New Delhi, India
The following consists of my impressions and experiences on my first full day in India.
First off I remembered the other complete movie I saw on the plane, The Informant with Matt Damon. It was certainly a memorable movie, but just I couldn’t recall it until I woke up from a 3-hour nap yesterday afternoon. I’m not fully functional unless I get at least 8 hours of sleep. I didn’t try to sleep last night until 2am and was woken at 6:30am this morning by two marching bands and fireworks.
My day really didn’t start until probably 10am after I finished blogging about the day before. I seriously doubt I’ll be blogging this frequently, but you never get a second chance at experiencing a first impression, so here goes.
My goal for the day was to keep it simple. Just find a SIMM card for my smartphone so I can have a phone # and, more importantly, 3G data service. I learned through the internet (which is never wrong) that the Gaffar Market was famous throughout India as an electronics mecca and it was roughly 15 blocks away. Before I left Seattle, I spent hours researching service providers on the internet and concluded BSNL was the right one for me.
I started walking. 10 blocks later I discovered that I’d been walking in almost the opposite direction from the market. This is easy to do since there are few street signs, and most of those are only in Hindi. Traveler’s tip: If you don’t see signs in English, chances are you weren’t expected to go there. After heading back to my hotel for some pointing out instructions from the front desk, I was off in the right direction.
Now you may be asking yourself, “He walked how many blocks?” You have to understand, I like to walk. In Seattle I’ll walk 40 blocks to get downtown, wander around, and walk 40 blocks back without giving it a second thought…and Seattle is hilly. Humans are optimally designed for walking long distances. Thinking, tool-making and walking/running long distances are the only things I know of that humans clearly do better than any other species. So I like to walk to celebrate my humanness…and because I could use the exercise.
The difference between walking in Seattle and walking in Delhi is like the difference between road and mountain biking, it requires much more situational awareness and a different set of skills. Delhi is an obstacle course. First off, you are regularly being distracted by beggars, sellers and taxi drivers; the latter refuse to accept that a westerner would want to walk anywhere. The only time this doesn’t happen on the street is when you go somewhere you are not expected to.
Secondly, there are sidewalks, but they are are largely unusable. This is due to construction/demolition (of the sidewalk or adjacent building), parked bikes/cars, disrepair, perceived filth (I can be a little picky where I step), vending carts, sitting/standing/squatting people, utility boxes that take up the entire width of the sidewalk, and sleeping dogs (best just to let them lie).
So you’re mostly forced to walk in the street, which (thirdly) is narrowed by vehicles that are often triple-parked. I’m not sure that Delhi police even bother with parking violations…or (fourthly) moving violations for that matter. They’re probably too busy dealing with accidents caused by such violations.
These vehicles, which are constantly moving and shifting lanes, are also regularly honking their horns to make their presence known to other drivers/pedestrians. This creates an annoying cacophony that gradually ends around midnight. Some of these horns are quite piercing. They tend to come from the smallest vehicles. One I heard was melodious and reminded me of the Patton soundtrack during the North African campaign. But my favorite horns are the ones that quack like ducks. It takes a special kind of person to be a quacker. You have to possess the consideration to modify your horn so that it doesn’t damage hearing with a sense of humor to boot. My kind of people, those quackers.
Then there’s negotiating the throngs of people who are also walking. On the plus side, they can be helpful for figuring out when and how to cross a busy intersection, though some of them are @!$^*#& insane about it. Think Frogger. I won’t be emulating that behavior. My strategy is to cross with a sane-looking group of people based on my safety (and visibility) in numbers theory. If we go down, we all go down together.
Lastly, you are constantly visually assaulted by advertizing. By the time I leave India, I expect the part of my brain that is affected by advertizing will be completely destroyed. Actually looking forward to that.
Anyway, I finally reach the market and begin wandering around looking for signs of BSNL. The market itself is smaller than the average strip mall, but there are plenty of electronics stores in the surround blocks. I walk blocks and don’t see any hint. I had a printout of a Google map showing where a BSNL store should be, but for reasons I mentioned earlier, it’s hard to identify the street. Also, whenever I researching locations in Google Maps prior to my journey, the result would invariably show a completely different-looking address. Apparently Delhi uses a dual addressing schema, which confuses me and doesn’t inspire confidence. Finally I start asking around. The first two people tell me that BSNL doesn’t offer service in Delhi. I think they must be trying to switch me to what they have and so I move on. But that’s what people who don’t sell SIMM cards are saying as well, so maybe the internet is wrong?
The clear consensus among the crowd is AirTel, so I embark on a quest to find an AirTel SIMM card. More wandering in the wilderness. Finally I am physically led by a shopkeeper who took pity on me to a tiny store that possess what I seek. But first I need to prove myself worthy. To complete my quest, I must produce three objects: my passport, a passport-quality photo and the business card of my hotel. I only possess one such object, so I am forced leave empty handed. It would seem that I am still in the early stages of the hero’s journey as described by Joseph Campbell.
Then it occurs to me that my overall plans had changed since deciding to spend the first day obtaining a BSNL SIMM card a month ago. Two weeks ago I learned that the head of my Buddhist lineage, the Sakyong, had arrived in Pharping, Nepal (outside Kathmandu) to receive one month of transmissions from His Eminence Namkha Drimed Rinpoche. While I was waiting for my flight to Newark, I booked a round trip to Kathmandu from 11/14-12/13, so I’ll only be a week in India before I spend a month in Nepal. I would need a different SIMM card for Nepal, so why am I bothering right now with India? I’m sure I can survive a week in India without my smartphone (he said with a quivering voice).
I start walking back to the hotel. It’s 1:30. I’m hungry, jet-lagged and need a break from India. I spy a bar that serves food. I walk up a flight of steps and into a darkened room that looks like any nice restaurant you would find in America (there’s technically no bar). I’m the only customer at first, which makes me wonder if the food is any good. I order my first meal in India, a chicken tandoori dish, and stare off into space until it arrives. I decide not to have a drink. I’m on pilgrimage and not supposed to. Even if I wasn’t on pilgrimage, it would put me to sleep. The food is excellent. Just what I needed.
I head back to my hotel and crash for 3 hours. There’s no power when I arrive, so I take the stairs. Note to self: Don’t take the elevator during the day unless you’re prepared to spend quality-time with the other occupant(s). The air conditioner continually kicks on and off with the electric grid.
After checking email and researching where I’m going to stay in Nepal, I head off in search of dinner. I walk a few blocks and pick the busiest restaurant I see. Turns out that they are vegetarian and specialize in thali. I’ve always wanted to try thali, but it’s pricy in America and I’m too cheap. I look at the prices. $4 plus tax and tip (I may be cheap, but I always tip). No problem. I try to order the South Indian thali, but the waiter says no, “Not for Americans”. I like this guy. He’s looking out for me. I was nervous about ordering thali because it’s like a sampler dish. The more samples, the greater the potential one could ruin my day. So maybe it’s best to avoid South Indian thali outside of America. I get Punjab thali instead.
Thali is like a cross between Ethiopian food in that you eat it with pieces of bread instead of a fork, and dim sum in that they are constantly bringing out different samples to try/refresh. I call my waiter over about one of the samples. “What is this called?” I try to repeat it back. He says it again. I try to repeat again. He gives up and shows me on the menu. I write it down. Malai Kofta. I get seconds. I also get seconds of the dessert, which is a custard dish with fruit in it. I was advised before I left for India not to eat the fruit unless it had a peel and I peeled it myself, but I didn’t know this dessert had fruit in it until I took my first bite. So I figure if I’m already screwed, I might as well enjoy the dessert. I didn’t get sick.
Observation: It seems my mind is fairly plastic. Things that bothered me the first night in India didn’t bother me so much the next day. Things that bothered me in the morning were basically OK by evening. Not that I’m fine with everything, but it’s workable. You have to adapt or you’ll go crazy.
Fun facts:
- The elevator in my hotel travels to 4 floors (0 to 3). As a software developer, I love that.
- My room is on the 4th floor which the elevator does not travel to. To reach the 4th floor, I must physically climb one step from the 3rd floor. For reasons I can’t explain, I love that too.
- The deadbolt on my door has two distinctly designed settings, half-inserted and full-inserted. Why?
- It takes 10 minutes for the dribble coming out of my shower faucet to get hot. Had I been assigned a room on the 3rd floor, I would be able to take a shower 30 seconds faster.