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Published: December 22nd 2008
We are finally back with another country to blog about and wow, what a country!
We travelled to India via a marathon journey of a flight from Manila to Singapore, another flight from Singapore to Chennai followed by a flight to Delhi...all done in 24 hours without stopping in a hotel, but sleeping in Chennai airport...hey, it saved us £5!
So obviously we were very tired when we got the taxi from the airport to the cheaper area of Pahar Ganj in Delhi where we had some very nice accommodation booked (£10 for a fan room with hot shower, cable tv and internet). Our first observation about Indian way of life concerned the way that staff hierarchy in India seems to be structured, it’s best explained in this following conversation example we had at our hotel reception:
Donna: Hello. We just checked into our room. Can we have some towels please?
Receptionist: (standing next to a pile of towels): Certainly. I’ll get ‘the boy’ to get them for you.
(The ‘boy’ as the receptionist called him was actually 20 years older than him and at the time Donna asked for the towels the ‘boy’ was located
a good 20 metres away from the pile of towels within hands reach of the receptionist).
Donna: Okay thank you (looking confused as to why the receptionist couldn’t just hand them to us himself)
Receptionist tells the guy standing next to him that we need towels. Guy stood next to receptionist: BOY! (shouting)...BOY! TOWELS HERE NOW! (The guy tutting to himself and chastising the ‘boy’ in front of us.)
The ‘boy’ comes running over...picks the towels off the pile and hands them over to Donna. Receptionist: If there is anything else you need just tell me and Ill get the ‘boy’ to sort that out for you.
Funny you may think but now Neil seems to have adopted this style of authority to get things done. We are writing this entry well into our India experience and all of our accommodations seem to have a ‘boy’ or two so that whenever we need anything Neil suggests that we get ‘the boy’ (said in a very English accent) to ’deal’ with it for us! An example:
Donna: We need to take our dirty socks to the laundry Neil.
Neil: Okay... Let’s get ‘the
boy’ to deal with it for us shall we?
Donna: (Rolling eyes). Let’s ask reception instead.
Reception: BOY!....BOY!...LAUNDRY!
Anyway....let’s continue. Our advice is to not arrive into Delhi feeling tired because you will likely get bamboozled by the local tourist touts like we did. It was immediately obvious that Indian people are very friendly and helpful and, ahem, owing to our tiredness we almost got sucked in by the tourist touts charms who misdirected us at every opportunity when we asked for directions. The aim of their misdirection was to send us to their travel agency or shopping emporium to try and get us to buy something.
So we ended up very lost, feeling very tired in even our first hour of being in Delhi. 3 hours after ‘exploring by misdirection’ we finally found a decent restaurant...we are ashamed to say, Subway. We had wanted to try the Indian food at the first opportunity but when trying to ask for directions on 5 occasions we ended up either in a Sari market or discussing our travel plans with random strangers!
The area in which we stayed in (Pahar Ganj) is very backpackery and in this
Jama Masjid
Mosque in Delhiinstance we mean full of hippy type westerners who seem to view India as an excuse to not wash or shave for 2 weeks, to start wearing rags and no shoes, tattooing themselves with henna and embracing their search for Indian spirituality a little bit too much in our opinion. But the funniest thing about all of this is these particular backpackers were the ones generally found in restaurants eating banana pancakes and pizzas!
We had been told that Delhi would be a real culture shock and overwhelming, even for a well travelled person and whilst it was congested, noisy and one of the more dirty cities (think cow shit, human piss, rotting vegetables and everything in between) we have visited, it is actually quite nice because it didn’t feel like a capital city. It is very low rise with not as many western influences as what we had expected, it has a charm that is quite hard to describe in words.
We only spent two days in Delhi and on one of these we walked to one of Delhi’s more famous landmarks, the Red Fort. The walk there and back was actually more interesting than the Red
Fort itself which was not particularly impressive due to the fact that large areas of the fort were off limits to visitors. At 250 rupees entrance fee each it really did not seem worth it. Getting there was less direct than getting back because Neil managed to bamboozle himself with the map reading and took us by the more (in his words) scenic route via roads congested with cows, rickshaws, beggars and groups of staring Indian guys who seemed keen to practice their English by shouting things like ‘where you want?’ and ‘can I go you?’. It was all very sweet and the people were good natured along the way and Donna was even able to find a fruit shake stand for a banana shake with vanilla ice cream for 20 rupees (30p)...although half way down the glass of the fruit shake we both realised it might not have been a good idea as many travellers have told us about their famous Delhi belly experiences while in India.
This was pretty much all we did in the capital although Neil insists that we tell you that you can get a kilogram of the sweetest pea pods for only 20
rupees. After eating 2 kilos of these, Neil soon got a digestive complaint that was nothing to do with Delhi belly.
Our onward journey would take us to Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal via a very early morning train, however we seemed to get free buckets of hot tea to drink, a breakfast, biscuits and chocolate éclair sweeties, 1 litre of water each and an English language newspaper each to keep us occupied on the 2 hours journey. At £5 a ticket we think some of those British rail companies need to start bucking up their ideas. So far we are loving India but will it stay this way?.....
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AnnaAdventuring
Anna Louise
I loved reading your blog! I have been to Delhi several times - always at the beginning or end of a trip, and always when I am feeling exhausted. Your account of ending up in sari markets when looking for food, and hotel staff who insist on doing things the 'proper' way regardless of logic sound all too familiar!! I look forward to reading more of your travels in India.