India changes you, maan!

Day 2 - Connaught Place

anarkali — Thu, 8 Mar 2007 10:17:00 GMT

I promised way back when we were on our India trip that I'd tell you about our day on Connaught Place (we are back from India but I feel compelled to finish off the journal given it's been so popular!).

Connaught Place is officially called Rajiv Chowk (after Indira's son. Indira gets naming rights on the outer circle too), but everyone just calls it Connaught Place, or CP. It is a series of concentric circular roads lined with Victorian buildings and is a business area of Delhi. It also has a lot of shops, restaurants etc. It also has a lot of touts, scammers, etc.

We first noticed people were friendly when we were walking down the road from where we were staying, Paharganj, to CP. It would have been a couple of kilometres, and we were grateful to be walking instead of in a narrow cramped plane seat, or cooling our heels in a transit lounge.

Most of the way we were importuned by rickshawwallahs wanting us to take an autorickshaw like normal people rather than take our chances with the broken up pavements, puddles of mud-and-god-knows-what-else, hawkers and cows. They were persistent. Finally, the most recent one screeched to a halt next to us and said "You are staying at my brother's hotel! I am going to tourist office! I take you there! No charge!". We politely declined (although it did occur to me to ask him "so, which hotel is your brother's hotel?" but thought that would be overly suspicious. He insisted. We politely declined again. We were really happy to be walking after a long plane trip etc. He acted pained and upset that we obviously didn't trust him. I assumed the "hands folded in respectful namaste" position, with smiles, and head wobbles, along with repeated assertions that he was really a very generous man and we were very grateful for his kind offer, but we were really just enjoying the walk. It took about 5 more minutes of this to dislodge him. Turns out he was one of the less persistent ones! We were approached by no fewer than 3 more friendly people who after lengthy conversation also offered to take us to the tourist office. Then there were the 20 or so who eschewed the lengthy conversation and cut right to the chase, offering to take us to the tourist office.

But the class act was Sam. More on him in the next installment.

Days 1&2, Delhi

anarkali — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 18:17:00 GMT

A quick rundown on where we've been so far:

Feb 5 to 10 - Delhi/Agra

Feb 10 to 12 - Jaipur

Feb 13 to 17 - Pushkar

Feb 18 (tomorrow) - Udaipur

Further detail to be provided at length later!

Today is actually day 11. But in India time is an illusion, at best a rough guideline! We have hardly stopped since we arrived and only now have taken the time to sit down at the PC and write something.

Day 1 was a short one, starting with our arrival at Indira Gandhi International Airport. We needn't have worried about the auto rickshaw scrum out the front. Our hotel knew only my first name but he was standing there right on schedule in the arrival hall, and the scrum we expected was more a disorderly queue.

We got to our hotel and crashed. Mid range hotels, based on our vast breadth of experience in India may or may not offer hot water, toilet paper and towels. Fortunately, our first night's hotel, in the somewhat seedy marketplace near the New Delhi Railway Station called Paharganj offered all three. We had a great view of the street from 3 floors up, but the noise didn't really stop. With late night puja in the temple across the street, traffic, horns, and the call to prayer from the mosque and the market waking up at dawn, we didn't get much sleep.

We spent the first few days familiarising ourselves with the essential experiences of arrival in Delhi. These include:

1. Being stared at. All men, some women, all the time and at length.

2. Being offered transport. Repeatedly, and by transport providers who follow you the entire length of the street you are walking along, repeating their offer just to make sure you don't happen to suddenly change your mind.

3. Being scammed. Our first taste of this was on the first full day at Connaught Place...we'll leave that for the next instalment.

To keep you busy in the meantime, there are some photos up at www.flickr.com. Do a search on username anarkali.

Sydney the night before

anarkali — Sun, 4 Feb 2007 20:22:00 GMT

First the boring details: We are leaving at 8:30 tomorrow morning. Flight details:

Mon 5/2/07 SQ0220 Dep Sydney 830 Arr Singapore 1330

Mon 5/2/07 SQ0408 Dep Singapore 1620 Arr Delhi 1930

We have travel insurance (a tiny wooden Ganesh), real travel insurance (with World Nomads), we have the India Lonely Planet clasped firmly in one hand, and everything we are likely to need for the next month, including more medications than anything else in our backpacks. We have even registered with Dept of Foreign Affairs and Trade! (the big bad scary world version of a little paper tag on a piece of string saying "Please look after this bear" I guess).

We will have two big challenges tomorrow. The first challenge will be to to get up early enough in the morning to shower, get dressed, pack backpacks in such a way that nothing falls out, is stolen or slashed, or breaks, lock it up in its little metal mesh cage, while keeping track of the whereabouts of our moneybelts, our baggage and each other, and that's even before we set foot in the International Terminal at Sydney Airport, and well before the time we have to get ourselves to the checkin counter two hours before flight (ie 0630).

Our second big challenge wil be to survive arrival in India's biggest, dirtiest, maddest, weirdest city. We'll let you know how we went!

Lots of love, Kel & Ed

PS You may comment here if you wish, or you can always contact us at the gmail account, which is the address we used to tell you about this journal.