Delhi Meats

I arrived in Delhi last night around 9pm, but by the time I went through the Swine Flu Health Check, Immigration, Baggage Claim, and Customs, it was almost 10pm. Outside of Customs I was met by a representative from Sea and Sky Travel, the company the college has employed as our "travel liason", who led me to a cab and sent me on my way because he had to wait for the last of our group to arrive at the airport shortly following me. When I got outside, the first thing I noticed was the dust. The second thing was the full moon. Not only was it a full moon, but it was also the Dalai Lama's birthday. Auspicious timing for an arrival, to say the least.

When I arrived at the Hans Plaza Hotel in central Delhi, the incompetent concierge had no record of a reservation under my name, so the taxi driver had to call the agent from Sea and Sky to talk to the hotel and finally I was given a room key after about 15 minutes of frustration and confusion. Owing to the excitement of being in a profoundly unfamiliar environment and the 9 and a half hour time difference, I was unable to sleep right away, and so waited until my roommate arrived around 1am. After we settled in and contacted our respective relatives to inform them of our safe arrival, we visited the 24hr hotel cafe for what would be a relatively timely dinner were we in New York, but considering it was 3am in India, seemed to be a curiosity to our waiters.

We returned to our room mentally drained, but physically unaccustomed to the time difference. I was unable to sleep until after sunrise, at 5:30am. My roommate awoke around 6am and proceeded, perhaps out of restlessness, to get ready for the day. By 6:30 the sounds of her moving around the room woke me from a bizarre dream (which are one of the common side effects of the anti-malarial I am taking) and was unable to fall back asleep. I watched BBC World News after showering and dressing while waiting until it was time to meet my teachers and fellow classmates at 9:30 for breakfast and orientation. By 12:30 we dispersed for a few minutes to freshen up before attending a group lunch at the United Coffee House. The food was outstanding, perfectly spiced and served with the best naan I think I have ever eaten. After lunch, generously paid for by the college, the five of us were split into two groups and each given the name of a different nearby destination which was written on a piece of paper in Hindi. Our task was to find a stranger and get directions to the designated location and record the sights, sounds, smells, and overall atmosphere of the place.

My partner and I got directions from several strangers then walked the 25 minutes or so to what turned out to be an enormous Sikh temple, Gurdwara Bangla Sahib, the largest Sikh temple in Delhi. First, we had to check our shoes outside the temple walls, then step into a shallow pool of water at the entrance to wash our feet. We walked barefoot around the perimeter of a huge pool where devotees were bathing, which was set in the middle of an even larger courtyard, paved with a black and white marble mosaics, red woven rugs drenched in water running the length of each side and intersecting at perpindicular angles. The enclosure was walled in by open-air corridors where some worshippers sat in groups, some lay sleeping in the shade, and others walked about. Then we went inside the temple, which was up a flight of marble stairs.

Inside there were small groups of people prostrating in front of a room with large glass windows revealing what appeared to be some kind of shrine covered in brightly colored embroidered cloths, and touching the doorway with their hands and foreheads as a means of obtaining blessings. We went upstairs and walked around a balcony overlooking the main room where more small groups of people were scattered around on a bright red and orange patterned carpeted floor around a platform mounted by several seated musicians. They were singing what we assumed to be prayers, seated on cushions around another altar draped in heavy embroidered cloths, the whole space marked off by a golden railing. We walked around inside for a little while longer, taking photos and observing the worshipers, then trickled outside with the crowds, and walked around a large flagpole draped in orange fabric where people once again were touching with their fingertips and foreheads. Finally, after walking around the fourth side of the pool, we sat for a period in the shade of the open-air corridor. After a few minutes, a teeny little India woman wearing a white sari and a kind smile approached me and started speaking to me in Hindi. I hadn't the vaguest idea what she was saying, so I just kept saying, "I don't understand", "I only speak English", and shake my head and shrugging my shoulders in what I could only assume was the international sign for, "I don't understand". Eventually she wandered off, and my companion and I laughed off our confusion and decided it was probably time to go.

At the threshold to the temple we washed our feet again, traded our little tin coin in for our shoes, and once we had them on got in a tuktuk, a little three wheel motorized rickshaw which looks as precarious as it feels. We rode it back to the hotel for 50 rupees (about $1) and had the pleasure of being pestered by beggars at every red light. We just ignored them until they either went away or the light changed, whichever happened first, and neither of which ever happened fast enough.

After about an hour's rest, the whole group met for masala tea( which is probably the most delicious drink I have ever had) in the hotel cafe to reveal the mystery locations we discovered and our experiences and reactions to them, followed by a dinner of South India dosas at the Banana Leaf. The sun set while we were at dinner, and as we rounded the corner onto Barakhamba road, a huge, low-hanging yellow full moon appeared in the dusty sky and escorted us back to the hotel.

I am presently back in my hotel, enjoying some black tea with milk before assing out for the night. I will hopefully be able to sleep through most of the night, considering I haven't really slept since my last night in New York, not counting the ambien-induced spell of unconsciousness I had on the flight here.

Tomorrow we are taking a tour all morning of Old Delhi followed by another "special project" involving the locating of a mystery landmark.