Month: January 2008

Premise: Our friends – Sarah and Lisa are visiting us for 10 days and we are planning a tour of North India with them.

Disclaimer: I am donning a ‘Details hat’

Date: 26th Dec, 2007

Day # 1

9:30AM, our home: We all enjoyed tasty dosas with coconut chutney. Lisa love coconuts and she loved the Chutney. We got busy packing and I was spazzing for a while as my mom thought I was left out last in packing my bag.

12:00PM, Hyderabad Airport: Sarah is surprised about the lax of security at the Airport. No one asked her any ID or anything. She could totally have been someone else and still fly to Delhi. Some lady try to cut us in our line and Sangita yelled at her.

4:00PM, Delhi Airport: Hustling to find a taxi to rent for the rest of the day. Hertz says – 2500Rs, some other guy – 2000Rs. Finally we settle down to Delhi Tourism dept or something who rented the car for 1200Rs. We were meeting our friends – Jacob & Vinitika for dinner later at night. So after calling them, we figured that we should head towards Haus Khaz.

We meet our first good driver – Umesh from Karnataka. He explains a lot of things to us about Delhi and understands and speaks good English. On our way we stop by to get some Dollars exchanged – 1$ == 38.40Rs. So as we were travelling to Haus Khaz – there was this biker who was driving ahead of us and suddenly out of nowhere he drives on a stone/something on the road and flips over, make s somersault and hits the lamp post. The most brutal accident I ever witnessed. Sarah being seated in the middle watched it too and we were all horrified. We talked to the driver about informing police, and he said we can do so if we plan to stay in the Police station that night. We were just speechless for next 30 mins till we reached Hauz Khas.

6:00PM, Hauz Khas: We are all shocked to see how fancy that place was. Pretty boutiques, nice apartments, restaurants and some really really beautiful people. For a moment we were thinking that we are in the village area of NYC. Delhi is damn good. We were all in love with it. Hyderabad has no where near to Delhi.

We walked around and waited for our friends. Finally Jacon and Vinitika arrived and we decided to go out for some drinks and dinner.

7:00PM, Gola bar: We had good time over drinks. Sarah was tired and Lisa was fading away. Me and Jacob had some good discussions about how our working patterns are changing. After our drinks we head out to a ‘Chettinad’ Restaurant and have some Appam and Chicken Gassi. Everyone loved the food.

10:00PM, Goodbyes: We had some nice paan and then bid goodbye to Jacob and Vinitika. Vinitika got us a room to stay for 1 night in Delhi. Since we thought we will be in only for couple of hours, we should go with a cheap hotel.

10:30PM, Pahargunj, Delhi: As our driver took through the narrow and dirty streets of Pahargunj to find our hotel. This was a totally sketchy place. Sarah, Lisa and Sangita were already scared to be there. As we stopped to ask for directions at a place. One weird guy just pounded on our car – to which everyone shrieked. His name was “Pappu Pager”. He was promising us a place to stay and would never shut up. She tried to grab my phone from me as I was talking to the hotel people. He was high and drunk and just yap away. It was kinda fun to watch him move, shake and twitch. Our friends refused to get out of the car till we see someone from Hotel to come pick us up.

Finally someone turns up and takes us to the hotel room.

11:30PM, Hotel Star Paradise, Pahargunj, Delhi: We check into a room. Since we were planning to stay there for just 4 hours we all stayed in 1 room. The rent for the room was 400Rs + 200Rs for extra bed. Once we are in, this guy brings in a extra cot and some really really dirty mattress. I was so ‘excited’ to sleep on it. Our American friends refuse to even use the blankets from the hotel.

12:30AM, our hotel room, Delhi: We figured that we won’t get tickets to ‘Shatabdi Express’ next day heading out to Agra. So, I call Umesh to get a price quote from Delhi -> Agra -> Jaipur. Finally after a little bit of haggling, we decide on a price: 7200Rs for taking us from Delhi to Agra and then to Jaipur and then staying with us in Jaipur for 2 days till we board the train for Dharmashala.

4:30AM, our hotel room, Delhi: Sarah didn’t sleep at all. We were awake and getting ready. There was no hot water – so we all took cold showers. Imagine – Delhi, early morning and it was freezing like hell. We all took ice chilled cold water baths. Damn. I was quite pissed off but as Sarah, Lisa and Sangita started to make jokes about the hotel and how we are all scared to be there, I became ok about it. They were all very sportive about it we checked out of the nasty shit hole.

Premise: Our friends – Sarah and Lisa are visiting us for 10 days and we are planning a tour of North India with them.

Disclaimer: I am donning a ‘Cynical hat’

Date: 25th Dec, 2007

1:30AM, Hyderabad Airport: There is nothing like waiting for someone or for your flight in an Indian airport. You have a lot of people as usual, in addition to that everyone in the town and their mom would be there. And added to that everyone would be standing. Yes, I do sound very cynical but believe me when I say, that I face these things with utmost patience.

So me and Sang were waiting for our friends to come out. It took about 2 1/2 hours for them to get out. In the mean time to pass our time we played a game of who is the most beautiful and who is the most ugly person. There was one moment where I mistook a Airhostess to be our friends but it didn’t take much time to recognize them once they were out! Finally Sarah and Lisa arrive. Yay.

9:30AM, Our home: I woke up to the giggles and laughs of our friends who were trying to use our bathrooms. Sangita was giving them ad-hoc classes as to how to do a “bucket bath”. I had to rush to Trinetra market to get some good old ‘toilet paper’.

11:00AM, Charminar: It was fun to go to Charminar as our first ‘tourist visit’. Both Lisa and Sarah were surprised to see the sea of people. We stood like good Samaritans in the line to get the tickets. Someone saw that some white people are standing in a colored line and got us ahead and front of the line. This did not go well with the lady who was next in the line and she kinda yelled at me for cutting the line using ‘white people’ as pretext. For a moment I felt bad (remember I am a good samaritan too) for the lady but then when I realized that our friends were charged Rs.100 and we(people of color) were charged Rs.5 I felt no pity towards anyone who is standing in line. Call it my ‘secret justification of the world’ process.

So we climbed the steps and got on top of Charminar. It has a very good view of the city around. I was trying to be careful with Sarah’s left shoulder (as she has a history of dislocating it after her ‘daily Karate class’ and ‘regular ass kicking of Josh’ practice) and also stop a whole lot of guys from just falling on top of white people. I think it’s tough life for people who are both white and girls – to be visiting India. Every Indian Romeo (or Ranjha) wants to touch them or fall in love with them. Desi Babu, Angrezi Baby!

Once we were on top of Charminar, both Sarah and Lisa were asked by random guys to have their pictures taken with them. Being the good Samaritans they are, they politely refused. But this didn’t deter some people and they just simply took pictures of our friends. It’s a weird feeling to see a Hyderabadi hero (A typical teenager with long hair and fancy pants) scramble and pull out his phone camera to take a picture of our friends before they walk away.

So, now we all realized how the rest of the India trip is going to be. It would all be stares and random flashes (the camera ones) all the way. We would get ‘Hullo’ once a while but we knew that it was meant for the whities not us.

We did a little bit of shopping. Sarah bought some bangles, Sang and Lisa bought some ‘Attar’ (scent). Again, looking at our friends the prices would automatically go up. It’s just not the Indian government who has jacked up all the ticket prices for foreigners – it also includes all the stores. Good thing we had the ‘Ninja Price Negotiater’ (hereon to be referred as NPN) – Sang who basically cut so close to the bones of the sellers that it hurts watching her haggle.

1:30PM, Our home: We got back from our Charminar trip and our friends (who are amazingly adventurous and very sporty) donned the ‘Standard Indian Aunty’ (TM) look – by wearing Indian nighties. My grand mother, mom and sisters were pretty amused to see them in that attire. They thought that both Lisa and Sarah looked like live dolls in the Indian nighties.

Then we sat down to have our scrumptious dinner. My mom is a genius. She knew before hand that some white people are coming to visit us. She knew that she couldn’t talk to them. So, she used one of her best weapons from her arsenal – food. They say, the best way to reach a (Wo)man’s heart by the stomach route. If that is true then, my mom friggin owns the route, the canal next to it, the whole neighborhood! She meticulously planned the lunch to be the best one. So, we all enjoyed our ‘Coconut gravy based fresh shrimp’. That was awesome. Period.

3:30PM, our home: As I suck totally at haggling (there are many, but this one shows up very often), the girls have decided to take my sister – Asha along with them for further shopping. Asha is also a ‘NPN’ and equals Sangita at haggling.

3:45PM, our home: Since we decided to take Asha (and Bannu comes with her by default) with us and now we were 5 in number it was tricky to get all of us in the car. Me and Sang sat in the front and I had to straddle around the gear stick. This is the beginning of the trip long harassment I would undergo with the car, auto, rickshaw drivers. The groping ended after 45 minutes as we reached our destination. Man those were some ‘jerky’ switching of gears.

4:30PM, Sultan Bazaar: Both Lisa and Sarah got some pretty bags and clothes. Asha and Sang made sure that the price was low. And the crowds kept staring at us.

6:30PM, Auto: This was the first ride in an auto for our friends. As usual we were more in number to fit in an auto, so I snuggled next to the smelly driver. At first I was kinda surprised to see that guy being so jovial and friendly and later I realized that he was drunk. Phew. So, I had to keep him sober by talking to him about random things till we got to our destination. Oh man, the things we discussed for the next 30 minutes.

7:30PM, Birla Mandir: I think that we Indians have it in our genes that we always go to places at the same time. It was so friggin crowded at Birla Mandir. I think that we ar programmed in such a way that if one Indian just thinks to visit a place – the rest of the India wants to visit the same place to. It’s magical how 50,000 other people can read your thoughts.

We stood in a line and finally had a Darshan of God. It was fun so sit and relax after the darshan. We had a good time.

As the jet lag settled on our friends, we reached home with dreams of yummy coconut curry.

Read Day # 2