Today was a travel day. Our departure time from the Imperial Hotel was noon. In an effort to squeeze some activity into the day we planned a dash to a small shop we'd visited last year located not far from the hotel, near Connaught Place. Much of Delhi and the area immediately around the Imperial is dug up due to construction of a new metro system. But, according to the concierge at the hotel, the underground shops at Connaught Place are closed until the Metro is completed.
So instead we decided to walk around and explore. I suppose we should have known that the block around the Imperial would be an ideal place for industrious people to snare tourists and lure them to their friends' shops with another friend lurking a few paces behind with a tuk tuk ready to whisk them all away. We were solicited by several and brushed them all off with a firm "Mat Karo" (buzz off) until finally one earnest looking guy drew us in. The next thing we knew we were tuk tuking around roundabouts and through snarling traffic.
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| Cozy inside the tuk tuk, or to be more precise, the "auto-rickshaw". |
I can't say we saw anything terribly interesting in the 3 shops we tore through in 45 minutes but the tuk tuk ride and our nice driver (who also helped us cross the street!) made it worth the expedition.
Virender met us at noon and took us to the airport. We said farewell to Cliff and Cathy who are headed off to the Jaipur literary festival and to other northern destinations. We will be reunited with them in South India in about 10 days (ok 11 days but who's counting). Meanwhile Ferris and I are flying south to Chennai.
Had an amusing conversation waiting on the flight checkin line. Virender was working feverishly trying to get us to the front of the line. Ferris and I stood off to the side trying to be out of the way. A tall 30-ish Indian man came up and asked if we were on line. I told him I honestly didn't know, that it was very hard to know where the 'lines' were as Virender had been shuffled to several checkin agents before landing on this particular one. The young man hung his head and laughed. He said he'd been standing on a line for 20 minutes before being told it was the wrong one. He was exasperated by the way people were cutting in front of him on the line. This immediately endeared him to me and we struck began talking.
Turns out he was born in Puri in Orissa (I went there last year with Cliff and Cathy) but now lives in Charlotte NC of all places! What a small world it is. He said that Indians don't really understand what bothers westerners so much about India but he said now "I completely understand it. Now that I've lived in the US for three years I completely get it." Then Ferris and I played gate change turnover at the airport, running to three different ones at completely opposite ends of the enormous airport in the half hour before boarding.
Arrived in Chennai via Air India (after flight delays) at 7 pm. I can safely say that I've had quite enough of flying for a while. All we've done for the past two days is fly and in India, or anywhere else really, that's not really something you want to spend tons of time doing. I knew that Chennai was a big city - population 4 million, the 'Detroit of India' and a major software center - but I wasn't prepared for the intense traffic we found ourselves in.
The relative affluence of this city vs a place like Lucknow was immediately apparent in the number and quality of motor vehicles. No one can move at more 15mph so motorcycles dart through the cars and enormous buses from all directions. Occasionally pedestrians who wish to speed their transition to the next life step casually into the traffic, looking neither left nor right. If India could teach me one thing it would be to be so casual and laisse faire about life.
It took 45 minutes to reach our hotel, the Taj Conemarra. I confess to being a bit disappointed at first; our room demonstrates that this is quite a faded Taj. Usually Taj hotels are glorious; the rooms at this one are decidedly not if ours is any evidence. Ferris and I ventured out after checking in and ate a delicious meal at the Rain Tree restaurant.
The restaurant completely redeemed the hotel. We ate outside under soft lights near statues of Vishnu and Lakshmi festooned with flowers and colorful robes.
On stage were musicians seated on a rug playing a tabla, a flute and a violin played upside down. The head of the instrument rested on the musician's foot. Occasionally a female dancer performed traditional dances which we were told by our highly attentive waiter stories of the lives of various Hindu Gods. He appeared at our table approximately every 45 seconds. He told us about his parents who lived near Madurai; how they ate a small amount of rice for breakfast at around 4am, farmed their fields until mid-afternoon at which time they ate their large 5 course meal of the day, then worked in the fields for another six hours and finished the day with a small bowl of rice for dinner. His mother died at age 90 and his father at 92! Our delicious meal of curried cauliflower and South Indian spiced chicken was served on a palm leaf. In fact each dish we had was served on a precisely cut, exactly round, palm leaf. Do you suppose there's a little man sitting on the floor in the kitchen with a protractor in his had cutting out palm leaves? In India, anything is possible.
