India Trip: Day 2 - Delhi!!

So as you last read, we had just gotten our bags and were finally leaving the airport. The diplomat helpers were man-ing the bag duties, and we were walking out taking in the distinctive smell of India. I can’t really explain it. But if you’ve been once, when you get there again, the second the cabin is de-pressurized, you know you’ve arrived in India. It's not a knock on India. It's just a robust smell of spices, fragrances and industrialism. It's not bad.

We cleared declarations easily. We pretty much gave the sleeping guard a high five and moseyed out to the main waiting area. In that area our tour guide company had a guy standing there with a sign that said “Shenoy.” Our diplomatic motorcade just grew to two cars and by 3 more people.

I felt like we were Spinal Tap arriving in Japan. Unknowns in the US but rockstars in India, we were felt very loved. A huge thank you to Dr. Patel and his father-in-law for arranging for the first class treatment. We piled into one car, the bags went into another and our driver attempted to follow the bag car.

Leading up to this trip, one of my biggest joys was to see what Shelly thought of India in the first 20-30 minutes. I remember in 1993 when I went for the first time, it was like falling into the rabbit hole. Everything was so wildly different, and it all happens at once. The first shock is the traffic. Traffic is beyond anything you’ve ever seen and anything you could possibly imagine..

The roads, in descending order of mechanical power, have cars, motorcycles, rickshaws, bicycles and pedestrians. And then in ascending order of animals that you would not expect to see walking casually down a major roadway, you have humans, dogs, cows and elephants. Occassionally you'll see a camel. The camel we saw was sprinting down the road. If you can see a camel sprint in your lifetime, you are witnessing one of the funniest things ever.

What you should know (from the cars all the way through to the elephants), is that neither provide any signal that they are changing directions. They can continue straight, make a hard right, a veering right, cut across 3 lanes of traffic to make a right, or simply drive into on coming traffic because its just “easier that way”. Anything other than throwing your car into reverse is accepted. The only reason you aren’t allowed to throw your car into reverse is probably because a lot of the cars play Celine Dion's muzac version of “my heart will go on” when in reverse. The remaining small cars play “Silent Night.” I figured it was best to not ask questions regarding the song choices let alone, “why do you need a back up sound to a car that is smaller than most of the women in the heartland of America?” The key point to navigating the road is that you have to anticipate everyone else’s thought process, be step ahead of them, and be nonchalant about the stress.

No one who drives in India seems to worry about anything. I’m not sure if its because it’s a country full of spiritually satisfied people or whether everyone has made peace with the fact they most likely will die in that automobile. If you took Americans and put them into this type of driving world, we'd all go from road ragers to a higher level of road wrathers. I would also think American's would be livid at being charged to make right turns but getting left turns for free.

Hopefully the sarcasm made it through the blog.

I could tell Shelly’s initial 15-20 minutes was leaving an impression. It was impressing me all over again. We both had our eyes glued to the road as there were about 15 million stories being told in Delhi, and we were passing about 6 million of them on this drive alone.

I’d say less than 5 minutes into the drive, Shelly yanked my arm and said “oh my god. That man is peeing on the side of the road.” I think a state-side road pee-er is trying harder to hide his junk. He’s hiding behind a bush or something. In India, the roadside pee-er is pretty care-free doing his thing. He isn’t exactly facing traffic, but he’s not trying to hide anything from anyone, which of course, is unfortunate.

I’d say my Dad, Shelly and I had collectively seen about 5 road-pee-ers in under 10 minutes of driving. After Shelly’s initial reaction, her second reaction was, “two!” and then of course “three!”. My Dad chimed in with “four”, and I had “five”. As a result, our two weeks had us calling out road side pee-ers by number. It didn’t matter where we were driving to or what we were talking about. “You know the political strife in India can come down to….15…the different religions and their sense of entitlement”. “What I loved about the Taj was the…10…intricate work laid in the marble.” “We’re about 15 minutes from lunch. What is everyone…25…thinking of having this time around?” Our final count was shy of 40. Don't read into that number and say, "oh, i guess they saw less pee-ers." If you're looking to read into it, say to yourself, "i guess they just began to think it was normal and stopped counting as frequently."

When we got to the hotel, it was dusk. This was the first of our four hotel stays, and it was the first of the lackadaisical bomb checks at the hotel gate. Apparently, terrorism in India is limited to putting bombs under the front of your engine and the back of your trunk. That’s the only place security looks. For a country that just had hotel based terrorism, you’d think they’d still try to make you feel a little better about the thoroughness of the car check.

Checking in at the desk went smoothly. The tour agent took all the necessary vouchers and gave us the time of the next day’s pick up. Additionally, like a decent husband, I called prior to our trip to have roses waiting for Shelly when we checked in.

Ladies, you “ooooh and ahhh” here. Gentlemen, I raised the bar on you.

It worked out perfectly. Thank you Crowne Plaza, New Delhi! Shelly and I went to our room, and my Dad went to his. Dad got the non smoking room, and Shelly and I may have been the first people out of 4,000 people to not smoke in our room.

It wasn’t really a big deal because we were only there for that night and the next. The room had what seems to be standard issue in Asia, a button at the side of the bed that turns on and off all the lights. It’s an awesome feature particularly when you forgot to turn off the bathroom light and the jet lag is too strong to do anything about it. The room also had what seems to be totally unique to the Crowne Plaza. The western style toilet was slightly slanted backwards. So much so that your feet actually don’t touch the ground when you sit all the way back.

Surely you must be thinking, “maybe it was just your room.” But when Shelly and I met my Dad for dinner, he said, “what’s the deal with the toilet? It slants backward.” We all laughed.

Dinner had me excited. If you’ve never been to India, you’re missing some good Chinese food. I guess like how Texas and California have good Mexican food by proximity, India follows the same model. We ordered an appetizer and 3 entrees. What you should know about India is that most restaurants serve family style. So we got a ton of food. It was all delicious. Sadly, we left half of it there.

During dinner we had the joy of listening to the Chinese version of the White stripes. An Asian guy and an Asian girl, presumably brother and sister, were the entire band signing classic American songs through the aid of drum machine and their guitar and keyboard.. It was like being at a private taping of Chinese Idol...but really early in the competition. They nailed some songs; they totally butchered others. It was amuzing for music sake alone. Then we looked over, and their lighting consisted of someone turning on and off the light switch as well as dimming Christmas lights. This was the savy penthouse restaurant’s best of the best.

As we were wrapping up, fireworks started to illuminate the sky. We walked over to the window and saw that the fireworks were going off beneath us. It was an Indian wedding. See the video below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M--mkPkjSBA

If you look at the bottom middle of the screen you can kind of see an elephant at the party. That isn’t some colloquialism like "don’t discuss the gorilla in the room." Literally there was an elephant at the party. And if you look to the right near the top, you can see a white horse. Presumably, Andre the Giant found the white horse and told the groom, “and there they were. Four white horses. And I figured, if we ever find the lady…oh hello lady!”

This firework display was interesting to me because seemingly every great trip Shelly and I have been on, we’ve been greeted with fireworks. When Shelly and I arrived in Greece for our honeymoon there were fireworks. When we arrived in Bangkok, there were fireworks. It was only fitting that we got fireworks to kick off an India trip that rocked the casbah.

We returned to our room where we ate the Air India provided cheesecake for Shelly’s birthday. Thanks to the size of the cake, we could have a second slice and celebrate Valentine’s Day.

With that, we headed to bed and got ready for a 9am pick up for Monday morning. We were still jet lagged so waking up was pretty easy. We had breakfast at the hotel. The key to breakfast in India is don’t eat the Indian food and definitely don't eat the American food.

Outside of America, bacon isn't really bacon. We all know of the issues with Canadian Bacon. Indian bacon isn't quite as bad, but it doesn't look so hot either. French toast in India is uncooked wonder bread warmed in the heating tray. Really your best bet is the omelettes and fresh fruit. Also none of the juices are chilled, and they are pretty water downed. After about 3 days of this you miss the kick that Tropicana orange juice provides as it makes your entire face quench into a ball. Watermelon juice by comparison is lacking in just about everything.

Our guide, Sanjay, showed up, and we headed to the Red Fort. The Red Fort was closed on Mondays, so we just kind of took it in from afar.

At the time I was a little disappointed that we couldn’t go in. In retrospect after going to 2 million forts, 1.4 billion palaces, I’m ok we just saw the Red Fort from afar.

After Sanjay explained how the Prime Minister holds some annual speech at the steps of the red fort, he summoned two human powered rickshaws to ride through old delhi. It's worth noting that there are a ton of rickshaw guys who peddle around tons of people on a daily basis. None of these drivers have huge quads. I don't get how this is happening. If they had a protein based diet, there could be some seriously jacked rickshaw peddlers. The bike has no gears and they move at a pretty good pace.

The other thing worth knowing is that our rickshaw ride started right in the middle of a traffic circle. I definitely thought we were going to die when our rickshaw drivers decided to play chicken with a gigantic bus. Please note that the smile on my face in this picture is really just relief that I was still alive.

Old Delhi is pretty old. They aren’t kidding around. We zipped by:

- the oldest man on earth smoking a joint (sadly no picture available),

- a monkey doing a hollywood rooftop chase scene by himself,

- a sikh temple, a jain temple, and a jewish synagogue all within 6 buildings of each other.

Then we turned down an alleyway and got to see the real Old Delhi.

The buildings have been there forever. Electricity has been added as an afterthought.

I’m sure Ralph Nader would be ok with this. The markets are just jammed together like they are in Venice. But the colors were more vibrant in Delhi.

The shops are also a bit more random and more focused on weddings.

Don't ask who the white male bride of frankenstein is in the picture. We were zipping by. One “store” that caught our eye was a hole in the wall. As our rickshaw peddler maneuvered the streets, we passed kids running the store. They were selling Pepsi and what looked like condom packages. That was all that was for sale. I guess your either thirsty or horny if you go to this place.

Shelly and I were in one rickshaw, my Dad and Sanjay in the other. Of course Shelly and I thought kids selling Pepsi and condoms seemed odd, and it was worth following up. Companies are looking for synergies everywhere. Maybe Indian marketers felt sugar and condoms go together.

Later we learned that those condom packages are Paan. Paan is some nasty chewing tobacco that is popular because smoking is illegal in Delhi. Paan stains your teeth a redish color, pretty much all the rickshaw drivers chew it, and it apparently gets you high. That made more sense that Pepsi and condoms, but it didn’t explain why kids were selling tobacco.

We ended up at a Jain temple where a small Jain priest walked us through one of the oldest Jain temples in Delhi. His English wasn't so hot. He asked my Dad if he spoke Hindi. My Dad said “a little”. The Jain priest shifted gears, gave up trying to communicate with Shelly and me, and just talked to my dad. My Dad proceeded to understand every 7th word. I can't say we learned a whole lot from the temple. The paintings, however, were pretty. We also learned on our own that like most Indian religions Jains seem to love ringing bells loudly for at least 3 minutes straight during prayer. You might be thinking, "3 minutes of a ringing bell isn't that bad." but you'd be wrong. Think of it when people say an earthquake lasted for 1 minute. One minute of unnatural shaking or unusually loud bells ringing is a long time. At 3 minutes, you're hope that their god will come down and stop the bell.

We did learn from Sanjay that Jains typically don’t eat root vegetables as they feel you are what you eat. So if you eat food from the ground, you are the ground. But if you eat food that grows from the aid of sunlight, you are spiritually better off. If found that interesting, however, life without onions is no life worth living.

We left the Jain temple with our hearing in tact and rode to a fairly standard issue mosque (no offense to my muslim friends). Before we went into the mosque, we got this shot of my

It's pretty obvious that if he didn't become a fantastic radiologist, his calling was rickshaw driver. If only he had some paan and Pepsi.

We drove to Raj Ghat, the eternal flame and memorial for Gandhi. I have to say on a serious note that I was really appreciative of being there. Having read a little on the independence of India and knowing how principled a man he was, it was nice to take it in.

Perhaps it's a little odd to be smiling in this picture instead of being deep in thought. But I'm not good with serious photography.

It was here at Raj Ghat that we realized Shelly's superstar power. As we were leaving, we passed perhaps 50 school boys varying from ages 12-14. Every single one of their eyes were transfixed on Shelly. Shelly did them the favor of waving and smiling. It was like injecting cocaine into a puppy. The immediate jubilation of 50 school boys whether they are American, Spanish, Haitian, Indian or Jamacian (thanks Will Smith) the reaction is pretty much the same. High fives, big smiles, double takes to ensure they witnessed what they saw. This was only the beginning of something that would occur for 2 weeks intermittently. It was superstardom. It was like we were traveling with a white Bollywood star.

Last stop was Qutub Minar, the oldest tower that took forever to build. In fact it took so long to build that as a different generation started on top of the last generations work, you can see the actual design of the masonry change. According to Sanjay it is exactly the same height as the Taj Mahal. But our Agra tour guide disagreed. Anyways, here is a great picture that Shelly found.

This second one is after we knocked over the arch.

Just kidding, just kidding.

And with that we ended up back at the hotel. Still jet lagged, we went to our rooms and feel asleep at 6:30. We had to be up at 7am the next day to eat omellettes and then get in a car for a 5 hour drive to Agra.

NEXT: meeting Dev Singh (the greatest driver in the world), staying at a great hotel named JayPee which as a Bills fan made me shudder, seeing a fake Taj, seeing the real Taj, and watching Shelly and my dad enjoy a fig based dessert.