Pretty normal night last night, but since I’ve previously declared myself the master of jet lag, I’m not saying that again. Still, slept ‘til 6, and I’m sure that’s a good sign.
Woke to a partly overcast day and newspaper warnings of a dust storm. Sure enough, the wind blew all day and the air looked a bit hazy, but if that’s what passes for a dust storm in Delhi, I’m not worrying one in the future.
Finally got my mind around a plan for the next section of my time here. I’ve had to give up on Srinagar definitively, and I also had to let go of Manali. Same thing happened when David and I were here ten years ago…India is just so big and there is so much to do, and transportation infrastructure is so inadequate that you can’t manage all your main priorities. So I rented my Ambassador for ten days and am headed to the mountains! Leave Friday for Amritsar and the Golden Temple (a priority from the last trip) and will head north into the hills at Shimla after that. Have a pretty leisurely pace planned, too, with time to stop, do some walks, take pictures and read.
I’ve also come to the conclusion that India is a lot more expensive than it was. The dollar is really weak everywhere, and with the rupee strong because of the amazing development, there aren’t nearly as many bargains here for Americans as there were. This place used to be a traveler’s dream come true – an absolutely fascinating, ancient, complex, unique country that was one of the cheapest places to visit in the world. Now, it’s just fascinating, ancient, complex and unique.
I’m not the only one to notice this. At a restaurant, I spoke with an Indian woman who was a naturalized American citizen (PhD from UGA….go figure), and she said the same thing, complaining about how much harder it was for her to treat her relatives here. I think there is more wealth about generally now. Touts used to aggravate me to death on our last trip, following me for blocks talking about their shops. Now they give up in a block or less. (…or it could be the heat). There are also far fewer young tourists. There are still the occasional skinny, scruffy, slow-moving, bushy-headed, been-here-too-long-ers, but you don’t see many. I suspect they can’t afford it. (…or it could be the heat).
Well, the heat about got me today, but I was heading for the Cottage Industries place if I had to be carried there! I love these places. The government buys from the best craftsmen in the country and puts their work in Cottage Industries stores in big cities all over the country. I loved the one in Mumbai (that’s were I got the wall hanging in the dining room), and the one in Delhi is the flagship store, so I was on a mission. Couldn’t make it that far, though, because I was about to drop from the heat, so I nipped into the Pizza Hut at Connaught for something cold to drink.
Ha! I don’t think anyone over 30 had ever eaten there; there was a silence on both floors as I walked in, fat, sweaty, flushed and bald. Still, they didn’t ask me to leave, so I got a pizza marked “Indian” and two cokes.
When conversation in the place renewed, I glanced around to see what part of modern India looks like. Young guys with their motorcycle helmets and cell phones. (Interestingly, not many of them were talking on the phones. It may be that they’re expensive, or it may be that the service is so irregular they can’t get a call through; my experience bears out both situations.) Young girls dressed in tight western styles or pastel saris. Even a sprinkling of Sikh kids with their cell phones and turbins (I don’t detect any particular dress for Sikh girls.)
Went back out into the heat and walked for three blocks, counting the streets until I could get to the cool, air-conditioned comfort of Cottage. However, when I finally got there, I was dismayed to find that the AC in the place couldn’t keep pace with the heat; it was sweltering. I managed anyway. The CI here is a department store on a scale with Macy’s with each department having things like Maharastran carving, inlaid fretwork, teas or bronzes. All handmade, all unique, and much of it really beautiful. I would have lingered here for hours but for the fact that I was sweating from the walk to the place and it was hotter inside than the street had been.
As it was, I toughed things out for a couple of hours. First thing I did was locate the feeble AC outlets. Then I’d head off to look at brass and come back for a refresher at the hand-carved stone replicas department, where some intrepid clerk had rigged up a fan beside the pitiful trickle of cool-ish air coming through a vent. After my forehead had dried off a bit there, I’d venture off again to handmade bedspreads until I was embarrassed to be sweating so much and would head to the repros for refreshment again. So it went.
And, whew! the prices again! I don’t know if the heat affected my math or not, but things seemed kind of high here. Even the little bags of gift tea were $12. One thing on my mind, though, was the really nice wood carvings, like the Shiva playing the flute in the photo. For Christmas, David gave me way too much money to get something unique and worthwhile in India, and I’m thinking that might be it. I want to see it when I’m not so near heat prostration, though.
I’d had about as much sweat and dust as I could handle after a couple of hours, but I didn’t relish finding moto-rickshaw and making the hot trip back to the hotel, so I decided to head for one of the most elite hotels in the city -- the Imperial. This is a trick I discovered in Cairo: being an aging westerner, I can go into these swank places and have a beer in the greatest air conditioning in the city. Beer is about all I could afford in a place like that, but beer is enough. And since the Imperial was just across from the CI store, I moved as quickly as I could.
This is a great hotel – an old art deco place that even Gandhi and Mountbatten had used when discussion partition. It’s renovated brilliantly, and the marble floor tiles and colonnades reminded me of the Prado, a similar hotel in Barranquilla. Must be the same era….
Anyway, I got my beer. Draught beer was only sold in imperial pints, so I bit the bullet and got one. I half felt like I’d pass out in the bar after so much beer on such a hot day, but I was thirsty, the AC was fantastic, so I took the risk. What a wonderful, refreshing break! When’s the last time you actually felt refreshed after a beer? I lingered and watched the far-wealthier-than-I at rest, not attracting much attention at all. This was much more my demographic than Connaught Pizza Hut.
Feeling amazingly renewed, I headed back to Connaught. Passed a car in the Imperial parking lot with an Orbitz sticker on the windshield, which gave me an idea – could you find Imperial discounts on Orbitz? What a great way to spend the last night in Delhi! I’ll have to check on that.
Stopped back by the CI place to have another look at Shiva, and strolled back to the hotel. Took a nice, pre-dinner nap, had a great alu gobi dinner, and slept like a log (after my strenuous day!).
Woke to a partly overcast day and newspaper warnings of a dust storm. Sure enough, the wind blew all day and the air looked a bit hazy, but if that’s what passes for a dust storm in Delhi, I’m not worrying one in the future.
Finally got my mind around a plan for the next section of my time here. I’ve had to give up on Srinagar definitively, and I also had to let go of Manali. Same thing happened when David and I were here ten years ago…India is just so big and there is so much to do, and transportation infrastructure is so inadequate that you can’t manage all your main priorities. So I rented my Ambassador for ten days and am headed to the mountains! Leave Friday for Amritsar and the Golden Temple (a priority from the last trip) and will head north into the hills at Shimla after that. Have a pretty leisurely pace planned, too, with time to stop, do some walks, take pictures and read.
I’ve also come to the conclusion that India is a lot more expensive than it was. The dollar is really weak everywhere, and with the rupee strong because of the amazing development, there aren’t nearly as many bargains here for Americans as there were. This place used to be a traveler’s dream come true – an absolutely fascinating, ancient, complex, unique country that was one of the cheapest places to visit in the world. Now, it’s just fascinating, ancient, complex and unique.
I’m not the only one to notice this. At a restaurant, I spoke with an Indian woman who was a naturalized American citizen (PhD from UGA….go figure), and she said the same thing, complaining about how much harder it was for her to treat her relatives here. I think there is more wealth about generally now. Touts used to aggravate me to death on our last trip, following me for blocks talking about their shops. Now they give up in a block or less. (…or it could be the heat). There are also far fewer young tourists. There are still the occasional skinny, scruffy, slow-moving, bushy-headed, been-here-too-long-ers, but you don’t see many. I suspect they can’t afford it. (…or it could be the heat).
Well, the heat about got me today, but I was heading for the Cottage Industries place if I had to be carried there! I love these places. The government buys from the best craftsmen in the country and puts their work in Cottage Industries stores in big cities all over the country. I loved the one in Mumbai (that’s were I got the wall hanging in the dining room), and the one in Delhi is the flagship store, so I was on a mission. Couldn’t make it that far, though, because I was about to drop from the heat, so I nipped into the Pizza Hut at Connaught for something cold to drink.
Ha! I don’t think anyone over 30 had ever eaten there; there was a silence on both floors as I walked in, fat, sweaty, flushed and bald. Still, they didn’t ask me to leave, so I got a pizza marked “Indian” and two cokes.
When conversation in the place renewed, I glanced around to see what part of modern India looks like. Young guys with their motorcycle helmets and cell phones. (Interestingly, not many of them were talking on the phones. It may be that they’re expensive, or it may be that the service is so irregular they can’t get a call through; my experience bears out both situations.) Young girls dressed in tight western styles or pastel saris. Even a sprinkling of Sikh kids with their cell phones and turbins (I don’t detect any particular dress for Sikh girls.)
Went back out into the heat and walked for three blocks, counting the streets until I could get to the cool, air-conditioned comfort of Cottage. However, when I finally got there, I was dismayed to find that the AC in the place couldn’t keep pace with the heat; it was sweltering. I managed anyway. The CI here is a department store on a scale with Macy’s with each department having things like Maharastran carving, inlaid fretwork, teas or bronzes. All handmade, all unique, and much of it really beautiful. I would have lingered here for hours but for the fact that I was sweating from the walk to the place and it was hotter inside than the street had been.
As it was, I toughed things out for a couple of hours. First thing I did was locate the feeble AC outlets. Then I’d head off to look at brass and come back for a refresher at the hand-carved stone replicas department, where some intrepid clerk had rigged up a fan beside the pitiful trickle of cool-ish air coming through a vent. After my forehead had dried off a bit there, I’d venture off again to handmade bedspreads until I was embarrassed to be sweating so much and would head to the repros for refreshment again. So it went.
And, whew! the prices again! I don’t know if the heat affected my math or not, but things seemed kind of high here. Even the little bags of gift tea were $12. One thing on my mind, though, was the really nice wood carvings, like the Shiva playing the flute in the photo. For Christmas, David gave me way too much money to get something unique and worthwhile in India, and I’m thinking that might be it. I want to see it when I’m not so near heat prostration, though.
I’d had about as much sweat and dust as I could handle after a couple of hours, but I didn’t relish finding moto-rickshaw and making the hot trip back to the hotel, so I decided to head for one of the most elite hotels in the city -- the Imperial. This is a trick I discovered in Cairo: being an aging westerner, I can go into these swank places and have a beer in the greatest air conditioning in the city. Beer is about all I could afford in a place like that, but beer is enough. And since the Imperial was just across from the CI store, I moved as quickly as I could.
This is a great hotel – an old art deco place that even Gandhi and Mountbatten had used when discussion partition. It’s renovated brilliantly, and the marble floor tiles and colonnades reminded me of the Prado, a similar hotel in Barranquilla. Must be the same era….
Anyway, I got my beer. Draught beer was only sold in imperial pints, so I bit the bullet and got one. I half felt like I’d pass out in the bar after so much beer on such a hot day, but I was thirsty, the AC was fantastic, so I took the risk. What a wonderful, refreshing break! When’s the last time you actually felt refreshed after a beer? I lingered and watched the far-wealthier-than-I at rest, not attracting much attention at all. This was much more my demographic than Connaught Pizza Hut.
Feeling amazingly renewed, I headed back to Connaught. Passed a car in the Imperial parking lot with an Orbitz sticker on the windshield, which gave me an idea – could you find Imperial discounts on Orbitz? What a great way to spend the last night in Delhi! I’ll have to check on that.
Stopped back by the CI place to have another look at Shiva, and strolled back to the hotel. Took a nice, pre-dinner nap, had a great alu gobi dinner, and slept like a log (after my strenuous day!).
No comments:
Post a Comment