Day 20: Goodbye Hyderabad, Hello Delhi

Day 20

We woke late for the first time in weeks. It felt strange.

It was hard to wake up and see the same dingy hotel walls we'd seen for days. The team was sick of Hyderabad. I'd taken to calling it Hyderaworse.

We wanted nothing more then a good weekend brunch and then put some distance between us and this town.

Michael had purchased a simple water heater and we'd been using it to make coffee. With some foresight I brought some ground coffee Cheryl and I received for X-Mas from a cousin. It proved a lifesaver although we jokingly referred to our brew as "bathroom coffee" as it was stationed next to the sink. It held much appeal regardless.

I asked our front desk where we might find a good non-veg place for breakfast.

The thinly veiled look of disgust was better suited in response to the statement, "I'd like to eat your dog." I was given it all the same with the useless answer, "go north to Secretariat street. Maybe something there."

I knew Secretariat Street and it ran along a lake and an empty park. We'd never find some sausage up there which I think was exactly her intent.

We walked back over to the area around The Palace Restaurant, and uncomfortably for me, the Taj Mahal Restaurant where I'd had coffee with my punjabi teacher friend.

Past grievances aside, we had a nice, albeit, vegetarian breakfast. We all sampled the samosas and I had a delicious onion masala dosa. Adam went for the masala poori, which was ballooned to the size of a human head. Michael, to his chagrin, ordered just the buttered white toast, regretting it once he saw our fare.

Back at the hotel, we repacked everything and editted out what was expendable to make space for souvenirs. In our preparation for this trip, we'd all tried to both pack light and be prepared for any contingency. We had sleeping bags, tents, mosquito netting, wet wipes, bags of medication, water purifying tablets, etc. I even had a DIY camping stove with a wind screen, all made from recycled soda cans.

Most of this stuff we didn't even use. The sleeping bags came in handy in the hotels with dodgy bedding.

We purged what we could, repacked and settled in for the wait for our ride to the airport. It was 5 hours away and we were ready. It made it seem like 10 hours.

Finally our car arrived.

We ended up abandoning some stuff in the room for the ever present hotel workers to find and giving some stuff away to the parking lot security attendants. They seemed puzzled.

We hoped 2 hours was plenty of time to get to the airport and deal with ticketing and check-in for our domestic flight.

It actually proved to be way more time then needed. Domestic flights in India don't allow more then 1 small carry-on bag. We had loads of camera equipment that needed personal attention, so had to check all our own bags. We should have expected this since we'd gone through the same before. For some reason we didn't. All comfort inducing gadgets and products were checked in with our other luggage.

Gear in hand we made it through security and to our gate. "Our" gate, as it turned out, was everyone's gate. The Hyderabad Airport has only 1 gate.

Domestic airport terminals in India have all been triumphant culminations in this nation's experience at ineffiency, incompetence, over-staffing, poor training and mismanagement.

There is a uniformed employee for every 6 travelers, each one not really doing anything and all incapable of answering a question or performing their assigned task without 3-4 other bobbling worker's.

The necessary patience was quite nearly impossible to muster. Yes, I'm bitter.

Every domestic traveler goes through one large room with the one functioning gate. Outside the gate are shuttle buses. All flights are boarded on the tarmac.

We were remarkably early as our flight was delayed 40 minutes. Everything is late in India.

As a result, we got to watch the room fill to over capacity and empty again, a half dozen times.

Adding some sparkle to the airport experience's luster, were 2 different, yet both discomfort-inducing factors.

1) The heat of the day drives mosquitoes in open doors and windows and conveniently enough for them, closer to people. The airport with it's abundent water, constantly open doors and large population density, made it a veritable mosquito sanctuary.

I've seen fewer, less hungry bugs while trekking through rainforest in the Amazon watershed.

2) The airport paging system, while not really intelligible due to well-worn, blown speakers, makes up for it by being very, very loud.

The staff manning it need to make their pages in multiple languages which requires time. Unfortunately there is little time between shuttles, none really to make the many pages each flight requires - "flight such and such now in security", "...now boarding,"...still boarding,"...now leaving," "Mr. Rasheed why aren't you on the plane?", and "the plane is now gone." Having to announce every stage of the flight's departure means there is one constant page, for hours on end. Each paragraph is separated by an electronic "bong" sound.

Since no one can make out what is being paged, the airport thoughtfully employs droves of workers, shoving through the crowds of waiting passengers and bored employees, shouting everything the page is simultaneously saying. The constant din means you almost certainly have to tune it all out just to keep a grip on your sanity. Every so often you need to go in search of someone who speaks English to tell you the status of your flight. No doubt this confirms their belief in the need for the constant paging and shouting, causing bosses to urge the staff to really put their lungs into it.

The domestic airline Jet & Air India are true anomalies to most other Indian businesses I'd seen. The inflight experience is a relief after the trials of boarding. The staff is always happy, attentive, with top-notch food on real dishware. I wish they'd expand to Chicago.

Finally in Delhi we secured a large car to take us to our hotel - The Maidens (http://www.maidenshotel.com/).

Driving in a car in India is a completely novel thing. It doesn't seem like the same place. Steel doors & glass mean for a quiet(er) ride without the fear of accidentally getting gored by a passing cow or having a stray dog jump on your lap. It also makes you a large, unmissable target for the beggars.

The India in our many travel guide books seem finally understandable. To date we'd thought they had just gotten the whole place terribly wrong. We just entered the India for tourists.

We'd traveled 2000 kilometers of India in the seldom-seen-by-tourists, brown-collared world of the working poor. Rolling up anywhere, commanding your own 'auto' fundamentally changed the dynamic between ourselves and the people we'd meet along the way. While never equalizing us, what we didn't know was, it humanized us in the eyes of the southern Indians. We weren't just strange, rich, foreigners. We were doing the unthinkable, living on their terms, going to places far, far off the tourist map.

The car ride and the people at the airport were different from our Indian world. We'd gone 3 weeks with hardly seeing shoes, only the hardened, wide-toed bare feet of the workers or sandals. Finally I'd found out who bought the socks I'd see for sale on the street corners. We never saw socks actually worn and wondered how the sock vendors made a living. Turns out the well-socked were whipping by us all the time, protected out of sight, in their cars. It occurred to us that we'd never interacted with anyone from a good quarter of population the size of Canada & Mexico combined - the middle class and wealthy.

There is a part of India that seemingly went from walled compound to car, to mall or night club, never really living the street life. That wasn't OUR India.

These were the friends and relatives of the Indians abroad that warned us to avoid the streets, never drive and never let anyone see your camera. Had we'd heeded their warnings, well, we'd have just stayed home. Our whole trip was about doing what many said we shouldn't.

Arriving at our palatial hotel, a treat for our last night's on the continent, we started to see the India of the typical tourist. An exotic desitination, not too foreign, where everyone speaks English, service is very western and there's burgers and fries on every menu. A tropical locale, not too far off the cultural map, like maybe the Bahamas.

The India of our last couple of days was a bit like a theme park rendition of the India we'd come to know.

Our fancy hotel was so fancy, that rickshaws weren't even allowed to pull up front. While thoroughly enjoying the western comforts, I was just a bit defensive about our India. The real India of the smoky, chaotic streets outside our walled compound.

While it's easy to get caught up in the vivid descriptions of the sights, sounds, smells, and lack of any personal space of our 3 weeks driving, the different way we were treated in our rickshaws is something that almost no outsider will get to experience. It defied description or comparison although we've grappled with it amoungst ourselves.

The India we experienced was one of the most genuinely friendly places I think we'll ever be. The craziness of the day to day is the price of entry.

anthony //