancy restaurant where we had some of the best
Indian food I’ve ever had. They served
us all kinds of wonderful Tandoori Chicken, Chicken Makhani and many of my
favorite dishes. To most of my fellow
tourists, these were strange and exotic foods and they didn’t have any concept
of Indian food, so I proceeded to explain the dishes to them. Our guide, Sujay ate with us and we discussed
all kinds of things.
Throughout the day, we bombarded Sujay with endless
questions about religion, people, the caste system, the relations with
For example, today we saw several men walking around with
a red dot on their forehead. It had
surprised me, because I thought a dot on the forehead was the “bindi” mark
reserved only for women, indicating they are married. So I asked Sujay about it. He said that on a man, it is a separate
thing. It just means that they have been
to a Hindu temple. If it is a long
vertical line, it also means they received a blessing at the temple.
On our bus ride back to the hotel, I asked Sujay to give
us a Hindi Word of the Day, much like we did in
Sujay also tried to teach us another Hindi phrase, “I’d
like some water.” I don’t know the
correct spelling, but the words sounded like “Moojay pani Cha-He-Ay.” Moojay is me, Pani is water and Cha-He-Ay is
“I want.”
Here are some observations from driving around
First of all, we saw tiny scooters driving down the
street with a complete family of four riding on them! The scooters would have mom, dad, teenage son
and six-year-old daughter, all crammed onto one tiny seat. Hard to imagine, but even harder to take a
photo of.
Second, the men outnumbered the women ten to one. I guess that many families have tests done to
determine the sex of a child, and if it’s a girl, the fetus is aborted. I think that this was commonplace several
years ago. It is sad, but I suppose the
reasons are many. If you have a boy, he
can help in the fields and farm work better.
He can carry on the family name.
A daughter requires an expensive dowry and you have to find a suitable
husband for her, and if you don’t she can become a burden for life. But now
Third, I expected to see lots of shanty towns, cardboard
houses and street people in
Still, I didn’t see much of the extreme poverty around
the city, and we did a fair amount of driving.
I wonder if the government has done something to hide the problems from
the tourists. Don’t get me wrong: the
people here are “poor” by our American standards of money, but even the poorest
seem happy. Children here are laughing
and playing in the streets, making their own entertainment from nothing,
compared to American kids who walk around angry, unhappy and isolated with their
countless gameboys, televisions, computers and gadgets. The adults here are simple, but also
happy. The joy just lights up their
faces.
Despite all the wealth we
have as a people, not many Americans have that joy inside, or if they do, they
don’t show it.
Fourth, I expected to see large herds of cows walking
around the streets, and I was surprised to only find a few. Cows are considered holy, so people here
don’t eat beef. I was told that recently
a cow-count was done and they found more than one hundred thousand cows in
We asked Sujay what the cows ate in the city, and he said
trash. People basically leave heaps of
trash outside their homes and the cows wander around eating it. He joked that the city cows probably wouldn’t
know what to do with grass if they saw it.
It made a few of us wonder if Indian cows had a pallet for spicy curried
trash.
Last of all, I was surprised at the lack of air pollution
in