My co-worker Groom has been responsible for many of my cool India experiences: his wedding, the cricket, and now, Holi!

After work on Tuesday (which was technically Little Holi, the day before), we gathered together off the side of the road near the office. We had to bring everything with us because we would not be able to return to work after “playing Holi.”

The above was an email I received.

Can’t imagine why…

Holi is one of the biggest holidays in India, especially for the majority Hindu population. It is the spring festival of color. The first time I saw photos and videos of Holi online, I couldn’t believe this holiday existed. It’s crazy! But, for our little celebration, quite a lot of fun!

They said since it was my first time, I should wear white so I could see the colors better. (They also said to wear “old clothes” but we obviously didn’t pack those in our suitcase, so I actually purchased a white outfit for about $6 at the less expensive store connected to the supermarket. ) We gathered and drove to a spot nearby. Someone brought powdered colors. Some of the colors were mixed with water. They even said “leave your camera in the car… you never know what will happen on Holi” so the photos were taken after the fact.

Becoming Holi

We definitely let our inner children come out; maybe that is why it is called “playing”. Children are known to carry squirt guns filled with colored water, in fact, and from what I can see, this is a holiday very popular with kids. Bottles of color were poured – including my Holi baptism of blue water right over the top of my head – and powdered color rubbed on my face. (No bhang was involved, though… that would be the adult part of the celebration, I’m guessing.)

Holi Body Parts

In the emailed invitation that my co-worker sent, there was the phrase “Bura na mano, holi hai!” I asked what it meant:

The idea of someone throwing colors “without your consent” is fascinating and I think also why our co-workers advised caution on the streets if we decided to play out in the city the next day. With our little group, though, it was relatively safe, crazy fun.

Holi: Where you are the Easter Egg

Holi Group Photo

You can tell they went easy on me… no roughhousing on the foreign girl; you can actually still see individual colors! It didn’t feel that way at the time, though, I assure you

After our hands had dried, we took a lot of photos. Then we all ate samosas and snacks, carefully. There was also the occasional squirting bubbly soda involved in the Holi mess. We let our taxi off the hook and one of our co-workers, after covering the entire back seat with a car cover (and the driver’s seat with newspapers) drove us home. I would have felt sillier walking in the hotel (I think we amused the staff somewhat), but we saw people everywhere going by, full of color.

Holi Souvenir

Follicle Blues The Holi blue? Not quite gone from my hair. Getting there, though.

Thunderstorm! Delhi knows how to put on a show. Over the last several days, there have been at least three instances of dark clouds rolling in, lightning streaking across the sky, then sheets – sheets! – of rain pouring down. It’s awesome, unless you are caught in it. The walk from the gym back to the hotel building, I got soaked through. There have been lots of power blips. When the power goes out, I like to look out my window where I can see two 20-storey buildings across the quad. It’s fun to suddenly watch the power come back, the center lights of the stairwell blinking to life first.

Honey!I love honey, as many of you probably know (if you’ve seen the honey stash on my desk back home). After I scoped out my supermarket, I started systematically trying out all the different honey brands here (there are quite a few.) Just as I discovered my absolute favorite, the supermarket inexplicably stopped carrying it. They also started phasing out Tropicana 100% juice. Then the Nutella went. A conspiracy I’m sure. Not expecting much, I wandered down to the next big intersection in the opposite direction. To my surprise, I found an “Easy Day” supermarket that not only had 100% Tropicana and Nutella, but lots and lots of Hitkary Honey!

Yeah. I stocked up.

Taxi Fail? We have had some taxi issues… like them completely not showing up yesterday. Luckily, we work close and it is easy to catch an auto from outside our hotel. I’ve talked a lot with the owner this week. I think we’re settled. I guess we’ll find out.

Cable! I had been jealous of Chris and Peter because they told me tales of this new “cable box” they received that had non-fuzzy new channels! Here I’ve been making do with mostly-visible movies on WB. Their end of the building must have gotten the box first. I was not jealous, however, when they talked about all the little bugs coming up through the drain into their places, though. All things being equal, I’d rather have no TV than have bugs. (Or maybe Guido is having big bug feasts while I’m at work?) On the first of the month, the TV died completely, as apparently planned. Tonight, though, the cable box dude came. I have new channels and they are clear and crisp! The lack of TV gave me motivation to dig into the thick novel, Pillars of the Earth. So far, very good.

Leave a comment! And I have converted my blog to WordPress! You can leave a comment now! (Assuming I did it right… and that you are inclined to.)

Wednesday: Haldiram’s! My co-worker looked at me and said “Haldiram.” I said, “What?” He said, “Haldiram.” I said, “I have no idea what that is.” He said, “That’s okay.” A little while later, the team went down to lunch, but instead of the elevator stopping at the cafeteria floor, everyone got off at the parking lot. I thought it was a mistake at first. But not at all! We were spontaneously going to Haldiram’s! Haldiram’s turned out to be a popular order-at-the-counter style restaurant (with a fair number of little homeless kids outside, though, which made me sad.)

A co-worker calls this chain, “street food style, but hygienic”
He knows what’s important to me

The place was busy. You could order a variety of traditional North Indian, South Indian, Chinese, and snacks. I had something called a Tandoori Platter which was pretty good, but their specialty is “chole bhature” which I’ll translate as “poofy fried bread with spicy garbanzo bean sauce”. My co-workers called the Haldiram’s chain the best, cheapest lunch around, at a couple bucks (the cafeteria food for a buck at work doesn’t count I guess.) Glad I didn’t bring my lunch today!

Thursday: Restaurant Week! Who knew, they have Restaurant Week in Delhi! I perused the restaurants. The Indian food ones were the most popular. I settled on a European style one called “Tres” due to the variety of food offered on their set menu. And, yum. Best Meal So Far. Finally, a chance to have meat other than chicken or mutton, which are your only meat options at the average “non-veg” restaurant here. I swear that was the best chorizo I’ve ever had. And wow, did I miss red wine. And, everything was so CLEAN including the restrooms. You would never, ever be able to tell from the outside that this was a high-end kind of place (though apparently it was in a high-end neighborhood; couldn’t tell in the dark), so yay for Restaurant Week.

The cost? Almost precisely the same as Denver Restaurant Week. About $25 a head. Hmm. Getting there? This was the hard part. I thought I did an excellent job giving early notice and clear, detailed instructions to our normal cab guy. But my confidence was shattered when the driver showed up at 6:30am to my place for no reason at all. (Unless he was mixing up 6:30am and 6:30pm, but what restaurant serves dinner at 6:30am? Except Denny’s. No Denny’s here.) Pretty sure he didn’t understand and unable to explain it any clearer, I also booked Easy Cabs, then made the mistake of reading Easy Cabs reviews in which I heard all the sob stories about them never showing up. But it all turned out fine. Everyone showed up when they were supposed to (I didn’t cancel our normal cab until the last minute just in case; they ended up both arriving at the same time. No idea where our normal driver thought he was taking us since the owner never confirmed anything. Felt a little guilty for the last minute cancelling, but not terribly much so.)

Friday: Cabana Cocktail party! On Thursday, an envelope was left in our rooms with an invitation in it. Our hotel was throwing a PR party. We walked over. In typical Indian hosting-hundreds-of-people fashion, there was a buffet that did not open until 9pm, lots of covered tables and chairs, and a dance floor. The free alcohol was an unusual draw and it became increasingly popular mainly with the men over the course of the evening. The DJ was blasting the music. And, like the Ring Ceremony I had been to a couple months back, the guys and gals alike danced their hearts out, moving sometimes in unison and often lip-synching the lyrics. The hosts seemed to periodically be giving out random wrapped gifts to the Best Dancer or something, but we were not really paying attention. We all got pulled up to dance later, which actually was kind of fun even though I didn’t know any of the music (except, again, Gangnam Style.) Problem with dancing: there is no one to hold my purse.

Anyway, so a little while later, the two friendly ladies pulled us up, yet again, to dance. This time, after only a few minutes, I heard over the loudspeaker, “And the winner goes to the lady with the brown hair!” They repeated it. I had this feeling they meant me, even though I would have described myself as the only woman in the room WITHOUT brown hair. Yep, they did. I guess they wanted to give the foreign lady a prize (and photograph it) really badly, because I certainly wasn’t doing any fancy dances in my sneakers while holding my purse. After that, a less creepy older guy followed by a more creepy younger guy starting dancing with me (I was still awkwardly holding the present). The younger got a phone call (and cell phones rule here) so I took the opportunity to escape back to the others.

I opened the present next day and to my surprise: random art! And I like it. The colors are lovely. I may even keep it.

This’ll really pull the room together…

Saturday: Road trip! I joined a group called “Delhi Road Trips” on an ex-pat site. They decided to have an introductory lunch meeting in a little town called Karnal a couple hours north. The guys organizing it were awesome and even got me a lift from my place! The retired major and his wife totally took me under their wing. At any rate, the six of us plus driver had a stimulating conversion as we headed to a new state: Haryana. (That makes four states, five including Delhi, I’ve managed to see so far.) We talked about whether marriage makes one happier and about whether destiny was pre-determined. Big stuff for people who had mostly just met. The place we were headed called “Haveli” was unexpectedly closed due to either a kitchen fire or a labor strike, depending on who we asked, but we hung around for a while to wait for the others in our group to show (we were super early – all being punctual-type people.)

Multiple Marriage Lawns… but only One Luxurious Room:
A Unique Theme Resort Indeed!

So, we got some snacks to hold us over and hung around and took photographs. This resort was in the middle of nowhere, but pretty fun, even closed. In fact, it is a chain, and we passed a smaller “Haveli” on the way up. We took photos and sat, chatting and to my utterly huge unbelievable excitement, starting to plan a Leh trip! Earlier, I discovered another person in the group shared my passion for this crazy Himalayas road trip idea to the north. Amazingly, they seem keen on planning as well! Serendipitously wonderful!

(Getting in my monkey – and monkeying around – quota for the post)

Probably the most fun part of the Saturday road trip, besides the great conversation with a very cool group of folks, was the palm reader. All the ladies (and one of the gentlemen) took a turn. The reader himself, who had his booth stacked with palmistry books, asked for my name and age and then looked at my left hand and told me a lot of things while another person translated for me. He was surprisingly accurate about my relationship issues.

The group of us getting our fortunes told

No one else – out of the seventeen people who said they intended to come – showed up, but we enjoyed the small group atmosphere. We headed back to the first Haveli (quite hungry at that point) and two others had just arrived, coincidentally, thinking that this was the Haveli we were meeting at. Lunch was good. Had too much lassi, but not a bad thing. I’m having as much lassi and chai as I can possibly have while in India. (Side note: a few different people have been surprised that I know what “chai” is… they don’t realize that their local tea has spread all over the world.) The waiters all wore little vests and genie pointed shoes, it was cute. We took some photos there as well and I had a kulfi for the first time, which was a milky ice cream bar that tasted like cardamom (a spice I only know because it is a setting on our work tea machine). Not bad. I’ve heard advice to avoid dairy / ice cream in India. Yeah, not happening.

Delhi Road Trip Group!
(some of us at least)

Also… I’m thinking about moving to Orange County.

(totally stole this image)

The apartment high-rise complex across the street (called Orange County, seriously) has three-bedroom furnished apartments (including a sauna, gym, and pool building) for a little over half the price I’m paying now. I checked out a few rooms. First one was so dirty, I almost didn’t look again. Next one they showed me was better. Then they showed me the adorably furnished one (with art and a purple wall in the side bedroom). Yep, they know what they’re doing. Gotta decide if it is worth the security deposit, agent commission, and all the other hassle / extra expense of having an apartment.

All right, Delhi, you win.

My spinning ceiling fans (on Level 3) were keeping me just cool enough at night, but it’s time to step it up.

Actually, though, it is not as much the warming temperature, but the fact that A/C discourages mosquitoes that prompted me to ask the front desk three times in three days to please come up and get the A/C working for me. I got munched a couple nights ago by a ninja mosquito and got out the aerosol spray for the first time. Although they made the spray smell nice, I don’t like the idea of spraying poison in the air.

One maintenance dude had to lift a shelf that I did not know lifted and plug the things in while the other *stood out on the ledge* and fiddled with something out there. They double checked that I still didn’t want my heater (which had been using the A/C socket) before taking it away. No thanks.

Delhi is less humid than I expected. Although it certainly is warm out in the middle of the day, not brutally so, not yet. I still enjoyed a hot chai after lunch in the outdoor food stalls outside work, though the market has been becoming popular with flies lately.

My brilliant method for looking for an apartment so far has been to:

1. Walk in a nearby shop with the word Real Estate in it
2. Search on 99acres.com (and send messages to the dealers using their system)
3. Map the address of an agency in several results on 99acres.com and walk there

Method 1 worked pretty well, getting me the possible “Orange County” apartment, 3-bedroom, fully furnished, for $550/month. Pretty good deal. However, there is a 2-month (at least) security deposit and 1-month finders fee. That’s 3 months rent worth of fees when I’m only going to be here 8 more months, not to mention I’ll have to pay for all my utilities and internet. There is still savings compared to my current place, no doubt, but not enough to make me take it right away.

So Method 2 confused me, implying that 30,000 rupees ($550) was way too much. Every search result was under that amount. My co-workers, however, told me that 30,000 was about what I would expect to pay and that the internet prices were just to get you in the door. (Incidentally, my co-workers quoted 25,000 for a 2-bedroom. It’s surprisingly difficult to find a one-bedroom apartment.) Sending messages to the dealers did get through, but not always as quickly as I hoped. I also learned that nothing was available in Sector 62 near my work, despite that I can SEE a lot of apartments there.

Method 3 has been the most interesting. I found the real estate agency called “Shubham Assocates” right where Google said it’d be and talked to some folk who spoke very little English but understood it pretty well. This led to the last 24 hours, which has involved all sorts of emotions like excitement and frustration and fear and confusion and fun. But I satisfied my curiosity. I’ve seen apartments in several societies now. My real estate guides were two twenty-something guys who took me from place to place on the back of their motorbikes. Notably, using this form of transportation did not stop them from taking cell phone calls from various apartment owners as they organized the venture, holding the phone in one hand while they steered, controlled the throttle, and braked with the other. My normal Delhi vehicle internal monologue of ohmygod, don’t hit that truck/car/auto/woman/motorbike/bicycle/dog/cow was a bit more persistent since a mistake would involve me in the hospital, not just me mildly injured or inconvenienced.

View from 14th Floor of “Exotica Elegance”

They couldn’t always get the keys to places they asked me to meet them at. But they didn’t like to tell me until I’d already walked through the 97-degree weather to the complex in question and waited about 20 minutes. That led to the “frustration” part of my emotions. They did always have a backup place in mind, though.

Problem is, I have not actually found one I liked yet. My favorite complex so far “ATS Advantage” right across the street only has “semi-furnished” apartments which means no beds, couches, or tables. I don’t want to deal with having to buy/sell furniture so that’s out. “Exotica Elegance” had cute, furnished apartments, but no TV and the gym looked like it was for storing, not using, exercise equipment, the ellipticals were so tightly packed. “V3S Indralok” was the cheapest by far at less than 20,000 ($330) but it was farther away and not in as nice a neighborhood. Not sure I’d be comfortable there. The other ones they showed me in Orange County were either not completely furnished or quite nearly as expensive as the original 30,000.

(They really wanted me to close a deal with them today or tomorrow morning. But the best offer they had was 22,000 for a mostly-furnished two bedroom. The only catch was… they hadn’t actually shown me that place, yet.)

So, apartments in Delhi… The ones I’m looking at are in “the best housing societies” in the area so theoretically pretty nice comparably. These societies all tend to be gated (with armed guards) and have several high-rises surrounding a park and a pool. The ones I looked had nice furniture, but oddly small living rooms, and thin mattresses. (I have yet to see a thick mattress in India.) None had bathtubs, but there were usually several bathrooms (with a variety of toilet cleanliness level). All the ones I looked at had not just one, but multiple balconies, and a special washroom by the kitchen. The lobbies, if you could call them that, had a functional feel – just concrete walls – and the elevators were slow and not very confidence inspiring; the fitness centers varied wildly. My favorite parts were the awesome views of the city from so high. These apartments are not the luxurious ones you might find in an ex-pat neighborhood in South Delhi – these are clearly used by Indian families. In short, they are just good enough to do the job for this picky American girl.

In other fun news, I got to go to another Indian Wedding! And this time, they did the Walking-Around-The-Fire (the real, final part of the marriage ceremony) before the buffet, so I got to see it! And I even got a spot near the front.

The wedding was for (breath) the Major’s daughter’s husband’s cousin. And it was colorful, large, and beautiful as always. A funny side issue was that I had a doctor’s appointment at 8am the next morning for my insurance, so I was required to fast for 12 hours beforehand. And of course, the buffet didn’t start until 9:30pm. But the Major’s wife was very insistent that the fast was really only meant to be *10* hours and made sure I ate plenty at the buffet right up until 10pm.

I’ve been continuing to avoid raw veggies – that I didn’t wash myself – and ice. But my attempt to avoid ice cream is simply not happening. I might get back on the wagon during the summer months, just because I know there will be more outages. I still amazingly have not gotten badly sick! I still expect it to happen any day as I’ve gradually become less careful.

This week is Navratri in India, a special nine-day festival with a lot of celebrations and, more to the point, special fasting rules. Some people avoid grains, meat, garlic, and onions. Others only consume fruit and milk for the whole nine days. Having a wedding buffet during this time meant they were also apparently obligated to provide a special “Navratri” version. Our cafeteria at work also has a special version of the usual choices for this festival. It is apparently a very big deal, but I didn’t even know about it (the reason being because I don’t get any days off work. I always notice the festivals which involve a day off work.) I’m eating my usual assortment of food.

Maybe I’ll try a sari next time…?

At any rate, it was perfect weather for this outdoor wedding (the food was indoors.) Instead of a receiving line, the bride and groom set themselves up on stage with a professional photographer. Then, everyone who comes through gets to greet the bride and groom AND have their photo taken with them. Good system!

When we went through, they asked where I was from and I told them. Then I said, “I came all the way from America just to come to this wedding,” and I got some laughs. “That’s a long way,” they said. They were really friendly. I’ve heard brides and grooms are usually exhausted by this point, but they looked good.

The Major was trying to help me solve my apartment problem. (He knows everyone!) He could offer me a comparably-priced place, but only one with a much longer commute, close to an hour. Not sure I can do that, but it was a very kind offer.

Even hanging in through the Turning On of The Air Conditioner

The oddest part of the very quick home medical test was the electrocardiogram thing. Felt vaguely like I was being hooked up to The Machine, with the suction cups and all. But otherwise, it all went smoothly.

I was very proud of myself this week. Every week at work, someone on our team does a “tech focus” where we talk about something cool we know or learned. It was my week. I’m bad at thinking of things, but I had a couple small ideas, nothing that was making me excited. Then the previous presenter gave me an idea and I went with it. I learned how to create a Browser Add-On! It took a couple web tutorials and a couple late nights, but I did it! I created a very silly add-on for Firefox.

If you’re curious, right-click Affirmations.XPI and do Save Link As… Then, once you have it saved, open Firefox and go to the Tools menu and choose Add-ons. Then drag the file into the window (or use the gear menu and choose Install Add-on From File) and you should get the pop-up asking if you want to install. Install. You may have to hit Enable after it is added to the list, then restart Firefox. You should then see a new item in the Tools menu called “Affirmations”. If you choose it, you’ll get a little encouraging pop-up message. (If you have View->Tools->Add-on bar checked, you will also see a new icon in the lower right corner that does the same thing.) Simple, silly, and not nearly as hard as I expected. Though apparently, doing the same thing in Internet Explorer would be horribly, terribly hard.

What makes Firefox Add-ons fun is that, if you want to change it, like to add additional inspirational messages, all you have to do is change .xpi to .zip (you may have to tell your computer to show you extensions), and look in the files yourself. The files needed for an add-on are only XML, HTML, Javascript, and CSS pretty much. Nothing super complicated; you can make any change you want in Notepad. Then change the file extension back to .xpi and re-drag to install it again. (Commercial add-ons are signed preventing you from making changes without re-signing, but mine ain’t signed.)

We felt the earthquake that hit the border of Iran/Pakistan this afternoon. It was not very strong in Delhi, but it was unmistakable on the third floor. It was short, just a couple little heaves.

My surprise was that, the second the earthquake happened, everyone in the office got out of their seats and proceeded toward the doors of the stairs. “This happens sometimes,” one of our co-workers told us as we walked. Because the earthquake clearly was not bad, people were talking amiably, not particularly hurrying, as if the entire company had spontaneously decided to go on break. The guards held the door for us. The speed with which all the residents of this business complex emptied was like an elementary schoolteacher’s fire drill practice dream come true.

So, a day before I move into my 12th floor apartment (yep, I got that 2-bedroom in Orange County) is when I find out Delhi is on some kind of fault and is due for a Big One. D’oh. My complex does advertise “earthquake resistant” building methods, though… At any rate, our co-workers said this had happened two other times in the last year. It looks like evacuation is standard procedure across Delhi and everyone is eager to comply. Not a bad thing.

The employees of the various companies hanging out in the sun, waiting for the OK to go back inside

My other earthquake experiences (all minor ones) have been in Japan. At this level of earthquake, the office workers in Tokyo will barely look up from their computers, let alone leave the building. Then again, we postulated that the the buildings in Japan are built a little more sturdily. (And earthquakes happen more frequently there I think.)

I’m in my new place! A two-bedroom in a “housing society” called Orange County, really. It’s well known as a pretty swank place to live, apparently. It’s nice enough. The rent is $450/month. The utilities (water, gas, electricity and society fees) are approximately $60/month. I pre-pay cash to the maintenance folk on the first floor.

For all the talk about India’s bureaucracy, the paperwork didn’t seem worse than renting an apartment in the U.S. The owner, the real estate guys and I gathered in a room on a Sunday, the day after I looked at the place, and we signed all the pages of the lease. Then I handed over a bunch of cash. (Everyone involved insisted on cash and the real estate agents got a full month’s rent commission.) I learned the daily limit of my ATM withdrawal (about $1000) but the owner let me pay the deposit and first month’s rent the following day.

Tower 10, 12th Floor
(Notice lack of a 13th floor)

The friendly owner and his family (three other adults and a small child – wow, what a squeeze) were there when I came to see it the place both times and he told me he was willing to leave major items for me to use, like a couch, chairs, bed, table, coffee table, and TV. Because of the rent savings from my only other viable option (a 3-bedroom fully furnished for $560), I agreed, not realizing he did not intend to include a fridge, stove, microwave nor any other furniture whatsoever.

The front door.
(No, that is not a demon over it. No, that is not a swastika. Keep telling myself that.)

I discovered later that he never intended to leave anything at all. This left me wondering why I had even been shown this place as I had specifically requested fully furnished. The owner and his family apparently really wanted to help the foreign lady out. (Honestly, it’s just making me feel guilty.) What’s irritating is that all the money I saved by not getting the three bedroom, I’ve just blown on appliances. The owner said that he could reimburse me for any cost I spent in buying appliances, and I believe he intends to… it’s just that once I’m back in the U.S. that is one of those really easy things to “forget” to do. Even before I started looking, I assumed that the chances I’d actually get my security deposit back were about 1 in 5.

Living Room / Bedroom / Kitchen

The owner is super nice and not only left the active cable box but went out of his way to renew it with additional English movie channels so it wasn’t all Hindi. Apparently, the furniture (which is really quite nice and looks brand new) was something he got at the start of his marriage. Feel sort of bad about that and even offered to let him have it back. But he said the ladies (his mother and wife I assume) insisted. He gave me an excellent tour of the facilities and basics before he left and has kept in close contact with me ever since, making sure I’m doing well and have what I need.

Bathroom

My apartment has two bathrooms. One more than I need, but that’s fine. No bathtub, of course, but I’m lucky just to have a barrier between the (overly gadgety) shower and toilet.

A Geyser

A “geyser” in India is something you really need, as it heats the water for the rest of your apartment. It is pronounced “geezer” and apparently does not spark thoughts of water spurting out 100 feet in the minds of the locals. And it creates some HOT water.

Guess what my apartment does not have any of? I did not realize it until I started moving things in. Look at the floor plan. Anything missing?

This has everything! Except…

The floor plan is almost a perfect mirror image of mine, except for the location of the sink. Yep, three balconies! I am not a fan of the living room as it is narrow and right in the circulation zone, one of my biggest pet peeves left over from architecture school, but the kitchen is quite spacious. Architecture school also taught me one thing that is often overlooked, as it doesn’t look good in a floor plan: storage space. Yes, ladies and gentleman. There is not one single closet. To be fair, yes there is a wardrobe in each bedroom. So my clothes have a place to go. Know what doesn’t have a place? Linens. Towels. Jackets. General-purpose stuff that I don’t need out in the open. Even the bathroom does not have a single shelf. Nowhere to put vitamins, antibiotics, extra toilet paper, or my feminine hygiene products. Because I didn’t get any furniture either, my books and desk supplies also don’t have a place.

I do suspect I just have more crap than most Indians. That wardrobe in the second bedroom is my current storage area. How four adults and a child lived here is still beyond me as this feels just adequate for me. And this is without the room full of stuff I still have in the States.

Fun from the 12th floor
View from my balcony

So I bought a fridge and a microwave from the nearby Orange County shopping center’s electronics store. From a very attentive saleswoman. At absolutely full American-level prices. (The microwave was about $130, even! Where’s Target when you need it?) And when I saw the washing machines I just melted. I am SO SICK of washing my clothes. Even though the owner of the apartment mentioned the location of a self-serve laundromat (which I still have not found incidentally), I decided that I probably wouldn’t want to be carrying laundry in the heat/rain. It has already hit 100 degrees here. Luckily, it’s not humid, but it is starting to get pretty uncomfortable being outside for too long carrying groceries, etc. And it is not even the hottest month yet.

They have “semi-automatic” washing machines. What’s that, you ask? It means you have to take your clothes out of the main compartment and put them in a smaller compartment for the spin cycle. I was easily talked into fully automatic.

Anyway, so once they realized I was serious, I got sat at a comfy table, an air conditioner was put right beside me, I was served water and tea, and generally was treated like a queen, despite wearing the silly T-shirt I got from our St. Baldrick’s activity day at work. I admit, it is kind of nice to be pampered. My “asking for a combo purchase discount” got me a free $40 stainless steel electric kettle I had my eye on. Something, anyway.

More fun from the 12th floor

So a couple days later, four young guys delivered all my purchases. More accurately, they delivered the fridge and kettle. Then when I pointed that there was a third thing on their sheet, they came back up 12 floors with the microwave. Then when I pointed out the washing machine on the second sheet, they had to go back down for that as well. Then, and only then, did I sign their form.

Very luckily, a neighbor lady of mine had stopped by. Without her there, they might have made me figure out on my own how to get the fridge and washing machine out of the boxes where they were tightly styrofoamed. (It took three of them working together to do it successfully.) They unpacked, plugged the fridge in, and put it in place. I only realized two hours later that they never turned the outlet on. Seriously, people. I’m the one from a country where we don’t have switches next to the outlets.

But the real challenge was the washing machine.

Spatial Conundrum

Yeah. The only place for a washing machine is on the balcony off the kitchen (and indeed, that is where I’ve seen it at other apartments.) But the only outlet is behind the door. The water inlet (cold water only) is also behind the door. The drain? You guessed it. On the opposite side. WTF?

A drain on my resources

So, my washing machine ended up at an awkward angle right in the middle of the balcony. Giving the problem a little thought, I figured putting a bucket with a hole in it was a clever solution. Except that the hole was not quite overlapping the drain, so I painstakingly poked additional holes in the hard plastic. That worked slightly better. Keeping the hose up with plastic and packing tape: not working as well. But good enough until I get something better.

Still, I am loving my washing machine and its automatic spin cycle (my clothes dry so fast!) even if it causes a bit of a wet mess on the balcony when it drains.

I hung out with the neighbors today. The owner of the place knew them well and introduced them to me before I even moved in. The couple and their two sons lived in New Jersey and California (their younger son is, in fact, an American Citizen) as did the brother and his wife and two daughters, so they are easy to talk with and understand (and have already been translating for me). I met the whole extended family today. Along with having a lovely time chatting with the 10-year old girl who speaks English in a wonderful American accent, I also learned that they had a similar conundrum with their washing machine. Their solution: extending everything. The input, the plug, and the drain pipe. Only the middle one I can do on my own.

Go home, architect, you’re drunk

The club is quite nice. The facilities are similar to Cabana’s. Four treadmills, two stationary bikes, two ellipticals, and a variety of weight machines and free weights. There is a spa with a jacuzzi and sauna apparently. I haven’t tried it yet. My favorite is the room clearly signed “Restaurant” but is just an empty room where they hold yoga classes. My neighbor told me the yoga classes are at 5am and 5pm and cost about $15/month. Hmmm.

View from neighbor’s balcony

I have a maid.

I decided to just keep the owner’s maid at $20/month since that was the easiest transition for both of us. She speaks Not One Word of English. I was very nervous the first day. I thought it would be really awkward. However, it wasn’t awkward for her. She is obviously way more comfortable and familiar with the house and her duties than I, so (after showing her where I had put the supplies I had purchased based off an extensive list the owner had texted me a few days previous) she just did her stuff and even helped me dispose of the refrigerator and washing machine styrofoam and boxes. She seems pretty on the ball. She mops / wipes the whole floor, including balconies, and does the dishes. I thought it was weird that she came 7 days a week so I had the neighbor tell her not to come on Sunday (but that I’d still pay her the same, which I’m sure she disapproved of. Except the girl is already getting more money out of me than from the owner. He first said 800 rupees, then suddenly switched to 1000. Yep. Foreigner tax. Whatever. It still comes out to less than $2/hr which, you know, yikes.)

There is an older guard at the bottom of the elevator. He seems super friendly and smiles a lot. Also: Not a word of English. Even numbers. I actually got to use my Hindi numbers to tell him the flat number (this is when I was just visiting the owner on my own.) A few times, he really tried to tell me something and I really tried to understand. Just wasn’t happening.

One thing I like is that this place, unlike Cabana, has a really easy address to tell people over the phone. Everyone knows Orange County. I tell them my tower number and flat number and that’s it. So far, I’ve had all sorts of delicious food delivered with no problems.

Other things I like:

• That I have an apartment
• Cool view from, count ’em, three balconies
• Big kitchen with RO (reverse osmosis water filter) built in.
• Good-sized bedroom with wardrobe and master bath (that has decent water pressure even)
• An exhaust fan in the kitchen and bathroom (most places I have lived have NOT had one of these – or a working one at any rate) and ceiling fans everywhere else
• Cable and a good-sized flatscreen TV
• Nice, helpful neighbors
• Nice floors, fake wood in bedrooms, tile in living kitchen

Things I don’t like:

• Insufficient outlets in kitchen. One for the fridge, one for the RO, one too high to reach, and one for everything else (microwave, rice cooker, kettle, etc), all of which have high-voltage plugs that regular multi-plug power cords do NOT have, so I have to use the devices one at a time
• The lack of closets or shelves anywhere except for the wardrobe
• Difficult washing machine setup
• That the bedroom and balcony doors lock. Just seems like a bad idea.
• No A/C in the living room! (This will be the end of me.)
• Small living room
• Lack of a screen front door (like the neighbors have) but at least I have screens on many other windows.

A video from my balcony taken from my camera. Not all that exciting, but you know.
(Should work in Chrome and Firefox if all my converting worked.)

We spent a long weekend in Jaipur ostensibly for Buddy’s daughter’s birthday (the big First Birthday in India… like a Bar Mitzvah for a baby) but also to check out the “Pink City” because, well, why not. It’s a point on the Golden Triangle after all. And Buddy’s hometown.

Buddy helped us figure out the train schedule and what was available, then he booked tickets for us for our first Indian Train Experience. I think a lot of trains, especially during school’s summer break starting in May, are booked months in advance, but he was able to get us seats in the air conditioned car with just a week’s notice except for the return trip Sunday night. So we opted for a different style train on Sunday morning instead. One way for one person for the four-and-a-half-hour journey cost about $10. And included breakfast. Can’t beat that.

Catching the 6:05am Shatabdi Express
(Advice: sometimes, it is good not to tune out those background announcements… because you might find out that the platform your train is actually on is contrary to what the sign at the front said)

The “veg” breakfast included some kind of potato kebab, mango juice, some thin slices of bland bread, and some butter.
The non-veg version just replaced the potato thing with an omelet.

This train, the Shatabdi Express is the second fastest train in India, second only to the even more prestigious Rajdhani Express. I thought it was a bit run down and the seats were close together, but it was nice enough and the air conditioning worked perfectly. Most of the seats were taken, but no one clogged up the aisles or anything (like I’ve heard they do in other train types / classes. I just read in the Wiki article I linked to that the reason is that no “unreserved” tickets are sold for Shatabdi trains.) We received a bottle of water – “India Rail” brand – a newspaper and hot tea almost right away. Then we were served breakfast, though it took some prodding for them to bring the “non-veg” breakfast out. I think they had forgotten about it. But they were using plastic gloves! That made me so happy. The cutlery (real silverware) was wrapped up nicely as well. Only the straw wasn’t wrapped. Not bad, India Rail!

The landscape was mostly grasslands punctuated by several trees and the occasional hill. Near towns, though, it was less fun to look out the window because the railroad tracks are apparently the preferred location for doing your duty. Those guys did not seem to mind that the entire train could see them. Toilets per capita in India I’m sure is a low number indeed.

Because our co-worker Buddy is awesome, he picked us up from the railway station. (One beggar outside touched me on the arm, ew. I’m starting to become used to the begging but I do NOT like being touched anywhere on my person. I probably overreacted with my “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me!”, but whatever.) And since Buddy’s amazing awesomeness was unending, he actually lent us his car and driver for the ENTIRE day and night. Whoa. The hotel we found using a combination of Buddy’s recommendations and MakeMyTrip.com’s reservations was a ten minute walk (and a five-minute drive due to oddly-organized roads) from the station and oh, the luxury of a five-star hotel. I think we only paid $50/night using MakeMyTrip but seems like it should have been more. Everything was so clean. So clean, that it almost seemed like I could drink or brush my teeth from the tap water. But I didn’t.

Country Inn
Because we were due for a splurge

After checking in and dropping off our luggage, we headed out. One of Buddy’s recommended places to see was close by and immediately stood out to us from the car because of its nifty architecture. The Albert Hall. We may have went into its museum if we had realized the price we saw was for a Composite Ticket (that included most of the sites around Jaipur) and not just for this single museum. We were balking (for some reason) at 7 bucks. At our next stop, we got the Composite Ticket that included Albert Hall for the same price, but never made it back there to see the museum. So we just had fun taking photos instead.

The Albert Hall
(I did not count all the holes.)

My favorite part about Jaipur was the Old Walled City in the middle. This is the “cute town center” I had looked for, but failed to find, in Aurangabad, which had led me to wonder of its existence outside Delhi at all. But wonder no longer! This fits the bill exactly. We had to drive through a pretty arch within the wall – there is really a wall – to reach the old town and once we got in, it was quite charming!

Jaipur Old City Area
(The Pinkish City)

Jaipur is called “The Pink City” but if it is because of the color of the walls here, I might have gone with The Orangish Adobe Rust City or The Burnt Umber City. I would have liked to spend more time wandering around in this area, up and down the streets, checking out the markets and enjoying the atmosphere. However, I settled for the view from our air conditioned vehicle.

Our vehicle and patient driver made his way right smack in the middle of all the pink to the place you see if you do a Google Image search for Jaipur. It is called the Hawa Mahal. And that famous beehive view of the front… was covered in scaffolding. Of course. Luckily, the inside was open. And awesome.

The facade and beyond at the Hawa Mahal

We found the entrance leading through an alley with gift shops to a road in the rear, following hand-written signs to a little ticket booth and door in the back. There may have been an easier way, one with less gift shops, but it was not immediately obvious.

Hawa Mahal is the kind of temple I like. Lots of nooks and crannies, multiple curvy paths and stairs to explore any way you like, overlooks of the city and stained glass windows, and just general prettiness. It was a lot of fun, even in the increasingly warm temperatures.

Sights from various floors of the Hawa Mahal

There were some other tourists around, but it was not packed by any means. It was fun going up and down the floors and looking out the windows of the facade which were originally built for royal ladies to look upon the town’s activities without being seen.

This group of ladies was having a grand time exploring the place, then taking photos of me with them.
They also posed for a photo from my camera.

Yes, the above is what many Indian ladies normally wear while out doing touristy things; at least that was my observation. Unlike Westerners, who don much more casual T-shirts and sunglasses, capris and sandals, aiming for ultimate comfort, Indian ladies always seem to wear only slightly simpler versions of the graceful and beautiful clothing worn for weddings and formal celebrations.

Our next stop was lunch! An expensive meal at a place our driver took us to called Niros. (We thought he was saying New Rose. And I wondered, like I always do, if the driver managed to get himself some lunch at some point…) Two western women walked in. Chris pronounced, “The food is excellent here!” The girls said, “Really? You’ve been here before?” and Peter said, “Actually, no we haven’t.” The girls perused a menu but walked out shortly later. “It’s too expensive. We’re students,” they explained. But it was only really expensive by Indian standards… seven or eight bucks a meal. Our meal was unusually meaty. No curries, just pieces of lamb and chicken on a plate in Rajasthan style. It was indeed excellent, though. Our next destination was back in the Old City practically next door to the Hawa Mahal: The City Palace.

(The Indian accent has the unfortunate tendency to pronounce “C” as closer to “Shi” making it seem like this palace we were going to see… was not so great, if you know what I mean.)

The City Palace Guards
Sitting, Standing, Posing

The City Palace was large, pretty, and had some nifty mixed architecture and a cool display or two as well as a random puppet show, but in general, I was not overly impressed. Could have been the pounding heat, which, according to Google, crossed the 100-degree mark while we were there.

If you go through the below door, you’ll end up in the “Sabha Niwas” which is some kind of throne room or royal receiving hall. Also, as one of our party found out the hard way, they take the “No Photography” rule very seriously. All photos had to be deleted and they attempted to charge a 500 rupee fine, though did not seem able to enforce it. All this does not explain why you can see photos of Sabha Niwas online. (Aside: In general, I like to know the reason behind photography restrictions and wish they would post it. In this case, it seemed arbitrary. Nothing within seemed like it would be particularly sensitive to light.)

The “Don’t Even Think About Taking a Photo In Here” Room

Other stuff in City Palace:

Mubarak Mahal:
Cool Rivendell-like architecture. Mediocre garment museum inside. Sneaky second story with no public access.

On our way out (just as we realized that the last place listed on the ticket with the word “Baggi” actually meant “Buggy” where sure enough, there was an unexpected row of presumably horse-drawn buggies in a line) we saw these guys performing.

Puppets!

The puppet show seemed less of a cultural part of the palace and more two guys making a buck doing some semi-traditional activities. After we arrived, the puppeteer (and his drumming companion) made the girl puppet do some overtly sexual dance moves. (Luckily, the kids who were watching had left by then.) I tipped him, but he still wanted to sell us some of his handmade dolls afterward. So did half of Jaipur. Men with dolls. That appears to be a Jaipur Thing.

We walked back to where the driver was parked. Peter bought a baseball cap for a few bucks that had, no joke, the shape of a running puma above the word “Lego”. Mixed branding at its best. The driver told us that the Jantar Mantar (aka Cool Sundial Place) was just up the street in walking distance, so up we walked. This, and almost everything else we visited during our trip, was included in our 350 rupee ($6) Composite Ticket. There is also a famous Jantar Mantar in Delhi. More than sundials, they both have lots of sculpture-building-instruments that measure astronomical things like the azimuths and angle of the planets and other scientific space stuff. (And have been settings in a few movies.)

Jantar Mantar

Jantar Mantar was very neat, but one thing (besides the heat) significantly detracted from my enjoyment of it. One thing I heard is not the case in Delhi’s version.

Climb me!

This place was built to climb on, no question. Stairs and climbable everything, clearly designed to ascend. But, guess what? It wasn’t allowed! Though I have to say one good thing about the place. I looked Jantar Mantar’s Wiki entry up just now… and wow, this place must have had a facelift! It is pristine now compared to the state of it in the photos. Maybe that is why climbing isn’t allowed?

Some Jantar Mantar gardeners and the view back to Hawa Mahal

The Obligatory Monkey Photo

Despite that the sun still had plenty of room to go, the time was 5:00pm so they started kicking us out. They even hurried my purchase (hard to believe they would want to hurry any transfer of my money) of mango juice at the exit. I’ve been generally buying a beverage at every site, mostly not water just in case the bottle is somehow not as sealed as it looks.

Our driver then took us north of the city to the Lake Palace. Apparently, you are not allowed to actually go inside the palace, so most people view it from this viewing spot along the side of the road, complete with all sorts of people selling things and the occasional cow.

Jal Mahal, or Lake Palace
(one of many “Mahal”s in India)

There were a couple persistent salespeople here. I saw a tour bus arrive later with lots of white people on it, which explained all the retail activity. I liked the following sign in the area. (The message read in Hindi on the other side.)

The sign reads (all spelling mistakes, Britishisms, and spacing theirs) under the seal of the “Tourist Assistance Force”

Don’t avail services of unauthorised guide for sight seeing
avoid friendship and advice of the persons who approach to
provide their services at monuments, bus stand and railway
station for arrenging accomodation and sightseeing
don’t encourage beggars and hawkers at tourist sites

Time for a coconut.

STEP 1: Find a coconut stand

STEP 2: Pay them some money while they slice off the top

STEP 3: Drink through a straw

No worries about the quality of that water! Also replenishes electrolytes. Felt a little weird just tossing the coconut onto the pile when I drank all the coconut milk within, but I’m sure the rest of the coconut must be used somehow (fed to the cows or whatnot.) From what I’m told and have seen, nothing is wasted in Delhi.

We were pretty exhausted by this point. As it was sort of getting near dinner time, we decided to have our driver just take us to the restaurant that Buddy had recommended.

Chokhi Dhani

What can I say about Chokhi Dhani? It is one part carnival, one part hotel resort, and three parts Renaissance Festival.

We paid our 700 rupees ($10 for entry plus $4 for a Royal Rajasthani Dinner) and entered. There were traditional dancers and a storyteller. There was a ferris wheel. If you wandered over to the hotel side, you could get an adult beverage (which we did and saw a frog). If you walked through the grounds toward the rear you would find booths with classic games like the ring toss, basketball, shooting, and archery, but instead of oversized stuffed animals, you just win your money back if you are successful! Amusingly, once Chris made an elaborate point of making sure the booth guy actually did load the pellet in the rifle for each try, he made all his shots and won his money back. The palm reader told me that I could depend on having three kids.

It took quite a while to find the location of our dinner (and to explain to people asking what we were looking for.) but eventually someone led us to the building. A table was arranged in a giant square around the fancy room. There were only two other small groups of diners there (another building seemed more popular for dinner, but we didn’t know the difference as we only saw this offering). They sat us along the table and proceeded to serve us a bottomless array of various levels of yum. I loved the paneer and aloo (potatoes) of course. The lassi was the salty kind and liquidy, so I didn’t end up drinking much of it. The best part was that they kept refilling your bowls if you wanted. That and the multiple rounds of dessert, but the ice cream was cardamom flavored. To be honest, I’m sort of sick of that particular spice, but it is in a lot of things, especially desserts.

We returned after our long, long day crashing into our beds, AC running, not planning to get up the next day until after 9am.

The two morals of today are:

1. Always bring your phone charger, no matter how short a trip it is. Even if your phone has always lasted this long on battery before. Just bring it.
2. Don’t judge bad text message grammar or assume it is the phone’s fault. It doesn’t mean the important part is wrong. Even if it really looks wrong.

Breakfast at the hotel had a nice selection of Western and Indian options, including freshly-made omelettes, which I enjoyed one of. I saw a woman touching a parantha (fried flatbread, sort of like naan, but usually with onions and peppers cooked in) with her fingers before deciding on another one. I could go on rant after rant about PEOPLE TOUCHING MY FOOD. Even people in the food service industry. It has gotten to the point where if I see someone use tongs, gloves, etc, I think they are extra awesome and will patronize them again, even though that should be par for the course hygiene-wise. Oddly, my co-workers for example, were super careful not to touch the cake we got when we all celebrated Sachin Tendulkar’s birthday. (Yes, my co-worker bought a cake and we all wished India’s most famous cricket player a happy birthday after lunch.) So my co-workers get it. Why don’t people in the actual industry?

The front desk took about half an hour to arrange it, but eventually we got ourselves a driver for the day in a comfortable, air-conditioned vehicle. Then it was off to the Forts of Jaipur! Which would make a good name for a band.

If you come to Jaipur someday and can only see one fort, see Amber Fort. (Or Amer Fort depending on which guide book you are reading.)

View of Amber Fort
(from the next fort up, but I’m cheating and putting this photo first)

Amber Fort is huge. Enormous. I mean, look at the place. Also, it has lots of great views of the little town below (which I’m not sure is part of Jaipur or not) and I’m a sucker for a view. Even cooler? You can see old fort walls on hilltops in the distance that look remarkably like the Great Wall.

View from Amber
(…to the Great Wall of Jaipur?)

Now it is time for…Trapped in a Photo Shoot, Part 1

Photos of people who have photos of me

As it has happened to me in many tourist sites in India, I became part of the destination.

As soon as I was standing in one place being taken a photo of, it became the thing to do. I don’t mind at all when it is cute kids, but two of these four dudes thought it was totally fine to put their arm around me when they were posing. (It seems like a lot of guys must want a photo of a foreign girlfriend? Because it is rarely just a group photo of “Hey, look it’s us with a white person,” it always seems to be individual photos.) I guess part of me is flattered, but I’m mostly baffled. Lately, if I have an opportunity, I have been asking to take photos of the people who have just been photographing me (and as a courtesy I usually show them on my camera afterward, which I’ve noticed people tend to like.) Hence all my photos of random people.

More of the Pretty
The Amber Fort Palace Museum

Trapped in a Photo Shoot, Part 2.

I took a picture of this group early on. But they got me back!

It was either a group of families or a big, extended family touring the fort together. They had me surrounded on a walk overlooking the garden and I found myself being posed with one woman, than someone’s daughter, then being introduced to a grandfather on the other side, then a picture shaking hands with the husband, then a group photo, then a photo with grandmother and youngest child. It was actually quite amusing and totally harmless, though I seriously had no way to escape gracefully, so I just waited it out. Probably a dozen or two people either wanting to be involved in the photo-taking or being in the photo itself were all around me. I was in so many photos.

(Ha, Pete is trapped in a photo shoot, too.)

The best part of Amber Fort was yet to come. The final area was not as pretty and decorated as the Palace part. And it did not have quite as many views. But it was fun.

Amber Fort: The place that wants you to get lost

You could wander for hours in here and have no idea where you are, I loved it! Corridors, stairwells, rooms that led to other rooms that led to balconies. No symmetry, no order, just lots of paths to try. I can’t believe we found each other at the end.

Amber Fort: The place that makes you ask, “How the heck did you get over there?”

Side note: the exploring has a limit, as one member of our party found out the hard way.

Climbing a bit higher to get a good photo, there was eye contact with a guard, who then appeared at the location very shortly later. Despite the lack of signage restricting anything, the guard took an elbow and wanted to take the “guilty” party to the “control room.” Luckily, the guard was not very aggressive and let me slip between him and the rogue photographer. I then took my time walking down the stairs and taking photos, leaving him stuck behind me for longer than he wanted to be. After that, getting lost in the maze was no problem.

The central courtyard
(…where you can attempt to orient yourself when you come upon it, or just make yourself more confused.)

Time for another fort.

Take the road above Amber even higher into the mountains…

…up to the top.

Although Jaigarh Fort is a smaller fort with less interior space (more functional as a fort, less as a palace or living space) I found it to be photogenic. (And pink.) Someone must agree since they were setting up a wedding in one of the courtyards. It was much less crowded than Amber, though. It is mainly famous for having a large 1720s-era cannon on wheels.

Jaigarh Fort: Pinker than Jaipur

Jaivana Cannon
(famous enough for its own Wiki entry even)

Wandering Atop Jaigarh Fort

For all your traveling-on-the-fort needs

There were two sections of the fort. In between the two were a place to buy soda and chips, dress up and get your photo taken, ride a camel, or check out some weapons.

Tourist Camel and a gorgeous green flyer amongst all the pigeons

(The sign I needed at Jaipur Railway Station)

And they are serious. But in the digital age, you just have to press the trash can icon.

It was right here I ran out of photos on my memory card. I had a few, but not many, older photos of my apartment and such, so I went on a delete frenzy and suddenly started being careful. After all, we had one more fort to go!

(Moral 3: bring all your memory cards, sheesh.)

At the tower on the end of the fort
Me and a kid who wanted me to take his photo but without a photo in return!

Awesome view from Jaigarh Fort

The final fort of the day was Nahargarh Fort. This one had the best Jaipur views and, although small, had one cool building that was basically a house, but repeated a dozen times to the side and two deep so that walking through it was constant deja-vu. There’s the courtyard. And again. And again. But the stairwell to exit was not always there. Tricky. This was a later design and so actually had toilets built in (as in, two blocks to put your feet and a rectangular hole with some sort of drainage.)

View from Nahargarh Fort

View back down to Hawa Mahal and Jantar Mantar (sundial place)
We’ve come full circle!

So now it was time to do what we came to do. Go to the birthday party.

The text message I got read exactly: Hotel jaipur haritej, Neer jln marg is the venue of todays party

I figured out “Jaipur Heritage” and found the address of the hotel online ahead of time, thinking I was all prepared. After a drink at the hotel bar, we found an amusing auto driver who implored us to help him expand his business by giving him high reviews on tripadvisor. He spoke great English and was overly friendly. (Had I been alone, I wouldn’t have appreciated his demeanor, but with the three of us, it was funny.) He even stopped at Jaipur’s most famous sweet shop for us and we were able to pick up some of Jaipur’s most famous cake thing (pictured, but I don’t recall the name.)

Jaipur LMB Sweet Shop

So we arrived at the hotel, not too late. But the two men at reception had no idea what we were talking about and spoke very little English. However, they imparted two vital pieces of information. One: that there was another Jaipur Heritage hotel and they knew the rough location and Two: that “jln marg” actually meant something. I get +1 for knowing that “marg” means “avenue” in Hindi but -1 for thinking “jln” must be a typo due to all the other typos in the text message and so ignored it. Grammarnazifail. (Later, my co-worker told me, “That’s why I said JLN marg, because I knew there were two.”)

Unfortunately, it seemed as if the hotel was a good 20km away so we were going to be quite late. We got on another auto that was the slowest auto we’d ever been on. I thought it might be about to break down and when the driver suddenly pulled into a gas station to fill up, I thought lack of fuel might have been the problem. No. We jokingly “raced” with an auto next to us at one point just to see if we could get the driver to speed up a bit. Turned out that we were in some kind of auto that did not go higher than a certain speed (or something.) It was excruciating, especially once we got on the high speed JLN Marg. However, I texted Buddy that we would be late and he responded, “No problem, we are in IST” which, as he explained to me the first week I was here means, “Indian Stretchable Time.”

And on the auto ride is where my phone displayed the message “Your battery level is critical, please turn off your phone to avoid losing data.” This was bad not only in trying to find this party, but also because the only receipt of our train tickets home the next day was a text message! I found out by desperate accident that I could forward a text message so I did that. Then I quickly texted Buddy to see if we could get an address or any more information about the hotel. No response. (Granted, he was likely very busy hosting a party at that point.)

So we got to the closest landmark the other hotel guys had told us about (without that information, we would have been totally lost.) But no sign of Jaipur Heritage. I risked a phone call to Buddy and handed the phone to the auto driver crossing my fingers that the phone lasted. It did, phew.

The auto driver pulled up next to what looked like a hopping party. We exited. My hotel key had fallen to the ground next to the auto, but luckily, Pete saw it and picked it up for me. Then we walked into the party.

Everyone looked at us as we strode in confidently. We looked for our co-worker, the only person we knew. Someone asked what we were doing there and we said we were looking for our co-worker for his daughter’s birthday party.

“This is a wedding,” he said.

D’oh. That was definitely how the night was going. We walked out; I was quite embarrassed. Normally, I would have responded to the fact that people were looking at us like we did not belong, except that people are always looking at us.

We walked until we saw a nearby sign with the word “Heritage” in it and eventually found the entrance. Two parties were happening within. We hesitantly walked into one. And there we were! We found it! (And after all that, we still were not late for dinner.)

Leaving Jaipur…

I ordered a 5am wake-up call (because I had turned off my almost dead phone – which is also my alarm clock – by that point) and it cleverly rang all the way in the bathroom. Twice. Annoying, but it worked so I can’t complain.

The pre-dawn streets were quiet as we walked toward the train station. The block before we reached it, though, the streets turned into utter crowded chaos and I wondered where everyone had suddenly come from. Crossing traffic half-asleep was kind of nerve-wracking; autos, taxis, bikes, and people everywhere moved all around us. It was a little intimidating in fact, but we reached the train station without incident and found our platform no problem.

The Double Decker to Delhi

Well, no problem until we realized two stops down that we incorrectly read our text-messaged train ticket (that I had forwarded to Chris). It read “C10U 96 C10U 97, C10U 98”. What it meant was Carriage 10, upper level, seats 96, 97, and 98. We were in Carraige 1, though, as the 0 in the tiny SMS was ambiguous. (When we eventually walked back nine cars to Carriage 10 – and asked the couple guys who had sat there to move – we recognized a couple other passengers who had made the same mistake.) The seats were nice, but tight. And we had to pay for breakfast this time.

But for the most part, the ride back (which ended at a different station than we started, weirdly) went smoothly.

So, Jaipur thoughts…

I loved Jaipur, especially the city center. It looked pleasant and wanderable. I saw plenty of sidewalks (a lack of sidewalks is one of my biggest complaints about walking around Indian cities), the streets were in a consistent grid full of the Pink, and it is just cute. The unique forts in the hills outside the city were a bonus. As Pete was saying, “It’s like everywhere that’s not Noida is pretty.” I would definitely like to go back and revisit.

I am surprised the population is more than the Denver metro area; it feels like a much smaller city. Notably, the movie Most Exotic Marigold Hotel was set and filmed here, though I was not particularly reminded of it as we criss-crossed the city. I was nervous before I came that the beggars and touts would be plentiful and aggressive because this is a very popular tourist destination. However, there were not many beggars compared to Delhi, I thought. The number of people who desperately wanted to be our guide was somewhat astonishing, but they were super friendly of course, even though they tried to convince us that there was stuff we could not see without one, which did not seem to be the case. We declined their services, mostly because we didn’t want to go to a tourist shop afterward.

Something funny I noticed is the new sales tactic at intersections. Up until now, I’ve seen people selling towels, flowers, cleaning windshields, and straight-up begging, hoping to make a rupee at the red light. But now, when the cars are stopped, they *hold a shade up to the car window* to relieve you from the heat of the sun and then ask for money. So clever! They are probably doing the same thing in Delhi, but as our taxi route has no red lights (busy 4-way intersections, yes, red lights, no) I haven’t witnessed intersection commerce in a while.

Animal Roundup

We saw so many different kinds of animals here, I started keeping a list.

• Cows and calves (naturally)
• Horses
• Goats (especially at the forts; above photo was on our way down from Nahargarh)
• Pigs (we spotted groups of them just a couple times from the car)
• Elephants (we saw more than one Tourist Elephant, all painted and decorated, walking up the streets of the Old City.)
• Camels (several places offered tourist camel rides)
• Dogs (but not nearly as many as we see in Delhi)
• Cats!
• Monkeys (naturally)
• Lizard (a cousin of Guido was hanging at Jaigarh Fort)
• Frog (at the Chokhi Dhani outdoor restaurant)

When we were planning this trip, we had a thought to try to see Ranthambore National Park where, if you are lucky, you may catch a glimpse of a tiger. But the smaller vehicles were already booked for the weekend and getting out there – another few hours from Jaipur – would have been hectic. I’m ambivalent about animal safaris. It’s cool to see the big predators out in their natural habitat, but not so cool I want to go really out of my way to see them. I was game for it (pun intended) mostly because I like doing different things occasionally, when I’m not feeling lazy.

Doors

Without intending to (at first anyway) I started taking pictures of various doors I saw in Jaipur. Not sure why I kept up with the theme, probably unconsciously using an idea from a magazine or art show I saw once, but I figured I’d post them anyway.

Break on through to the other side…

And with that, two points of the Golden Triangle are down. Probably saving the third (Agra where the Taj Mahal is) until I have visitors.

I looked out the window to my balcony the other day and there was a lizard scurrying across it. A lizard that looked just like Guido! He followed me all the way here!

I was not in time to grab my camera, but it seriously looked blond-colored just like him!

Princess Bed!
(Only made possible by a lucky nail I found, a magic place to put the nail in the concrete wall,
and an extremely convenient loop net configuation.

So I decided to get the mosquito net (that I bought from McGuckins back home) out. I actually don’t have many mosquitoes up here on the 12th floor, but it is worth it to not have any buzzing in my ear at night. It’s also kind of cool to sleep under.

There are more mosquitoes now that the temp is regularly hitting 100 during the day and not getting much below 80 at night, but not tons. It is still quite dry and hasn’t rained in quite a while. Notably, even though the temperature outside the other day has overtaken the absolute record high in Boulder, I feel like I haven’t really *felt* it. I think that is because the office is freezing. Freezing. My fingers are so ice cold that walking out into the heat feels great!

Team Lunch

So we had a team lunch at a restaurant in the corner of the Sector called Binge to welcome our newest team members. I liked it – it was one of the better buffets I’ve had. One of the choices was, I’m not making this up, called “Cheese Steak – Tomato Sauce.” In this country of Nearly No Beef, I knew they did not mean a cheese steak like I thought of it. So what did they mean? Grilled paneer! Cheese cooked like steak. In tomato sauce. It was delicious, but anything with paneer is. I haven’t had cheddar cheese since I’ve come, but with paneer, which I’ll describe as a soft cheese with the consistency of tofu but a taste more like mild mozzarella maybe, I haven’t missed it as much as I thought I might. (In the Trivia That No One But Me Cares About: Binge is the name of an establishment in my science fiction novel. So I thought it was cool to eat there. Even though I’d never eat at the one in my story.)

Still learning culture every day. I noticed one day at lunch that there did not seem to be sufficient ringage for the number of married men – i.e. just about all of them are wed but only a couple had wedding rings, so I asked. Turns out men in India wear wedding rings on their right hand while women wear it on their left hand. Sure enough, almost all of them had a right-handed ring that I overlooked. I guess it makes for easier wedding photos!

(Looks over shoulder in office)
Oh, that’s where I am.

I had to inform the foreign registration office of my address change. You’d think that would be done with a phone call or over mail. No. I paid ANOTHER $150 (!) for the company that does the paperwork to meet me at the FRRO office again. I had to provide a copy of my lease, but honestly the paperwork this time seemed very minimal, so the price seemed ridiculously high. I think my money went toward this man’s taxi from Gurgaon (on the full other side of Delhi) and the whopping fifteen minutes spent with me. My office this time did not bother to tell the taxi driver the address. So, for once, I was glad of my smartphone. I was able to open my e-mail, look it up, and write it on a sheet of paper for the driver as we headed in the general Ghaziabad direction.

The FRRO was, again, empty (which I think would make any Delhi ex-pats green with envy as I’ve heard nothing but DMV-style horror stories from Delhi’s version). The sum total of what the FRRO officer did was: take my file out, scribble out the old address and write the new address, sign the change. Then scribble out the address on my official form, write in the new one and sign it. Woo.

Chocolate: I’ve stopped giving it out because it is too hot now. It just melts. Even bringing a Cadbury bar home from the supermarket caused it to melt (though I think it had a head start with the power outages in the supermarket.) Speaking of chocolate, I confirmed that in India, like in Great Britain, a “chocolate shake” just means “chocolate milk.”

As much as my mood depends on the color of the little light
it is pretty amazing that I’m connected to the world through it

My “data card”, my 3G USB modem thing that connects me to the internet, is excruciatingly inconsistent. The light turns blue (3G) for awhile, but then’ll go suddenly back to green (2G) which is essentially like the internet stopping right when I’m doing something like Skypeing with my parents. The owner told me the 3G was very consistent in the bedrooms. So I moved my whole operation (i.e. my laptop, chair and table) in there. Made little difference to the 3G, but I’m enjoying A/C proximity. I’m seriously considering looking into broadband.

This having a maid business is odd. She comes in the mornings (so it is amazing how quickly I am up, dressed, and breakfasted) and cleans the floors and does the dishes. She speaks almost no English. And I speak almost no Hindi. Despite that, we sort of communicate. Though when it came to money, she had to call someone to explain to me in English what I wasn’t understanding. Turns out when the owner called me a week or two ago to “ask” if I could raise her monthly rate to 1500 ($28) if she did an occasional bathroom clean (to which I said no) that he wasn’t so much asking as telling. On one hand, I think she is overcharging me as he told me once that he paid 800 and that was with the dishes of four adults and a kid! On the other hand, it’s still only around $2/hour. She seems smart and on the ball which I like. Though I don’t think she does dishes as well as I do, which I try not to think too hard about.

We had a couple confusing conversations where I think she was telling me her 10-month old had a fever and needed shots. But I can’t figure out if she was telling me just to tell me, telling me because she needed to take the day off (which would be totally fine with me), or telling me because she wanted money. She said a sentence later where the only words I understood were “10 rupees” but it did not seem like she was expecting me to do something. Who knows. This, among other things, had started to make me more motivated to continue studying Hindi. I mean, I clearly hear the words I do know, so it is a good start. But I need to increase my vocab.

We recently hired a new manager at work and, for a little team bonding, we all went out for drinks. We decided on a sports bar called “The Sports Bar” on the 4th floor of the GIP mall. This was about the coolest sports bar I’ve seen (not that I frequent many, but still.) It had three giant stair-step levels of tables overlooking a large projected screen. The inner row of tables each had individual TVs. If you are serious about watching and eating, this is the place to go. Assuming you want to watch cricket, of course. Because the “IPL” is the thing to watch. (Indian Premier League)

The Sports Bar

We had a lot of appetizers for dinner, the most mouth-watering being this lamb kebab thing (served on a metal grate with still-fiery flames underneath.) Delicious! Less impressive was the plate of “nachos.”

Enough to feed a fraction of an American

Had two mojitos and a sangria! That’s way a lot for me. Tried to not think about the ice factor. Most of the others just had a beer except for the other gal who had the same drinks I did. The beer to drink in India is “Kingfisher.” There is also Kingfisher airlines! According to Wiki, the parent company’s “core business includes beverages, aviation, electrical and chemicals.” Odd mix indeed.

I almost ordered dessert because just the concept of an “oozing warm chocolate effect” was almost irresistible.

Tell me more about this effect…

The music selection here reminded me of when I went to The Big Chill several weeks ago. It was nostalgic 70s and 80s western music. We heard Take On Me. (I asked if anyone at the table knew the song. No one from India had!) Then YMCA. My coworkers just looked blankly at me doing the YMCA dance. Then Hotel California (which I can’t hear without quoting The Big Lebowski in my head), Stayin’ Alive, Video Killed the Radio Star, Dancing Queen, Faith (George Michael), and La Isla Bonita. At some point, they switched it up and it was 2000s music like Green Day and Coldplay. Random. Awesome for me, of course, but random.

And, as only people who have had too many mojitos do, we took silly photos with Pete’s sunglasses.

Sunglasses at night

The day after that, I did something I’ve never done before. I ate lunch from the market. There is a street market right outside our building complex that serves quite a variety of food. Although I’ve gone out there many times with the gang for a chai after lunch, I’ve never had more than a bite of the stuffed paranthas (fried bread) available at the same stall. I either eat from one of the three places within the cafeteria (which I discovered are subsidized which is why it is so inexpensive) or just bring leftovers. With the help of a member of the team, I got an entire potato and onion parantha from the street market for lunch. It was very hot (even after I brought it back to the building’s cafeteria to consume) but I enjoyed it a lot. And I did not get ill afterward. Chris calls street food “Street Meat” even though most of it doesn’t actually have meat in it. So, this was my first “Street Meat” meal (though my co-workers assure me that the yellow-tarp place has a higher standard of hygiene compared to the other places. Notably, I am the one who calls it the yellow tarp place since it was how I recognized it at first. No idea what they call it.)

I also discovered that the lassi I’ve had there on occasion has crushed ice in it (to keep it cool, I’m assuming). Chances that the ice here – as opposed to The Sports Bar or other restaurant – is made from filtered water is Not High I am thinking. I can’t believe I haven’t gotten sick. But I’m now nervous about having another one, despite that they are quite tasty.

Enjoying yellow-tarp-booth chai at the market outside my work

I must be homesick. I listened to Midnight Oil, my official homesick music, for about an hour. Must have been ’cause of the Skype fail this weekend. And, like happens to me at least when I revisit songs I haven’t listened to in years, but used to know note-by-note, it has now been stuck in my head for a week.

And, nothing to do with anything, I was at work, looking into a currency-related bug and found the currency code mapping. You know how “USD” is US Dollars? And usually, there are similar abbreviations for other countries and their currencies? Some funny ones I noticed:

• “ESP” Spanish Peseta
• “MAD” Moroccan Dirham
• “YUM” Yugoslavia New Dinar
• “COP” Colombian Peso
• “EEK” Estonia Kroon
• “BOB” Bolivian Boliviano

I didn’t realize BOB was legal tender! In any case, I promise that I’m plenty busy at work, not just scrolling through code looking for YUM! Our daily taxi keeps me from working overtime, which is good, though it always seems to come just as I’m getting going solving something.

This weekend’s trip began at 6:30am from Delhi. Five of us + driver piled in the SUV and started north. We soon passed by “Haveli” at Karnal again (locale of our group’s first outing) but stopped to eat further down at a “government-run” restaurant, whatever that means, where I learned of yet another delicious fried flatbread called puri. From Indian restaurants back home, you’d think your bread options consisted of only naan, but there is so much more. Puri is sliced very thin and uber fried. Therefore freakin’ delicious. Slightly smaller than the similar poofy bread served with chole batura. (Brief side rant. Not appreciated: telling me that trying to put on my seat belt is “unnecessary”. The lack of a law and/or skill of the driver are irrelevant to my reasoning.)

The Delhi Road Trip Group

The highway was in good shape; we passed by fields and towns quickly in our air-conditioned vehicle. We crossed the state border of Haryana first, then Punjab, then Himachal Pradesh (two new states today! Seven, all together since I arrived.) The last hour of the seven-or-so-hour journey was spent ascending a vertical mile from Chandigarh at 1150ft to our destination Shimla at 7200ft.

This road was built to induce motion sickness. Tight, twisty turns all the way up the mountain. I kept my eyes firmly out the window and managed to avoid feeling too nauseous. As we climbed in altitude, I noticed something unusual. Trees full of red flowers. Purple flowers. Hillsides full of white flowers. It then occurred to me. Oh right, it’s spring! (Nothing like over-100-degree temps to make one forget that, no, we aren’t anywhere near “summer” in Delhi yet.)

Oh, springtime! Forgot about that.

The view was beautiful. These mountains are not empty hillsides full of trees… quite a few houses and little towns were all along the way. Shimla was the “British summer capital” so the route between it and Delhi got (and still gets) a lot of traffic. But nothing was quite like that first glimpse of a what a city on a mountainside looks like.

Road to Shimla

I’m not sure I can describe why Shimla looked so DIFFERENT to me. So much like nothing like I’d ever seen. And this is me, who has seen plenty of mountain towns in Colorado. I think it was partially because the city was not built in a valley, in a clearing, along the river, or any place that made obvious sense. Also, a good portion of the buildings were tall and close together. Seems like they picked some random mountains and plopped a full city onto the side, multi-story hotels and all.

Houses of Shimla

Parking garages right on the top, there

Fearless monkeys

And at the top, not a temple, but a church.

There are not a lot of roads. The main, twisty road through the middle has just enough room for one vehicle in each direction and a few tributary roads off that. I can not see how you would access the majority of houses. I also don’t know why the main road was not more packed; they told me parking was at an extreme premium which made sense, but it seems like the road should be constantly jammed. I also can not picture this place in winter, though a Google-image search of Shimla will get you all sorts of snow-covered photos. (I also am baffled at how the electricity and plumbing work here, especially the latter.)

View from the top

Took this very close to the above photo
A hidden understreet

Unlike any Indian city I’ve been to, the main spiritual attraction here is not a temple but a church.

(And I still had to take off my shoes inside)

The flat spot atop the hill where the church rested was a popular place for tourists and I saw quite a variety. There were also the requisite tourist activities. You could pay to take a ride on a fancy horse. The most persistant salesperson (besides the one asking if I was interested in any day tours) showed me photos and offered the chance to put on traditional clothing and get my own photograph taken. I declined, partially because the traditional dress of this area would have no cultural context for me but also partially because of the idea of wearing clothes hundreds of people before me have worn was not all that attractive.

Also at the top of the hill were some statues of both Mahatma Gandhi and Indira Gandhi (no actual relation, apparently) who became the prime minister when her father died. The airport is named after her. So is my neighborhood. “Indirapuram” means “Indira-city”.

Lady Gandhi

My favorite part of Shimla was a surprise to me. As we were walking along the steep sidewalk that led up to the church… I turned around to take a photo of the street below, but glanced upward briefly. Then I saw it.

THERE IS A GIANT PINK STATUE ON TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN!

That’s what I said. The others looked at me, bemused. I was just like, “Giant… Pink… Statue… ON THE MOUNTAINSIDE! How cool is that?!” They let my eyes bug out of my head for several minutes. Then we kept walking. If I had more time, I may have considered trying to hike up to it.

Pink statue overlooks the European-influenced town.

Seriously, how was that thing built? Further, the major (who had been stationed here so was familiar with the locale) told me it was all one piece of stone. If this town hadn’t already blown my mind… wow!

Another awesome thing about Shimla:

Sidewalks

The “Mall”

A monkey with expensive taste

Down the stairs to the next level of pedestrian avenue

The lower marketplace; feeling a bit more local

Same ‘fancy’ name as the store in Rishikesh
(but still doesn’t make sense)

Stairs, elevators, and steeply inclined sidewalks. That is how you get around as a pedestrian in Shimla. How does furniture make it up? I saw several men carrying heavy loads including a guy with a refrigerator on his back. Every time I saw one of these men, usually with his whole body – and sometimes forehead too – strapped to thing on his back (and sometimes bent over double to carry it), I let him by. I almost took a photo of one of them, but even if he would not have seen me, it seemed slightly rude, like I was treating his labor-intensive job as tourism. I settled for photographing this monkey momma along the same street instead.

Awwwwwwww

In the middle of the town is something simply called “The Lift” which is what it sounds like: an elevator (a series of two elevators actually) that takes you up from the main street level to the main pedestrian level. We had to take The Lift (10 rupees a ride) to the top, then go another seven stories once we reached our hotel and then up two flights of stairs to reach our room. The elevators were fairly small, and often had a line to get in (though not a long one) but they did the job and did not break down like one sign warned about.

Count ’em, three elevators just to reach our hotel room.

The hotel looked nice from the outside. The interior decoration was lovely and tasteful. But I really wish it were in the average Indian hotel’s better interest to make the sheets and towels look really clean. There should not be any ambiguity; I should not have to wonder if the towels and sheets have gotten washed (and not just folded neatly) after the last guest. I mean, they weren’t really dirty… just not really sparkling white clean. The not-quite-fresh-looking state of the sheets and towels has been consistent in every hotel in India I’ve been to (except the five-star in Jaipur whose sheets and towels were pristine.) I suspect they were just hand washed in cold water with weak detergent, no bleach, and dried outside. That makes the most sense. But I hate wondering.

Looking toward Bridge View Hotel

The toilet paper in the room was too damp to use; in a bathroom where the shower has no barrier to the toilet area, that should be an expected problem with some sort of solution. (Though, the shower did have hot water at least!) I was just glad personally that I brought my own toilet paper and pillowcase. And that my aim was good in killing the three flies that were in my room when I arrived.

Otherwise, the hotel was perfectly serviceable. The food was decent. The staff were nice. The monkeys were content.

Hanging out on the hotel terrace

View from the terrace (day and night)

Church (and statue) at night

The evening was interesting. We met up with a couple (the girl was Sri Lankan, the guy was Nepalese) and later decided to go to a play put on by an acquaintance of the major’s who had traveled from Delhi with his troupe. Although the play was in Hindi, it was extremely visual and so the majority was quite understandable (and very good.) It was called “The Wall of Delhi” and told the story of a young man wooing a woman among the poor and struggling of the city. Things took a turn for the worse when he found some hidden money (in a wall), spent it lavishly to impress the girl, was later questioned and accidentally discovered a political scandal, where his situation rapidly deteriorated. (The play was a statement on corruption.)

After the play, we went back up to the hotel for dinner and wine (provided by, who else, the Frenchman) with the two new members of our group. We chatted while the chilly (!) wind blew, until I was dozing.

Wine on the terrace

The next morning after breakfast (omelette! but I had to ask for “chilled” milk to go with the cereal as they only had hot milk available) we got back up into the car and drove even higher up the twisty road in the mountains above Shimla, up past all the people on horses, to a small little market where you could purchase textiles, cool wooden clocks that would not fit in my suitcase, or you could pay someone to sit on a yak while your friends took photos.

Also, cool views and stuff.

And a “barking deer”
(though I didn’t hear anything)

I was pretty tired today. One of the others asked me “why are you tired?” which I had no answer to since I had gotten enough sleep. I’m not sure what to say to the pronouncement that “I look tired.” If I look hungry, I can eat. If I look sunburnt, I can get out the sunscreen. But I can’t do anything about being tired right in the middle of a trip. I have to keep plowing on, which I will, I just won’t be as energetic about it. It’s probably because I took two very long trips two weekends in a row (with multiple 5am mornings), and it was finally catching up with me. And I think for that long of a road trip, having part of our less-than-24-stay be additional time in the car seemed like not the ideal option. At any rate, we stopped briefly back at Shimla on our way down to pack up our luggage and snap a few more photos.

Hillside Houses

I like that the above sign exists. (There is also a ban on smoking in the whole city, which one of our group found out the hard way, even though we had seen the sign.) I still saw garbage, but less of it and almost none on the streets. I couldn’t tell if that was because it is easy to toss trash down the hill (out of sight) or if people actually litter less. Also, I like that the fine is $100. I’ve seen some fines that are less than $5… which seems like more of an invitation than a deterrent.

Oh, now they tell me
(Also, watch your spectacles!)

With our two new passengers (which we had exactly enough room for), we headed back down from the cool air of the lower Himalayas to the summer of the plains. To be frank, I was a little surprised how trusting the two were… it made me a bit suspicious, even. But all was well. . They told me they had come from Delhi by bus – a twelve-hour journey made longer by frequent passenger-road-sick stops, apparently. Not fun.

We had lunch at a little restaurant (that barely looked open) along the road. Once again, they were out of gulab jamun (it is a difficult dessert to make, I think, and needs to be kept hot which is why so many places do not seem to have it I guess) and once again, the Frenchman had trouble ordering black tea. The waiters during the course of this trip have appeared a little confused, always wanting to put milk and sugar in it. The major confused me, however, by ordering “sugar free” even after he was already given his presumably sugar-free tea. (I realized later that Sugar Free was the name of an artificial sweetener.)

We had listened to classic Bollywood all the way up, so it was a nice, if not surreal, change to hear classic 80s all the way back which the Sri Lankan girl, despite being born as the 80s were ending, appreciated and owned; everything from Manic Monday to Dancing With Myself. Nothing like grooving to the Safety Dance at a gas station in rural India as the sun is setting. We stopped at the Karnal Haveli restaurant on the way back (which was closed last time we were here) for dinner but I was half asleep by then. Enjoyed the lassi, though. Not the waiter touching the bread with his hands. (Seriously, food service industry!)

Shimla was a really cool place, both temperature and atmosphere. I can see why, according to my co-worker, all the richer folk in Delhi escape here as soon as the summer heat hits. (Summer vacation for kids starts at the beginning of May, apparently, so these places get even more crowded.) It almost seemed there were as many hotels as houses. I’m curious to visit other “hill stations” now…

My apartment, Part 2:

More things I like:

• Taking the trash out only involves putting the bag outside my front door. Any morning of the week.
• I can often see fireworks out my window (12th-floor view + weddings with fireworks + lots of weddings)
• 24-hour maintenance!

More things I don’t like:

• Ants. There aren’t tons and there aren’t lines of them, but they are there. Little ones in the kitchen that will get into ANY foodlike substance I leave out. Black ones in the bathroom that are pretty harmless.
• My air conditioner plays a LOUD little tune when it is turned on. Normally would not be a big deal except when there are power outages in the middle of the night. Then I get to be woken up over and over.
• Construction dust

Finally got gas stove hooked up.
This increases my menu to include omelettes and spaghetti,
not just Stuff That Can Be Put in the Rice Cooker Veggie Steamer Whether Or Not It Was Intended To.

So today, my coworker took me to the mall in Saket, which is big enough to have its own Wiki page. Fancy mall. Expensive mall. Increasingly crowded mall. We did more eating than shopping, though. Then braved the 100+ heat to take some photos.

Hanging out at the million+ sq. ft mall

The armored Buddha? Practices non-violence and violence.
And the Hard Rock Cafe guitar! (No beef in those burgers.)

The guy we were with told a story about how when he and his uncle were overseas, they had some kind of delicious, juicy meat roll they assumed was lamb. Later, he found out it was beef. But he never told his uncle!

At a DVD store (that also sold smartphones and, oddly, Barbies), I saw a whole bunch of movies that I want to see. Mainly Oscar nominees. The standard price for a new release appeared to be just under $12. Need to buy a DVD player first. I wonder what region these are?

Also stopped in a nice bookstore hoping to find a Hindi-English, English-Hindi dictionary. Only saw the latter despite that there was an English-German, German-English dictionary in the same section. I’m trying to translate “Tum hi ho,” the Hindi love song that plays in every shop, restaurant, radio station, TV music show, everywhere, all the time right now. Yes, I found translations online. And yes, I tried Google Translate. But the translations only translate a line at a time (and are not necessarily consistent with each other). And Google seems confused when I input Hindi.

Then, my favorite part…

Just minutes – minutes – after I was thinking to myself, “I wonder if Delhi has a Haagen Dazs,” one appeared! I had to go. It was about the Fanciest Haagen Dazs Ever with restaurant-style seating, waiters, and an elaborate – and artistic – menu that included a fondue dish. It was also extremely expensive.

Something called the “chocoholic”? Don’t mind if I do. Nomnomnom.

Yum. And the two-and-a-half scoops or so cost ten bucks! Sheesh! Worth it, though. The people I was with tried really hard to pay for it, even though they didn’t have any. I only managed to put my 500-rupee bill in the waiter’s hand after the credit card didn’t swipe properly.

After our mall excursion, we drove by this place where the sign said “Old Fort” and they had a lake you could rent a paddle boat. Lots of non-Western tourists were there. I got more than a few glances.

We were just coming upon the end of the day, though, and there were about fifty people in front of us in line. And I was surprised to find out my co-worker “didn’t like crowds.” I thought anyone who grew up in urban India would almost be more comfortable in a crowd. I guess not! We decided to skip the boat ride, even if we could have made it. Quite crowded for a hot Sunday. (Talking to my co-workers the next day, most of them stayed at home in the cool air conditioning watching movies, rather that then venture out into the weekend heat.) Glad the metro has air conditioning.

Can’t believe what I saw in my bedroom tonight!

In other news, I’ve decided to attempt to get Broadband internet since my data card (USB modem with 3G) likes to stop working whenever I’m Skypeing with someone.

So I signed up on Airtel’s website. They said I would be contacted in 48 hours. Today (which was within 48 hours) I was contacted by someone from a Collection Agency which sounds ominous but apparently gathers the required documents. The man on the phone from Shellex, who had decent English and was very curt and businesslike, said to “mail” them to him. And, again, he meant “email”. Lucky my work has a scanner.

I’m hoping to avoid missing work for the install. Or much work. We shall see…

Three folks from the US office are visiting work this week, which has been a blast. It is fun to introduce people to things I didn’t realize I had been taking for granted. And it is a good excuse to eat out!

We (the whole entire team) went out to happy hour last night at Spice Mall. When I ordered rum and coke, the waiter brought out a can of Pepsi and asked if I wanted coke instead. Um, yes. So he brought some in one of those single-serving wine carafes. And, as with other times I’ve been served cocktails in India, he mixed the drink in front of me (ostensibly so I could confirm the amount of alcohol contained within? When they bring beer bottles out, they have the consumer confirm the adequately-chilled temperature with their hand before opening and serving.)

You know, that other Captain: Morgon

I had to suppress, again, my non-filtered-water-ice phobia. Buddy, who is quick to assure me that most restaurants use ice made from filtered water, is amused by my paranoia. I was too sleepy to dance much (yep, this sports bar has a dance floor and yes, it plays Gangnam Style), but I enjoyed the very skilled (and very physically close) dancing of my male companions. One of the new guys with glasses was quite the dancing sensation. Another told us how his brother had actually studied with a famous choreographer in Bollywood. Men take dancing very seriously here.

When I got back, after 11pm, the power was out. At first, I was like, “glad that didn’t happen in the elevator!” But then it did not come back on. A half hour passed. I was like, “is this a REAL power outage?” But the lights in the hall were on.

I was glad I have windows in three directions looking out to lit buildings. It was enough light to brush my teeth by. And take a shower. I hopped in when I was discovering just how HOT my apartment is when there is no air conditioning, not even air movement.

Incidentally, it has gotten so hot out, that I don’t really need to heat my water any longer before my shower. The water is not cold. On an unrelated note, it also smells like sulfur sometimes.

My apartment was miserably hot. I discovered after waking up at 1am (not the first Too Hot awakening) that the ice cubes in my freezer had melted, but that the cool water felt good sprinkled on my (let’s face it) mostly nude body.

The nude breaker box

I messed with the switches in my breaker box wtih a flashlight, but they all looked in place. I then shut off every single switch in my apartment except for the fridge and the ceiling fan in case I was overloading the system (and because the power blips happening nonstop overnight made my electricity turn on for half a second and I’ve mentioned the little tune the A/C plays every time it turns on, haven’t I.)

I even turned off the mystery switch. No idea what the icon means.

I’m grateful I remembered at the last second that, if the electricity is off then my RO (reverse osmosis water filter) is off too. But I have several backup bottles of water.

I did manage to fall asleep a few times, hot and sweaty, and imagining the majority of the population sleeping in the same heat, but probably with more clothing. Especially all the construction workers who I am pretty sure sleep in the temporary shacks on the street below my flat. When I woke up at 5:30 (sun was up, too hot to fall asleep again), I noticed that a few of the ants that like to find foodstuffs in my kitchen had apparently mistaken me for edible goods. Gross. Sheets went in the wash and I took another shower.

Come on, eat those things!

I was determined to find out whether this had only happened to me (and I should call maintenance) or everyone (and I should just wait it out.) Luckily, my neighbor was up at about 6am and I asked her,

“Did the power go out last night?”
She said yes and went on about how because the weather is so hot, the circuits or whatever overheat, which I’d read about. Then she said it would probably be back that evening.
“Oh well,” I was thinking, bummed about the open milk and possibly juice I’d have to toss.
Then she added, “and it will stop using the power backup.”
“But that backup is out too, right? I have no power.”
She said, “Oh. You should have power. You should always have power.” She walked over to confirm that my light switches did, in fact, do nothing.

This makes me wonder what she thought I was asking. The power goes out almost every day (though the backup had always kicked in before). Did she think I’d never noticed?

Then she suggested it was off because my prepaid maintenance balance had run negative. I thought that was extremely unlikely, as I just checked it last weekend. When I moved in a month ago, I had put 5000 rupees in ($100) and last weekend it was still just under 3000 so I figured I had nothing to worry about for another month. Even my neighbor said it was only about 2000-4000 a month (and, I don’t leave my A/C on when I’m out.)

Still, I went down to the maintenance office (thank God someone was there who could check) and he told me my balance was -900. Mind boggles at how this is possible. I refilled it on the spot.

I am amused by this pull tab.
This has nothing to do with the rest of the post.

I went back up and, sure enough, there was my electricity. My landlord (who failed to inform me that the balance was negative, but informed me within minutes that I had refilled it since he gets a message every time) suggested I should go get the full statement to see what happened.

But I know what happened. I have the electric bill curse.

Everywhere I live, no matter what I do, how frugal I am, I get Giant Utility Bills. I once spent half an hour on the phone (over a decade back now) with a patient man from the electric company as I ranted, asking why the old couple in the mirror-image duplex had a lower bill than I even though I had toughed it out and barely used the heater that month. (My only guess later was the hot water heater.) Then there was the time in Japan where they were so shocked by how expensive my bill was, they actually sent some people over to investigate if something was wrong with my meter. It wasn’t. I was just using a lot of juice for comfort in a house with no insulation.

Seriously?

All in all, I’m actually glad for the uncomfortably hot experience. I wanted to see what it was like to sleep in the ambient temperature. But I would never be able to have that discipline while sleep deprived so it took an unnecessary power outage. (I also want to try a Ramadan-style dawn-to-dusk fast sometime just to see what it is like. But I don’t tend to do well on low blood sugar…)

On a side note, either Baby Guido loves to explore. Or he has some siblings…

The power outages are happening more often now that we’re topping 100 every day, as I heard they would. There were at least three during a meeting at work today and one at home just now. But because my work has backup power (including an UPS – uninterrupted power supply – for our workstations) and with the backup in my apartment complex and the fact that the internet connection persists, it’s no big deal. (You know, unless I don’t check on my utility balance.) In fact, for privileged people such as myself the biggest problem with a power outage is if you are watching a movie, the cable resets to the default channel when it comes back on a minute later. #firstworldproblems

However, the “water outage” was a new thing this last week. I don’t know what else to call it. It was like someone shut off the water for a few minutes. I would have thought it was intended except that it happened again, in the late evening. Less than 10 minutes. Very odd. Perhaps I will go back to “bucket showers.” (i.e. filling a bucket ahead of time and pouring water over my head with a large cup.) This way, I know I will have sufficient water to finish my shower before I start. It also gets the soap out better.

One of the visitors from the U.S. office asked me what the hardest thing about living in India was. And I found I had trouble answering that question. The most annoying thing at work I’ve already complained about: that it seems almost every person has their cell phones turned up to the highest volume, set to annoying rings, and gets called all the time. Very distracting. Other than that, it is a pretty spiffy office!

I ended up saying “miscommunication,” which is pretty broad. On one hand, it is indeed frustrating when my maid has to ask me for a glass of water six times, especially for her. I should have remembered paani means water. And giving simple directions to taxi, auto, and rickshaw drivers becomes that much more complicated. And trying to understand whether the call I received is a junk call (today’s was from a man from the company that sold me my microwave who really wanted me to come to his cooking class in the middle of the day) or someone who needs to legitimately talk to me but even then, I only get about 80%, which is agonizingly not quite enough. Even sometimes at work, surrounded by fluent speakers, they don’t always understand me (but don’t admit it. I find out when they ask me something I just finished saying.)

But miscommunication isn’t what makes me the most frustrated. An example of something that regularly makes me frustrated happened today.

I was standing at the counter, ready to order lunch, waiting for the person ahead of me to order, then waiting until the guy taking the orders was ready (i.e. looked up or made eye contact.) But while the guy was still clearly busy counting money, someone next to me shouted out their order and held out their cash, ordering for himself and the guy next to him. I gave him a look, but he didn’t notice. The guy took the order and cash and, before he could even pass on the order to anyone, both a woman on my left and a man on my right said their orders, holding out their 100-rupee bills over the counter. Now, it wasn’t all that crowded of a place, it was pretty much just those guys, me, and the other woman. I had very obviously been there before anyone else. I actually spread my hands out, blocking them and said, “No, I’d like to order next please, I’ve been waiting a while.” No one had any problem with that. The guy taking orders seemed amused. And he took my order next.

The irony here is that I end up being rude later because I’m trying not to be rude. If I would just join in the (what I think of as rude) move to the front, say my order loudly and hold my money out whether or not anyone is before me and whether or not the clerk is ready to take my order, then everyone would probably be happy. I need to have the same level of “counter aggression.” It’s not actual aggression. Definitely not. It’s just how you order. (Even on the roads, it seems like people are constantly cutting each other off, but it’s not road rage, more like a controlled simmer if that.)

(Filler photo. Well, yeah, they’re all filler photos.)

But I’m really bad at it. Worse, I get all riled up by it. Like when I’m hanging back with my shopping basket waiting for one of the two cashiers to open up. Never fail, someone looks at me and then stands in line behind the cashier I’m further from (hedging their bets, and I silently grumble, hoping that one doesn’t open up first.) Then someone might sneak off to the side of my cashier with a quick purchase. Then I get irritated and make a point of standing ridiculously close (to me) to the person in line. Again, I’m the problem here, but politeness is ingrained to a fault. Also, my personal space sphere is way too wide. I think being a woman is all that saves me from being shoved forward to close the agonizingly large gap I’ve left in front of me. And I think it is also that I’m not from the big city. There is a general sense of “hurry, hurry, no time to waste” here, especially in the metro, that I just don’t have by default.

I think some people, when asked what some of the hard things are about living in India, might say “pollution” which I guess is bad, but I don’t notice it a lot, or “traffic”, which I generally avoid by living close to work and being on an early schedule. The honking I’ve totally adjusted to. “Poverty” is a big one, but even though I do see it and think about it a lot more now than I used to, it isn’t something that riles me up (maybe because I feel helpless to change it.) And the begging is the worst at tourist sites, so a visitor here might feel the brunt of it, but I’m not solicited by beggars on a regular basis, so it doesn’t top my list. “Hygiene” gets me. Things are not as clean as they can be. I actually felt a burst of happiness upon seeing the guy who was serving me a sandwich USE PLASTIC GLOVES. (And I mean, plastic gloves that he took off to handle money, then put back on to handle food. Yay for Cafe Coffee Day.) My co-worker got out-of-work-for-three-days ill just from food so it can happen to natives, too. Possibly “bureaucracy”… after I’ve gotten my broadband, after I’ve done my taxes, then I might have a different opinion, but so far, meh. “Mosquitoes.” This might be a close second. I’ve never felt murderous rage except in the presence of a possibly-disease-carrying mosquito, blood-sucking evil vampires from hell that all need to be KILLED KILLED KILLED.

India’s answer to Starbucks

Actually, because it hasn’t rained in ages, I haven’t seen a mosquito in quite a while. I’m worried about when the wet weather comes.

But, yeah. People cutting in front of me is one of the biggest daily things that drive me crazy. (That and a lack of sidewalks.)

Best thing about living in India? The number one thing has to be the inclusiveness. Two years I lived in Japan. The people I worked with were great, helpful, kind, just awesome people. But I never got IN. I was always the outsider and always would be. But from day one here, even though I appear just as out of place as I did in Japan, I feel included, part of the team, one of the guys. The only time my “guest” status kicks in is when the bill comes. No one wants to let me pay for anything because I’m the guest. (Or maybe because I’m a woman? Or maybe because they are the ones that asked and it is a cultural thing to pay when you are the invitee? Only I am lame about inviting people anywhere so will I ever get to pay anyone back?)

Also, there is pretty good service everywhere (because there are so many workers) and people are polite. I think I’m called “madam” (or the cute “aunty”) in an average week more than in my entire U.S. experience combined. I also love than I can catch an auto virtually anywhere, though that is a city thing. Also, standing out – more like, standing out as a rich person – does have perks. I get noticed. I get served.

Also, the beat-filled Bollywood music that I hear everywhere (and the fact that everyone seems to know, and can dance along to, the songs.) The urban cow herds. Having lots of really unique places to visit in a small radius. All the gorgeous clothes the women wear.

And Holi. The fact that it exists. That is unmatched in the U.S.

Finally of course. The food. All the different kinds of fried bread alone. And even at a place called “The Great Kebab Factory” you will have no problem as a vegetarian. In fact, I was waiting for the waiter to serve me some of the yummy stuff my “pure-veg” co-worker was getting because I can only eat so much chicken. My pure-veg co-worker called them back so I could try some fried pineapple too. Word to the wise: Chinese food is much spicier out here. Good, but spicy.

(totally stole this image)

We were driving through the city during rush hour and my Indian co-worker was actually dissing India a bit, wondering why people couldn’t just follow the rules when they drive. I actually felt offended that he was criticizing the wonderfully chaotic cooperativeness of the traffic. Then again, I don’t have to drive in it.

In other news, I was eventually successful in seeing some movies. Saw Star Trek: Into Darkness 3D and Iron Man 3. Both were lots of fun. Both were less than $5. Both had reserved seating that, despite my initial trepidation, I’ve come to appreciate (since the last thing I want to do is fight over seats.) And both, oddly, had intermissions. The movie just… stopped, in the middle, like it was broken, about halfway through.

By the second week of June, I’ll be back on my own again. Chris, Pete, and all our Colorado guests will be home.

Time for another outing with the Delhi Road Trip Group! And a 6am Saturday morning rendezvous! This time, I was very conveniently picked up from my apartment.

We hung out at the nearby Durga Temple (one of many, many “Durga” temples as I found out trying to Google it), and got some looks from the locals while we munched on some surprisingly good packaged cookies and waited for all 10 of us to arrive.

What religion couldn’t do with more blue statues?

Soon enough, we were off to Rishikesh! There is only one major road between Delhi and Rishikesh, so it was familiar to me, being the same one we took in March. It must be noted that if and when they finish / improve this highway, the drive will take a fraction of the time.

We stopped at a road-side food court that included a large Haldiram’s and a large McDonald’s. And the longest bathroom lines ever in both places (at least for the ladies room.) But I was totally all over the attendant to re-fill that toilet paper, which she did, mostly thanks to the people who translated my request. Incidentally, I don’t like the system where you pick a stall door to wait behind. There should be a single line for all stalls. Just sayin’.

McD’s in India

For some reason, we decided against Haldiram’s. So this marks my first actual Indian McDonald’s meal. I had an Egg McMuffin with Cheese and a Hash Brown thing. It was actually very tasty. My co-worker from Colorado, John, who was able to join us at the last minute, ordered a Sausage McMuffin. Based on the sign, I have to assume it is made of chicken…

The drive was, again, long and interesting, though I found that I was less riveted than I was the first time as I’ve gotten used to many Sights of India. We again passed through the Muslim town where all the women were in burqas. The traffic was as crazy as ever, I lost count of the number of close calls with trunks and buses we had. The Major kept us occupied by pouring us all a glass of mango juice, pointing out the mangoes on the trees everywhere (it is clearly mango season!), and having everyone do a self introduction.

What I enjoyed most about the drive up was the chance to practice my Japanese! I sat in the back with a woman about my age from Japan (who also had lived in New Zealand) and stumbled over words that came much easier eight years ago. Still, it was fun to meet someone who knows what “Trivia No Izumi” is (best show ever) and we bonded over how some of our loved ones asked us “WHY India?” And since no one else in the car could understand what we were saying, I didn’t worry that I was accidentally being offensive. Though they assumed I was singing a Japanese song when I imitated the “Hey” button from the trivia show and wanted me to sing it. I thought I might try to sing a Japanese song I knew anyway, but I could not even remember one full lyric of any of the half dozen songs I used to be able to karaoke. Ah, well.

After we passed Haridwar, which looked nearly as crowded as last time, we took a different turn and headed up to Rishikesh, but on the other side of the river, and soon started the ascent into the foothills.

View from the back seat

The road up into the hills was one lane, so naturally it was used by vehicles going both ways, speeding around blind corners, swerving, and honking. The view was beautiful – stunning – even if I could only capture it from a moving vehicle (as there was no place to pull off really. Not safely at any rate.) I also discovered as I looked at the city below that there are not one, but two iron footbridges spanning the river. I kind of wished we had a chance to visit the other one as it looked just as nifty as the one I visited last time.

Overlooking the temples of Rishikesh
(from a moving car)

We drove along the Ganges, then turned inland following a road along a tributary until we saw the sign for our tent site: Rainbow Jungle Camp, then turned down a four-wheel-drive road to get to the entrance.

Our Griswold Truckster

Let’s be clear. We were not camping. A “tent” was comprised of two twin beds with frames and sheets (though oddly, no pillowcase) and an electric light within. Full flush toilets (with sinks WITH SOAP) were across the lawn. And lunch – a surprisingly tasty buffet with standard Indian staples like paneer curry, naan, sliced cucumbers, a potato dish, and bitter yogurt – was being served in the nearby building.

Our “camp site”

As we got set up in our tents, we found out that the other vehicle had not taken the correct turn at Haridwar and had ended up on the wrong side of the river. While we waited, we kicked back and relaxed at the lovely site. We had earlier stopped along the route to buy liquor (since both Haridwar and Rishikesh are dry) and the Major handed it out. However, after just a few sips, one of the staff approached John and said, “Please hide your drink. It’s not allowed.”

John wrapped his beer bottle in a bag and that seemed satisfactory to them. I kept to the lemon mystery drink they served me.

Beautiful camp site locale

We decided we would check out a nearby temple, so we piled back into the Innova, went up the four-wheel drive road, then kept going further up the hills following a wooden sign to a temple dedicated to Shiva. Apparently Rishikesh is Lord Shiva’s old stomping grounds, so the city and its hilly surroundings are quite holy.

There are also goats.

Toward the top of one hill was the temple. The driver parked as close as he could and we walked through a whole bunch of gift shops and places selling roasted corn on the cob to get to the temple.

I decided to turn down the opportunity (?) to take off my shoes and wait in line to pay my respects this time. Instead, I wandered nearby and found…

A temple monkey!

And the hills beyond

On our way back, we found out that the other car, who had eventually turned around and found a bridge (there are very few!) had taken another wrong turn into the ashram neighborhood. We stayed in the car and drove back down the mountain to meet them.

We were back in the same neighborhood of ashram I visited almost three months ago, driving down a road I had once taken a curious photograph up into. Last time we were here there was a Yoga Retreat. This time, it was a gathering of people who wanted to Save Ganga (the Ganges) from pollutants. We watched for a bit, finally seeing our companions near the statue on the platform.

Devanagari numbers

While John and I waited at the car for the Ganga ceremony to be finished, we were approached by a group of women and girls who seemed absolutely fascinated by us. Many of them said “Hello” or “How are you?” as if they were trying out phrases they had learned in school and I returned the greetings and shook hands with them. One of the older women offered me a kulfi (a milky ice-cream-bar-type thing.) I took it. Luckily, just then, everyone had returned and I was able to surreptitiously wrap it in a napkin in the car because I didn’t really want to eat something I wasn’t sure if a stranger had licked or not. John was a good sport and ate his, though.

By the time we got back, it was dark. Tables were set up in the main lawn and speakers were blasting music. The other guests at the camp had clearly already finished dinner. I was bummed that we missed a meal (though I did have a fresh kulfi the Major handed me on our way out), though someone managed to wrangle up some very tasty appetizers. The Frenchman brought out his wine again – no one seemed to care about the alcohol bottles anymore – and I had some in a plastic cup.

Some guys from the other camp site groups were dancing and I watched the synchronous close-quarters movements in fascination. (Men would just not DO this back home.) Being exhausted after all the hours in the car, the wine really did me in. At 9pm, I decided to go to bed just as I was told dinner would be served around 10pm. I figured if I was still awake, I’d have some. But despite the loud music, nonstop conversation outside my tent, slightly-too-hot-to-be-comfortable temperature, and the idea of bugs (I had already seen one very large ant), I crashed, but not before setting my alarm for 6:15am for the river rafting excursion the next morning!

There had been hints the previous day that we would eat breakfast *after* we returned from the 3-hour rafting trip. I strongly objected. If I don’t eat within one or two hours of waking I get grumpy and light headed. Granted, I get not wanting a huge breakfast before being jostled on a raft, but I have to have something, even if leftover car munchies. Don’t get between me and my morning meal!

Luckily, the Major assuaged my concerns and convinced the staff to make us mini sandwiches before we set off. Not sure what was in them? Tiny cubed cucumbers? But, with the hot chai, it was perfect.

Crossing over the Ganges, a preview of the water we’d soon be rafting over

We drove down the twisty roads a bit until we came to a bridge that looked like it had once been meant for cars, but no longer for whatever reason (maybe that it was not quite flat.) So we crossed it on foot – with a guide from the camp – and piled into a truck on the other side, the 10 of us (the Major sat this one out) barely fitting. We then continued upstream on the other side of the river for a while, crossing a vehicle bridge to get back, then getting ourselves a raft at one of the many rafting booths set up.

(totally stole this map)

Our rafting trip had no rapids graded higher than a “3+”. We started at Butterfly on the map above and hit the remainder. Our camp was at Shivpuri, in the middle.

At our take off spot

We reached an elaborate camp along the river and got ourselves set up. It was efficient and confidence-inspiring; the equipment seemed to be in good condition and I geared up tight. Although I was nervous, I also had a smile plastered on my face so I was excited to get started.

Our group before the rafting

I liked our guide. He seemed competent, my main judging factor for a guide. After his intro, rowing demo and safety check, we got into the raft. We practiced rowing forward, stopping, forward again, back, and only once with different sides doing different directions. “Back” and “Relax” kind of sound the same when shouted… maybe that’s why he sometimes said, “Stop.” Though Relax has a nice ring to it.

I was impressed with the Major’s wife. In her 60s, unable to swim, but in love with the water (and married to someone who is not) she was very excited to come along. We sat her in the middle where she could hold on to the rope attached to the raft with both hands. (John advised her that, during the rapids, she should hold tight to the rope with her left hand, raise the right one up in the air and whoop.)

I remember the first and only other time I had been river rafting (in Colorado), I was terrified, sliding to the middle of the raft during the bumpiest parts. I was not nearly so nervous this time for some reason, though we had some large waves and good, big splashes. Lots of rafters were enjoying the same rapids – apparently, this is high season. We had rafts in front of us, rafts behind us, though managed not to bump into any (unless it was on purpose. We followed our guide’s every call, even as he directed us right into his buddy.)

At one point, we reached a calm spot and our guide said we could get out of the raft if we wanted. I climbed out into the water.

BRRR!!

I immediately asked to get pulled back in. The gray-haired Frenchman had to pull a few times, but he did it. The fellows were having a grand time, though.

At some point, we realized only the girls were left in the raft. Luckily, John taught me some basic pulling-people-up-into-the-raft techniques and the skinny Dutchman said I could try him first since he was the lightest. Amazingly, I managed to do it in one try.

We prepared for the upcoming rapids, all in our same positions on either side.

I soon understood how Roller Coaster got its name but it was the deceptively mild-sounding Golf Course where things got bad… for the raft in front of us. I had been thinking to myself, wondering if we were going to topple as the raft bent up and down through the water when I saw that the yellow raft in front of us upturned completely.

We saw at least two people appear, floating down the river. I kept wondering if someone was under the upturned raft, but I never found out. John was amazing, reacting immediately, even as I had not a clue what to do. As we got near, he pulled them closer with the backs of the oars, then pulled them up quickly into our raft, even in the fast water. Soon, we had both of them in the middle of our raft. They looked a little shaken up and the Japanese girl was kindly comforting them.

I don’t know how many people were on the raft, though there was some shouted conversation in Hindi between other raft guides and our guide, perhaps determining who had whom. Eventually, we pulled off to the side and the two transferred to a different raft. Then we continued on.

We rafted by some people jumping into the water from a high rock. Shortly after that, we pulled up on the shore where the guide said we could go jump off the rock, too, if we wanted.

Jump!

I hiked up the busy shore, full of other rafters and people selling noodles and beverages, until I came upon the rock people were jumping off of. The other two Americans had already jumped a couple times each. It was actually a wet climb to get up to the top of the rock and I’m surprised I made it without slipping. There were a whole group of people on top of the rock. I have no idea what they were doing. We speculated later that they were working themselves up to jumping. (I had done that once at a water park – freaked out at the top and waited for other people to go by until I found my nerve.) The nice dudes welcomed me up, though. I peeked off the edge and the water was indeed further down than I had expected. Well, there’s nothing for it.

One, two, three JUMP!

I think my initial “whoo!” may have turned into an actual “whoa!” along the way, then I was suddenly shooting down into the very chilly water. The life jacket propelled me back to the top and I swam for shore. Whew! Ganges Dip Part Two. This time, with adrenaline.

Street food… along the river

When we walked back, everyone was eating hot noodles. Now that I had jumped, I accepted the offer and was soon served instant – but delicious – noodles on a plate so hot that they also gave me a piece of cardboard under the plate to hold it with as well as a plastic fork.

It was only as I was nearly finished that I realized where they washed the dishes. In the river.

The noodles – which we call top ramen back home – are called maggi here, like the woman’s name. So if you ever see a sign for Maggi, it means ramen (not necessarily instant.) Though this was the “2 minute” variety and we then referred to the place as “Maggi Point.”

I had been looking forward to the “floating alongside temples” like the advertisement suggested, however, our tour ended before we reached Rishikesh proper. (I actually thought our guide was joking at first when he said it was finished, but I guess it means it was a good experience if all I wanted to do was keep rafting!) We got off at the beach and climbed up the hill to the road where the car was waiting. The major’s wife described the trip to her husband as we drove back up and pointed to various spots along the river.

There was only one shower in the camp and I figured I’d want to properly shower later so I settled for brushing out my hair (which took a while and required a lot of space) and changing into dry clothes. I realized I had ripped the seams in my blue pants while rafting, which I was a little bummed about, but I guess I can always get more pants (and I had brought plenty of changes of clothes with me.)

We were set to hike a mile or so up to a waterfall, but when I finished changing clothes and out of my wet sandals into dry sneakers (yep, two pairs of shoes for an overnight trip), it had turned into another drive.

Holy Swimming Hole

I was asked if I was interested in swimming. As it was the first time I had been dry all day, I declined, but enjoyed the playful splashing of the nearly-nude Indian guys.

Also, at the waterfall:

Monkeys!

I managed to convince the Major to let the guide we brought lead us back to the camp on foot (at least those of us who wanted to). It was an enjoyable walk through the valley, though the sun came out which made it quite hot. Us blondes picked up a nice sunburn. It was the only time I didn’t bring the hat I brought (that I had bought specifically for this trip.)

Guided into the valley

The valley looked to be full of mini farms and had narrow irrigation canals running through it that also doubled as sidewalks (we even stepped aside for some locals). Like a scene from an old movie, I saw a woman leading her cows with taps of her stick back to the animal shelter attached to the house made of stacked stones.

“Indian” Corn

And that was the last excursion of the trip. We were served an identical lunch to the previous day (which was perfectly fine with me as it was fresh and quite tasty) and hung around the camp a bit.

The drive back was long. First, we squeezed three extra people in the car during the twisty road back to Rishikesh, then we spread out a bit, with one in the front, two in the back seat and two in the way back. I offered to sit in the way back as I have short legs, but no seat stays comfortable when six hours stretches into seven stretches into eight when we hit weekend traffic.

Notably, though, after we dropped off one of our party at the Haridwar railway station, it was the first time there were no Hindi speakers in the car to talk to the driver. Luckily, the driver understood enough English to pull off at our request to the same food court for dinner. This time, we opted for Haldiram’s. I had the chole batura (which they are known for) and it was decent enough. We ate so fast, the driver was not there when we returned and I had to text the Major and ask him to call. I felt kind of bad, but I think we all just wanted to get going.

I was first to get dropped off. Even then, we were nearly at midnight. We had left the camp at 2:30pm, so yep, 9+ hours. 150 miles should not take that long. Indeed, Google maps puts the drive at under 5 hours. Whatever the equivalent is of the Indian transportation bureau really needs to improve this highway.

(You might have noticed that a lot of these photographs did not have large versions. That is because many were borrowed from other folk on the trip who posted their pics to our Road Trip site (behind a login) which has a size limit. I also tend to not show full-sized photos of people besides me. No blackmail here.)

As a parting picture, I wanted to show this car I saw everywhere. (The one on the right.) The first time I saw it, I was like, how nostalgic! Then I saw two dozen of this same car pass. Someone explained that one of the original car companies in India (called Hindustan Motors or something) made that model of car… and hadn’t changed it in fifty or so years!

Also. Monkey!

Amazing the difference humidity makes

My shining, wet face probably looked less attractive to the friendly clerk at “Needs” that asked if I lived at Orange County and if I was single. On reflection, probably not a bad thing. I bought lemon juice and sugar (I had to ask where both were, but luckily the people who work there are very helpful) and a pitcher, though they did not have any measuring cups, and made myself some lemonade when I got home. I’m going through the ice cubes in my little built-in ice cube tray duo almost faster than I can refill it. All it takes to empty it, though, is turning a lever. None of that twisty-breaky action. Yay for lemonade!

I must have been in a generous mood today. I gave the bicycle rickshaw driver almost a buck for my foray down the street several blocks (an easy walk in pre-May temperatures) which I knew was probably too much. Proven by the fact that he actually waited until I was finished and took me back. At least I’m pretty sure it was the same dude. So he did pretty well before 10am. Then I gave money to some beggars, which I almost never do as a rule. I think it’s the ones at tourist places that are more likely to be doing it as business (forced or otherwise) and I think the old woman/young woman/baby trio here were actually just poor. Still only helping the symptom not the problem, though. There are a lot of barefoot children in this area that I am realizing must be children of the construction workers who live in the site’s shantytown.

The organizer of Delhi Road Trips has officially cancelled the Srinagar-Leh-Manali road trip due to lack of interest, turning it into a possible Leh-only week trip by plane. I have until tomorrow to decide what to do. Flight vs. Road trip using a different company (I have been talking to the organizer of one, actually.)

I have broadband!

My broadband setup

It only took the combined efforts of four of my coworkers talking to three different representatives of Airtel (one of the largest telecommunications companies in India), but I have it! And they were able to install it on a Saturday! One dude came for the phone line, another came for the router and software. It appears to be fairly speedy – it is supposed to be 8mbps – and how nice it is to not have to sit at an awkward angle, trying to aim my 3G data card out the window. I can sit anywhere in my apartment in any other not-good-for-my-back position I want!

However.

One noticeable drawback. When the power goes out… my router goes out too. And I lose internet. Before, with my 3G data card, the power going out was a non-issue. The main issue was just it randomly deciding it was not on 3G anymore and switching to 2G. Now, the power going out has replaced the reason I switched in the first place! The randomness is just as inconvenient. Next step: buy a UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) which will keep my router on for a little while during the power blips. This is what we have at work. The Major just suggested I could get a Power Inverter which would do the same thing. Hmm. Need something, either way.

So, let’s talk about power outages.

Delhi National Capital Region

The above is the best map I found online to describe how everything fits together. The red-shaded part (if you are not colorblind) is Delhi. The little yellow circle in the middle is New Delhi which is within central Delhi. The blue cities surrounding it are part of Delhi NCR (the National Capital Region) but are technically in different states. I live in Ghaziabad just north of the border with Noida and a handful of metro stops from the border of Delhi.

Map with both city and state boundaries.
(that I also totally stole)

I was talking with my co-workers about all the power outages and water outages. (There was another 5-minute disappearance of water this morning, right as I was about to do my dishes. I decided Sunday is a non-maid day so I get to do my own dishes today. I both wanted to give my maid a day off and also have a whole day where no one comes to my apartment.) Anyway, so one of my co-workers looks at me and says, “we never have any power outages where I am.” Then he goes on to explain the hierarchy of power outages. In short: Delhi proper gets its power from everywhere else so rarely goes out (the politicians wouldn’t like it if the power went out all the time). The places around it go out according to their infrastructure weakness. In order of Most Outages, it goes about like this:

• Ghaziabad (me)
• Gurgaon
• Noida
• Delhi

Looking toward Ghaziabad from Noida
(in other words, home from work. My apartment is next to the buildings with cranes)

A word about the bureaucracy. India has the reputation of having Very Slow Government Services. Most of the paperwork I’ve filled out for various things (my PAN card, FRRO, and for private corporate things like my phone, bank account, and internet) so far is a lot, but seems reasonable for a place that has to diligently protect against fraud. Granted, I’ve said before that I’m lucky with the FRRO because I live in Ghaziabad. For those living in Delhi, getting a foreign registration card is like…

The Postal System of Doom

So I went to the post office yesterday for the first time since I’ve been here. The one other time I have sent non-courier mail, Chris went in my stead, so I did not hear much about it, other then it is hard to find. And it is hard to find. You have to know it is there (which I knew, thanks to my neighbor) because the logo above you can only see behind a closed gate if you look at just the right angle.

No hours are posted anywhere except for within the post office itself where it describes (in Hindi only) what services are available when. I got there at 8:50am on Saturday. There was a pretty big crowd outside the gate. Someone helpfully pointed out the letter box, but I can’t put letters in the box without a stamp (and if there is a place to buy stamps here except at the post office, I do not know about it.) Luckily, one dude spoke English and explained that the post office opened at 9am, but I may or may not be able to actually get a stamp until 10am. Ick. I waited in the shade (me, a bunch of guys, and one other woman.) When the gates opened at 9am, everyone poured in, but the English-speaking guy told me that the great majority of people there were buying train tickets (or something) and the post office part of it was mostly empty. He kindly pointed me in the right direction.

The post office building was a small, concrete building with no air conditioning and four ceiling fans. The one above where I needed to stand was the only one not working, and not for lack of trying. They kept flipping the switch on the fuse board, but it kept shorting out.

There were two men in front of me and two people behind the desk. But no one was being helped. At about 9:10, four more postal employees (I assume) appeared behind the desk. Five minutes later, one of the men in front of me was finally helped. Then, gradually, the other. And I waited. Then two more customers came in. An old guy walked right up to the desk (instead of standing in line) and I was like “hey, I was here first.” He said something that, by the tone, sounded like, “but I’m only here for xyz” and I said, “I’m only here for stamps.” He backed off, but the person behind the desk handed him something anyway.

Around 9:25, it felt like one of the six people behind the desk took pity on me, poor confused foreigner sweating up a storm, and told me to walk over to his side, asking what I wanted in okay English. I gave him my letters and postcards. There was still a little confusion – maybe people don’t send many postcards here – and one of the other customers, trying to help me, asked, “Sprekenzie Deutch?” Unfortunately, I can’t sprekenzie that.

It took another ten minutes and the assistance of three other employees, but they finally stamped them and charged me. Okay, sure, in the end 35 minutes is not an unreasonable amount of time to wait in the post office. But in the States, I see individual employees helping individual people and things moving along in an orderly fashion, slow or not. I would not call this chaos, as there was at equal number of employees as people who needed to be helped. I just had no idea what the heck everyone was doing back there and what was taking so long and why, when someone finally did help me, it felt like pity.

Also, very notably, I have been sent four pieces of mail (including three packages) from the States by regular mail. I have received one. ONE.

Moral of the story: don’t have anything sent to you in India by regular mail. Shell out the freaking *fortune* to send it by courier instead. Courier is very reliable. Indians so rarely use regular mail here that if you say the word “mail” people immediately assume you mean “e-mail”, which has caused two brief misunderstandings for me already. The letters I sent with Chris all did make it promptly to their destinations and I’m expecting these to as well, so I guess sending letters/postcards from here is doable, as long as you are willing to spend the time. I heard packages can be a different story, though, especially if they contain valuables.

On an unrelated note, I’ve decided to not go on the plane trip to Leh, instead shoot for my original dream trip, the road trip up the Himalayan passes to Leh.

I went out and bought a UPS! Now I have a Happy Internet Experience in my 3G-challenged and power-continuity-challenged apartment. I went to Croma (the electronics retailer where I bought my rice cooker) and they directed me to the computer shop in the same shopping center called “Zed Computers.” I walked in. Some guy who I thought was a customer approached me and I told him I was looking for a mini UPS for my computer. He reached to the side, took a box off the top of a pile and said, “like this?” Weirdly convenient, but that works! He told me the price ($50) but there was this unnatural pause between the time I said “I’ll take it,” and the time he actually took my money and wrote up a receipt.

Maybe he was waiting for me to bargain?

He seemed confused that I was like, “yep, sounds good.” It was the price I was expecting and considering it saved me a hot journey down the road to try to find one (thank you Buddy for informing me that all computer shops will carry the little ones) it was well worth it.

Yay for UPS!
An Uninterruptible Power Supply (unless the power is out for more than 20-30 minutes, and it has only gotten close to that once)
Manufacturer? “American Power Conversion (India)” Okay, sure. Made in India. Like most things here.

It has already worked twice. Power goes out. Router stays on. Lovely. Now I need to somehow attach my cable to it so I don’t lose the channel I’m on during these brief outages. Two nights ago, I missed a key scene in a very silly movie called the Sorcerer’s Apprentice which was only really worth watching because Nicholas Cage was having such a good time. And had good hair. Last night, I missed a couple blips of The Lion King which is okay, because I have it memorized. Tonight, though, I managed to see most of “In Time”, a clever sci-fi concept where time really is money and the amount of time you have left to live counts down on your arm. Have you ever noticed that when you miss the beginning of a mediocre movie (concept was clever, execution was cliched), the movie often becomes much better because you fill in the gaps yourself?

Have you ever noticed that when I have a short post with nothing much to say, I start babbling about movies?

Now it’s time for…

A Toothpaste Update

A single tube of Tom’s? Lasted 143 days. Go Tom! In the competition between the individual timings of chapstick, floss, toothpaste, and deodorant, I never expected the deodorant to win! Should be any day now. I know the suspense must be killing you.

I was told tonight that the monsoons would start early this year, evidenced by the recent increase in humidity. Ugh. Ugh because it means mosquitoes. I hate mosquitoes a way I hate nothing else in the world. I could never been a Jain. The ultimate non-violent religion. Wiki excerpt: “[Jain’s] rarely go out at night, when it is more likely that they might trample insects.”

I have in arm’s reach the Tennis Electric Racquet of Insect Doom and I’m not only unafraid to wield it, I’m eager.

And now I can plug it into my UPS to recharge. Insects at night, beware.

I’m declaring it official. I waited a few days before posting to be sure, but yep. The temperature has dropped about 15 degrees, the humidity has risen, and it has rained every day since this day, Thursday, after just about no rain for a couple months. And locals concur that although it is a bit earlier than usual, monsoon season has begun.

So I’ve started taking my malaria pills.

It was also recommended to me that I should go vegetarian during monsoon season… because the moisture makes meat even less hygienic, apparently.

It’s not wild and crazy rain. It’s not even constant. But I had chai in the drizzle for the first time and I’ve taken my umbrella out of the plastic for the first time (and we also got charged triple by the very smart auto drivers.)

Notably, whether summer, winter, monsoon, every season is cricket season.

I was watching some YouTube videos recently and the commercials are Indian! For some reason, that amuses me because I thought the ads were related to the video – or person posting. But several unrelated U.S.-based videos in a row have shown commercials I would have seen here.

And from the Fun with Hinglish department…

My co-workers were conversing in Hindi at the table during lunch. I understood almost none of it, but I always pick up the English words interspersed in. I heard “(hindi, hindi, hindi) top three American mistakes (hindi, hindi, hindi).” After a lull in their conversation, I turned to him and said “So what are the top 3 American mistakes? That’s the only part I understood.” He looked at me funny. “We’re comparing our favorite Bollywood actors. I didn’t say that.” Then he thought for a bit and said, “Oh! I said, ‘top three Aamir Khan mistakes'” and we got a laugh out of that one. I never realized those sounded the same.

In related news…

Pretty hot stuff. And the desert, too.

Aamir Khan is on my list of personal heroes. A lot because of the this talk show he did last year that brought a lot of taboo issues India is facing out into the open. I found an English subtitled version of whole and parts of episodes here and have watched almost all. I can’t remember which episode featured my favorite bit, where he spoke with some charismatic people with disabilities, but all of them have been terrific.

The Khan’s are a famous actor family in Bollywood… apparently there are three brothers. My co-worker called Aamir for the “classes”, another for the “masses”, and the third just “for stupid people.”

At my office, they have a Fun Committee. One of many things I love about my company is the emphasis on the social nature of work. And, presumably, happy employees are more productive.

All the emails that went out about our week of fun called it the Summer Mela. Mela is a useful word in Hindi (so useful, it has its own Wiki entry) that means a meetup, fair, gathering, etc. I see it used all the time from national festivals to sales at the supermarket. The first Summer Mela event at work was very well attended. It was a Tug of War. In Hindi, it is still called “Tug of War”.

Techies Participating in a Physical Contest

They did a good job with the rules – like making sure there were exactly 10 people on each side with at least three women and that there was enough room to move forward and back – which I always appreciate. Screams, yells, and cheers echoed all over the office, making it difficult to work, if indeed you were still trying to. An exciting afternoon.

A quieter event the next day was Tambola. Similar to Bingo. Everyone gets a little slip with random numbers on it from 1 – 100. The blank squares are free and the object is to get the five numbers across any of the lines. Then a blackout at the end. The very first time I played Tambola, I actually won! (I said “Bingo!” loudly and then I asked my amused co-workers what I was supposed to say. You say the line number like “Line 1!”) But it was for charity that time, so I didn’t actually win anything. I wan’t even close to winning this time around, but it was fun.

A Lack of Bingo

I am glad that they said the numbers in English. I think they might have anyway, even if I wasn’t there. I think, at the moment, I’m the only Westerner in the office, though a lot of people from other offices around the globe come and go. A lot of meetings are conducted in English, though I can never be sure, in those cases, whether the English is entirely for my benefit or if it is used because it is the “language of business.” I’m told, in some other offices, people use English exclusively.

Later in the week, they had a “balloon burst” race. Teams of four would walk awkwardly across the room one at a time while holding a balloon in between their knees. (If it fell, they would have to pause and wait for a team member to help.) At the end, they had to stomp on their balloon to pop it. Another loud event, though this one was off to the side. Later, there was arm wrestling. I only saw a crowd of people and heard the occasional rising level of cheer, then silence again.

The final event on Friday was a talent show. I am always amazed at these kind of things (we had one back home too) how talented my co-workers are.

Office Talent Show

The woman in the photo sung the only song I knew. Rolling in the Deep by Adele.

I took that photo from pretty close to where I sit. Which was unfortunate because I had a problem I really wanted to get solved before I left for the day. I might have ignored the bug and enjoyed the show, but then the comedy started – all in Hindi – and I didn’t understand a word anyway. I probably should have just given up on trying to work because apparently I have the funniest co-workers known to man; the people around me were bursting out laughing every few seconds. Also, the microphone was turned up really, really loud.

Speaking of loud, one of the books I read about foreigners living in Delhi joked that most Indians must be partially deaf (due in part to the many wedding celebrations which involve drums so loud they can be heard blocks away followed by music turned way up at the celebration.) The volume of the amps for this event, the volume of the music whenever there is a dancing event, and most of all, the volume of people’s cell phones, which always make me jump like my alarm clock is going off, make me wonder if this isn’t true.

Either that or I’m getting old and crotchety.

Not just the fun committee, but the co-workers on my humble team of about a dozen also know how to have a good time. It was two people’s birthday in mid-June, so someone bought a cake, ordered pizza and we had a little celebration in the office canteen.

Yay for Junk Food!

India Domino’s > American Domino’s.

Yep.

Finally, from my Videos Of Things That Are Not That Interesting series comes this: Going to work.

Now, to be precise, this isn’t really my morning commute because I usually take a taxi. But due to some alternate taxi driver pick-up location misunderstanding one morning, I hailed an auto instead. I decided a minute or two in to start filming it with my camera. You can see the auto driver looking in his rear-view mirror like, ‘What is she doing?’ The auto driver missed the final turn (more accurately, I don’t know in which “block” my office is, just which “sector”, so I had to correct my instructions) at which point I stopped filming.

My morning commute is very short (the video is not all that long). My office is practically in walking distance, if the weather were nice and there were not a narrow tunnel followed by the Road of Doom in between. (You can’t really feel the Doom crossing the intersection in the video… but I’d be afraid to cross it on foot during rush hour.) I tried to focus in on the people playing cricket on my route. Same place we played cricket earlier in the year, when I could stand to be outside for more than 15 minutes in row.

If you are using Internet Explorer to view this page… well, stop that. It’s the bane of my existence, that browser. Also, you won’t be able to watch this video unless you are in Firefox or Chrome. Notably, if your internet connection is slow, the video is probably not worth the download anyway. Though if the streaming isn’t good, you can right-click and download for later exciting viewing.

So I’m part of another group, started by the “Road Trip Group” organizer’s daughter called the “InterNations New Delhi Women’s Group”. For our first outing, we went to Barbeque Nation, an Indian chain, for lunch. I just read in the Wiki article now that, “Every table has embedded grills giving customers an opportunity to try out their culinary skills with the three-fourth cooked vegetables and meats.”

I, um, totally did not realize the meat on skewers over the grill was 3/4 cooked. I thought it was fully cooked and ready to eat. Maybe the few minutes over the grill were enough? It certainly tasted yummy and I didn’t get ill or anything.

Even a place with “Barbeque” in the name caters to vegetarians. You get skewers with veggies or otherwise vegetarian items on them instead of chicken or fish. And those items have a green handle instead of a brown handle. I’ve said it before, India is a great place to be a vegetarian. I mean, even the commercial for candy makes a point of saying “Snickers is vegetarian” in case of confusion.

Worldly women bonding over barbecue

The gathering was quite diverse. I met women from Iran, Mexico, Switzerland, Russia, and finally another American from Texas. English was our comon language. I feel like, in every other work or leisure group I’m part of, I’m always in the minority, either being a woman or a foreigner or both. Not the case here!

I guess the managers of Barbeque Nation must have thought we were a nifty gathering as well, for they presented us this cake at the end.

“Nice Group”

The restaurant was at Saket mall, so I hung out there for a bit after lunch, had a coffee shake, did some reading, and bought some DVDs. This is the only place I’ve found that sells DVDs in Delhi. Neither of the malls near where I live sell DVDs, though plenty of places sell DVD players. I looked around on the internet and found this site that does a conglomeration of ratings for various recent Bollywood movies, so I picked four and bought ’em. They were $6 each and rated for “All Regions” so maybe they’ll play back home, too? I bought “OMG”, “English Vinglish”, “Barfi”, and “Kahanni”.

Images that do not look like central Delhi

I found this flag, but could not find the Haagen Dazs again.

Waiting for the metro

So a trio of security guards blew their whistles at me when they saw that I was taking the above photograph. They were at the bottom of the stairs, just out of the shot. I don’t think they realized I’d already taken it by the time they whistled, so maybe they thought I was quickly complying. They didn’t follow me or anything to check my camera. I’ve been trying to figure out why they whistled. Maybe they think I could plan something sinister by studying the metro layout? No idea. My camera is not all that fancy. And everyone’s phone has a camera and there are a million people around. I was just being obvious about it.

I did a Google image search of Rajiv Chowk metro station. Yeah, my photo is nothing special.

The several days of heavy rain earlier caused flooding across northeast India.

I caught a hint of it trying to walk several blocks down to Shipra Mall. I almost could not make it on foot because of the lack of dry pavement. The cars, rickshaws and people were all sharing the not-flooded edge of one street. I almost hailed a rickshaw. I’m thinking the suddenness and severity of the several days of rain is part of why the streets got flooded so badly, but the sewers may also have been clogged with the garbage I often see on the side of the street. (And likely the sewers were built before this city grew to its current gargantuan population.)

The Yamuna River that runs through Delhi is at the highest levels it has been at in thirty years. There is a pretty significant flood plain, though, so only the people who live there are displaced.

The biggest news comes from further up in the mountains along the Ganges.

Rishikesh, where I was at just a couple weeks ago, is seriously flooded. Towns further upriver have been completely destroyed.

Rishikesh photo from the news

From 18 June, the Times of India writes:

“NEW DELHI: While the entire country is happily bathing in early monsoon showers, now at 40% in excess for the time of the year, torrential downpours have sent mounds of earth crashing into homes, toppled trees and buildings and overflowing rivers have swallowed vast swathes of north India, leaving at least 50 people dead and thousands homeless in the muddy aftermath. Nearly 20,000 people are still trapped in various places because of landslides and wrecked roads and bridges.”

That is the major thing on the news right now. And more rain is in the forecast. (Though Delhi has not seen much rain since the first few downpours.)

We had a team movie night mid-week.

Several of us at work left a bit early and headed over to a nearby theatre to see a new comedy called “Fukrey”. Any resemblance to a curse word in English is purely coincidental.

The title is a slang word without a clear definition.
Co-workers called it that in-between-high-school-and-college funk. One site defined it as “jobless” or “money-less”.

And although this was our second team movie, I forgot again: Movie theatres do not allow cameras. They take that rule Very Seriously. (Though phone cameras don’t seem to matter at all for some reason. Maybe separating people from their phones is un-enforceable.) Anyway, being in a foreign country, I always have my camera on me. And, unlike the other movie theatre we went to last time, this one had no baggage booth (like most stores, supermarkets, and places with similar rules have.) They really searched more of my purse than they usually search. And so one of my co-workers had to miss the first five minutes of the movie to go put my camera back in his car.

Ugh.

The movie itself is apparently very funny, judging by the amount of laughter around me. I understood bits and pieces (the story basically revolved around four people getting in and out of trouble while trying to find enough money to secure a spot at a university), but the funniest stuff was in the dialogue, which I got almost none of. I am baffled that they don’t subtitle movies, especially since Hindi, despite being a national language, is only one of many, many native languages in India. English is more unifying language than Hindi, at least according to what I’ve seen. I got some explanations from my co-workers during the perfectly-timed intermission and after the movie. I have a feeling a lot of the humor wouldn’t translate, but it was still pretty entertaining to watch and guess.

I kept hearing this Hindi word over and over. Matlabh. Apparently, it just means “means”. There was a subplot about interpreting a dream, so that makes sense. New word of the day.

There were not many song and dance numbers in this one (sort of half of one, if that) and so the movie came in at well under three hours. It seems like comedies are not usually musicals? I haven’t seen enough to be sure.

In one scene, one of the characters was wearing a shirt that said, in the style of the “Puma” logo, “Coma” with the puma cat draped across the letters. That was pretty funny. Though I think I spent a lot of the movie trying to figure out how that guy’s turban stayed on and why he wasn’t wearing the usual Sikh turban. The Internet gave me a kind of answer.

According to Wiki, Sikh turbans can be different styles depending on age, religion, region, caste, if it is a special occasion, or if you are playing sports.
(I see the green-styled one in real life all the time, but only see the white-styled one in movies.)
The white-styled one… does not seem as dignified to me.

During the intermission, one of my co-workers ordered soda and popcorn for everyone, which they *delivered* to us at our seats once the movie was going again. Nifty!

As soon as the credits started rolling, everyone immediately stood up even though they were still showing new footage behind the credits (of the four characters finally going to college. And the one guy changing to wear the above green style Sikh turban instead.) The girl next to me said “It’s over,” as if I wasn’t sure what credits meant. I was looking at the screen saying, “but there’s still movie going on.” Besides, I’m a credits person. I always stay to the end of the credits. Apparently even less people do that here than in the U.S. As I’m not going to make people wait for me, I left with them. Then they all paused at the exit doorway to watch the end of the new footage anyway. Ha.

I really have to remember, though, to leave my trash in the theatre. Because there are very few public trash cans. I was lucky to find one. I worked at a movie theatre cleaning up trash after movies so I know it is not a huge deal to clean up, actually. Just my habit to not leave trash around.

On the way home, we took the main highway, saw all the tents along the river for flood refugees. Got stuck in rush hour traffic. And saw a cool sunset over the temple. I figured, I better take photos to make the camera hassle worth it!

Traffic and the Sun over Akshardham

So we went out to get a cup of chai from the street market after lunch…

…and there was no street market! Just billowing bits of tarp and bricks.

“There must be a raid today,” my co-workers explained plainly. “The street market is actually illegal,” they continued, “so the owners of the booths pay 6,000 rupees every month to the police to carry on and 4,000 to the municipal guy to warn them of raids.”

“I had no idea,” I said. “How often do they do these raids?”

“Whenever the city needs money for something, like equipment.”

This photo is hard to see clearly, but that large vehicle has an ice cream stand on it, that was illegal, and it carting it off to apparently be destroyed. The fact that it was probably someone’s livelihood was hard to overlook.

Anyway…

When I returned home from work, there were several sheets of paper rolled up on my door. On everyone’s door. I picked them up. Even though it is written in Hindi, it is not too hard to guess from the words interspersed in English (just like in spoken Hindi) what it means.

The words in English in the opening paragraph are: “Dear fellow residents”, “committee members”, “miss management”, “orange county”, “maintenance amount”.

Other than the misspelled phrase that made me imagine a society Miss Management Pageant where lady bosses strut their stuff, I figure some tenants are not happy about the way their pre-paid funds are being used.

Everyone pays a maintenance fee that covers electricity, backup electricity, water, backup water, the club house and gym, security guards, and the upkeep of the complex. So far, I’ve been paying around $130 – $160 a month. (The base fee plus usage.) Whether that is reasonable and whether that is being mismanaged is not something I have enough evidence to have an opinion about. (Since I cannot read the rest, I have no idea what the call to action is, and my neighbor who translates everything for me hasn’t been home since.) What I do have an opinion about about is the lack of consistency and warning surrounding this fee.

Because, within hours of your account running down to zero, they will shut off your electricity.

Like they did tonight.

Also when I came home from work, I heard the beep of my UPS as if the power was out. Then I kept hearing it. Then the UPS itself ran out of juice. Since that also knocked out my internet, I checked the balance of my maintenance fee from my phone. It was at -920.

What makes this particularly frustrating is that I was on top of it this time. I had been checking the balance every other day. Yesterday evening, it was at 1,200. So somehow, $40 worth of fees was used up in one day when the daily average should be closer to $5, if that. Ugh.

Construction dudes

Speaking of first world problems…

Why is it so hard to find large garbage bags in India? One of the supermarkets I frequent had the size I needed once. Once and never again. I keep going back different days of the week to check (and there is a difference depending on the day of the week) but they only sell the small bags used in toilet garbage bins. The other supermarket’s clerk found some large-but-not-quite-enough bags that will do in a pinch, but seriously.

My co-worker laughed at me when I asked him about this. He says, “Why would you buy something you are just going to throw away? Especially when you get grocery bags from the supermarket every time.”

I apparently like my bags to fit my bin absolutely perfectly.

I’m also slightly concerned because both supermarkets stopped carrying the brand of milk I buy (“Nestle”, believe it or not), the brand that does not require boiling.

(imagine a Guido photo)

Baby Guido’s back! Several weeks ago, I caught him scurrying out my front door and under the neighbor’s door. Since that neighbor is out of the country, I figured B.G. was in a happier place without some crazy giant human always starting conversations with him. But he’s back!

Though in my desperation to get a photo of him, I scared him right down the curtain and under the wardrobe. I got a very cute photo, though.

Then I discovered that I CAN delete every photo on my camera with one command.

Sigh. Luckily, I had just backed up everything; I only lost the Guido photo.

I got an email inviting me – and any American Citizen – to the July 4th party at the U.S. Embassy on Saturday night. (One perk of registering with the embassy before moving, I guess. At least I assume that is why they have my email address on file.) They had some security restrictions. The worst was no large objects including umbrellas. So… your outdoor party during rainy season in the middle of an expansive neighborhood… has No Umbrellas Allowed? What? Luckily, it wasn’t raining when I woke up this morning.

The same day was our company’s badminton tournament in Noida. So I decided to give my taxi service some weekend business and headed down to Sector 21 on Saturday morning to play.

A Place to Play Sports and Stuff

From the Department of Redundancy Department

I don’t count the number of years it has been since I played badminton, I count decades. I played it a bit during “Raquet Sports” in high school and at the occasional backyard barbecue, but have never learned how to properly play.

Though that is not the case for the people here. When I arrived (after I wandered the complex, got barked at by a scary dog when I trespassed on what was apparently the dogs’ lawn, and finally found someone I knew, since I never would have found the door on my own) I was talking to one of my co-workers and he told me that badminton and table tennis were hugely popular here. I had no idea. Speaking of which, that is what Kathryn, my new co-worker from the States, calls “Noida”: “No idea.” Can’t believe I’ve never thought of that. Anyway, there was a whole giant court with four permanent badminton courts on it, so they must take this seriously here.

The gameplay did not take too long to pick up, actually. The switching sides when serving confused me a bit, but they had someone from the office reffing each game and explaining the details. At first, I was completely inept, missing completely or hitting the birdie against the stem. Then I got the hang of it, hitting it fairly regularly and managed a few good volleys (rallys?) during my first game. Everything following that, however, could be defined as Fail, horrible Fail. The only game I won was mostly because it was mixed doubles where I took the front, he took the back, and therefore I let him take most of the shots. I still had a lot of fun despite that the humidity that was so intense, even the locals commented on it.

It was a good, sweaty workout, that was for sure. And I loved how organized everything turned out to be. I’m very impressed that a committee at work manged to put together all the brackets, reserve the space, figure out who was playing when, and get the couple dozen of us a small lunch – a stuffed pastry and juice box – from the one concession area all in their spare time. And they wore matching shirts to boot.

Luckily, I managed to find someone to lend me their racquet for each of my games – everyone brought their own of course, because who doesn’t own a badminton racquet? I actually tried to purchase a racquet at Shipra Mall the previous night. Nope. Nada. So I bought The Worst Jeans ever instead and found out at the register that I did something I have never done before in my entire life: I lost my debit card. Luckily, I had a very clear memory of using it two days ago at the ATM in the basement of the office. Out of all the places to leave it, apparently that was a good choice because my card had not been used since then. I suddenly love that my bank sends me a text message every time my card is debited. After the most roundabout “Press 1 if” loop ever including one that, no joke, said, “Press 3 3 to report a lost or stolen card” and I had to just keep pressing that 3 until the next recording or it wouldn’t take, I managed to cancel the card. Now I have to wait until banking hours (i.e. Saturday) to get a new debit card. Bleh.

And because I know you are curious: The are the Worst Jeans Ever because they FALL DOWN. I know many people have pants that slide down their body as they walk. It’s a common problem, right? I mean, why else would someone invent the “belt”. But me, with ginormous round hips and thighs have never had this problem. Never in my entire life, no matter what style jeans. Until now.

So I went to pick up Kathryn (yay, a new American buddy just in time for July 4th) and we walked together to the metro station, about ten minutes in the heat and humidity. Seconds, SECONDS, after we entered the metro station it started pouring!

Whew. We were nervous about how wet it would be on the other side, though. With no umbrellas (sigh) we watched from the windows as the rain poured down on everyone, down all over the visitors to Akshardham, the people entering at each stop more and more soaked. We switched to the Yellow Line at Rajiv Chowk, this part all underground. At Race Course Station, we asked the man at the exit which gate was the closest to the U.S. Embassy. He said, “This one, but it’s raining outside.”

Tentatively, we went up the escalator. If it had been that bad, we figured, there would be more people in the covered part here, right?

Right! The rain had turned into a drizzle by the time we exited and found an auto to take us the rest of the way. Best Timing Ever.

The Program

I told my co-workers during the week that I was coming to this party tonight. The asked me if they have parades on July 4 in the U.S. And… I had no idea. Do they? (Hangs head in shame.) They said that India has both Republic Day, honoring the constitution (when they have a super big parade right through the middle of Delhi) and Independence Day, coming up in August. They said they hadn’t quite sorted out what to do on Independence Day. After all, it has only been sixty or so years from their independence from Britain (whereas as Americans have had 230 years to figure out something.)

Stepping into the Surreal

Our passports were checked, we were stamped, and we went through security that, compared to all the security I’ve already gotten used to in Delhi just to get into the metro station or the mall, did not seem so terrible. They started a little late and I learned later that the sudden rainstorm had completely ruined their preparing. But they did a great job setting everything back up. I couldn’t tell there had been a horrible storm just a half hour ago.

The party actually took place in a baseball field (!) You can see it right there on Google Maps. Again surreal. They had one smallish indoor area that I was happy to see just in case that rain came back. There they also had what was, according to Kathryn, the Nicest Public Toilets ever. Good to know for, you know, next time I visit? At the party, which had a pretty good amount of folks, but not nearly as many as I was expecting, I also ran into the one other American I know in Delhi, Megan, who I met at the Women’s Group (the Barbeque Nation entry.) Cool coincidence!

I’m standing in a baseball field, surrounded by American Flags, American accents, and people in shorts. In the middle of Delhi.

Overall, I liked the party. They kept the speeches and ceremony aspects short and sweet. Some marines marched to the stage with flags and rifles that were not fired. Then someone sung the national anthem. Then it was back to the nostalgic cover band playing Country Road, Sweet Home Alabama, and, for some reason, YMCA. They buffet was full of All-American food like burgers, fries, hot dogs, nachos, potato salad, quesadillas, fried chicken, corn on the cob, and believe it or not, a “Philly Cheese Steak”.

Be an Arrogant Bastard for only $10

The one disappointment was cost.

It cost $6 just to get in. The cheapest beer was $2 and went up from there, though it was pretty cool that they had Dogfish Head 90 Minute. (Apparently, getting this specialty beer in was not easy.) I had a $4 glass, er cup, of a wine called ONA which, despite looking like grape juice, was quite good. But you did not buy the food and drink directly, you bought coupons. Except the coupons only came in booklets of 200 rupees ($4). I asked the man at the coupon counter how much the buffet dinner was and he looked at me, confused, and said he wasn’t sure. How does the guy at the food and drink coupon counter not know how much the buffet dinner is?? Then he pointed to the paper inside my program which I now realized was a menu. With prices. With every single item charged separately. (And none were in increments of 200 rupees. The cheese steak was 280, the chicken was 220, the apple pie was 80. Seriously?) I know it is “special food” but seriously? I’ve never paid for a buffet dinner at a party in India ever, let alone be charged separately for each item. Incidentally, I declined braving the beef.

An American Indian?

The best part: fireworks! It was a short show, but yay! Fireworks are pretty commonplace here. Every other wedding has them – I often see fireworks out my window, but I still enjoyed them.

There was a raffle drawing after that, full of a bunch of useless prizes. A trip to Jaipur, where I’ve already been and probably will go back to, a trip to Agra, where I’m planning to go to later, or a trip to America, which I wouldn’t be able to take for tax reasons. Whew, didn’t win though I was nervous for a second because the person who won was also named Melissa. Wish they would have had free food instead. After that, they had a DJ who played a techno remix of Somebody That I Used To Know, some other new songs that I did not know, but one song that I also hear at Indian parties: Gangnam Style! Kathryn pulled me up to do the Cupid Shuffle. Then my regular taxi driver came and picked us up.

Now I have to go dig out my American debit card to pay for all these extraneous taxi rides…

So here I am, halfway through my time in Delhi.

What do I miss from home?

The spinach and steak salad at Murphys. Driving to my friend’s house, even after dark. Drinking tap water. Reliable sidewalks.

What will I miss come December?

All the new wonderful people I’ve met. Getting cheap transportation anywhere to see unique places. The garlic naan. Bollywood music.

Toiletries Recap
How long this stuff lasted comparatively, graphed up my bathroom wall
Legend: starting from the second tile up, a tile = a month

The Knock-on-Wood Department presents: bugs. Although I keep expecting big, nasty bugs to show up in my apartment, I haven’t seen too much yet, especially as compared to the giant spiders, beetles, and poisonous centipedes I shared my house with in rural Japan. The biggest ones I’ve spotted have been bigger than flies, but smaller than wasps and easily catchable with a tissue, which is one of my main Criteria for Bug Inconvenience.

(Lizards don’t count.)

I suspect the two main reasons I have not seen much is because 1. it is not humid year-round here and 2. my apartment complex applies pesticide. Being pretty high up may help as well.

I still have purchased bug spray with a picture of a cockroach on it. Just in case…

What is this thing, anyway?