6-4-07 New Delhi, Day One
So last night we closed the bathroom door so that the A/C and ceiling fan (did I mention there was an amazing ceiling fan in here) could cool the room down faster. So this morning I went to the bathroom and felt like I was in Japan again with a heated seat. Only this time, the heated seat was in a sauna. Yeah, it was that hot! That being said, I took another cold shower this morning to refresh myself for the hot day ahead. We received a call at about 11am (yes I know its late, but we are on vacation and the last few days have been exhausting!). The caller asked us if we wanted breakfast - and then asked me if I was awake! Of course I'm up -I'm talking to you aren't I?? So we headed to the rooftop for our complimentary breakfast. The roof ambience left a little to be desired. Pictures are attached. But it did have a cover (yes, the roof had a roof), and a fan which made the heat a little bit more bearable. The rooftop view, which I also took pics of, is not so impressive. It is quite sad really - mostly homes with clothes hanging to dry Everywhere. It kind of reminded me of Indiana Jones when he is in some Middle Eastern country - I don't remember which one - but somebody out there knows what I'm talking about and he is running through the rooftops with people chasing him.
By the way, a funny story I forgot to mention days ago. But I'll mention it now - because we just realized that we haven't yet taken our malaria pills for the day. Ok, so it was the night of the Full Moon Party and it being two days before our arrival in India, we needed to take our first anti-malaria pills. So I asked Andrea, "where are they?" and she replies, "I don't know!". And I reply - you had all the pills, remember? So then she said, let me check and headed to her backpack. She pulls out a prescription bottle full of pills and said proudly here they are! I said, thank God! I take the bottle, and then I vaguely remembered...weren't the anti-malaria pills in a box?? Andrea said, yes, but we consolidated them in Argentina! Then I stopped, thought for a moment and thought "what the hell is she talking about?" I have a pretty good memory for what I do and don't do. And consolidating boxed pills into a prescription bottle was definitely not my doing. So then I ask her, if you consolidated them do you still have the instructions. She replied "no, we threw those away". Again I thought to myself - who is this "we" she speaks of?? I remember clearly reading the instructions before leaving on our trip and thinking, MAN these are important! Then Andrea says - I'm not even sure these are the pills, because there is only 30 in here - and it says it's a substitute for Allegra? I then remember that I did consolidate our anti-malaria pills. But I consolidated MY box into HER box - and they were pre-single packaged pills. And then I slowly remembered that the pills were circular - so I was certain that these were NOT them. Andrea was not so sure. She still thought those were the anti-malaria pills. I then did a quick count in my head - two days before - nine days during - and seven days after - that would make.....36 pills between the two of us. Yup - these cannot be them - I was convinced! Andrea and I both started to freak out a little. We still considered taking an Allegra-ish drug each - because - what if they were the right pills? What if my memory had failed me and Andrea had consolidated them in Argentina one night without me knowing. Who was to say these were the wrong pills? So we decided to each take one Allegra-ish pill each and call our Doctor as soon as we got to the full moon party to get a new prescription or to confirm that these were the right pills. If not, we would have our amazing parents overnight new pills. Then it hit me! The pills just might be in my bag.... So I looked through my bag where I had all of our emergency use only stuff - like duct tape, flashlight, utility knife and fishing line, and sure enough there were our malaria pills. Still in the box, but consolidated together, as I had remembered. Not in Argentina though - they had been consolidated the night before we left. With that being said we counted them and found we only had thirty anyway! So we needed six more. So we figured we'd call our doctor and tell them to send over six more to our hotel Delhi. Two days later when we were checking into our flight, Andrea realized that we were only in India for seven days, not nine like we had thought. Thank God we had such a good time at the full moon party and forgot about the malaria problems - and didn't call up our doctor to bother her!!! We in fact have the right number of pills and didn't even realize it! Whew. So long story short, we lost the pills, almost took the wrong ones, found them, thought we didn't have enough, forgot we didn't have enough, and it turns out we had enough. Got all that? Good. And on top of all that, we totally forgot this entire melodrama until today. What a memory!!
Back to today's events - but please remember we are exhausted and have very weakened memories lately!! Where were we, breakfast! They didn't ask what we wanted for breakfast, they just brought us a huge plate with all sorts of good stuff. Our only problem was we couldn't have most of it. Because of the whole malaria and Hepatitis fears our doctor had given us, we are not allowed to eat any raw veggies, fruits, or dairy. So the banana, milk for the cornflakes, and omelet full of raw veggies (yes, they were not cooked, unfortunately), were off limits. I ate the omelet, not realizing that the veggies were still raw - but hopefully everything will be fine. The rest of the breakfast - toast, coffee, a really good tea, and mango flavored juice boxes - was delicious!! Sitting next to us was a western-looking couple, so I decided to make conversation. We quickly realized that they did not speak much English and our conversation was getting nowhere fast. I then asked where they were from - and they replied "Spain". All of a sudden our conversation got much easier - only this time in Spanish! We found out from them that Jaipur and Agra (home of the Taj Mahal and temple locations) were both cut off from the rest of the world because of protests in the area. So no cars, no trains or airplanes were being allowed in. We had received an email from the State department of the U.S. a few days ago about this - but didn't realize its severity until we spoke with these two. Apparently they are havi9ng problems between the government and the poorest caste level in this state. And it seems it has spread from Jaipur to Agra and was supposed to spread the New Delhi today - GREAT we thought. So we are probably not going to be able to go to the Taj Mahal - one of the main reasons Andrea wanted to come to India besides Palak Paneer (her favorite food in the world). So she is really bummed. So guess what we did next. Seeing as there were possible protests headed for Delhi, we decided to hire a driver to take us around on a tour of the area. The front desk at the hotel told us where the protests were likely to be (the cops already had the area staked out), so we ventured in the opposite direction, since our hotel is pretty centrally located.
The first place the driver took us to was barricaded off by the military and closed for the day because of the protests. But it looked amazing from far away and we are hoping it will be open tomorrow!!! Apparently it is a huge mosque and by huge I mean like five Catholic cathedrals all put together. That's right, this mosque sits twenty thousand believers in it - more like a stadium if you ask me! I took a few pics from a far, and we headed to our next stop, Humayun's tomb. We know he was an Emperor, but that's about it. The tomb was incredibly beautiful. They used red stone to construct everything and the location had not been restored by any means. So there was rocks falling apart in some areas, paint chipping in others, and it looks like a huge mosque also - but it is in fact just the Emperor and his wife and children's tombs. Around the tomb was an intricate waterway system with fountains - it reminded me of small moats with mini-bridges across them. It was really cool - I took some incredible pictures. Definitely more than what we expected - considering we saw the Ming Dynasty tombs and were far less impressed! These Indians know how to bury their dead, that's for sure.
Our next stop was Qutab Minar, although we didn't know it since our driver had taken it upon himself to drive us where he thought was appropriate. I tried to tell him where I wanted to go on the map, and he smiled, nodded, said a few things, and completely ignored me. Fortunately, he had good taste! Qutab Minar is a HUGE tower, apparently Minar means something like tower or monument. On the map, it just looks like a tower, but when we got there we found a huge compound covering acres and acres of land. It had a mosque, a tomb and college combo (the first of its kind) and apparently they loved this idea so much because they continued the tomb/college combo from then on. The price to get in was pretty funny - 10 rupees for an Indian, and 250 rupees for a foreigner ($5USD - yes, they accepted US dollars). The location is so beautiful and so un-restored, it is breathtaking. I took so many pictures, I thought I was going to break the camera. The carvings in the stone were amazingly intricate, and they covered pretty much every surface. Even up hundreds of feet, the carvings were everywhere!!! This is also the location of a second Minar, that never made it to completion, but was intended to be twice as high as the original. Unfortunately the builder died and it was left as is, not even halfway completed. Even so, it is fairly spectacular. It looks more like a huge wall of rubble and stone - which was going to be covered in brick type layering but never made it. All around were the typical Islamic-style archways (the domed shape), some were fully intact and some were almost rubble. The college /tomb area was also a mess of rocks, but a gorgeous mess at that! Really, only the pictures can do it justice, lets just say we were pleasantly surprised!!! I wonder why this place isn't as well known as others around the world, since this was built in the eleven hundreds and is a "world heritage site" Either way, we were extremely glad to have had the privilege of walking the site.
On our way out, Andrea decided to head to the bathroom. She was greeted by the "gatekeeper", a friendly security guard who took one look at her and stopped her from entering. He then proceeded to pull out a key and unlock a special door at the front of the bathroom. The bathroom overall was fairly open and there were standard squat toilet stalls, all empty. But, with his special skeleton key from what seemed like medieval times, he unlocked the special door for Andrea. She was thrilled when the door opened to reveal a Western toilet fully equipped with toilet paper!! A treat nowadays! I ended up outside with the guard and I mentioned that I thought the place was beautiful. He understood Europe and proceeded to ask me how much was one Euro worth in rupees. Then as if he didn't know, he asked how much ten would be in rupees. Satisfied with my answer of 500 rupees, he pulled out of his wallet ten Euros and handed them to me, looking for an exchange! I told him I wasn't from Europe and I didn't need any Euros - so he took them back and Andrea was just exiting so we headed off to the parking lot. I didn't make it two steps without him saying "tip, tip? Tip??!" so I gave him a few rupees, which seemed to make him happy and we headed off to our next destination.
As soon as we got in the car, the driver said something that weirder me out, but quickly I realized what he was trying to say. Here is his original line: "I am really angry! And upset! You eat lunch. NOW."
I quickly realized that what he was trying to say was that he had not eaten lunch yet and was therefore starving and would like to know if it would be alright if we stopped for some food. I agreed and he brought us to a hotel with a restaurant. The food overall was extremely good - Andrea had a great spicy and minty tomato soup, but the place was WAY overpriced. We definitely think the driver got a kickback for taking us there - but whatever. I just realized since we ate dinner later, that the bill at this place had a service charge of 10% and two separate taxes, one for 25% and the other for 10% . So a 700 rupee meal quickly became 1,000 rupees!!! Still not too expensive by American standards, but a complete rip off considering we hate dinner for less than 200 rupees without any service charge or tax added on. You live and you learn I guess.
After lunch we attempted to stop at the National Museum, but it was also closed, we think because of the protests. So we swung by Parliament and India Gate (similar to Arc de Triumph) for some quick pictures and headed back to our cow riddled street. We wandered the Main Bazaar for a little bit, Andrea checking out the pashminas and the various spices being sold on the street. We found a vegetarian Indian restaurant with some cheap Palak Paneer which made Andrea quite happy for dinner - although she admits it was not as good as the American-Indian version!
After some internet and phone calls, we will be off to bed, ready to get up early tomorrow for some more sightseeing in Delhi - and hoping that the protesters calm down so that we can get to the Taj.
Good night Everyone!
P.S. All day I felt really itchy and thought "WOW, India has so much dirt that its gotten all over my neck". What actually happened was that on the morning after the Full Moon Party, I lazely tossed all my clothes into my pack without tossing them into the "dirty clothes". So this morning, I took that wifebeater that was sand infested from the Full Moon Party and I mean "Sand infested", and put it on and I didn't realize it until about halfway through the day that it was my undershirt that had spread all the sand all over me. Oops!
P.P.S. Everyone in India thinks I am Indian. They have a hard time believing me when I say that I am not! In fact, at the ticket counter at the tomb, I told them I needed two tickets and they said one foreigner, one Indian? And then asked me where I was from. I thought about saying India...just to get the discount, but then realized I don't speak a lick of their language.....so I said my grandparents were from here and they still asked me from where - so I replied Delhi, Thank God the questions ended there!!! I've decided not to try that anymore since I can't seem to bullshit my way with them. But they still cannot believe that I'm a westerner!! I've had no less than seven people today ask me if I was Indian, and then give me incredulous looks when I tell them no. Then they assume I have Indian ancestors! It is pretty funny!
Love,
Jose and Andrea
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