The New World

January 2, 2015

On the evening of August 3, 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail west from a small port in southwestern Spain with plans to reach the East Indies and gain entry into the spice trade. Five weeks later, instead of reaching Asia, Columbus landed in the Bahamas and the rest is history. Hoping to avoid Columbus's mistake, we had traveled east instead of west via the old Silk Road route through Constantinople (which incidentally by falling to the the Turks in 1453 had triggered a search by Europeans for an alternative, westward route to India). 

We had several advantages over Columbus. Constantinople was no longer closed to travelers heading west. We were pretty sure the world was round. And we were able to travel by this modern invention called the plane. With those advantages in hand and a little luck, we accomplished something Columbus failed to do in four tries, and landed in India around 5:30 am after only 26 hours of travel. 

I suggested we fire a lombard (a type of cannon used to alert Columbus that land was spotted on his first voyage to the New World) upon landing, but Becky didn't think it would go over well with the airport authorities. 

As we departed the plane, our first impression of India was not the sweet smell of spices but an acrid  smoke smell. As we walked out into the cavernous and modern Indira Gandhi International Airport a cloud of smog hung over everything inside the terminal. I've been to smoggy cities - Athens in 1991 and Cairo in 2011 come to mind, but I'd never seen smog inside a building before. 

Twenty-six Hours of Travel Does Nothing to Her Beauty

After making our way through immigration and collecting our luggage, we armed ourselves with a fistful of rupees - 10,000 - from an airport ATM. With the exchange rate of just over 60 Rupees to the dollar, you can quickly have a false sense of wealth by carrying around thousands of Rupees - though not quite like the million Dong I had in my wallet in Vietnam the year before.

Having read that many of the taxi drivers refuse to use the meter for foreigners, we decided to go with the pre-paid taxi booths to get to our hotel in the center of New Delhi. Walking up to the first booth, the man quoted us 400 Rupees for a taxi and then eyeballing us, changed that to 800 Rupees because he said it was 400 each. Having done a little research ahead of time on the internet (a world traveler's greatest tool), I knew this was an exorbitant price for a ride downtown. As we prepared to walk to the next booth, the man quickly lowered his price back to 400 Rupees. Welcome to India, where everything is negotiable. 

We walked out of the airport and matched our voucher to the appropriate taxi and settled in for the 20 minute ride to our hotel. As the driver reached for his seat belt, we attempted to find ours. But as with most taxis in the developing world, no seat belts were to be found for the passengers. We would just have to place our trust in our good driver.

As we rode downtown, the city was dark with a steady rain falling. A chill was in the air. Not how I had imagined India. There were few street lamps and the ones that existed threw off a weak light so you couldn't make out the buildings by the side of the road. Although it was 6 am and still dark, there was lots of activity, with people walking in the road and huddling around small fires.

We were staying at Bloomrooms@New Delhi Railway Station, near the New Delhi Train Station. Located in the Paharganj neighborhood, the area is a haven for low-budget hotels. Fresh off her role in Titanic, Kate Winslet starred in Holy Smoke!, a movie that was took place in Paharganj and depicted an Indian train that hit an elephant and then sank slowly into the morass of the chaotic neighborhood. Unfortunately, the film was not a big of a hit as Titanic, mainly because Winslet's co-star, Harvey Keitel, wasn't as dashing and handsome as Leonardo Di Caprio.

Although many travelers had reported the neighborhood to be dirty, seedy, and somewhat scary, we decided to stay here because we hoped to catch a whiff of Ms. Winslet's left over magic. That and the hotel was right next to train station at which we had to catch a 6 am train the next morning.

As we neared our hotel, our taxi driver began humming Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On. The breaking dawn allowed us to size up our neighborhood. Although we were very close to the train station, not a lot of people were out and about. Through the rain we could see two and three story structures in various states of disrepair. Some of them were completely gutted as if someone had decided to remove all of the windows and doors to the building. However, the Bloomrooms hotel was in a sleek, modern looking building.

To our relief we were allowed to check-in to our hotel room immediately. There is nothing like arriving in foreign land early in the morning after crossing the ocean and then having to wait until late afternoon to freshen up. In fact, in his best selling memoirs, Christopher Columbus commented on how much in was looking forward to checking into his hotel room when he first arrived in what he thought was the East Indies.

Up three flights of stairs (or a extremely tight and cramped elevator ride), the door to our room faced a nice looking inner courtyard. Inside was an extremely modern and spacious room with a lightning fast wifi connection. We found the small outside balcony facing a completely gutted building to be very romantic. The most interesting feature of the room was the shower.

The shower had a floor to ceiling window that separated it from the main hotel room. You would think that the person showering would have control over whether the window shade was up or down to protect her privacy. Intriguingly, the shade was on the main hotel room side of the shower. Thus, a person could be innocently whistling to herself in the shower (perhaps something catchy like the theme song to the movie Titanic) while another person in the hotel room could suddenly yank the window up and see all. It made no sense to us Americans with our good puritanical backgrounds. 

Doing her best Kate Winslet impression

After exploring the room, we FaceTimed the kids and my parents to inform them we had one-upped Christopher Columbus. FaceTime is another marvel of modern international travel. In years past, we would have to first find a street kiosk that sold an international telephone card, then you would have to find a telephone booth that made international calls, which wasn't always as easy as it sounds. I remember once in Barcelona, Becky and I probably went to a dozen telephone booths all over the city before we found one that we could call home on. Now you just whip out your iPhone, connect to the hotel's wifi, and within seconds you can see your kids. I could even switch the iPhone's camera to the rear facing one and give the kids a tour of the room and show them our view from the balcony while FaceTiming them. Fantastic.

Showering and changing into clothing that we hadn't been wearing for 26 hours made us feel like new people. In the corridor, we discovered fresh tea to help us combat our jet lag. Tea is one of the joys of India.

Although local tribes had long drank tea in northeast India, it did not become a huge industry until the British introduced it to India in an attempt to break the Chinese monopoly on tea. And Indians did not begin drinking it en masse until the 1950s. Today, it's is everywhere - grown in the north and south and found on the streets and train stations. And a hotel room without a tea kettle would be a major scandal. Tea is so beloved on the subcontinent that Indians consume 30% of all the tea grown on the entire planet.

The tea in India is usually served with the hot milk and sugar already added. The sweet mixture was so good that we went cold turkey on our usual coffee and almost exclusively drank tea during our entire trip.

Fortified with caffeine, we decided to venture out and find some breakfast. According to our copy of The Rough Guide to India, Connaught Place is the commercial heart of New Delhi and has lots of good food options. A quick search on Google Maps showed it to be less than 2 kilometers away (about a mile for those still on the Imperial Units system). Because a light rain was still falling, we obtained a ride from the hotel's complimentary's minibus.

Delhi has probably been continuously inhabited for more than two thousand years. From the mid-16th Century to the mid-19th Century, large parts of India were ruled by the Mughals, a Muslim dynasty that claimed to be direct descendants of Genghis Khan. Our hotel was right on the edge of Old Delhi (though confusingly not the oldest part of Delhi), which was the capital of the Mughal Dynasty. By the 19th Century, the British, through the East India Company, controlled large parts of India and finally deposed of the last of Mughals in 1857.  A year later they established the British Raj - the term used for the British rule of India.

The British established their first capital in Calcutta in the eastern area of India known as Bengal. Having a strong hatred of all things associated both with the Cincinnati Bengals and Mother Teresa, King George V declared in 1911 that the capital of the Raj would be moved from Calcutta to Delhi. To carry out this move, the British built an entirely new city south of Old Delhi, known today as New Delhi. Connaught Place was developed to be the showplace of the new British capital and sits on the northern edge of New Delhi.

At the center of Connaught Place is a circular central park (the Inner Circle). Surrounding the central park are two circular rows of terraced buildings which create a the Middle Circle and the Outer Circle. Seven road radiate from the central park. The buildings house restaurants, shops, hotels, and businesses.

Our minibus driver explained that the shops around Connaught Place did not open until 11 am. Because it was only 9:30 am, we asked him to drop us near an establishment that served breakfast. Wandering out of the minibus, we noticed that there were almost no people around - which we thought odd considering we in the heart of a city of 15 million people. The restaurant our driver highly recommended was empty and obviously closed. We headed for the middle circle and began to be approached by men at regular intervals.

The script with every man was essentially the same.

"Hello, where are you from?" 

"America" 

"Ah Welcome - Obama is coming. Obama is good." [Sometimes they would ask us from what part of America we came from and after we told them near Chicago, they would tell us they had a cousin that lived there]. 

"Yes, we like Obama - it is exciting that he is coming to India in a few weeks."

 They would then tell us what street we were on and proceed to ask:

"What are you looking for?" 

"Oh - we are just walking around - enjoying New Delhi." 

"I work for the tourist board. The tourist office is close by. Let me take you there." 

"No thank you - maybe later."

The persistent ones would then proceed to tell us that the area was dangerous for pickpockets and proceed to pull out an official looking "Tourist Bureau" ID card and again urged us to come with them. One man even told us the direction we were headed in - south - was dangerous, which was preposterous considering the area south of Connaught Place contained the important government buildings such as the parliament and prime minister's palace.

Luckily, I had read our copy of The Rough Guide to India ahead of time which warned:

On Cannanught Place and along Janpath steer clear of phone "tourist information offices" (which touts may try to divert you to - a typical CP tout chat-up line is to inform you which block you are on, so be suspicious of anyone who comes up and tells you that unasked) and never do business with any travel agency that tries to disguise itself as a tourist information office.

Wikitravel.com also warned:

Many first time travellers to India find themselves falling victim to scams and touts, and unfortunately Delhi has a lot of both. Be on guard for anybody trying to help you by giving you unsolicited directions or travel advice.

Fortunately, a few polite no thank yous and "maybe later"s caused the touts to leave us alone.

Fending off the various touts, we walked around the Middle Circle trying to find an open eating establishment. Even the Indian megachain,  Cafe Coffee Day  was closed. With over 1,600 locations, the Starbucks of India was named the "most popular hangout joint amongst youth" on the Subcontinent.  Just not in the morning apparently.

Giving up on the Middle Circle, we headed to the Outer Circle of Connaught Place. We spied the Hotel Saravan Bhavan which appeared to have people eating in it. Although we didn't know it at the time, the restaurant is one of the largest vegetarian chain restaurants in the world. Founded by restauranteur, P. Rajagopalin, in Chennai [the largest city in south India], there are over 30 locations in India and another 47 world wide, including in Europe and the United States.

Rajapopalin pays his employees well and gives them fantastic benefits. The food Rajapopalin created for his restaurants is delicious southern Indian fare at very reasonable prices. Sounds like a great founder and owner? There was only one problem, Rajapopalin is also a convicted murderer.

The whole sordid tale was laid out in a 2014 profile in the New York Times Magazine. Rajapopalin was convicted of murdering the husband of a woman he wanted to marry. The tale involves astrology, multiple wives, and an attempt to tie the victim on a railroad track so a train could run over him. What better place to begin our introduction to authentic Indian food.

Our breakfast consisted of several puris, idlis, and a dosa. Puri is a deep fried Indian bread on which we placed a spicy potato mixture and sambar [a spicy lentil stew]. An idli is a small cake made from rice flour. Ours were served floating in sambar. Idlis are the staple breakfast food in southern India. And a dosa is a crepe made from rice and lentils - also a regular southern Indian breakfast food. Dosa's can be as large as a table. We ordered the Masala Dosa, masala meaning a spice mix, which came filled with spicy potatoes.

I also ordered a sweet lassi, which is a drink made of yogurt, water, and sometimes spices and fruit. Becky had a masala chai [a spiced tea drink]. The breakfast was murderously good and all for under $10 for the two of us.

Killer Puri

A Criminally Good Serving of Sambar Idli & Lassi Drink

A Masala Chai that was so Tasty, it was Almost Lethal

As we ate breakfast, we studied the map of New Delhi that our hotel had given us. The map showed the Gandhi Smriti museum to be only a short walk south of Connaught Place. Gandhi spent the last 144 days of his life and was assassinated in 1948 at the location. It was a must see for us.

We stepped back out into the street and headed south on Janpath, one of main boulevards in New Delhi. The light mist had stopped falling and many more people were out and about, though not as many as you would imagine when you think of India, a country approaching 1.3 billion people. Later in the day, we would experience that India with teeming masses near our hotel.

On our way to the Gandhi Smriti, we stopped to walk around the Jantar Mantar, a giant observatory built in 1724 by the founder of the city of Jaipur, Jai Singh II. Consisting of several huge instruments, it was used to predict the movements of the sun, moon, and planets. Apparently, the Mughal emperor at the time depended upon the location of astronomical objects to decide when to begin a journey. Though with today's incredible smog and haze in which we couldn't even spot the sun, it is hard to imagine ever being able to spot any celestial objects from Delhi.

The most spectacular of the instruments is the Samrat Yantra, a giant sundial in the shape of a triangle that points towards the North Pole. Because it showed him the way north, explorer Robert  Peary first attempted to reach the top of the world by setting out from the Jantar Mantar in 1908. He abandoned his attempt at the foothills of the Himalayas when he realized dog sleds were not the best means of transport over those mountains. He then sensibly set out from New York City on his next attempt to reach the North Pole in 1909,

Robert Peary Setting Out from the Jantar Mantar in 1908 

Heart Shaped Astronomical Instrument used to Find the Planet Venus

Samrat Yantra Points North - Explorer Peary's Dogs would Slide Down for Fun

Replica of the Colosseum used for Gladiator Fights when the Emperor was not Consulting the Stars. It's also a Favorite of Russell Crowe.

We attempted to use the giant astronomical instruments to determine our way to the Gandhi museum we were trying to find. But with the heavy smog continuing to hang over the city, we were unable even to spot the sun and had to rely upon our hotel map which showed the museum to be only two blocks south on the Janpath boulevard. After a few blocks of walking and no sign of the Gandhi Smriti in sight, it began to dawn on us that our hotel map was a crude one and probably not drawn to scale. However, there were regular signs for the Gandhi Smriti that continued to point south and so we ventured on.

We passed several high end hotel establishments with pretentious names such as The Meridian, Shangri-La Eros, and the creative The Imperial. Eventually, we crossed New Delhi's most famous boulevard, the Rajpath. A wide boulevard lined on both sides by parks and trees, it is India's Champs-Élysées, which starts at the Rashtrapati Bhavan (the President's palace) and continues for approximately one and a half miles to the giant India Gate - an arch similar to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The famous opening scene in the movie Gandhi, with over 300,000 extras for the great leader's funeral, took place on the Rajpath.

The view from the presidential palace to India Gate is supposed to be a spectacular one. But from where we were standing (the intersection of the Janpath with the Rajpath), we could not make out the presidential palace less than a mile away because of the heavy smog.  We could barely make out the India Gate less than a half mile away. I know I continue to go on and on about the smog, but we had never seen anything like it. It was atrocious.

Crossing the Rajpath, our journey south continued on Janpath road. On both sides of the street, buildings became less frequent as trees and fields dominated the city scape in this part of New Delhi. And then we saw monkeys - real live monkeys - dozens of them running on railings, jumping from trees, and searching through garbage for tasty leftover morsels of human food.

Delhi's relationship with the monkeys is a complicated one. Around 30,000 red-faced rhesus monkeys live in the city and can be a menace to the human population. Many of them carry diseases like rabies and tuberculosis. They can be aggressive towards people, sometimes attacking them. In 2007, the deputy mayor was killed when he fell from his balcony while fending off a monkey attack.

The monkeys also steal food and wreak havoc on buildings they enter. They even invaded a local hospital after learning how to use the automatic doors. And the monkeys particularly like to steal whiskey and get drunk. As they say, monkey see, monkey do.

They were even seen as a potential threat to President Obama when he visited in 2010 and 2015.

However, the monkeys are revered in Hindu society as an incarnation of the monkey god, Hanuman. Every Tuesday, Hindus worship the monkeys by feeding them. In addition, thousands of temples are devoted to Hanuman throughout India. Therefore, attempting to rid New Delhi of the monkey menace by using violent means is unthinkable.

Over the years, the city has attempted to manage the menace by deploying larger langur monkeys on tethers to scare the smaller rhesus monkeys off. But this practice was recently banned as cruel to the langur monkeys. Nowadays, Delhi has employed specialized "ape-men" who attempt to frighten the rhesus monkeys by mimicking the call of the langur monkeys. From what we could see, these attempt had not been very successful. Perhaps if Davy Jones were still alive, he could have terrorized the monkeys by singing some particularly bad old Monkees tunes.

Monkey Believing in his Daydreams

Monkeys having a Pleasant Valley Friday

He's in hurry to Catch the Last Train to Clarksville 

Having walked for about an hour since breakfast, we reached the end of the Janpath boulevard at another traffic circle Although we were very suspicious of our hotel map because a two block walk had turned into almost two miles, it clearly showed the Gandhi Smriti being located before the Janpath ended. So we did what one does in every country when lost, we walked up to a auto rickshaw driver and asked directions.

Auto rickshaws, also called Tuk Tuks, are the motorized version of the traditional hand pulled or cycle rickshaw used as a means of public transportation. Consisting of a open cabin built around a three wheeled vehicle, they are a cheap way to get around India for short distances. The ones in India are usually bright green and yellow.

The driver we approached indicated we had walked too far and that our elusive museum was back a block or two. He offered to take us there for free, but wary of a catch - such as being taken around to various "markets" with high mark-ups afterwards, we negotiated the fare. We agreed upon 50 Rupees, which was an absurdly steep price for a two block ride. However, with the average income in India for many workers being the equivalent of only a few American dollars a day, I realized early on in India that it was silly to bargain over 10 or 20 Rupees as that amounted to 20 or 30 cents to me but was a significant amount to the people we encountered in the service industry.

A one minute Tuk Tuk drive later, our driver deposited on in front of the Gandhi Smriti.

When All Else Fails - Take a Tuk Tuk

Next up: A Jet-lagged New Delhi