Exploring Delhi

The Red Fort

This must be one of the most polluted cities I’ve ever been in.  The sky has been a gray haze since we arrived and sometimes visibility is quite limited.  Nevertheless we’ve been running around, checking things out.

We sojourned out to see the Red Fort.  It was built in the seventeenth century by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. It served as a residence for the royal family at one time.  The fort contains a chaotic array of architectural elements with bell shaped domes, round towers rising high into the air and many carvings and artistic elements.    The walls are two meters long on each side and at some points extend up thirty meters.  Inside the fort are many buildings that once contained royal and military functions. We decided to take a cab given our earlier in the day experiences with security in the subway.  The cab ride was very hairy as usual and when we got close to the fort there was a huge amount of traffic so we crawled along for a while but finally arrived.   We checked out the fort, which is huge.  One of the things I’ve discovered about visiting iconic sights that you have seem images of is that often they are so much larger than your picture of them.  That was true of the fort, which is a truly massive structure and it’s red sandstone construction make for an imposing sight.  I can imagine anyone trying to attack it being intimidated by its sheer presence.  Unfortunately we couldn’t get inside because the fort is closed on Mondays, but we were able to see the magnitude of the place.

Leaving the Red Fort was also an adventure.  The traffic was so thick that finding a cab and then making our way back to the hotel seemed impossible so we decided to look for the metro despite our earlier experiences.  We knew there was a metro stop somewhere nearby.  After a few false moves in the wrong direction we found our way to Chandi Chowk, the main street in Old Delhi and a major bazaar area.  We walked through stalls selling everything under the sun, asking non-English speaking people for the metro.  People pointed us on our way and since we stopped many people to ask and they all agreed on the direction we kept trudging.  Finally we were directed down an alley like street that did not look like it could possibly be right, but then Jim spotted a sign that said metro with an arrow.  We kept going and actually reached a station.  After going through the requisite long lines to get a ticket we actually sped through security.  I rode in the ladies only car, which was quite a pleasant experience.  We arrived safely back at the hotel dirty and tired, but after showering went to the free cocktail party our hotel has for guests and had a beer and unwound a bit.

Security in India

Security lines at the train station

It’s tight.  Actually sometimes it feels like a police state.  Airports are not the only place and the security there is twice as cumbersome as in the USA but also only half as efficient so you do the math.  Your bags have to be scanned BEFORE you enter the airport and get your boarding pass.  Only one small carry on is allowed so even though we travel light we had to check some bags.  If was clear these bags were opened and searched on the way to the plane.  Then we had to have our carry on bags screened again and go through the metal detectors.  Then they pat everyone down.  Men and women in separate sections and the women get a little curtain around them.  I’ve had security women stick their hands inside my pants and under my shirt.  Not particularly pleasant.

Did I mention guards with automatic weapons every where.  The same security measures are carried out on the Metro and the train station.  Imagine a scene at Times Square where everyone had to go through screening every time they entered a station and you get the picture.  Often the security lines at the Metro are hundreds of people long.  So a short trip can take a very long time.  Similar screening although sometimes not so intense takes place at hotels and shops.

Of course, one can buy one’s way out of most of this with money.  Millions of people have the wherewithal to live in gated communities, have cars with private drivers and use various private services to avoid most of this hassle.

Leaving Kolkata

The air smells of gasoline and oranges; the temperature has cooled somewhat to the mid-eighties.  I feel very far from home as I read on my computer that New York City and the northwest have a foot of snow.  I wonder how my grandson Sylvan is faring in his first real snowfall now that he is in Boston after growing up in sunny Florida. 

There was an announcement in the local paper about a series of new infrastructure projects the government is starting.  There seems to be a division on opinion on whether these projects will actually help the economy here.  The people we’ve met are charming but it seems difficult for many of them to climb out of poverty.  The various small (very small) entrepreneurs you see lining the streets with stalls, kiosks and carts although they seem very hard working, and some working on electronics seem very skilled, don’t appear to be able to get more than a hand to mouth existence.  And many of them have their young children working with them, which means they are not going to school and consequently not getting much of an education.  Not a good formula for upward mobility.

Last night at a sort of working class restaurant a local man sat down at our table to drink his coffee and chat with us.  He seemed optimistic about India although he’s currently looking for work and we chatted about various aspects of life in India and America.  

Kolkata Thoughts

We visited the Victoria Monument, which was built at the turn of the twentieth century and was intended to represent the strength of the British Empire in India.  It is a massive structure with soaring towers and a rotunda 184 feet high with Roman columns and painted frescos on the upper arches. Amazingly impressive. They thought they would be here forever.  Little did they know.  I can’t help quoting the Percy Bysshe Shelley poem Ozymandias “Look on my works, ye mighty and despair.  Nothing besides remains…the lone and level sands stretch far away.”

I had my first and probably last experience on the Kolkata subway today.  It is hot, crowded, dirty and noisy.  On the other hand it gets you across the city quickly for about a nickel.  Although everyone seemed respectful the gender mix was about 85% men and 15% women so that was also slightly uncomfortable.  We did take it to the Kali temple, which is the temple to the goddess of destruction, which seemed appropriate

The privileged in Kolkota live behind high walls and hidden entrances.  Unlike most cities we’ve visited where wealth is flaunted and main streets host huge shopping malls with designer brand ads in hundred foot banners floating in the breeze, here many of the malls are hidden in private driveways.  While street vendors sell food to the many working poor, the wealthy dine in high end restaurants, the women bright as butterflies in their colorful saris and jewels, their hair and makeup immaculate.

India is on high security alert.  Everyone is wanded and/or patted down on entering hotels and malls, military and police with automatic weapons are everywhere and security guards at every entrance.  It’s unclear whether those with weapons actually are well trained to use them.  Cars are searched before they enter the hotel driveway.

It’s hard to maintain a healthy diet here.  The food is excellent but all either fried or heavily sauced or both.  I’d kill for a plain piece of grilled fish and steamed veggies.  Most of the hotels have huge breakfast buffets and sometimes I can get some yogurt and fresh fruit but they're also filled with tempting things like samosas, which I’d normally never have for breakfast, but are really yummy.  I’ve been able to swim some but most of the hotel pools are not well designed for lap swimming.  We, or course, walk a lot so that’s some exercise.

Arriving in Kolkata and Getting a SIM card in India

My previous knowledge of Kolkata (Calcutta) was of reading about the black hole of Calcutta when I was a kid.  As you’ll recall this was where the British Army was defeated by a local Sultan and 143 British POW’s were jammed into a cell designed to hold about three.  Three quarters of the British soldiers died of heat, dehydration and general yuckiness at the situation.  So not the best image when coming into a new place.

We arrived after dark and after a bit of a hassle getting a taxi driver to actually take us to where we were going at the agreed upon price, we proceeded into a city that was celebrating Diwali-The Festival of Lights.  It was sort of a combination of Mardi Gras and the Fourth of July.  Fireworks, people dancing in the street, strings of colored lights hanging from every tree and building, candles glowing on little shrines set up on the sidewalks.   It was amazing.

This is a very poor place, however,  the first place I've been since Madagascar in 2004 where I've seen people lugging buckets of water home from pumps on the street because they have no running water in their houses.  And people bathing and washing clothes at these pumps for the same reason.

I’ve been getting local SIM cards for my phone as we go along  as it’s much cheaper to do this than to pay T-Mobile exorbitant roaming charges.  For example, called a friend for a four minute call in Saigon and it cost $24.  So, getting a card in India.  You need a note from your hotel, I guess to confirm that you’re not sleeping on the street, your passport, a Xerox copy of the front page of your passport, your visa and the stamp on your passport saying you actually entered the country and a passport sized photo.  Then you have to sign every one of these pages as well as a government form.  Then the phone guy has to call someone to authorize it all.  Did I mention that this was done at a kiosk on the street and the phone guy did not speak English. Then I got a SIM card and minutes and it all seems to work.  Total cost ten bucks and about an hour of my time.

Of Time and Taxis from Jim

My wariness of the obvious metaphor was overwhelmed last night when we arrived in Kolkata and I realized I was in a half-hour time zone (it is 30 minutes past the hour when the hour strikes most other places on either) for the first time and a passenger in a sweaty cab that was nearly as old as I – quite a change from the comfortably air-conditioned cabs—and subways – we’ve been using earlier in our journey.  The impression that India was a bit out of step was confirmed in a walk this morning when we  saw multi-story buildings under construction enveloped in bamboo scaffolding like we’d seen elsewhere before but was nowhere in evidence on this trip.

India is different.  Bigger.  More democratic and apparently still a bit less inviting to aggressive entrepreneurs who want to build big institutions that yield them big fortunes.  One surprise is that English is so rare here.  Another is a suspicion that attitudes are a bit different.  Certainly the enthusiasm that service personnel show toward customers is a bit more muted here, although people seem responsive.  Our trip was also punctuated by an extra round of security checks at Bangkok airport for India-bound passengers.  Apparently there’s more of a perceived threat than from passengers headed elsewhere, although we don’t know the basis for it.  Kingfisher Air did a fine job of getting us from there to here, where we’re glad to be.

Singapore

I expected Singapore to be sort of a capitalist North Korea, totally regimented and rule based, with tall buildings but no charm.  To my delight I found a beautiful area, a lovely mix of old colonial architecture and soaring new buildings all co-existing delightfully together.  The river that bisects the city has cute water taxis and party boats and the riverbank has been developed with tons of restaurants and shops—any cuisine you desire and mostly pretty wonderful.  The subway system is efficient and clean and serves most of the city.  Everything is clear here, but not in an intrusive way.  We were in the business center during lunch time and the streets and restaurants were filled with thirty-somethings who looked like they were having a great life. In the evening, having dinner along the river there were scads of well dressed people, locals and ex-pats, eating in the riverfront open air restaurants and the bars off the river were spilling into the streets with cafe tables and chairs.  A very lively scene.

There is a plethora of museums and art galleries and seems like a lot of artistic and literary stuff going on.  People here seem to take their culture seriously and it looks like the government encourages and funds some of this.

There is, of course, the death to drug traffickers notice and the extremely hefty fines for eating or smoking on the subway, and people clearly know the rules and obey them.  We met a delightful young Canadian on the subway who is here getting his masters in business and then plans to stay and work in Asia.  He waxed on about the opportunities here and the lack of same in Vancouver where he grew up, although he wanted to return to Canada at some point in the future.

Our hotel was nice but seemed to be a mecca for tours so huge busloads kept pulling up and disgorging hordes.  But we were only there for two nights and were out most of the day.   The pool was really nice, also.

Flew back to Bangkok to change planes (fortunately the airport isn’t flooded today) and we’re on to Kolkata.

On The Train from Kuala Lampur to Singapore

This Trip inspired us both to post

From Leslie

It might be the early part of the twentieth century.  The train is a throwback with brocade seats and curtains on the window.  I feel like I should be wearing a dark blue liberty of London print dress with a dropped waist and lace around the collar, white gloves, a straw cloche hat and high heel round toe shoes with a strap.  In fact I’m wearing khaki cargo pants and a black T-shirt, but still it’s like being a Somerset Maugham novel.  The train rattles along on the six hour plus trip, making long station stops and winding past rubber plantations and banana and palm trees.  There are long stretches where there are no signs of civilization.  Sometimes the train pokes along on its rickety track and sometimes it goes so quickly it seems it will fly off the track and we’ll be lying on our sides in some jungle.  It is easy to imagine being here a century or more ago.

We arrive long after dark.  Immigration and custom proceed at a lackadaisical pace and we’re finally out of the terminal expecting to find ATM’s so we can get some Singapore dollars.  But no ATM’s.  And we learn that instead of the subway terminal being at the train station as we were told it’s a bus ride away and we need money for the bus, of course.  We walk around the neighborhood and find a money changer.  At that point we decide to just take a cab, which turns out to be pretty quick (not much traffic at that time of night) and comfortable and relatively cheap.  The temperature is still in the nineties so we sit beside the hotel pool and drink wine and eat pizza.

From Jim

Kuala Lumpur to Singapore – The Trip’s Half the Fun

Around midday yesterday we queued in the Kuala Lumpur central station for the superexpress train to Singapore.  We bought premium seats that put us in a coach that must have been quite elegant when first placed in service during the Eisenhower years, but experienced a bit of wear in the interim to a point where neither the bathroom (probably part of the original equipment) nor the large flat screen tv (definitely not) were operational.   The five dozen passengers in the coach were served by two conductors, a cleaner (who repeatedly cleaned the aisles with a push carpet cleaner) and a woman who served the snack.  It was a six hour trip with roughly a half dozen stops.  The train moved with such enthusiasm that I sometimes wondered whether we were bound for Singapore or glory.  Suffice to say that had it been equipped with seatbelts, we would have fastened them.

Much of the scenery was a lush jungle and the fact that it is largely a single-track line added to the sense of adventure and isolation.  By the time the efficient Singapore bureaucrats boarded to check our documents before allowing our train to cross the bridge linking the two nations, it was dark and we were thoroughly convinced that the trip was totally worthwhile, presenting us with an old ambience that’s totally disappeared from the hypermodern airports in the region.  But we also wondered how much longer the trip would exist.  Along much of the line, parallel tracks were being laid and in several towns,  large, new ghost stations awaited little more than signage and access to the tracks before being placed in service.  Another victory for the escalators, which our tired bodies generally appreciate.