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.