An Update from India

I've been missing for a few weeks, so here's a quick update on what's happened and what's about to happen:

• Armen and Nyree left Delhi and headed off on their 3 month adventure. First leg: Australia. They were kind enough to leave us and their other friends with lots of goodies like a beautiful photo taken in Amber Fort, Jaipur, enough liquor and wine to last until their visit in February, and their driver.

• Mike came back to India. This time it was for work, which was great for him because he got to stay in incredibly nice hotels in Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi. While he was in town, we met up several times for tasty meals. Mike also earned the reputation of Cultural Attache for his colleagues.

• I'm heading to Bangalore this evening for a two day workshop on: Developing High Performing Women. Sounds thrilling, huh?

• Nyla also arrives early, early Monday morning (but I will be in Bangalore). But soon after landing in India, she'll head off to Agra for a night and then we'll meet up again in Delhi on Tuesday.

• Nyla and I are going to Goa this weekend! Looking forward to a nice weekend of sunshine and laziness on the beach as we celebrate Nyla's 30th birthday!

• We also have a wedding and wedding-related festivities to attend over the next week and a half for one of my co-workers. I prepared myself yesterday by going sari shopping. It was tons of fun and I wanted to buy lots of them, but I resisted! I'll pick them up later in the week and will definitely share photos with everyone. There are signs that wedding season is in full swing. You can't drive very far without passing white horses and bands on the roads or seeing firecrackers overhead.

• We still don't have our car. Boo. We were hoping to pick it up this past Friday, but there was a delay with some paperwork. Now since we are leaving in just a few weeks, we'll probably wait until January to take delivery. While I would love to have it now, waiting until January will mean that we can get the new 2009 model instead.

• Ani and I are coming for a visit in December. Our tickets are booked and we'll be back on December 11th. After the Christmas party, we're flying to San Fran and driving down the coast to LA. From there, we'll head for Vegas for the weekend before coming back home on the 22nd. It will be our first trip back in 8 months and our first Christmas at home, so we are looking forward to it.

I'll get better about the blog and will definitely post updates from Nyla's trip here and the wedding festivities.

More to come!

Fun Times at D-418

Last Saturday we had to start to do the unthinkable, say goodbye to Armen and Nyree, who are leaving India after spending two years here. We are really said to see them go because they've been great friends, neighbors and colleagues. From workday lunches at the Park or Karim's, to Saturday coffee breaks in Barista and late night dance extravaganzas in Smokehouse, they have been a critical link to our Delhi social life.

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To say goodbye to the masses that love and adore them, Armen and Nyree threw an amazing party on their rooftop last weekend. There were lots of drinks, tasty food and crazy dance moves throughout the night.

Armen, Alistair and Nyree

Marco and Sarah

DJ Jaan

Lucky for Armen and Nyree, they are not just returning to the cold and gray winter of London. Instead, they are off on a 3-month adventure through Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia. Not a bad way to cap off two years of ups and down in India. And Lucky for us, we have a few more friends to visit in London when we travel between Delhi and Washington.

My 3rd Diwali in India

I'm playing blog catch up today, so I'm going to start with Diwali. Although all of my colleagues thought it was my first Diwali in India, it was actually my third. It was also the first after marriage, which is supposed to be a special one.

Diwali fell on a Tuesday this year and everyone seemed to take off the day before and the day after. This resulted in a fairly quiet work week, and I was able to work from home. On Tuesday, we had a pancake breakfast and later one of Ani's sister's and her husband came by with Diwali sweets (yum!). Later in the evening, we headed to Ani's house for puja, dinner and the required Diwali firecrackers.

This is our house (second floor) with lots of Diwali/Christmas lights. And it's blurry because of all of the smoke from firecrackers. Great for the environment, huh?

Laura's Trip to India

I'm a little late to report this, but Laura finally came to India. Her trip was short, but action-packed. Here's a brief recap.

12 hours after her arrival, we were back at the airport for a flight to Kerala. We spent a day in Cochin (and stayed at probably my favorite hotel ever, the Old Harbour Hotel), before heading to Varkala. The next day were spent at the cliff-side beach and we didn't let the rain get in our way. The timing couldn't have been better...upon heading to the beach on our first day, I exclaimed: I can't believe you are in India! And then right there in front of us was an elephant! Oh, India.

After coming back to Delhi, I set Laura off on her own for the day, while I worked. After exploring Khan Market for a few hours, Laura and Ani headed to Janpath for coffee and then drinks to the Imperial Hotel. I met them there after work and then we went to Ani's house so she could meet everyone.

Friday afternoon we ventured to Old Delhi to see the sights from our rickshaw and to partake in a meat-filled lunch at Karim's. Next, Laura and I headed out for some shopping and hit all 3 Fabindia stores in GK Market! Our next stop was another favorite: Smokehouse Grill. After enjoying a nice dinner, we headed downstairs to meet up with some friends, drink and dance. We didn't let our early wake-up time on Saturday morning get in the way of a fun night.

On Saturday, we were up bright and early for our day trip to Agra. We left at 7am and were joined by Ani, his brother, Bhupinder, his sister, Rajni, her husband, KK, and their daughter, Sheren. 5 hours later we arrived at the Taj Mahal (my 4th and hopefully final trip!).

To see Laura off on Sunday, we had a super yummy brunch at Tonino's, an Italian restaurant. The three of us were joined by Kamlesh and Rajesh, Ani's sister and brother-in-law. With stuffed bellies, we were to Dilli Haat for a final round of shopping. Even though I already own more scarves than one could possibly need, I HAD to buy more! Laura picked up a few gifts - including a few for herself, before we headed home to pack. That evening, we had a quick dinner at Ani's house and made our way to the airport for our farewell.

Only 8 days in India, but Laura is already planning her next trip in 2009. That's a good sign.

Next Stop: Jaisalmer - The Golden City

After our day in Jodhpur, we headed to Jaisalmer where we spent the next 2 1/2 days. We arrived at the train station at 6am and we're greeted by 50 drivers with signs. Thanks to my well-honed foreign tourist senses, I realized that the guy who called out Killa Bhawan was just rattling off hotel names in an effort to fool foreigners. But he was holding a sign for a different hotel, so I figured it out. Ani did not and headed straight for him. I managed to stop the right guy and off we went.

Our hotel was located inside the fort and had an amazing view of the Fort Palace. The sun was just about to come up and we knew we would never wake up this early on our own, so we decided to stay up and enjoy it. We enjoyed morning chai and the sunrise from one of the hotel's many terraces.

After a brief nap, we woke recharged and ready to explore the city. First we tackled the Fort Palace, and then made our way to Gadi Sagar (a small lake and once the main water source) and a several havelis located in town. For dinner, we went to Trio restaurant, and once again enjoyed a great view of the Fort, now lit up.

Day 2 called for my tourist attractions, but at a slower pace. We walked around a bit, stopping by the Jain Temples and also making finalizing plans for our trip outside of the city to see a few more sights and ride camels. Around 4pm, we met our driver and went to the Royal Centaphs, the cremation site of the Jaisalmer royal family, and another beautiful Jain temple. Finally, we arrived at a small village where we were met by our guide and two camels and set off for our sunset tour. But, we were a bit late and we (well, the camels) had to go quite quickly so we could arrive at the dunes by sunset. We made it just in time and literally ran to the top of the dunes for a great view from the top. And there are so prepared for tourists here. One of the guides met us with (semi)-cold beer to enjoy while watching the sunset.

Back in town, we cleaned up and headed out for dinner in a nearby restaurant. Dinner was fine, but the highlight were more drinks on the hotel's terrace afterward. We were in such a prime location and had a great stop to view the happenings in the town below.

On our final day, we did a bit of shopping and picked up an assortment of things including: spices, a wooden box, and a bunch of cute ceramic door knobs to be used one day. Our shopping trip was almost foiled because we were low on cash and none of the ATM machines in town seemed to be working. We ran around in 40+ degree heat to 3 different ones, only to find they were all out of order. Happily, we were able to use a card in one of the stores and the owner let us charge more and returned the balance in cash. Shopping crisis averted.

After all of this excitement, we grabbed a quick lunch (and another quick shower) and made our way to the train station for our 19 hour trip back to Delhi! I was dreading the trip from the beginning, but it wasn't that bad at all. We shared our berth with a mother and daughter, who had also spent the holiday weekend in Jaisalmer. We talked about all sorts of things along the way, which really helped to pass the time.

We took well over 300 photos in Jaisalmer (and another 200+in Jodhpur), so it's impossible to post them all here. I've uploaded a few highlights below, but you'll have to check out the albums on the right for more. And don't worry. Those are only about 100 photos each. Enjoy!

The Fort Palace from our hotel....

...and our hotel from the Fort Palace

12 Hours in the Blue City

We spent Thursday in Jodhpur, which is known as The Blue City. It is located in Rajasthan, land of the maharajas. We arrived around 11:30am by train and left at 11pm that night. With no hotel room, we were forced to spend the day wandering around the city. Fortunately, this proved to be a good thing.

First we headed to Umaid Bhawan Palace, located just outside the city. The royal family still resides in part of the palace, but it also contains a museum and a hotel. Next, we stopped for lunch and then made our way to Mehrangarh Fort, where we spent hours wandering around and enjoyed the amazing views of the all of the blue buildings in the city.

In the evening, we explored the central market for awhile before heading back to the Fort for dinner on the terrace. There were only 5 tables, so it was quiet and romantic and the food was quite tasty. From there, we returned to the train station for the next leg of our trip to Jaisalmer.

A much needed break

I've been working too much lately, including just about the whole weekend, and now I'm ready for a break...or two.

My dear husband has the next 4 weeks off work, thanks to a little Railways athletic competition. Yes, I'm serious. He has 4 weeks off to "train" and then 3 days for the actual event. In any case, we thought we would take advantage of this to enjoy a weekend away and I was planning to take Friday off so we could have a long weekend.

Then I realized that Thursday is a national holiday (it's Gandhi's birthday). So now I'm elated that we will have 4 days to explore another corner of India! After some consideration, we've decided on Jodhpur and Jaisalmer in Rajasthan. Both places have been on my "to do" list, but Jaisalmer isn't the most accessible place, so it takes some planning - and a willingness to travel by train. So, I'm sucking it up and this Wednesday night we will head to Jodhpur by overnight train. After spending the day there, we will move onward to Jaisalmer by yet another overnight train.

I'm hopeful that both will be worth the long train journey. We'll have over two full days to experience Jaisalmer and hopefully this will include a little camel safari. I'm not sure what they actually mean by safari, but I'm up for anything.

The only part I'm dreading is the much longer overnight train trip back that will have us back in Delhi just for me to show up in the office after lunch. I'm sure that will be a looonnng day. In any case, I would happily trade long days in the office for long train travel across Rajasthan.

All of this excitement will be followed by Laura's first visit to India in less than two weeks! She arrives the night of the 11th, and the following day we are off to Kerala for a few days! While I've been to Kerala before, it is one of my favorite places I've seen in India, so I am more than happy to go back.

Stay tuned for photos and stories from the upcoming adventures!

It's a mad, mad world

On what is becoming an all too frequent basis, I hear a news stories that make me ask, "What kind of place am I living in?"

This happened again yesterday when I read the following headline in the local newspaper: Sacked workers beat CEO to death in Greater Noida. (Noida is a suburb of Delhi and how to lots of MNCs and industries). And now this story has made international headlines - 63 charged with killing the boss who fired them (CNN).

There are lots of instances of "communal violence" in India and this particular instance is being referred to as "industrial violence," which I think they just made up to fit this crazy situation. The government only made things worse when the labor minister said that the man's death should serve as a warning to management: "The workers should be dealt (with) with compassion and should not be pushed so hard that they resort to whatever that had happened in Noida." What?!?

And so, this is the crazy world I live in now. Where over 70% of the population lives in rural areas, but also where 3 of the most populous cities in the world are located. Where nearly 40% of the people live below the poverty line, but the rich are super-rich (the top 1% has over 16% of the wealth).

So is India really rising? Or even shining?

Finally calling it home?

Well, after 1 year of being back in Delhi and in the same apartment, we finally decided to do a bit of decorating by hanging a few things on the walls.

We also ordered a custom-made dresser for our bedroom to use in place of the too small and poorly made wardrobe. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait another 3 weeks for it to be delievered. But we didn't leave the shop empty-handed that day...we did buy a small wooden shelf for the living room.

For now, you can check out a few photos of the living room and bedroom with our newly hung artwork. While this isn't the final result, it's certainly a step in the right direction.

Don't-Do-It-Yourself

The Do-It-Yourself culture is just about non-existent in India because you can always hire someone else to do it for you, and that's even at a nominal price. After some initial hesitation, I've come to except this and I now ask others to do basic tasks for me.

I don't even have to go to the market on weekends. Instead, I can call my local store and have everything delivered to my door. Even the trash collectors come to our door every weekend (and during the weekend my maid takes away the trash so I don't even have to think about it). Today, we took a test drive of a car, and the dealer came right to our door. We didn't even have to set foot in the dealership.

Vegetable Seller

Trash Collection

Another example is paperwork. Indian society still relies on a tremendous amount of paperwork to do anything: open a bank account, sign up for a phone connection, etc. Despite the paper inconvenience, it's not that big of a hassle, because they will send someone to your home or office to collect everything for you. I've done this when opening bank accounts, applying for credit cards, setting up a new phone and internet connection.

Over the weekend we even had some photos framed from a nearby store. On Sunday evening, two guys from the shop came to our house and hung everything on the walls. We even had them hang a few other things we had been sitting around. I suppose I would have done it myself, but I don't even have a hammer and nails. Nor do I know where to buy them. And I imagine that people would stare at me like I was crazy if I tried. Why would I need a hammer?

I just hope all of this full-service doesn't get to me and make me into a lazy human being once we are back in the US.

Not so cool

A few weeks ago I added this National Geographic Photo of the Day widget (yes, I'm a nerd). See down and to the right...

I thought it was pretty cool, until today. Today's photo is of a buffalo carcass. Yuck!

Missing the bus

The terrace at my office building provides the perfect vantage point for one of my favorite pastimes in Delhi - watching people run to catch the bus.

Our office in the city center is located right above a busy, congested public bus stop. Throughout the day, I'm easily amused by the sight of men running down the street as fast as they can with the hope of being able to jump onto a departing bus. Buses here are generally old, rickety, crowded, reckless and unwilling to come to a complete stop at a bus stop.

Despite all of this, people still need to take the bus, so they stand poised ready to run and hop on, literally. As the bus speeds out of the stop, I always see a couple of men chasing after it. Usually, an unknown hand reaches out of the bus to pull the first man on and he in turns helps the next one, and then he the next one. This usually stops after the third one because the bus is going too fast at this point and the stragglers resign themselves to waiting for the next bus.

old and new buses in Delhi

Delhi buses are truly abysmal, but they are slowly being replaced with brand new, shiny modern buses that you would hope to see in the capital of a country that views itself as the next superpower. Some of these buses have air conditioning (for a higher price) and all of them have...get this...doors! What a concept.

Dinner with Rauhl Gandhi

...well, not really.

But I did have my first Indian celebrity sighting on Friday night. Ani and I had just finished dinner at our favorite restaurant, Smokehouse Grill. As we got up from the table, we noticed Rahul Gandhi sitting just a few tables away. To our surprise, he wasn't surrounded by a massive security detail, like most Indian politicians and celebrities.

The 38-year old Rahul Gandhi is the "heir" to the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty. He's the son of Rajiv (former Prime Minister) and Sonia (current head of the Congress Party) Gandhi, grandson of Indira Gandhi (former Prime Minister), great-grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru (India's first Prime Minister) and great-great-grandson of Motilal Nehru (leader of the Indian independence movement).

A long and distinguished family history.

An Olympic Outrage

Today there was an uproar in the Indian media about the Indian Olympics team. Apparently the team was to stay in a dingy 2-star hotel upon its return to Delhi. Anyone who follows cricket here knows that the mens' cricket team frequently stays in the top hotels in the city, and the media was quick to point this out this difference in treatment and lack of support for sports (other than cricket).

Now it seems that the Indian Olympic Committee is back tracking and claiming that was never the case. Either way, the team is now staying at the very nice, and 5-star hotel, Claridges...

And the whole country celebrates...

My favorite part is the use of mettle instead of medal. I have to assume this is a mistake, but you never know. I've heard some crazy bastardizations of the English language here.

Our Journey to Darjeeling

Last weekend we headed to Darjeeling for the long weekend with 9 other people. Our group resembled the UN, not only because of the multitude of countries represented, but also because half the people work for the UN (either with UNDP or UNICEF). In all, we came from 8countries: the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Iceland, Ireland, India, and the US. And Armenia was also represented thanks to Armen and Nyree.

On Thursday morning we all met inside the domestic terminal of the Delhi airport (which is much improved and now looks like a real airport) for our flight to Bagdogra in West Bengal. 3 hours later we landed at a civilian/military airport and hopped into the 2 rental cars that would stay with us throughout the weekend. We headed to Siliguri, a nearby town, for lunch and a stop at the liquor store. The following day was Independence Day, which is a dry day across the country, so we had to stock up.

We took the long route to Darjeeling and stopped at a lake in Mirik along the way. The ride was lovely, but cloudy and rainy. We soon learned that we were unprepared rain, except the German and the Japanese. How's that for stereotypes? Fortunately, there are plenty of people willing to sell you umbrellas so we were able to stay relatively dry. We finally arrived at our hotel in Darjeeling around 9pm after a quite scary car ride through the mountains and lots of fog.

The next day we walked 9km to the nearby town of Ghoom. We took the scenic route and through little mountain-side houses and shops. It was pouring down rain when we passed by a small house with a sign in the window saying "Tea & Coffee" and thought it was a good time for a break. We weren't sure if we could all fit inside this house, but we did. All 11 of us. We were served tea through a little window that connected to the kitchen. The house was definitely a bit lopsided and it took some getting used to. After the tea break, we made our way to Ghoom where we visited Ghoom Monastery. Afterwards, we were met by our cars and headed back to Darjeeling for a late lunch.

The following day we took the toy train to Kurseong. It took 3 hours to make the 30 km (~20 mile) journey from Darjeeing. The train is so slow that you could easily run along side it. Half of us actually missed the train in Darjeeling, so we traveled by car to Ghoom and joined the rest of the gang on the train. Finally in Kurseong, we wandered around for a bit before stopping for lunch. Finally, we made our way to Makaibari Tea Plantation for a tour of the factory and grounds and of course, some tea tasting.

Most of the group left the next day so they could make it back for work on Monday, but Armen, Nyree, Ani and I stuck around for one more day. Initially we planned to head to Sikkim, another state in region, but decided against it because of the travel time involved and the cloudy, rainy weather. We spent most of the day and evening hanging out at the hotel, with a little venture into town for lunch.