New Delhi
Trip Start
Nov 15, 2006
1
133
228
Trip End
Jul 15, 2008
Where I stayed
Yatri International Hotel
New Delhi, India
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
New Delhi, India
We took the early morning train from Agra to Delhi for 800R. We were told by the travel agent that the train was an express train to the capital and the trip would take 2 ½ hours. That means we while arrive early enough in the morning to get to the Pakistani Embassy shortly after it opens at 9:30 AM. But this is India. It turned out to be a commuter train stopping at every little station along the way. We left Agra at 6 AM and did not arrive in New Delhi station until 11 AM. We had made advance reservations at the Hotel Yatri International for an AC room w/bath for 1300R. But when we arrived our room was not ready. So it was one damn thing after another. The management put us in a temporary room so we could clean up and rest after our trip; and we were able pack up four packages filled with souvenirs, which we had accumulated since Kathmandu, and ship them from the main post office for a total of 5872R.
September 12, 2007
Irina took a city tour today (250R) and hated it. Arvid stayed at the hotel and tried to catch up on the travelogues, but it wasn't much fun without Irina helping and he made a lot of mistakes. This evening we set out to explore our area and find a restaurant where we won't get sick from the food. From all of our reading on travel in India one thing has stood out: travelers in India can expect to get sick. So we have been on our guard. So far so good.
September 13, 2007
We made it to the Pakistan Embassy this morning. Actually we don't get into the embassy itself but to a grimy thick wall on the street outside with a series of barred ticket windows which have been cut into the wall. Irina does the talking to the clerk behind the bars while Arvid watches a colony of large black ants crawling on the wall ledge in front of the window; set your hand down and they climb on it. Typically Indian, no attempt is made to eliminate insects even in a location where business is being conducted. One has the leg of a smaller ant in his pincher and is tugging him away to some destination the smaller ant does not want to go to. This goes on for a long while as the tugging ant makes slow progress moving the resisting ant. Irina fills out the forms we are given and when we return to the window the two ants are still on the ledge by the window. The clerk tells us that we will need the telephone numbers of our brothers and a letter from the US embassy. As we leave the window for the US embassy Arvid crushes the larger ant and the little guy takes off to tell his colony that God has answered his prayers and he is American. At the US embassy we are charged 1260R for a notarized form stating that Arvid swears and affirms he and his wife want to travel to Pakistan. We are not kidding! By the time we walk back to the Pakistan embassy the window is closed for the day.
September 17, 2007
We finally have our Pakistan visas and they cost us 9840R; the exchange rate is 42R to the dollar so that is a lot of money. But now we are ready to leave to Amritsar on the border. India has turned out to much more expensive than we had anticipated and we wonder if it is worth it. Modern India propagandizes itself as the rising economic power house but everywhere we look is filth and poverty: Indian pride appears a baseless self deceit. 7.2 million Indians apply for US visas every year; eighty percent of applications are granted. We wonder what they think when they arrive. What do they think about a land where you can walk down the sidewalk without having to step over a trickle running across your path from between the legs of the guy facing the wall. Another of their self deceits is the idea that the brahminical tradition of abstract learning, studies of ancient Sanskrit Hindu texts, makes them better computer programmers. Computer programming companies spread that to justify hiring English speaking workers in Mumbai for peanuts. What they had was the Brahmin family emphasis on education, but it was modern education that made them programmers. We know enough about the caste system to understand why more Brahmins were educated then untouchables. China may have a national inferiority complex; India could use one. But what India does have is the world's largest democracy. And that is really something. They got that and a national identity from the British. There was no Indian history as such before the British, just separate and contending localities; no idea of country or nation. The Muslim Moguls controlled the north and other Muslims groups threatened the Hindu states in the south. Arguably Hindu Indian might have survived only as oral traditions explaining decaying monuments and temples left behind. But the British Raj, without intention, gave it the space of time to survive and grow stronger than ever, and partition moved the Muslims to Pakistan. V. S. Naipaul in his Noble Prize winning book, "India: A Million Mutinies Now" writes: ". . . the British rule gave direction to later Indian history and made it easier to grasp. Events, at a certain stage, could be seen to be leading up to British rule; and, thereafter, events could be seen leading to the end of that rule. To read of events in India before the coming of the British is like reading of many pieces of unfinished business; it is to read of a condition in flux, of things partly done and then partly undone, matters more properly the subject of annals rather than narrative history, which works best with great things being built up or pulled down."
Comments
Advice
Watch out for the Pandies; rely on the Gurkhas and Sikhs. If things look dicey, head for the Fort. When the cholera comes, as it will without a doubt, take hold of your liquour and don't go on the shout - the sickness comes in when the liqour dies out.