The books say to change a fair
amount each time because it takes so long in most banks, but what they don't
say is that you end up with a *huge* wad of money. At the current rate,
thirty-one rupees is one United States dollar. A rupee is about three
cents. The biggest bill you generally see is Rs100. Imagine commerce in
the United States if there were no bills worth more than US$3. You don't
have to be very rich to sport a wad of bills that would choke a horse. We
changed US$500. That means we got a lot of bills. They staple them
together in stacks of a hundred about a half an inch thick. Then you have
to remove the staples and a torn bill will probably be refused. It is a
very big mess removing the staples. It took Evelyn almost a half hour to
remove the multiple staples from one batch we got. We usually hide our
money in chest pouches. This trip the operative word is only place it
there. The bulge in our chests is obviously money. Our understanding is
that is just fine. Nobody will remove it by force. India still has very
little violent crime. If your money is going to get stolen, it will be
quick and painless, without your knowing it until the thief is out of sight.
Or it may be through some confidence game. It will not be through violence
or threat of violence. For the time being, anyway.
The Lonely Planet guide recommends getting a pre-paid taxi at the
pre-paid taxi booth to avoid the chaos outside. Now there are several
booths, moving the chaos inside--though much diminished. We arranged for a
taxi, going to one of the stalls there. The stall to the left was trying to
convince us to take their taxi, which had air conditioning. This is an
extremely commercially competitive country. At least that is a polite way
of putting it. Well, let us be a little more blunt. A lot of the people
you deal with seem really money-hungry, much more than in the United States.
All is fair in making money. On the street you have a constant barrage of
peddlers, beggars, people wanting to take you someplace in their car,
bicycle, wagon, anything. To tell them no is no discouragement.
In each of our first three monetary transactions, people have tried to
short-change us. Again, it is a good idea to be paranoid. Anyway, walking
away from the taxi desk Mark reminded Evelyn to be sure and count her change
for the Rs175 fare. She did, walked back twenty feet to the desk, and
picked up the Rs20 they had short-changed her. Mark didn't even know it had
happened when he reminded her to check her change.
By the way, the Lonely Planet guide was also wrong about where the
State Bank of India was. It's *after* immigration, but still before
customs.
Our taxi appeared to have been left over from the British Raj, and
probably not serviced since then. It may have had shock absorbers at one
time, but we felt no evidence of that.
Even at 3 AM the ride to the hotel was noisy. You are expected to honk
if you pass a truck, for example. There was a fair amount of traffic and
also road construction crews, but also just people bicycling or walking with
bundles on their heads or pulling carts or working or sitting around. And
even at that hour kids are hawking flowers on the road. They were chains of
yellow flowers, but in the reddish light from streetlights even the trees
looked yellow. Maybe you beat the heat of the day by sleeping then and
working when it's cooler. We got to our hotel, the Oberoi Maidens, and
checked in. We got a whole *suite* for our US$75 per night, wrestled
staples out of the money, and finally went to sleep in a real bed about 4:30
AM.
When we made the reservation (only a couple of days before leaving for
India) they weren't sure if we could have our second night here. Luckily,
when we arrived they said we could, because we slept until about 2 PM. Nine
hours of sleep! Mark says he is not sure if his jet lag approach really
worked here, and then adds, (P.S. Sure it did. It was making sure I got a
decent amount of sleep even if Lufthansa's schedule did not allow it. When
I went to bed at midnight I got a pretty good night's sleep and woke up at
6:15 AM feeling it was just about 6:15 AM.)
So here we are, up at 2 PM. Our first sight is the Red Fort. This is
the Indian equivalent of the Forbidden City of Beijing or the United States
White House and capitol. From here the Moghuls ruled India.
We got a taxi and rode through the anarchy that is Delhi traffic. Our
traffic system is basically one of queues and in Delhi it seems more like
one of mobs. There are all sorts of vehicles moving in different directions
relative to the flow of traffic. Horses pull carts diagonal to traffic. It
is a mess. There are some major thoroughfares where the traffic is more
orderly.
The part of town we were in was Old Delhi, as opposed to New Delhi.
Later we will see New Delhi, but our first impressions are obviously based
on what we saw. Evelyn described it as alien, boisterous, chaotic, dirty,
exhilarating, fascinating, glorious, hectic, intimidating, jarring, kinetic,
loud, maddening, noisy, odorous, people-packed, quick-paced, run-down,
scintillating, tumultuous, unbelievable, vibrant, wild, xenobic, yogic, and
zany. Buses, cars, auto-rickshaws (like tuk-tuks in Thailand), cycle-
rickshaws, horse-drawn carts, bicycles, motorcycles, hand carts, people and
even some cows crowd the streets. It's absolutely amazing. I loves it.
When we stopped at the Red Fort, we were besieged by beggars, people
wanting to sell us tours, etc. Stopping the taxi was just like ringing the
dinner bell. We fought our way to the ticket stand. Admission is a
whopping half rupee. That is over a cent and a half American. And there
are guards to keep out the riff-raff. When Evelyn gave the ticket vendor,
she Rs50, she got back Rs9. When she pointed this out, he smiled as if to
say, Oh, you caught me, and gave her the rest of the change. Between
having to count your change and examine it for tears, it's no wonder
transaction go slowly.
Inside things are a lot calmer though there are still a few people
pestering you to guide you, at least until you get past the Hall of Public
Audiences. One scam is to explain that the person is an official guide and
even has an ID with a picture. Take it from us, there are no official
guides and the Lonely Planet guide to India tells you as much as you want to
know. One thing Mark says is if you have the time to visit the Red Fort
during the day and to come back and see the Sound and Light Show at night,
see the show first. It makes the whole visit more meaningful. The show
gives you a more coherent history of the Red Fort. Let Mark refine the
history down to a few sentences: The Fort was built by Shah Jahan, a great
Moghul, from 1638 to 1658. The name 'Moghul' is a derivative of 'Mongol'
and the Moghuls are descended from Mongols. Shah Jahan built this beautiful
palace and later the mosque, and in a fairy-tale sort of life ruled the
people and lived in splendor. His descendents became great lovers of art
and beauty and much less warlike, so when the Persians came to invade they
raped the country three ways to Sunday. They treated India like a treasure
chest that they invaded and raided nine times until the palace and the
country were in terrible ruins. For example, their 'Peacock Throne' was
stolen from here. The emperor refused even to judge disputes that occurred
on the nearby riverbank because he said his empire did not extend that far.
Then the British came. Even Britain admits it exploited India. But Britain
was in fact a mixed curse. Much more than the Spanish, the Portuguese, the
French, or many of the other colonial powers, the British had respect for
the people they occupied. Indigenous religions were tolerated. There were
no conversions by the sword. Indians served in the military and might even
have decent careers. As occupational powers go, England was one of the more
enlightened. Eventually the Indians in Britain's own army led a revolt
against Britain. In May 1857 the Sepoys--the Indians in the British Army--
led the Sepoy Rebellion. The rumor had been spread that Enfield rifle
cartridges were greased with beef and pork fat. The cartridges had to be
bitten to be loaded. The Hindus could not taste beef fat; the Muslims could
not taste pork fat. It was against their religions. It is a fact that fat
was used on cartridges in Britain, but not all Enfield cartridges. It is
thought unlikely that any of the fat-greased cartridges ever got to India.
But it didn't matter. That, combined with Britain's earlier attempts with
missionaries to bring Christianity to India was enough to begin the end of
the British Raj. When the British tried to tell the Indians what they
believed was wrong and what the British believed about God was right, the
British sowed the seeds of their own demise. Oh, they were able to put down
the Sepoys by force. But it made them the Enemy. They could force India to
let them stay, but they could never again be welcome. It took the best part
of a century, but they left India and they left very few Christians. There
is a lesson there but few are willing to learn it. (Boy, am I is getting
preachy this time around.)
Okay, so we went into the Red Fort. It is clear that this was once a
very beautiful set of buildings and that the Persians and others stole
everything beautiful but the architecture. There are beautiful flowers in
the walls and once the blossoms were made of jewels. But the jewels have
been chipped out and what remains is their sockets. Though the outside of
the fort is red (from the sandstone), the buildings inside are mostly white
marble.
We did something that in retrospect may have been gauche. There is a
mosque to visit. Of course, you do not wear shoes and socks into the
mosque. You can check them outside for a price but we were already wary of
being pan-handled so we slipped off our shoes and socks and put them into
our backpacks. At other mosques we had been told it was all right to carry
these things into the mosque, just not to wear them. As we went into the
mosque, the shoe-checker told us no shoes were allowed. But what surprised
us was that when we came out, the shoe-checker made a point of telling us
what we did was all right. The second part still puzzles us. Maybe that's
why the shoe-checker did it. The issue was not the few cents but the
unwillingness to part with the shoes so necessary to the success of this
trip.
Outside the fort, down below the buildings, were fakirs of the
classical Indian variety. No rope trick, but one levitated and one charmed
a cobra (though he seemed to take the lid off the basket only when non-
Indian tourists were watching). They wanted you to throw money down to
them. The levitator lay under a blanket with only his head showing through
a hole. He placed sticks on his body perpendicular to his length. Another
blanket was placed on top and his body seemed to rise under the blanket. Of
course, his head never really raised further off the ground that it would be
if he just stood up. Clearly what happened was that he was somehow able to
stand up and lift the sticks, keeping them horizontal so it appeared that
his body remained horizontal but was in fact vertical. Got that?
Most of the buildings were in poor repair, perhaps since the days of
the Persians, perhaps more recently. At least there was no graffiti. These
days about all the bright colors you see are the saris the women wear.
Two Dutch medical researchers saw we had the new edition of the Lonely
Planet guide to India. The most common book in India seems to be the
earlier edition of the Lonely Planet guide to India. Lonely Planet dates
back to the days of back-packing hippies. There are no more comprehensive
travel guides for low-cost travel. So the last edition is seen all over
India and one of the rarest and the one that gives rise to the most
curiosity is the updated version. |
