I work in a new and fancy building complex with three several-story towers. It is surrounded on either side by construction sites which may end up being even fancier building complexes. I need to show my badge before entering. Several big companies have offices here, ours taking up a mere two floors of one of the towers, and there are always people around, with the possible exception of at my arrival a bit after 8am which is way too early for people to start work in India. Most people arrive at about 9:30am. Some work the noon to 9pm shift.

I can tell an architect designed this place and can imagine how elegant the awkward just-too-wide-for-a-step slats next to the main walkway must have looked on a drawing. There are a lot of fountains. (There is also a fountain in front of my apartment building.) Wait, this is Delhi right?

What water shortage?

Like many European and Asian companies, I sit in a bullpen compared to back home. Not much privacy. No one keeps many personal affects at their desks because of security but the desks get cleaned every night which is nice. Despite the close proximity, everyone has their cell phone set at a high volume. The first week I was here, I had the Red Hot Chili Peppers stuck in my head every day because of one guy’s ringtone. Could be worse. I usually have the tuneless jingles echoing in my head most of the day. So does a guy nearby, who is always whistling them, likely subconsciously. Naturally, I’ve decided to just join in and turn my ringer on as well, even though I’d normally be in vibrate-only. Can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

My Desk (center) vs. Conference Room

Like Japan, this is a very greeting-oriented and team-oriented culture. Everyone says good morning to everyone on their team when they arrive. The men shake hands with all the other men. And the whole team eats lunch together, when feasible. The daily lunch gathering made me feel instantly welcomed. (And gives me a good opportunity to pump my co-workers full of questions about India.)

There is a really nice seating area off the kitchen with a TV that is usually playing Bollywood videos all day, though once in a while has a cricket game going, which seems dangerous to productivity. Free tea, coffee, and RO (reverse-osmosis) filtered water are available as well as the occasional snack. But the microwave is a bit of a demon…

When you open the microwave… it turns on!

Apparently, I’m one of the few who care enough about not wanting my arm to be microwaved that I power off the plug before opening it to put my food inside. One woman tried to help me, thinking that the poor foreigner didn’t know how to properly use a microwave. Yeah, no, I’m just a paranoid freak.

We are not allowed to eat at our desks! I think I’ve had lunch in front of my computer almost every day for… years. Maybe decades. But not anymore! I mean, this is a good thing. Except when I am craving a chocolate snack and want to munch on it while I work. (I once snuck in a tiny piece of chocolate at my desk and oh, the sneaky guilt.) There is a food court in the basement for the entire complex with three food booths. South Indian, North Indian, and Pizza. (All with separate veg and non-veg options.) There are also two small coffee shops that have things like packaged sandwiches and chocolate bars, though the coffee comes out of the same machine we use upstairs. The average price for lunch is between $1 and $2. Okay. That is cheap. I admit it. And not bad.

One dollar lunch

Granted, the above meal would have looked even better if I had gotten the yogurt and veggies to go with it. But I’m already a picky eater. The yogurt is too sour for me and I don’t tend to trust veggies that I did not wash and cut myself. Otherwise, tastes pretty good. But notice the lack of fork. (You can get a spoon. Or even borrow a tray and spoon for your own brought-from-home lunch. But forks are hard to come by.) I bring lunch from home occasionally (read: leftover dinner), but here, there probably is not much of a price savings in doing so unlike back in Colorado where I spend upwards of $10-12 on those food trucks if I forget my lunch.

Like I read in one of my books, everyone shares their food! People take food off each other’s trays with or without asking. And they offer it often as well. Delhiites truly love their food. I’ve seen entire groups tightly bunched around a table, dipping their bread in whatever mysterious goodness is in the middle. No one has taken any food from my tray without asking, but maybe they know that I need time to get used to the idea.

And everyone eats as fast as I do! I’m a shoveler. Yet I’m not always the first done. And I’m not even doing that much talking, mostly listening to the Hinglish. We only take a half an hour sharp to eat. Not positive why.

My favorite part of the complex:
Trees in stairs!

Just outside the exit of the food court is the coolest area. You can almost pretend you are in a little forest for a while. Okay, architects, you did all right.

I think I am the only foreign woman (at least, obviously foreign) in the entire complex. I’ve seen the occasional white guy (and even chatted with a dude from Holland as I waited for my taxi) but not a woman. Men outnumber women by quite a few in both the complex and my company itself. I guess they seem to be tech-leaning companies.

One thing that surprised me was the dress code. The majority of people are in jeans! Even people that work at the other companies. I expected quite the opposite. Some people wear suits or slacks (and some women wear gorgeous Indian-style clothes) but most people are in casual wear! I like this mainly because I love my sneakers. I’ll wear business casual if you want me too, but lemme wear my sneakers.

The restrooms are western-style, except with a health faucet (a bidet) and a trash for toilet paper. The sinks have soap and a hand dryer. Important stuff. There is a washroom attendant I see sometimes, replacing the trash bags and so forth. She is one of the many unskilled workers with black uniforms always around the office from before I arrive until after I leave. I’ve heard this is very common of Indian companies, almost their duty: since there is high demand for ridiculously low-paying jobs, create some. There are several people whose responsibility it is to keep the kitchen clean, mop the floor, take out the trash, and keep the water & milk in the coffee machines full. (Back home, we do it ourselves because hiring someone would not be worth it.) There are always people outside the complex wiping the glass doors and scrubbing the tile floors.

There is also one guy whose entire duty it seems is to brush the carpet. I see him in a squatting position that makes my knees hurt to watch, brushing the carpet back and forth. Back and forth. I feel bad stepping on the freshly brushed carpet. But maybe he feels lucky to have this job? In a cushy air-conditioned environment with endless free water and tea? No idea.

The few company-wide emails that go out are interesting. The most common is along these lines:

“The owner of the car number mentioned in the subject line is requested to release the hand brakes of its vehicle parked outside the office premises.”

Because there are so few places to park, people who didn’t win the garage lottery have to park outside which often means double parking. But, to make that work, anyone blocking a car needs to leave their brake off so their car can be shifted. By far, the most nerve-racking-oh-yeah-I-live-in-a-CITY email was one where there were Trade Union strikes going on, some misbehavior and stone-throwing, and they advised every employee to stay indoors. I didn’t notice anything different myself, but my taxi did call ahead of time to say when he would be out there, so I would not have to wait outside. (This was before I got my phone.) My favorite email thread was one asking if anyone had any spare wickets.

There is a street food market right outside the complex. I have only ventured out there once (when all six of my team were with me) to get an unbelievably cheap chai with everyone. A couple beggars came up to me. Couldn’t tell if it was just me, the walking ATM, or if the others were approached as well. There was also a small boy running around, naked from the waist down. I think I’ll probably keep within the confines on the complex. It’s a zoo out there. No literally:

An urban sheep herd

Everyone here likes to boast that Khan Market has the highest rent in Asia.

I looked it up. It doesn’t. It does have the highest rent in India, though. (Maybe Asia if you don’t count Japan, S. Korea, or Hong Kong?)

Khan Market entrance

My first reaction when I arrived was a kind of unimpressed, “This is it?” Granted, I entered from the back, which is even less impressive. Both Shipra Mall and GIP are way shinier. I did go shopping, though. I bought some shoes, a smaller Eicher map since the 300-page one is a bear to lug around (incidentally the book shop was selling the SAME Delhi-Agra-Jaipur Golden Triangle book!), and more Indian-style clothes in preparation for the summer heat. For lunch, I had a Pad Thai that was so spicy, my lips were burning for an hour afterward.

I was surprised by two things in Khan Market: one, how many foreigners – and foreigners in Indian dress! – there were (which apparently I should have expected) and two, how little the salespeople were selling to me. I mean they were perfectly polite, just not immediately saying “Hello ma’am, how can I help you ma’am.”

Lodi Garden is conveniently in walking distance from the Market (and the street had a sidewalk even, bonus.)

Sheesh, that’s a lotta tombs
(Gumbad means Dome, but even those are tombs as well)

I loved Lodi Garden. It was beautiful, relaxing, full of colorful flowers and curving paths; you could almost not hear the traffic anymore. Lots of couples and families were out enjoying the gorgeous sunny-and-70s weather. I laid on the grass for a while (well, on my sweater) and enjoyed the blue sky and pleasant atmosphere. Just lovely.

Tomb, tomb, tomb…

See what’s become of me…

I had wondered why the guy I asked to take my photo was taking so long lining it up… he wanted me to have a head sprout. It was a very cool tree, though, I even took a photo of it later. Once, I thought I caught a glimpse of a pure green bird among the constant pigeons. I thought I had imagined it until I came upon this sign:

One from the “Don’t Read This Sign Too Fast” Department
The other from the “Arbor Vigilantes” Department

At the other side of the Garden, I found I was near the India Habitat Centre, which a co-worker told me about. I wandered in. The building complex was quite pleasant and had the cleanest-looking food court as well as the cleanest-looking restrooms I’ve yet seen. I almost tipped the lady restroom attendant, seriously. After I sipped a sweet lassi, I checked out an art exhibit and passed this restaurant:

When in Delhi, eat nostalgic American food
(Ironically, I do end up having a nostalgic American dining experience today… but not here)

The Eicher map I purchased led me to my next destination. And my next destination gave me an idea of what kids dragged to Delhi by their parents must complain about.

“Come on, not another tomb!”

Some cities have cathedrals. Some have mosques. Some have natural wonders and wildlife refuges. Delhi has tombs.

Okay, sure, it has lots of temples, markets, and even a Fort or two, but without even trying, I saw five tombs in less than five hours.

On my way to the tomb on the map, an auto driver pulled up beside me and asked if I wanted a ride. I said, “I’m just going right there,” pointing to the tomb, about a block and a half away. He was very friendly (and spoke good English) and finally convinced me to take the short ride for “four rupees, for good luck, it’s my first ride of the day”. I’ll learn someday. So I got in and he pulled aside pretty quickly and started chatting, asking where I was from and telling me about how it was his 40th birthday today. He showed me his whiskey stash in a little front compartment of the auto, even though Sikh’s apparently are not supposed to drink alcohol. I asked him if he wore a lighter-colored turban in summer since he said his black one was getting a little hot as the weather warmed up. He said he did and showed me a picture of him in a brown turban as well as photos of his wife and son. It was a nice enough conversation but eventually he got to the part where he wanted to take me to a tourist shop. “You spend twenty minutes looking around, you don’t have to buy anything, and they’ll give me a liter of gasoline.” At least he was honest but twenty minutes, are you kidding me? I got bored of the conversation very quickly after that. Eventually, he just drove me to the end of the block, not unfriendly or anything. I gave him 10 rupees, wished him a happy birthday and finally went to the tomb and paid my $2 foreigner entrance fee.

The nice thing about tombs here is that they are all symmetrical. So, if you don’t like the light here:

You can just walk around to the other side:

And apparently, they all sort of look like the Taj. This tomb is on one of the HoHo (Hop-on Hop-off) tour bus routes. However, I only saw a very few tourists here. Apparently, this is more of a place appreciated for its secluded, romantic nature than for its history…

Safdarjang Tomb Smoochers
“I know a quiet place, honey.”

Riding the metro on my way back, I got a text from Deadpan, who invited me to dinner at, where else, Khan Market! So the four of us (including his wife and adorable son) returned in the evening (the Market still quite lively at 9pm) and ate at a place I completely overlooked during my daytime stroll even though I had been looking for a restaurant at the time. It’s called The Big Chill and it is Italian. Good Italian. Whoa. And, weirder, has a 1950’s American cinema theme. Old (and a few new) movie posters completely filled the walls. James Bond. Audrey Hepburn. Cary Grant. The music matched the era. At one point, they started playing “Surfin’ USA” and as I was bopping along, I asked Deadpan if he knew the song. He listened, then said he had not. Obviously, I should not have been surprised, but I was for some reason. Wondering if this restaurant might only be nostalgic for ME…

Lest I give the impression that Delhi is not under construction all the time… It is.
Safdarjang Tomb Renovations and Lodi Garden Gazebo Building
(I especially like how they hired women to tile the roof.)

Number of chocolates given away: all of them. Three for the trio of various-aged kids outside Khan market. Two to the mother and toddler at the intersection near India Habitat Centre. Two for an impressively acrobatic girl nearby who was doing nonstop front-walkovers down the sidewalk. Two for the adorable brother with his sister on his shoulders who peeked in my auto. And two for the Sikh driver who asked for some for his kids. (“That’s all?” he asked after I gave him my last two.) I am the Chocolate Distributor of Delhi.

Lessons learned from my first bicycle rickshaw trip:
Drivers (pedalers?) have even less English than auto drivers and even less of an idea of locations outside the immediate vicinity.
I did see more detail of local neighborhoods which was cool, but the cruising speed was, of course, very slow.

My longest entry yet!

So, I found this tour to Haridwar a while back on the Delhi Tourism site and had been planning to check it out. Realizing it went to one of the holy Ganges destinations on the final days of the Kumbh Mela festival, which only happens once every three years, I got Chris and Peter (who arrived yesterday) on board, not believing there were open slots with less than a week notice. Granted, Haridwar was not hosting the festival this year, but it was still a very auspicious time to bathe in the Ganges.

This was my first trip outside Delhi…
…and now I know what everyone was talking about.

This journey was definitely a cultural experience.

Our taxi was an excruciating half-hour late due to “a flat tire”. Good thing I allowed a bit of buffer and that there is no traffic at 6:15am on Saturday. We made it to the office near Connaught Place punctually at 6:45am. Many people were gathered and there were two giant buses parked outside. People started walking over to the buses, but the main guy told us three to wait. Turns out that those buses were actually going to Agra (Taj Mahal). Our bus was a 12-seater parked out back. And only seven tourists were going.

We departed shortly after 7:15, driving pretty much back in the direction of Ghaziabad, passing Vaishali station on the way. Then we passed the border checkpoint and after that, I got my first glimpse of rural India.

What does rural India look like? Kind of like the city, just more of the dusty marketplaces and less of the shiny malls and tall apartment buildings. A couple towns looked a lot like what I saw on my FRRO trip to Ghaziabad proper. Some were just road-side food stalls and mechanics along the highway. It often appeared as if someone took a row of storage units and turned them into shops. Others were barely shacks with corrugated metal roofs, lined with Pepsi or Coca-Cola boards and the ubiquitous hanging potato chip bags attached to each other for easy display. At one point, we passed a random shiny building that I can only call the Baskin Robbins Oasis. The variety of vehicles was about the same except with the autorickshaws being replaced by oxen-pulled carts. Many of the trucks were so overstuffed with hay (or people) I couldn’t believe they were not losing their load.

A few hours out of Delhi, we passed some towns where most of the women were wearing burqas, which was a bit disconcerting. (We are still a good distance from Pakistan.) But then, typical Indian dress resumed. We stopped at a surprisingly nice rest stop – seriously, I had been beginning to worry about the quality of our food sources – where munchies and meals could be bought (I had an omelette and Peter had a grilled cheese sandwich, both delicious). The restroom may have been missing toilet paper, but it was clean enough. After all, it had an attendant, like every restroom I’ve been to in India.

The Surprisingly Nice Rest Stop

Ganges Pilgrims? All along the road, we kept seeing people doing a relay race in the other direction with decorated cars blasting music following along. We also saw quite a few men carrying over their shoulder a festive-looking half-circle shape. At first, I thought they were preparing for, or taking down, holiday decorations. I discovered later that they were pilgrims carrying water from the Ganges back to their home shrines. The farther we went, the more we saw, and the more I appreciated their long journey!

Welcome to Woodstock. We finally arrived in Haridwar and pulled into the parking area. It was like a county fair and hippie tailgate party all in one. Decorated cars, farm animals, blaring music, and general celebration in a giant dirt lot. There was a little confusion about what we should bring and when we would be able to get back to the van (it was not departing Haridwar for another 5 hours but the location of the van and driver would not be reliable until then). Were we doing a Ganges dip? (A “dip” was their term.) I still wasn’t sure. I mean, how crowded would it be? How dirty would it be? I wanted to be prepared for any scenario (I even had wrapped my vital documents in a waterproof ziplock in my money belt just in case.) One of the other tourists spoke awesome English and was invaluable in trying to figure out what the plan was, if there was one. After a lot of back and forth, I finally decided to bring my usual Giant Purse but stuffed in a change of clothes just in case. After what seemed like a while of preparing, we all walked to the Ganges staying, as they suggested, all together.

The Ganges at Haridwar

(And again, from the side with better lighting)

It was an amazing feeling, that first glimpse of the Ganges bathing area. Incredible. Everyone was there just to let the purifying Ganges water wash over them. A very positive feeling. I decided I was definitely doing the dip now. I was on such a cloud, I didn’t even mind when we had to take off our shoes before dipping. The driver who had been leading us up until then (and stopping, looking over his shoulder in a resigned manner whenever we paused to take photos) led us to the main area where stairs led down to the river. But before we go any further, an introduction of our little group.

Our Haridwar Seven

Us three were the only white folk. The tiny older woman standing next to me spoke not a word in English, but had a sweet smile. I got to practice my three Hindi phrases on her and so learned her name was Rita. The tall man on the left was Ricardo. During the ride up, I thought he was a quiet Indian, but he was actually a very friendly dude from Panama. No Hindi, but very good English. The remaining two were best friends, Ravi and Shaji. These two were so full of information and advice (solicited or not) that there was a point where I was wondering if they were part of the tour because the driver himself (presumably the only paid member of the tour) seemed to hardly speak any English. Ravi was our translating savior.

Near our dipping spot

Once we found a spot on the stairs to deposit our stuff (someone would take turns watching it and, wow, it was scary separating from my money belt), it was Ravi who pointed to a nearby doorway and told me it was a ladies changing room. Shortly later, Rita disappeared in that direction. He also told me that I should take my dip now and do photos later. Then he advised that I should just let other people take photos and share them with me later (I put my foot down there; I trust no one else to post or send photos.) Then he told me to be careful in the sun with my fair skin. Indeed, it was sunny and warm (maybe 80) and a perfect day for this.

Should I really do this??

All the women I saw were in full clothing (unlike the men) so, glad I brought a change of clothes, I stepped in jeans and all. Ravi joked they would be shrink-to-fit after that. I was told the proper thing to do was cup some of the river water to my mouth, sip it, then pour the rest over the top of my head. I was down with every part except the actual drinking. Although Shaji had been going on about the special bacteria-killing naturally-pure properties of the water (even saying at one point the H2O water molecule had a different angle?), I was not gonna drink it, but I sure as heck was going to dip.

My Ganges Dip

So how was it? Awesome! It was cold, but not freezing. It was the temperature of the ocean when my parents tell me how “warm” it is. Either way, it was very refreshing. I felt wonderful afterward! Apparently, I am now sin-free for three generations. (So if I ever have kids, that will mean something.)

So I went into the ladies changing room. No idea what kid of weird racket was going on in here. First, some ladies near the doorway said I could use a bench and asked me for money, but in a sort of fake way. Finally I said, “are you asking me for money just because I’m foreign?” I don’t think she understood, but she just waved me in. There were several large, wooden benches and older ladies sitting on them (sometimes with small children napping behind them) but I didn’t get it. I just wanted to change clothes. Finally, someone pointed behind the stairs to a quasi-private spot that another woman just finished changing at, so I changed there. (I’m not particularly modest, so I didn’t care where I changed.) When I was done, one lady tapped her bench, like she wanted me to sit there. What was she going to do? Comb my hair? Another lady put a red dot on my forehead. Confused, I eventually dug out 100 rupees for her. They wanted something else from me. I repeated the phrase “I don’t understand” in Hindi (“Mein nahi samachti hoon.”) several times, but nothing was made clear. I heard a woman behind me say in English, “just go” so I did. No idea what was going on in there; they did not look like beggars. In any case: dot number one.

Shaji has dual parentage (his father was Catholic and mother Hindi, I think) so he did this ritual in honor of his late father with a priest at the river. I took photos for him. The ritual was pretty long, but it was interesting to watch. At the end, the priest gave each of us a yellow dot. Dot number two!

Rituals and Dots

Shaji gifted me this white scarf, mentioning multiple times that it was from Kerala and handmade. He said I should wear it to protect my face from the sun. It was not a bad idea, but I kind of don’t like wearing scarves on my head and I didn’t want something else to carry around, as nice as the gift was. I kept putting it on my head, shading my face, then just taking it off. We slowly made our way back to the van to put back things like my bag of wet clothes.

On our way back, it occurred to me just how few foreigners we had seen. I thought I spotted one white couple right after we arrived. None since. That explained the staring factor. The staring here is at a whole new level. We are now museum exhibitions, not just novelties. For example, we were walking along this raised walkway where they were selling books, old coins, and other souvenirs. Some members of our group stopped to look at the merchandise and I walked a few paces on, just hanging out, waiting. Then several Indian guys (and one gal) gathered around me, just looking. If the rest of my group of seven (including muscular guys) had not been a few steps away, it would have been more intimidating. As it was, it was weird. To turn the tables, I took out my camera and photographed them. They thought this was unusual, but the woman wanted to look at the picture afterward to see how she turned out.

Stare at me and I’ll photograph you!

Eventually, we started walking back and were about to turn off the path into the lot to find the van.

That’s when we realized we had lost Rita.

She had been with us the whole time. And now, the tiny Indian lady most blendable with the surroundings was no longer with our group. We halted and spent some time looking. I did a loop around the marketplace we were in. Chris did a loop, too. Shaji told me to wear the scarf as the sun was indeed beating down. I put it on then thought, no, I’m the easiest person in our party to spot if Rita is looking for us. She seemed an independent lady, so I was not too worried, but we couldn’t leave without her. I figured that, if I were her and had lost my group, I would head back to the van. The others agreed. So, we waited a bit longer than eventually kept walking.

Rita was not at the van. But a group of old men begging were. And, despite being told off by the Indian folk (that always works in Delhi) they did not disperse. Ravi and Shaji were in the van talking nonstop. I was trying to think and couldn’t, probably because I was getting quite hungry as it was well past lunchtime (and no mention had been made of lunch nor was there any place to have a meal really). In short, I was stressed. Even Ricardo said later that I looked like I might explode on someone, though I promised not to explode on him. At any rate, I wandered a bit away from the van, looking for Rita, but not wanting to lose sight of the van myself. To my left, I suddenly saw Peter and Chris sitting at a coffee stall, munching on nuts. It was an okay vantage point so I decided to retrieve my own stash of munchies from the van since it looked like that would be our lunch. As I walked back, I got word that someone had found Rita. Whew. I sat, shared my nuts and raisins (the driver and his buddy were happy to oblige), had some chai, and tried to de-stress.

After a lot of discussion on what the next destination was (I got the impression we were behind schedule – and Ricardo was concerned how our itinerary did not seem to be following the site – but I had never seen an actual timetable), we finally decided to take the ropeway up to the temple, which was good because that was the place I most remembered wanting to see from the website.

Not losing Rita (foreground) again!

The gradually steeper, sometimes curving, roadways through this little town were cute and reminded me very much of the road to Kiyomizu in Kyoto, also on a hill. Our driver put us on two bicycle rickshaws who mainly had to pull us up as they certainly could not pedal uphill with three full-grown adults in the back.

Pulling the rickshaw uphill

The ropeway cost under 100 rupees and the line did not take long (though did involve going through security for the first time since Delhi.) But you could buy some munchies while waiting if you were so inclined.

The Ropeway and View

Shaji had me hold this little red bag he had purchased. I noticed a lot of people, even Rita, had bought these decorative red bags. I understood why at the top once we had removed our shoes and started through the temple. The bags were filled with lots of little trinkets to do blessings with. Circular red stickers for the wall, little pieces of paper with wishes to tie on a mesh grid (just like Japan), etc. Shaji offered to let me do some of his red-bag blessings, but I shrugged and declined. Then the corridors got narrow and very crowded with moving people. Everyone seemed in a hurry to go through, yet did not skip any of the “blessing stations” either. I got pulled down to my knees for one blessing station. The guy inside the alcove gave me a red mark on my forehead (dot number three), then asked for a donation. A donation for an unsolicited blessing. I dug out a 10-rupee note and put it in. “No, no, no” he said. I realized the bill was sort of covering his little bowl of red gunk so I moved it. But that was not his objection. He was shaking a 100-rupee note that someone else had donated. Yeah… No. I stood up and kept moving. My mood was not stellar and getting worse by the second as I realized that I was being herded from one blessing/donation station to the next in a pushy manner. I did not donate anything after that. Mansa Devi temple did not seem very holy to me. It seemed more like a gauntlet.

I was relieved to be free and back in my shoes. Chris suggested walking down instead of taking the ropeway and I jumped on that idea. Needed space. So the three of us separated, agreeing to meet the rest of the group at 7:30pm at the van, and we walked outside. I wiped away sweat from my forehead and my hand came off red. That’s when I decided to wipe that red temple blessing off my forehead with tissues.

The first thing we saw were monkeys! Lots and lots of monkeys!

As much as we photographed the monkeys, though, we were being photographed as well. I once turned and saw three guys with their mobile phone cameras pointed at me. So I posed. Museum (or zoo?) attractions, I tell you.

The Monkeys at Mansa Devi
(and view back up)

The walk down was fairly intense. There were a lot of beggars and ones in heart-wrenchingly awful shape. Every several paces during the hundreds of stairs going down the mountain was another beggar sitting on the side. I saw mostly men but the occasional child as well (I gave the first kid I saw some chocolates and should have realized when another little girl violently grabbed my dupatta scarf from behind several steps later that she was looking for chocolates, too. But I was startled and just pulled my scarf out of her grip and kept walking.) I saw a guy with missing feet and another with totally deformed feet bent in an unnatural direction. We wondered how they had gotten so far up the mountain. One guy had made a little house for himself, like a little cave with a canvas top that he could just fit under, sitting.

Almost down…

My calves were burning a bit toward the bottom. On the last stair was a beggar child who I swore said “chocolate” to me. (We were long past the previous chocolate.) I laughed and gave them one. We headed back into town, looking for a light dinner but none of the restaurants were open yet, so we settled for a glass bottle of coke, water, and the last of Chris’ cashews as we recovered physically and mentally from our walk down the mountain.

We managed by some stroke of luck to find a place to sit along the river for this lantern releasing called Aarti that everyone was talking about. Well… some people did gather flowers and other offerings in a giant leaf bowl, set it aflame, and set it floating down the river. That was kind of cool. But it was not many offerings. And not all at once, like we all thought it would be. And while we waited, we were insistently solicited for donations. Some, by people in a uniform. One guy was leading prayers, having us all lift our hands up at the same time – which was kind of fun – then splashing Ganges drips at us, and saying something that sounded almost angry in what I assume was Hindi. No idea what he was saying.

Waiting for the fire…
And Hindusm had this symbol first; it means good luck.

Ricardo, Shaji and the gang found us at our spot, so our group was back together. As we sat, some woman came up to give us another red mark on our foreheads. Chris and Peter allowed the red line (and donated) but I declined. Someone announced something and suddenly, half the people sitting got up to leave. Was it over? Was that all we were going to see of flaming offerings go by on the Ganges? Or was the action elsewhere? We never knew. A woman came up and, despite my protests, managed to put a red dot on my forehead. (And… dot number four.) She wanted a donation and very persistently was asking me something, but did not take my 10 rupee note. It was not until Ravi appeared that he explained that the woman was looking for a 50 or 100. Greedy. The woman did the same thing to Ricardo, who had the exact same experience with his 10.

Then a child came up and I had to physically stop her from putting a red dot on my forehead. Seriously. Only one of my dots I asked for. I wouldn’t have minded a freely-given dot, but they wanted the big bucks for them. Finally, we headed back to the van. I was a little bummed we never got to visit the giant statue of Shiva – it was very close. But oh well.

There’s Shiva

We were off. Somewhere between alcohol-free Haridwar and Rishikesh, we made a very long pit stop that included beer purchases (and juice, which Ravi insisted on buying for my benefit since I wasn’t drinking beer.)

The hotel, contrary to what was promised, had no restaurant. And no room service. I hung around and made sure that Ricardo and Rita got food and indeed, eventually, all of us went out into Rishikesh (it was about 10pm at this point) and got a very tasty meal at a local restaurant. It was Ricardo’s first real Indian food. He’d been in Delhi with his buddies (who did not want to come on such a “religious trip” with him) but had mostly been eating KFC and Dominos for the last several weeks.

Tomorrow: Rishikesh!

Inderlok hotel. Let’s just say, you get what you pay for. The entire tour, including the night at the hotel and the driver for the almost 10-hour round trip was less than $40. I was required to pay an extra $14 to have a single room, but still. You do the math.

View from the hotel

The construction on the first floor, having no food available, the single towel that did not look very clean, the hot-water-less shower (though the faucet had hot water), the complete lack of a trash, the A/C not working (according to the others; I just used the fan), the ambiguous meaning of the bucket, and the little critter I found under my pillow reminded me a little of the Most Exotic Marigold Hotel. But the chairs were very nice, the closet had a cool wood smell, the door locked, and there was a balcony. Also, there was random fancy furniture scattered in the most unlikely of locations.

The luxury rooftop dining area?

Ravi, our trusty translator, told everyone the previous night that the bus was leaving at 7am (and that, if necessary, he would knock on people’s doors to wake them up.) Come 6:45am, he announced that several of the group were going to walk to the Ganges for a dip. I was assured the river was quite close. Come 7:15, the three of us were more than ready to go, but no one was there, not even the driver. I agreed to hold down the fort for a bit. The bit turned into over 30 minutes. (In the meantime, I drank chai – one beverage available – and chatted with the pleasant clerk who told me that there had been elephant stampedes in Rishikesh in the past.)

Brij Fancy Store
“The Smartest Way to Sparkle Yourself”
(Yep, your guess is as good as mine)

The driver returned, so I stashed our luggage in the van and walked out to look for everyone. I ran into them walking back. Everyone but Rita. Feeling like I missed out on seeing the Ganges again and wanting to make sure we had Rita, I walked out to the river (indeed, only a five minute walk down the street) with Ricardo. No Rita. But it felt like I was in a Jesus movie.

There was a curvy path that led out to the sandy bank of the Ganges, where people in colorful clothing were peacefully bathing on this holy day of Kumbh Mela. So devotional they were, that they did not even stare much. The temple was very humble. The path was lined every several paces, on both sides, with beggars sitting silently. As I walked down the beggar-lined path, it occurred to me how odd it would be to just choose one person to give money to. Why choose that one over this one? Would the rest crowd you?

As I walked back, I saw a few people going down the line of beggars, one by one, coins gathered in their skirts/robes, giving to each one. Ah. That would be the only way to do it, I suppose. I started walking quickly, worried now that everyone was waiting on me. But they weren’t. In fact, the ones who had told us the 7am leaving time were not even packed and it was nearing 8am. I told them we were late (they disagreed) and to please hurry as everyone was waiting for them. (Rita had made it back by now.) I at least scored a hard-boiled egg out of the transaction. And Shaji had given me a banana he bought at a roadside fruit stand. Between that and the roti (bread) I had saved from last night’s dinner, that was my breakfast. I appreciated that as very little was open on Sunday morning.

After quite a lot of hanging out in front of the hotel, they finally came downstairs and we departed toward the main temple (I assume) in Rishikesh and parked the van. We had an additional guide join us who led us along this very pleasant path along the river. Rishikesh is right at the foot of the Himalayas and it was nice to see some mountains again after so long.

River walk in Rishikesh

One of the first things us white folk noticed was… other white folk! Unlike Haridwar or the area of Rishikesh where we were staying, there were plenty of foreigners here, mostly women. I gave out some chocolates to the first cute kid and the inevitable second cute kid. Then we hopped on a prepaid boat across the river toward the other side. Today, the 10th, was a double holy day. Not only was it the final day of Kumbh Mela, it also was Maha Shivaratri, the celebration of Shiva’s wedding anniversary. Despite that, Rishikesh did not seem terribly crowded. Then again, I haven’t seen it on a regular day.

(You can see the bridge across the Ganges from here.)

On the other side, we were led through a very nice neighborhood with many ashrams in it. Ah, that explains all the foreign women! (Either that or they all had attended the International Yoga Festival I saw posters for everywhere.) I enjoyed walking through the ashram area. I liked that the sign in the temple said “No donations” and that everyone who wanted to could live here, free of charge, and learn the meditative ways. There were 2,500 rooms and counting, our guide told us. It reminded me of Eat, Pray, Love (a significant portion of which happens within an ashram.) It almost looked familiar as if they filmed the movie here with the water tower and everything. It was neat to see the little room doors facing out to beautiful gardens and imagine what it was like to live here.

Geeta Bhawan and other ashrams at Rishikesh

Then the guide lost all my respect…

Even though he had been decent until then – and even bought me a chai at a little stall in the ashram neighborhood and showed us a neat, tiny temple – he also led us to a bead shop. I peeked in and some guy was giving a presentation. The guide insisted I enter and sit down to listen. I was like, no. I have little patience for that kind of stuff and assumed the others felt the same but had been goaded. So Peter, Chris, and I who had managed to escape the presentation, hung out in the alley instead, waiting. And waiting. I felt bad for them. I peeked in again and it looked like there were actual purchases going on. Really? The purchases were taking quite a while, so I went in and asked him to hurry. My new favorite word in Hindi: Challo! Let’s go!

If I had been alone, I might have just waited it out. But sheesh, the three of us had already spent almost an hour that morning waiting for them. I went back in the bead shop several times, increasingly annoyed that not only did we have to put up with the tourist shop crap, but that we now had to wait while someone else gave into it. I was pissy, no doubt about it. Eventually, I asked them if we could just meet them at the van later. They agreed – wish I had thought of that earlier! – and wanted the guide to take us back for some reason. Rita joined us. Ricardo was worried that she would slow us down, but she was actually pretty spritely for an older woman.

Linger, and you shall be in strangers’ photographs

Near the above statue, us white tourists were very popular. Chris and Peter were in several peoples’ photographs. As was I. It seemed like each guy wanted to separately pose with me and have his photo taken. This is not the first time this has happened in India and I wonder how my photo is being used in these situations. We did not get a chance to see the above silver statue up close, but I was not saying no when someone said Challo! to me.

The Ram Jhula iron bridge
(that some people on our tour were too wimpy to go on)

View from Ram Jhula

On the other side now, following the guide who regularly clapped his hands twice and gestured to get our attention, we all agreed that we were hungry. And, with the notable exception of the rest stop the first morning, we had not been offered any opportunities for food. When the guide reached the boat dock and wanted us to either wait for the other two (ha!) or head back to the van down the same river walk (where we’d still be waiting), we disagreed. We wanted to get a bite to eat and return through the market. The guide was extremely insistent. Lots of gesturing and clapping. We would have turned our backs on him…

Except Rita had disappeared again.

She could not have been far as we had seen her at the boat dock. Ricardo and I spent a little while looking and calling her name, then gave up, thinking that either the guide would find her, she would meet the other two, or she would find her way back. After all, we were not hard to find and for her to purposely separate from the guide meant that she must have headed back on her own. The persistent guide, who I was only being minimally civil to given his bead detour, desperately wanted us to continue with him. When we told him we were going to eat lunch, he said we would get lunch on our way back in Haridwar. We did not believe him. Why would he know? Then he said we needed to be back at the van at 11am and it was quarter till. I said, “fine” wondering why he knew this mysterious ‘schedule’ that we were on but never had been told about. Then we just turned away, walked back up to the market and up to Flavors restaurant.

Delicious food. Best table ever. We could overlook the boat dock (on the off chance Rita did show) while we basked in the sunshine. The four of us had a lovely lunch and we got to know Ricardo better while finally having a real meal on our own terms. Ricardo confessed that he was relieved we were on the tour. He said he was afraid he would be left behind (and even pleaded with me the previous night to not let them leave without him), but knew they wouldn’t forget us loud, white tourists. He said he thought it was meant to be, that we were all there on that tour to help each other. I agreed!

View of the Ganges from Flavors; a Shopping Cow

We were a little ways through lunch when we actually saw the other two get off the boat and walk up toward the market in our general direction. We waved to them. They looked up at us and gestured to their watches as if we were late. I seriously laughed out loud.

They took off up the market, shopping, and we enjoyed our meal. As we were finishing lunch, the guide returned and found us, as we were easy to spot. We did not hurry, but we let him lead us back to the van. He seemed so concerned that it was 11:40 now and we were supposed to be back at the van at 11:00.

Mixed loyalties?

Never mind that we had gotten over an hour late start. Never mind that the driver had never once mentioned a schedule, time, or itinerary to us. Although I had to admit (once I got over the relief that Rita was, in fact, at the van) it was refreshing being able to arrive and actually have everyone already gathered there, ready to go. No more dilly dally. Challo, challo!

After an overly long stop near Haridwar (where Ravi and Shaji walked up the street to pick up beer and food), we headed back to Delhi. The drinkers were getting drunker, the Shiva chanting CD that had been playing on repeat had been replaced by them (bickering like an old married couple) fiddling with the radio at various volumes. They found Casey Kasum’s American Top 40 and we listened for a bit, but it did not seem right. When Cat Stevens’ Wild World came in at number 33, I knew we were in the wrong decade and then some. Exactly 130km from Delhi, we suddenly pulled off the road. “Yep, I heard that pop,” Chris said.

This actually happened

We happened to pull off right next to a tire shack. Either amazingly serendipitous… or not. How did I know that we were 130km away from Delhi at that moment, you ask?

The jack collapsed the first time. The second time seemed to be working, but when the wheel was off, I seriously stepped back and kept my phone at the ready to call an ambulance in case the van tipped over on someone. There was some drunken confusion and differing approaches to the problem of a getting a full tire back on when it was too tall to fit. Digging vs. Deflating. Almost all the guys took part in it at one point or another. Though the driver mostly kept back.

The convenient (?) tire shack and the old tire

Eventually, an hour and fifteen minutes later (which included a cup of tea for everyone), we had a new tire on and headed back. Shaji had earlier suggested a tip for the driver that I agreed to, but then I found out that he had given the driver 1000 rupees ($20) to pay for the tire. I gave Shaji 500 and called it even. The driver was kind enough to drop us off in Ghaziabad to save time, though did not hear us when we told him where to turn to get us a bit closer. We squeezed into an auto (and Shaji insisted on paying the 100 rupees fare) and made it back to the most luxurious hot shower ever.

And so our tour had started and ended with a flat tire.

Tuesday: Discovered I had a new roommate:

Had this been an arachnid or rodent, you would have already known about it
because you would have heard the screams from there.

But geckos – or whatever species this is – are cute. If they eat bugs, double bonus! Will name him Guido.

Wednesday: Finally got my new Axis Bank ATM card to go with my new proper account. Went to bank to check my balance. 0.00 Rupees. Luckily, I had savings at my credit union in the U.S. I paid the taxi driver his the usually weekly amount plus tip and wonder if the owner of the service is ever going to want me to pay for Saturday’s taxi… (not the same driver.)

Thursday: Account funded! After nearly two months, I finally got paid! Celebrated by paying my bill at Cabana with my new red debit card. Also received a birthday package in the mail! Awesome surprise! Sent two weeks ago, looks like India Post might work after all (and be worth the fortune it costs to send something here.) Will see if I receive other expected items…

Friday: Our group at work went for a team-building exercise: cricket night! Promptly at 5pm, some of the guys went to a giant field not far from work to reserve a spot. Someone brought wickets, someone brought bats, and someone brought post-game munchies.

Cricket & Wickets

I don’t know the rules of cricket, other than what I’ve been able to gather from Lagaan and other Bollywood movies.

However, you don’t need to know the rules to play, you just need someone to tell you what to do! I ran when they told me. I stayed put when they told me. I bat when they told me. (I even hit a few! Granted they were pitching, I mean bowling, extra slow for me.) I even got to pitch myself! And when they said, “We got the wicket again!” I dutifully gave my teammates a high-five, even though I couldn’t have told you whether that was a good or bad thing. Someone was keeping track of runs and overs and wickets and innings and other cricket terms. We won one inning and they won one, so we declared it a tie, though there was some question of whether one of the balls was a 6 when my co-worker caught it, as the field was vaguely defined by some trees and poles in the area, sharing fields with half dozen other cricket groups.

A Major League Moment

I’ve never NOT seen people playing cricket on this field when we drive by in our daily taxi, so it was nifty to finally play on it ourselves. The field, though, was mosquito paradise around sunset with all the random holes and standing water. I brought spray and luckily, none of us actually seemed to be bitten. We’ll see how the mosquito situation goes as the weather warms.

I think when many people picture India, they picture Old Delhi.

Old Delhi – three stops north of Connaught Place – is where one sees the giant bunches of power lines that criss-cross narrow streets crowded with people. Awning-covered markets are at every turn and the the intersections have few right angles. None of the buildings look like they’ve seen renovations in decades, except perhaps the variety of temples, churches, and mosques. The only signs of modernity are cars and scooters squeezing through and, of course, the McDonald’s right on the main drag.

My co-workers told me it gets so crushingly crowded on Saturday afternoons and evenings that you have to shove your way through just to get back to the metro station. The best time to visit, apparently, is on weekday mornings. But like many folks, I’m at work. Since everything is closed on Sundays, that left Saturday morning.

Old Delhi

So I awoke Saturday morning, had a hearty breakfast, had a talk with my intestines about the otherwise delicious chicken dinner from last night, skimmed a couple websites to get an idea of what to see, then off I went, chilling in the Ladies Car toward central Delhi.

But Delhi does have a way of making me grumpy, a little bit at a time.

Whether it was the pushy beggar who wanted more than two chocolates at Vaishali station, or transferring at the metro station and getting a train shorter than the platform and so having to jog with everyone else and squeeze into crowded last car, to every single rickshaw driver outside Chandni Chowk station trying to get my attention. (My favorite was the guy who said “It’s far, it’s far,” as if he knew where I was going. I didn’t actually know precisely where I was going, I was just following the crowd, but I also knew that every place of interest to me was in walking distance.) I think the worst was the kids who decided it would be funny to throw water balloons at my back after I finally did get on a rickshaw, then who laughed when I shrieked in cold, wet surprise. Then, after I recovered from that and was enjoying my ride to the mosque, thinking that my friendly rickshaw driver was doing a surprisingly good job pointing out the sites on our short journey, and that I might even give him 50, he turns around and charges me 150.

But everything was made up for at the mosque.

Jama Masjid
(Masjid = Mosque)

The mosque did not seem particularly welcoming at first (especially toward women). It was 300 rupees ($6) just to get in. And not only did I have to take off my shoes, they made me (as a woman) wear this god-awful robe apron thing “to cover up.” I assured the dude robing me that the garment was covering me up no more than my conservative clothes were already doing. I still got the robe tied on me.

However, they did allow one nice thing. I did not have to go barefoot on the warm, dried-bird-dropping-covered stone. I could purchase slippers to wear!

Jama Mosque, where I can dress like my great-grandmother
(At least they didn’t make me wear a headscarf.)

My OCD tendencies only cost me 100 rupees

After dark, it’s a Muslim Men’s Club

I’ve been reading The Muslim Next Door, which is giving me new appreciation for just how pro-women, pro-gender-equality, and pro-religious-tolerance the religion of Islam actually is according to scripture, so it is eye-rolling to see all this even in democratic India.

However, all of that aside, this is why the mosque made my day:

THEY LET ME CLIMB UP THE MINARET!

Like, actually get inside and climb the thing! For only 100 rupees.

The inside of the minaret is just a stone, spiral staircase around a column, going all the way to the top! That’s it. It’s tight enough where it is difficult for one person to pass another. Nowhere to fall, and the occasional tiny window out, it just goes up and up and up. HOW COOL IS THAT!? It is about 12-stories tall, the tallest thing by far in the area. And I was breathing hard when I reached the top. But worth it!

…reaching the top

It is one of the best views of Delhi I’ve had so far. I could see in every direction. At first, I was sharing the top with a foreign couple and their son. Then I had the top to myself for a little while before it started getting crowded up there.

The difference camera placement makes.

However, I assure you, mom, that the barrier went completely around from top to bottom.

View of Red Fort

View toward Karim’s restaurant
(How many autos do you see in this photo? I count about twenty.)

As I left, I got a little baggie to keep my purchased slippers in. I retrieved my shoes and a guy nearby wanted donations for watching my shoes. Indeed, unlike anywhere else I’ve been so far, there did not appear to be a shoe check here; you just put your shoes on the pavement with everyone else’s and hoped no one walked off in them. But, seriously, like that dude knew they were my shoes. Right. Anyway, before I walked back down the stairs, I looked at what they were selling at the stall by the entrance.

That SAME Delhi-Agra-Jaipur Golden Triangle book!

So then, I walked back to Red Fort, the other major monument in the area. My “no, thank you”s to rickshaw drivers were getting pretty weary. Some guys were persistent. I had to look one in the face and repeat NO, thank you for the fifth time for him to finally stop asking. I walked all the way to the bottom gate of the fort, but as it turns out, there is only one entrance, so I had to walk all the way back, at least this time on an inner street without rickshaws. Glad I wore sunscreen.

Red Sign

So, Red Fort. It’s red. It’s a fort. Yep. The audio tour, which you could listen to as you walked and enjoy some background music and historical information, was worth the couple bucks, but other than the relative peace and quiet of the large garden space and the pretty nifty-looking red walls, there isn’t much else to recommend here. This is one of the major attractions in Delhi for some reason, certainly one of the first I heard about, and it gets a lot of worldwide visitors, being a World Heritage Site. Honestly, seeing the variety of people was far more interesting than the fort itself. Saw Japanese tourists, African tourists, European tourists. Even Middle Eastern tourists I think.

Inside the fort. Cool tree in the fort.

I caught one Indian dude with his camera phone pointed at me. But it was less weird because as soon as he realized I was okay with him snapping a photo, he wanted to take one me with his elementary-aged boys, then with each individually, shaking their hand. (Shaking hands with children… and repressing my OCD instinct.) I got the impression that he was from outside the city visiting the capital… and the weird-looking foreigners were just part of the experience. (I mean, they were for me! Though I didn’t snap any without their permission.) So afterward, I asked if I could take a photo of his kids, too:

One guy later actually asked so politely for my permission to take my photo, that I almost wasn’t sure what he was asking. These two guys did the same thing all the other guys have done (a photo per guy) but were just super polite about it.

With the exception with the water-balloon-throwers, I generally find the kids to be adorable. The schoolchildren love to say, “Hello, how are you?” or “What’s your name?” or just wave. Obviously, they are learning English in school and the brave ones want to practice it. Japanese schoolchildren are very much the same. I always try to respond in textbook English; probably the English teacher part of me.

So, I figured I should actually try to walk around Chandni Chowk (i.e. Old Delhi) before I returned because it was so famous. I decided to head in the direction of Chawri Bazar, the next metro station down, thinking that would give me a good overview. I had a cheap chicken biryani (rice) for lunch in a literal hole-in-the-wall establishment near Karim’s. (And, in fact, if you are looking for Karim’s – very famous restaurant – it is just south of the mosque.) I turned and started walking on the smaller streets, kind of purposely attempting to get lost for a little while. And I did.

Chandni Chowk toward Karim’s
(from the mosque)

I think I wandered out of the famous part, where each street is a market that sells something different (spice, paper, saris, tools, food), and instead into a very old neighborhood. Narrow streets with lots of people out and about. I bought a bottled orange juice from one of the many little convenience stores and started taking turns at random. No right angles. No rickshaw drivers talking to me, just ones going by making dropoffs. It all felt so old. It would have felt like a time warp except for the periodic honking and speeding by of a motorcycle. but it was an indescribable experience. I didn’t take any photos here. I felt briefly like I was in Cairo because this apparently is a Muslim neighborhood. The large majority of women I passed were in burqas or at least fully covered. My presence did not seem to particularly bother anyone; they were just going about their day. I felt amazingly safe, actually. The only people who talked to me at all were, you guessed it, schoolchildren.

The lack of right angles confused my sense of direction a little, though. I ended up exactly where I started. After that, I took the most direct route on the map to get to Chawri Bazar station. An interesting walk in, I think, the paper street.

Taken from, believe it or not, the top of the stairs down to the Metro

I wore myself out pretty good during this day (the weather is getting warmer and warmer, I can feel it) and took a nap as soon as I got home.

In closing, I saw two things today I have never seen before in India:

Coincidence?

So, tomorrow I am off to a new state: Maharashtra. I booked airline tickets and a hotel through www.makemytrip.com, which a co-worker told me about (it’s like Expedia). When I get back, I’ll tell you how my Air India flight and stay at the city of Aurangabad (to see the Ellora and Ajunta Caves) at the Meadows Resort Hotel went. The whole 4-day, 3-night trip cost $385 for the round-trip flight and hotel.

I also booked a cab to the airport online through www.easycabs.com, which another co-worker describes as “reliable, but not the cheapest”. So many bookings. So much not-speaking-to-actual-people to do so. I like it. Assuming it works.

Other random stuff to fill up space:

Got to Skype with my grandparents for the first time! Way cool. Wish my internet connection was faster, though.

My first container of floss lasted exactly two months:

Click on the photo to see the site I stole this pic from.
It also captures my feelings on the subject.

I’ve seen the occasional mosquito, though they haven’t appeared in full force. Still, good to have:

A “Mosquito-Killing Racquet”

After some hunting, Peter and Chris found this for me yesterday in a neighborhood market! Yes! Mosquitoes DIE. Best part: it’s rechargeable – ZAP!

It’s a bummer that neither Netflix nor Pandora work in India, but Pandora’s message is nice:

Dear Pandora Visitor,

We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. We will continue to work diligently to realize the vision of a truly global Pandora, but for the time being we are required to restrict its use. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.

From the “I didn’t know that was a liability” department:

Actual sign in my supermarket

Also…

He’s ventured into the living room now…

So I should be back with a hundred photos – or a good story why not – following the weekend.

So I left my invisible husband in Aurangabad.

The online reservation I made through EasyCabs came through after all. Although the driver did get a bit lost and I had to hand my phone to the front desk to pass on directions, he arrived on time and the back seat had (gasp) seatbelts. The clean, modern, spacious, flashback-to-Heathrow airport that is Delhi’s Domestic Terminal 3 was a pleasant place to relax and purchase a swirly gold ring, which I put on at the store while four attentive clerks (groomsmen?) watched. (Enough of my friends and co-workers expressed concern that I was traveling alone, this was the best I could do on short notice aside from packing Guido in my backpack.)

At the airport, I also learned the yoga Sun Salutation.

Boarding was a breeze. The pilot sped around the curve and we took off. The flight attendants (dressed in saris) served us a full meal, but no soft drinks, for the less than an hour and a half flight. At Aurangabad, a man was waiting with my name on a sign. “The Meadows welcomes Ms. Melissa Fedak”. I love when people are waiting at airport exits with my name on a sign. Partly because of the justification for ignoring the calls of “taxi ma’am” around me but really because it just makes me feel special. Look, that’s my name, that’s ME.

As hoped, the staff at the hotel were able to book a tour guide and driver for me for the next two days, despite the short notice. My room was a cottage that I’ll call “India clean” that had a back door. Around sunset, I opened the back door and heard what I believe was a Muslim call to prayer. Quite beautiful. Then I got a phone call where the man on the other end very persistently tried to sell me a massage. After my hesitation, he changed it to a food massage. Which I understood after a few repetitions to be a foot massage. Not so beautiful.

My room in the cottage

Alone in the hotel restaurant – I had yet to see any other guests – I perused the menu for dinner, realizing that the helpful English descriptions are only useful when you actually know what an aubergine is.

(Just looked it up. Eggplant. Ah, that makes sense now.)

Too cold (and loud) with the air conditioner on and too hot with it off, I finally managed to keep just the fan consistently running and tried to get to sleep. Woke up with over 10 mosquito bites on my arms. (Even though I killed the one mosquito I did see.) Sigh.

My tour guide arrived so promptly at 9am, I missed the last course of my gradually served “American style” breakfast where the choices of how I wanted my egg cooked were “boil, boil and fry, or scrambled.” Obviously, I must have misheard so I ordered “fried.” No, I heard correctly. The eggs arrived hard boiled. Then deep fried.

I liked my Sikh tour guide immediately. He wanted to take me to a fort on the way to Ellora Caves “before it got too hot”. I shrugged and was thinking, another boring fort, ok I guess, but this was the Coolest Fort Ever! This was cool in a Helm’s Deep kind of way. With monkeys.

No railings? Another way the enemy could be defeated! If the baby monkeys didn’t snuggle them to death.

What made this fort worth it (like Fort Worth?) was how you could clearly envision its defensibility. Besides the walls within walls surrounding a moat that was actually deep (3 stories deep), there were clever double gates at a ninety-degree angle that made it hard for a battering ram or elephant to get through, with a hiding place for soldiers. Then there was path that turned into a tiny opening that soldiers would have to crawl through one at a time, making them a target for a beheading. (The tour guide even showed me the side drop-off to the moat where they could throw enemy bodies to the crocodiles below, oh yes.)

Then there was the Passage of Dark. Inside was a dark, and I mean pitch black, passage full of bats that twisted and curved up and down. Tour guide brought the required flashlight to navigate it. I love bats, even the one that startled me by briefly landing on my shoulder. I love bats because they eat mosquitoes.

If the attackers made it past the passage, then they would come upon a circular path that doubled back on itself, so they might turn on their own army, thinking it was the enemy. The two exits, if they could find them, were the correct one that in the past was kept discouragingly warm with a distant fire. The tempting path with a cool breeze led right into a hole that dropped you into the moat! This fort is full of clever.

If you were to continue after that, you’d get to the sheer 90-foot cliff they carved into the hillside. The fort itself was never penetrated. The only way an enemy won was to starve the tenants out.

In short, Daulatabad Fort = Win

It was sunny and getting hotter by the minute. Probably high 80s by now. We bought cold water at a stand across the street after the guide assured me that it was safe and the water was a good brand (and I checked, as always, that I had to break the cap). Then I applied sunscreen. And off we went, thanks to our patient driver (who kept the car shaded and air-conditioner running ahead of time for us) to Ellora Caves.

The Ellora Those-Aren’t-Caves

The Ellora Caves were built a long time ago. Between the 5th and 11th century. That’s old! Three religions: Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain are represented, co-existing peacefully. Carved figures, small and big, are everywhere.

Also, the Ellora Caves are not caves.

Cave 16. Not a Cave.

Storytelling in Stone

Rock Overhang Won’t
Collapse Now, Right?

Sneaky
Smoochers

They were excavated and built downward (or inward), all out of one piece of volcanic rock. Cave 16 is the largest monolithic structure in the world. I look at it. And my brain does not compute that this is what they say this is. It’s impossible. The time, the effort, the planning, the manpower, the skill this would have taken to do… It’s too mind-boggling to exist.

Cave 16 (there are over 30 caves, but it’s all about Cave 16) is also called Kailasha. The illusion is convincing. There are pillars and supports as if it was built from the ground up. But it was built from the top down.

Even standing inside, I can’t believe what I’m looking at. It just kind of looks like a cool, old slowly disintegrating stone/concrete temple. No one carved it out of rock. Because that would be unthinkably difficult.

In this and other caves were repeating themes and characters. The Jain figures of one sect are all nude and have a Buddha-like figure in the center flanked by a husband and wife (on an elephant and lion respectively). On one side is a devotee meditating so long and intently to reach enlightenment that he has vines growing up around him. Opposite that is the previous incarnation of the Buddha with a seven-headed cobra above him. Cave 16 is Hindu and full of dancing figures and elephants. In the Buddhist caves, there is almost always a large Buddha sitting mysteriously in the center chamber furthest back, the stone figure barely lit by the daylight. (One partially finished statue with just a head freaked me out a bit.)

Many of the Buddhist caves functioned as living quarters for monks and had a central church-like place of worship to gather. Hard to imagine living in such a place with little light and no plumbing. But fantastic echoes. (My tour guide treated me to some spontaneous chanting; indeed an impressive sound.)

Cave 10:
Stone Imitating Wood,
Cavity Imitating Structure
Still technically not a cave

After we toured the significant caves (where I steadfastly avoided buying the official “Ellora and Ajanta” book that every tout was selling), I asked to see the closeby Ghrishneshwar Temple because I had seen a cool photo of it online.

The tour guide warned me a little too late that this was more a religious destination than a tourist destination. No photography allowed anywhere on the grounds. (Really? Then where did the photo on the internet come from?) Again with the shoes off and stepping on dirty, shod places (ugh), then awkwardly walking in the middle of lots of Hindu devotees, the two of us: a blonde and a Sikh. Out of place much? Somehow, he enabled me to cut in line, which I didn’t want to do, and go and make an offering, which I didn’t have. Started to feel uncomfortable and declined and we left.

Mood took a further downturn when I got dragged to a tourist shop. Still half in my shopping mode from last weekend, I thought maybe I’d actually find something. No. I somehow got skillfully roped into this sales pitch about the famous himroo fabric (silk and cotton) which sure, is very nice and well-made and all, but the only scarf he showed me that I had any mild interest in was $120. No. Not for an unsolicited scarf. Sorry. Then I had to feel that guilt of obligation or whatever. Lovely.

At least he remembered lunch. Our shared paneer, dal, and naan was tasty. Noticed that he did not seem to pay. Wonder if he gets a free lunch for bringing his clients here.

He dropped me off at the hotel after that. It was about 2:30. I gave him (as well as the driver) a tip, because I do that. I was slightly disappointed, though, because I had been hoping for a full day See Everything kind of tour. And there was still plenty of daylight left. Happily for me, the hotel staff were up to the task. I was able to grab my same driver, ask the staff their top picks from the pamphlet, and have him take me there, guide or no guide, within minutes.

1. Panchakki I’m sure there is a mill somewhere around here and something special about it that I was supposed to see? I looked all around to make sure I wasn’t missing this 400-year-old mill of historical significance, but I think I walked the whole grounds and checked around every corner. I did see a rotating fan thing in the water spinning a stone grinder. I guess that was it?

I saw cool other stuff in the meanwhile:

Banyan Tree

Found cool overgrown stairs looking for the mill
Caught on camera unintentionally: family of four on motorcycle

There were two kids who managed to extract three chocolates each from me because they were so darn cute (though I saw noticeably less begging here than in Delhi and did not give away all I brought). Panchakki wasn’t really a waste of time, but I missed entirely why I paid 100 rupees.

2. Bibi-ka-Maqbara This is Aurangabad’s pride. The name simply means White Mausoleum I believe. I was most surprised to find that this Taj-looking building is nearly as old as the Taj itself! As I stood in the entrance way (following the security check), an old man in flip-flops offered to explain the details in the entry structure to me for 100 rupees. I hesitated, then finally just shrugged and said okay. A bit afterward, as we started walking the grounds, I began to wonder if he was going to say later, “well, the entry was 100 rupees, but the rest is another 500″ or whatever. Trying to guess what the final total would be, I followed the old guide around.

Bibi Ka Maqbara
(Not the Taj Mahal)

As we strolled, he gave a pretty decent explanation of various points of interest (like how this place is a third the size of the Taj and not all marble due to budgetary constraints) and took photos of me. A lot of people took photos of me including, a bit to my surprise, two well-dressed girls, taking a photo with me each separately (so this isn’t something just guys do). And I was in a family photo, then just with their kids. Then with a couple polite guys. I’m sure I was pretty sweaty and sunburned at this point, but still interesting enough I guess. I wonder if I’m more approachable because I’m alone or if they’ll go up to any of the non-Indian tourists.

Finally, at the end, I just asked how much I owed him, preparing to wince.

But all he said was, “as you like.”

You win! My offered 500 rupees went like lightening from my hand to his shirt pocket. My dutifully waiting driver then took me to my final stop.

View of Bibi from Aurangabad Caves

3. Aurangabad Caves Some of these were actually caves (meaning naturally caved out rock) but there were the temples and Buddhas too. And lots of stairs. My favorite part was actually the view back to the city (and the minarets of the mini-Taj in the distance.) A variety of people were checking out the caves; Indian tourists, non-Indian tourists, some groups of local guys. Every time I notice a group of guys staring at me, I’m now saying “hello”. Without exception, they always say “hello” politely back, it’s actually kind of funny. Though if I feel any creepy factor (I usually don’t) then I keep my distance.

Aurangabad Caves

The desired action here is unclear.
(Also, what the heck is a chapple?)

Aurangabad (Actual) Caves

Aurangabad Boobs

When I got back to the hotel, I asked if there was any internet. (I think every hotel in the world advertises internet. I learned in Russia how little that is a predictor of actual internet.) The woman – the same woman I see every single time I approach the front desk – confidently said yes. Then she went to check with someone. Then she invited me into the hotel’s back accounting room to let me use one of their computers. (!) It was slow. And had discouraging virus-checker notifications popping up a lot. But I got my internet fix.

I skipped dinner and just had munchies and watched TV. The cable channels scrolling through the guide were a tease. Most of them were not available. But they did have National Geographic and Discovery: Science and that kept me mostly occupied. I also watched BBC News and the Al Jazeera English network for a while just to get that refreshing view of America outside of America.

The woman at the desk called me, just double checking that I didn’t want that massage. Why don’t people get it? The more you try to sell me something, the less I want it, regardless of what it is. Case in point: pasta sauce. I found this pasta sauce in my supermarket that looked like it had all natural ingredients. I bought it. It was fine. But every time I go to any supermarket in this chain, they coincidentally push this pasta sauce on me. “All natural,” they say. I’m now supremely suspicious of the pasta sauce. As far as the massage goes, the main problem is that this is not the kind of hotel I’d expect a massage at. This is no five-star luxury.

Does this reek of in-authenticity or what? I mean, besides the three or so spelling errors.

I turned on the A/C tonight after my hot shower. My exhaustion from the long day was adequate for me to tune out the noise and get a good night’s sleep. I had significantly less new mosquito bites in the morning. I guess that is a win.

Ajanta Caves are a two-hour drive from Aurangabad (unlike the 15-minutes-away Ellora Caves.) So I took the suggestion to leave an hour earlier. The driver and guide were still punctual, yay.

As we drove, I noticed we passed many mosques. And at least as many cell phone towers. I learned that Aurangabad started out as a predominantly Muslim town, though with the industrial boom of the last two decades, the percentage of Muslims is down to just over a third, behind the Hindus. I saw a woman in the full black outfit – only her eyes showing – driving a scooter. We passed the time talking about travel in Jammu & Kashmir, which is something we both want to do in the coming months. A fun conversation! We kept passing booths offering Fresh Ice Gola. I thought, that many people can’t be misspelling Cola. I was correct.

At one point, we had to come to a full stop because a goat was stopped in the middle of the road. Honk. Bleat. Goat moved on. I’ve been reading everywhere how diverse India is both geographically and culturally. And I’m sure it is. But, from my foreigner’s eyes, all I can see is a city that looks pretty much like a hilly version of Delhi except that there are goats instead of cows and the autorickshaws are black instead of green. I’m sure people from Aurangabad would shake their heads wondering how I could think these completely different cities are similar. They even speak an entirely different language here (Marathi) even though they use the same script.

Aurangabad: Feel the Difference

As we drove (past one of the historical city “gates”) out of the city, the guide commented that the scenery was often compared to California. And I could kind of see it! Dry hills and mesas with little trees.

Aurangabad, CA?

Apparently, Aurangabad had been experiencing a drought over the last few years. That could explain the actions of these monkeys, hanging out near the market where we caught the 20-rupee shuttle bus to the caves.

Clever primates, you

The bus took us up a curvy road to the entrance of Ajanta. All us foreigners soon gathered at the ticket office (the guy did not want to break my 1000 for a 250-rupee ticket, but I made him anyway) next to a restaurant and a juice bar. Up a bit and you could see, at a glance, almost all of the horseshoe-shaped Ajanta complex. Pretty amazing. Apparently, each cave was originally separate, with a stairwell leading up to it from the valley below. It was only in more recent years that they were all connected with a concrete walkway.

Ajanta is famous for its paintings more than its sculptures and structures. What I liked most about it was its location. But the architecture and carvings were still impressive, even if they didn’t touch Ellora’s Cave 16 in pure enigmaticness.

Also, need I add. These are not caves.

Ajanta Caves of Awesome

My tour guide was knowledgeable and a fantastic storyteller. He is the one that explained how significant these paintings were. For being extremely old works of art – the newest were completed in 500 A.D. but some were from the 2nd century B.C. – they showed an astonishing understanding of perspective and foreshortening. (Foreshortening meaning – since I had to ask for a definition – the way a head looks when its turned.) Egyptian paintings, for example, don’t have these features.

The detail was also marvelous because, unlike frescoes, the paint did not seep into the stone, so the lines were very fine. When I pointed out the variety of skin color of the subjects of many paintings, he said it was mainly for contrast, nothing to do with actual race, as the figures were often couples or close together.

My tour guide called the paintings at Ajanta “The oldest modern paintings”

My tour guide really brought the paintings to life for me. I could have just stared, intrigued but baffled. But he told me how the parasol (like the halo in Christian paintings) represents someone important, usually the Buddha. (Sometimes, you even see three parasols.) He explained, for example, how the huddled people in the house in one painting were conspiring to kill the Buddha and that they set a rampaging drunk elephant loose on the town. You could see a shopkeeper hastily pulling down his shutters but a little ways over in the building, the shopkeepers were opening up again because the elephant, upon seeing the Buddha, bowed instead of attacked. How the story was told in the same painting (like comic book panels without the panels) was fascinating.

My favorite story in a painting he related was about monkeys. He pointed the flashlight across the wall mural, which took up about two-thirds of the space from floor to ceiling, and told me the story.

“Once upon a time, Buddha monkey, the strongest of them all, told the other monkeys in the tree not to let any of the fruit overhanging the river to fall in the water. But the monkeys were careless. A fruit fell in, floated downstream and was found by the King and Queen. They tasted the fruit and thought it was so delicious, they walked up the river to track the tree down.”

“When they found the tree, the declared it a royal tree and ordered that the monkeys be shot out of it with bow and arrow. So his brothers and sisters could escape, Buddha, being the largest monkey, reached across from an overhanging branch all the way to a ledge on the other side of the river.”

“The monkeys crossed and were saved. But Buddha’s jealous cousin decided to stamp on Buddha until he fell out of the tree. Buddha crashed to the ground, very injured, but held no ill will against his cousin. The king and queen were so overwhelmed by his forgiveness of the cruel monkey that they nursed him back to health.”

At the end (in the corner of the painting), Buddha monkey is seen giving a sermon.

All the elements of the story were in one large painting that looked like a single, elaborate scene, but were actually scenes within scenes. The large tree, the king and queen, the men with bows and arrows, the Buddha monkey stretching across the river. But I’m not sure I would have put it all together had I just studied it.

The jealous cousin is a standard villain in the stories, but Buddha’s self-sacrificing nature always overcomes. There is often a sermon following the happy ending.

As we reached as far as we could walk along the path (before running into the caves that were under maintenance) I chatted with a group of college students who were, to my astonishment, all finishing up engineering degrees focused on web development! So I asked if they were learning jQuery and they were like, “of course, of course.” I chatted with them for a bit and, thanks to the tour guide, finally got to have one of the many pictures I pose in taken on my own camera. This one was a particularly large group.

(I’m the one in the middle)

I had some noodles and a banana lassi (yum, and yum) at the official Maharashtra Tourism Restaurant while cricket played on the TV. My tour guide met me half an hour later to walk me back through the gift market to the car. He had warned that the touts were more aggressive here than at other places, but they did not seem so bad, even though one did start this whole conversation when I first arrived, claiming his name was “John.” Notably, the man who rediscovered Ajanta in the early 1800s, as it had been lost to the world for centuries, was a Brit named John Smith. As I exited, a dude said “Remember me, I’m John,” but I think it was a different guy. They both wanted to sell me the official “Ellora & Ajanta” book.

Leaving Ajanta
(Taken from the one place I saw beggars.)

The following morning didn’t start off great and kept on more-or-less in that fashion. Nothing horrible, just crankiness-inducing. First was the 8:30am “wake-up” call just to check one more time about that massage. I spent a good portion of my free time that morning (as the tour guide agreed that there really was not much else nearby worth checking out) writing feedback for the hotel – along with my cash tip for the maid – indicating how creepy the massage requests were and why.

At my last breakfast at the hotel, one of the waiters offered me an omelette for the first time. D’oh. So I had one. I also determined, after sitting at the pool under a tree reading for another thirty minutes or so after breakfast, that I am the only guest here. I’ve eaten the complimentary breakfast now at 7:15am, 8:15am and 9:45am. Never once have I seen another guest. In the accounting room the other night when I was online, I saw a whiteboard that indicated 18 of the 48 cottages were occupied. My only guess is that they are occupied by the myriad of workers I see everywhere – gardeners, housekeepers, waitstaff, poolboys, receptionists, etc. Because otherwise, these guests really keep to themselves.

I had a bit of sticker shock when I got the bill for all the tour guides. I only ever heard two numbers quoted to me. 2800 ($50) first for the guide. Then 800 ($15) later for my spontaneous excursion into Aurangabad. The grand total with all the guides / drivers / taxes for both days actually came to about $170. Although that is a reasonable price for the services I received – my tour guides were experienced professionals – it was still higher than I had been expecting.

(Just breaking up the monotony down here)

Trying to be safe and arrive early for my 4:20pm flight, I actually got there before the airport opened the airline check-in and security for the day! (For a city half the size of Denver, I kind of expected something bigger.) So I ended up hanging out in the lobby with the other tourists until 3:00pm, when I finally got my boarding pass but not the stamped, blank luggage tags that are apparently required for carry-ons so I got turned away at security and had to go back to the counter. Good thing it wasn’t crowded. Once the waiting room opened up, at least the snack booth guy in the corner opened as well, though he told me my cup o’ noodles would take 10 minutes. (It didn’t, but I gaped at him in disbelief at the time. It’s a cup of noodles. Just add hot water.)

Then someone turned on the TV and the same annoying commercial repeated over and over for a solid 10-15 minutes until I actually walked up to the television, intent on taking that chair from the unmanned “Public Grievance Counter” and standing on it to reach a button – any button. Maybe someone saw my expression of Doom. Because suddenly the channel changed to cricket.

The plane boarded on time, but a dude stole my window seat and I said aloud, pretty sure no one understood my accent anyway, “You’re stealing my window seat now, huh? I guess that’s how my day is going. Forget it, I’m just going to roll with it.” Then he sat there against the window, blasting his headphones the whole flight (even during take off and landing) while the kids behind me remained quite active. After a smooth landing (at least) I found the airport Delhi metro station and discovered that my Metro SmartCard doesn’t work. It is a special metro. That you pay extra for. Luckily no line. I did get to talk for a while to a British backpacker who had just come from Sri Lanka, which was kind of fun.

That evening, I felt the third finger of my left hand. I had taken off the ring at the sink to wash my hands at the hotel, though somehow failed to notice the gold sparkle during my walkthrough. Yep. I left my invisible husband in Aurangabad.

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