Coming to India

I’ve done my best to model this trip with a gradually increasing difficulty so coming to India immediately after Israel was never part of my original plan. They say that if you can travel in India, you can travel anywhere. This is, of course, a gross exaggeration, but it still seemed like a country I should warm up to with, say, a month or two in South East Asia first. However, I had two good friends, Rahil and Bekkah, who were both in Delhi on respective social action projects and who would only be in the country until the end of May. I hadn’t seen either in awhile, and wouldn’t for a while longer, plus having that kind of home base in a new country isn’t something that you pass up, so I opted to come here to India first, and work my way east from here.

Besides the jump-in-the-deep end facet, there was another downside to my timing. I arrived in India in mid April, just as temperatures across the country were starting to rocket upwards and about 6 weeks before the epic Indian Monsoon would hit the southern and north eastern states and begin to work its way across the country. The monsoon here is the result of the country essentially boiling over. As the land heats up, the air rises to be replaced with cooler air from the sea, bringing with it evaporated ocean water to fall over the land as rain. The energy released when the vapor condenses into rain over the land causes this wet air to warm up and rise further, which in turn enables even more wet air to come in from the sea. This self propelling engine is driven on two fronts by the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, and makes it’s way across the country over the course of a month. Tourists flee and locals rejoice as the entire agricultural backbone of India depends upon it’s very often fickle schedule. The six weeks leading up to the monsoon are some of the hottest of the year which humidity rising past 90 percent in the southern states bordering the sea. The off season; not the greatest time to visit India.

Delhi was between 105 and 115 degrees Fahrenheit during the 3 weeks I was there, and it was only getting hotter when I left. I saw on the news that it was the hottest April in Delhi in 60 years. Rahil’s room mate Andy was out of town which meant I could stay in his air conditioned room while he was gone-- a real godsend. While my nights were comfortable, my afternoons seeing the sights of Delhi were blistering. The sun was relentless and wind was non existent but I dealt with it and kept myself busy in my first week, suffering only the occasional sun stroke and mild dehydration. I walked around the historic Red Fort where the Mughals ruled, coming back for a night time audio and light show that chronicled the history of the fort and its inhabitants. I donned a makeshift leg covering, left my sandals with the shoe keeper, and explored the sprawling Jama Masjid, India’s largest mosque, including a winding climb up a minaret for a stunning view of Old Dehi. I gave in to a persistent rickshaw driver for a makeshift tour of the crowded bazaar of Old Delhi and was equally amazed both at his ability to navigate through the windy streets packed with merchants, customers, beggars, cows, and (lots and lots of) dogs and with the sense-overpowering combination of scents, sounds, and colors.

Red Fort

Jama Masjid

View of Old Delhi from Minaret

Rickshaw ride through Old Delhi

I saw the gorgeous architecture of Humayan’s Tomb, a precursor to the Taj Mahal. I walked the length of the Rajpath between India Gate and the Secretariat and the president’s estate (did I mention the sun stroke?). I also went to the Ghandi Smriti museum, and explored various marketplaces. It was a whirlwind first week of pretty straight forward tourism, crowds, touts and scams, and good food.

Humayan's Tomb

India Gate

Secretariat

Delhi is a sprawling city similar to LA in terms of layout. It’s not a city you can walk around so most get around via auto-rickshaws: three wheeled contraptions that run on natural gas and look like a mix of a golf cart and a motorcycle. Autos are everywhere and always seem to have a meter that’s “broken” making every ride a lesson in the tourist tax as drivers initially demand up to three times what the meter would charge. Most areas are filled with enough of autos, however, that you can just walk away from any driver who’s being unreasonable. While cheap and convenient, autos are completely exposed subjecting you to suffocating levels of smog when stuck in traffic. Delhi ranks number two in terms of world cities with the worst air pollution and it’s definitely something you pick up on. Another disadvantage to being in the open is the number of beggars that come up to you at every red light, poking and pleading for a few rupee.

While I was prepared for India’s massive poverty problem, it was particularly striking in a city where the cost of living is remarkably low yet night clubs charge NYC prices for drinks and often ask for cover charges of $100. The dollar is just worth less in Manhattan where even waiters make more money so it’s easy to wrap your mind around over charged venues. The same is obviously not true in Delhi making witnessing that kind of excess unsettling. This paradox is a much talked about theme of India. I’ve been reading In Spite of the Gods, a book chronicling India’s strange, fast, and uneven rise to modernity and it’s provided some wonderful context to my time here.

The range of prices is interesting across all products. Pharmacies are on every corner and charge bare bottom prices for even name brand drugs. At the same time there’s no guarantee that the pills you receive aren’t counterfeit sugar pills. A few friends I met are working on a startup called PharmaSecure to address this problem by printing serial numbers on the back of pill packs that can be sent via SMS to a service that reports on their authenticity (and prevents the same number from being used again). In general, Indian labor is dirt cheap so services such as auto rickshaws, house keepers, lock smiths, and food service cost low where as packaged goods can be a crapshoot. Many American products still cost American prices while others, presumably that can be fabricated locally (such as Coke) are considerably cheaper. You also find fast food joints like Pizza Hut have become full service sit down restaurants with elaborate menus and eager waiters. The food in Delhi was delicious and not restricted to Indian food only.

So my first week in Delhi was an informative one. I made several new friends, saw, photographed, and appreciated the obligatory tourist attractions, improved on my bargaining skills, learned my way around a sprawling city, got a taste for both ends of the financial spectrum, fine tuned my scam-o-meter and got used to a state of constant sweat. I spent a weekend in Rajasthan that I’ll talk about in another post, followed by the week of hell in a Delhi hospital I described in a previous one.

From 04-30 Hospital

I spent a third week in Delhi with Bekkah’s host family recovering further and, in general, cheering up. Getting as sick as I did really depressed me and for a few days I just wanted to get the hell out of India. That feeling eventually passed and I decided to reinforce my rediscovered excitement for India with a relaxing couple of weeks in Goa, a beach state in the south west. More on that incredible experience later.