First Indian Experiences

4-6 August 2009 Tuesday-Thursday
Traveling to Hyderabad, India
The trip has been an overwhelming experience. I feel like I am still arriving. Our 777 took off from O'Hare at 7:20 pm on Tuesday (August 4) night and lasted 14 hours and 40 minutes. We were lucky and got to change our seats to window and aisle in the back (Section 3) of the plane instead of seats which would have let Colin have an aisle and me one of the middle seats.
We were able to see many places on our flight despite sleeping, it being dark, or having the window closed most of the time. The sun was just barely set when we started our mostly northward journey over Wisconsin, Lake Michigan, Traverse City, Charlevoix, Mackinac Island, the Soo, and onwards through the vast Canadian wilderness, peering down at the landscape of lights shimmering in the enveloping darkness. I was so excited to be able to spot what was below us by the shape of the land defined by the lakes. "Lake Ann, where Aunt Bobbie has a cabin, is one of those itty bitty lakes right there." "I can see Becca's house! Well, not really, but I know it's right in there." I was worried I wouldn't be able to see Charlevoix, but sure enough, there was the tell-tale cluster of Round Lake and Lake Charlevoix, with Beaver Island and its necklace of smaller islands nearby. I couldn't exactly pick out where Burnett Road was; the trees seem to block almost all the light in that area, but I figured out a pretty good approximation of where it, or at least Brooks Hill, was.

We were still awake a couple hours or so later, when we looked out and tried to make sense of what we saw. Colin kept wanting to open the window to see if he could catch a glimpse of the Aurora Borealis (northern lights) as he had on this trip to Spain, but there were no mystical dancing colors to be seen. However, there was clouds/water/ice below us - what it was I could never quite decide, especially since the texture would change and the flight status map wouldn't show us near Greenland yet. I took some Benadryl and by the time we got to Iceland, I was so out of it that when Colin tried to wake me up, excitedly pointing out Rejkjavik, it was all I could do to say "mmph" and promptly go back to sleep without looking out the window. Sometime while we slept the sun "rose" in the west and we flew straight over Moscow. I woke up a bit before Colin and sometime after Colin woke up, I was able to crack open the window to see desert below. Soon we came to the Himalayas which were, of course, awesome. Just as we were about to hit the tarmac in New Delhi the sun was setting again.

Delhi
The first encounter on Indian soil was a mostly stressful experience but not overly negative. We were made to fill out a form declaring that yes, we were coming from a country where there were cases of the H1N1 flu and no, we hadn't had a fever in the last few days. There was a queue where they checked with an infrared camera for anyone who might be feverish before we went through the normal checkpoint. The bored guy who scanned my passport and visa didn't say a word to me, merely stamping it before shooing me on. Colin had a different story; his passport was a couple years older than mine and showed a picture and signature from high school. His signature on the entrance form was very different from the one on the passport and the guard didn't think the picture resembled Colin enough to be authentic. It took a long time, in which I started to slightly panic and try to figure out what I'd do if he wasn't let through. But thankfully, he was. Otherwise this would be a very different story.

The bus ride took us right on the runways themselves to cross and get to the domestic air terminal. When we stepped out, the heat, humidity, and smells hit us full on. The limited experience I've had with India so far involves very distinct spicy smells. I don't know how else to describe them. To add to the sense of bizarreness, our soap reminds us of green jello in look and smell.

That night, Wednesday night, was spent in the domestic terminal in New Delhi. It was unwise to go out after the sun had set and our flight was really early so trying to find a hotel room didn't make much sense anyway. The security was different; there was no one else there at the time so the guards were all clustered in groups. They ushered me to a screening room for females where I was checked by a female guard who I managed to understand when she asked "5:50 flight??" like "You're seriously staying here until then?" We had 7 and a half hours to go.

The night was spent mostly staring into space or reading. Colin managed an hour of sleep and I laid down for fifteen minutes with no success. There was wireless and it was even free, but we didn't have the right power adaptors and couldn't access the internet anyway; we had to have a code sent as a text message to a cellphone. We did try sending it to my US phone but it never came. The airport filled up with people as the night wore on, but at first it was almost barren except for the employees.

When the time finally dwindled down to less than two hours before boarding time, we walked over to a sort of cafe and got coffees and pastries for about 5 USD total. While it wasn't a full breakfast and my paper cup leaked, it was delicious. I decided ahead of time I wasn't going to even pretend to try to understand what exactly I ate here. We got a fuller breakfast on the two-hour flight and one of the ladies sitting near us was from Michigan and was visiting extended family near Hyderabad with her husband who was also Indian and their two young sons. The flight was largely uneventful which tends to be a good thing for flights. We were served breakfast and I picked the omelet again.

Hyderabad
The first thing I noticed was that Hyderabad seemed significantly cooler than Delhi at 6 in the morning had been. This is only relative though; the humidity is quite high and it's usually in the 80s during the day.

After disembarking, we really didn't have a clue how we were going to get to the hotel. Magically, there was a sign saying “Mr. Colin Alworth” and the guy led us to a car from the hotel. The ride into the city was overwhelming (I can't think of any other word to describe these first Indian encounters). Honking seems to be the way to alert other drivers. I don't think they even have turn signals – they certainly never use them. Some of the buses have “Please honk” written on the back of them. When Colin asked a coworker what this really meant (was it to be funny or was it serious?), the coworker didn't know. I don't remember much of the rest of Thursday; jet lag had taken over by then. I know there was some napping, Colin went to the office for a couple of hours, and then it was bedtime.

7 August 2009 Friday
Today was Colin's first full day at work. Both of us were dealing with stomach issues, mostly gas, all day. The power adaptor I had at the hotel for my computer failed to work. The older, British version of “Death at a Funeral” was on TV after dinner so we watched it. We weren't very tired so we fell asleep around 2 am.

8 August 2009 Saturday
We slept in and missed the breakfast hours. I was feeling “cabin fever” and finally got Colin to go with me outside. It was just a walk around the block but for a first taste of being within the city it was overwhelming. We didn't stop anywhere and no one grabbed at us. Later, I didn't feel good so we stayed in the rest of the day. We also asked for a new adaptor but didn't get it probably because they forgot about it.

9 August 2009 Sunday
We went out to lunch across the street (the first time I'd eaten outside of the hotel since we'd arrived) at a place that was called a coffee shop. The two dishes were really spicy, but one more so than the other. They were both different types of flat breads with different sauces to dip into. Our mouths were on fire, our eyes were red, and I was constantly blowing my nose. The price was roughly a third of what lunch at the hotel would have been. There was some drizzle while we were out and quite a bit of lightning at one point, but it never really rained. When we came back in, it was Colin's turn to feel bad and we ended up not going back out that day. I finally got a plug adaptor that works!

10 August 2009 Today
Colin's boss had flown in during the night from visiting his family elsewhere in India and he joined us for breakfast. I had my first excursion out of the hotel without Colin. It was only two hours, at a bookstore, but when the driver asked if I wanted to go back to the hotel I said “yes” with relief. It's not that I don't like being out there (haven't made up my mind yet), but it's just so overwhelming. Everything here is overwhelming. I thought I'd have lots to write about while being here but it turns out the problem is I simply can't seem to make much sense of it myself, let alone come up with conclusions and witty insights.

I spent more at the bookstore than I had intended to; I had told myself to get only two or three books and then other things I liked. No one thing was overly expensive to me and the books had prices that were really attractive for an American bookworm. For 1822 rupees, or 38 dollars, I got six books, two notebooks, four pens, and nailclippers. The most expensive book was 295 rupees, or just over 6 dollars and it's the Hyderabad history book (“Hyderabad: A Biography” by Narendra Luther). There's also an English-Hindi phrase book and a small travel book on Hyderabad. I made sure not to get just non-fiction books related to India; I got “Eat, Pray, Love” (Elizabeth Gilbert), “Setting Free the Bears” (John Irving), and “Freakonomics” (Levitt and Dubner).

While normally I would have probably put back at least half the books, the prices weren't the only reason I got so many; Colin insisted that this is my vacation and I don't have to go and have a hair-raising adventure every day. After all, I am traveling for four weeks and I intend to do lots of reading during the much-needed downtime. I brought very little but I did bring, along with the thick India travel guide, three reading books and I'm almost done with the second one.
When I was back at the hotel room, someone dropped off an elaborate flower basket that contains 13 roses and a cluster of white flowers. They still had droplets clinging to their petals and there was no indication of where they came from so I assumed it was normal hotel business.
For lunch, I went back to the coffee shop and ordered one of the same things we'd had yesterday – but asked for “not too spicy.” I was surprised to find how quickly I've adapted to spice because I dipped almost every piece in the sauces. It was very good. Along with a liter of mineral water and a cup of coffee, the lunch was about 125 rupees – a grand total of $2.50. When I walked back to the hotel, I realized I had metal coins in the money belt. I had to pull it out of my pants and fish them out, putting them in the basket before walking through the metal detector. I smiled, showing that I realized the comic scene I just gave them and they certainly acknowledged that yes, that was rather silly. From now on, I'm putting the coins in my pocket. Coins are worth no more than ten cents a piece, after all.