I visited India almost three weeks ago and I thought it was about time that I wrote my experience down. The fact that it was three weeks ago means I’ve already forgotten some of the experience. It started by waking up at 5:30 and getting to the airport about 1 hour later. I along with half our group got bumped up to business class. It was nice but not amazing. Mainly because it business class with economy class service, the flight was only three hours long and Qatar Airways has a pretty good economy class to begin with. But like I said, it was nice.
When we the Delhi airport the pilot, in a somewhat surprised voice, commented on something about there being a smoke alert. I’m not sure what he said but I gather that it was because of all the pollution coming from the city. The city itself was not very impressive from the sky. There was a definite lack of tall imposing structures. I read in “The World Is Flat” that this is because there is not a dependable enough source of electricity to support elevators for buildings over 6 stories. I saw a few that exceeded six stories but not very many. Before we got off the plane they sprayed the entire cabin with disinfectant. I think they do this because on the way back they repeat the routine and it would be insulting to only do it when we were leaving.
Going through customs was uneventful but as we walked from outside the airport to our bus we were accosted by a number of people wanting to carry our bags for 5 euros. I’ve worn the sucker badge a number of times but not that big. I gave the guy 10 rupees ($0.22) which he didn’t seem too impressed with. The same guy then asked everyone getting on the bus for some money. This was with several locals escorting us. I took a number of pictures from our bus as we drove to the airport. I spent most of the time looking out the window at all the strange and foreign sites of everyday life in a different land. My first thoughts were on the hierarchy of transportation. People walking, on bikes, rickshaws, motorized rickshaws (tuc, tucs), mopeds, motorcycles, taxis, compact cars and ginormous busses. I saw very few “nice” private cars. My other thought was that this place makes Doha look clean and organized.
Do Indians smile at strangers, not like they do in Doha. A big bus drove by and my friend Sandeep waved at all of them. Not one waved back and they all gave him a look of what are you looking at. I was taking pictures later in the week and had a school bus go by so I gave a wave. Some of the kids smiled and one gave me the finger. I just laughed.
The hotel was more then I expected but I wasn’t expecting a whole lot. The first room they gave us had only one bed. Since my friend Sandeep and I were sharing the room we felt like it wasn’t gong to be quite enough. After some convincing the hotel maintenance guy was able to create a new bed out of various pieces of a couch synched together with a sheet. Good enough for me. The room was clean but I was glad that I brought my own soap, shampoo and toilet paper. The shower curtain hadn’t been washed in a couple of years and the 1 foot band at the bottom did give me some concern. While there I never got sick but that is probably due to the fact that I preemptively took stomach medicine everyday and was anal about using my hand sanitizer. About 1/3 of our group did get sick at one time or the other. One lady actually had to go to the hospital because she was so dehydrated. In the end there was no permanent damage and the malaria pills seemed to have done their job.
The purpose for this trip was to go to a conference that helped to equip you in leadership roles at a church. It’s called a Leadership Training Time (LTT). So we spent most of our time traveling to our from this conference or being at it. We got to Delhi on Saturday and the conference started on Monday. We went to the local church on Sunday and then spent the rest of the day seeing a little bit of the city. Sandeep and I saw the Indian Gate and The National Museum. The gate was impressive and the museum is good if you are interested in art from the different periods in India’s history. I wasn’t but it was too late to turn back once realized this.
Traveling to the LTT and other parts of India was mainly done in a Tuc Tuc. It’s a 3 wheel motorized rickshaw that runs on clean CNG (compressed natural gas) to help with the pollution problem. The switch to CNG by these guys has apparently been pretty successful in making a dent in the pollution problem. They fit the driver in the front and 2 ½ adults with an American sense of personal space in the back. Of course we’ve seen whole families in the back of some of these. When there were four adults riding in one I sat up front with the driver very closely. There is a strange sensation when you are taking a roundabout on the left side of the road at full speed with a bus about 12 inches next to you. You reason that everybody else does it but you can’t help to think of how absurd it is that everybody is OK with it.
Sunday night we went to visit families who were somehow involved with the local church. I had no idea what to expect. I was just told that we were going to meet with some locals who attend the church. The church meeting area had become flooded and the scheduled meetings and activities had to be canceled. Since it’s a relationship oriented society, it was important that we stay in touch. We split up into 3s and 4s to go meet the families that were about a 10 minute walk from the church. I had read that in India the slums are often hidden from the main roads but that night I saw what they really met. We walked down a street and behind a building into another world. 4 to 6 story buildings were built with about 10 feet between them. Electrical wires and clotheslines crisscrossed between the different buildings. It was dark so I could only see a silhouette of the top of the buildings. Most of the powerful lights were on first floors. Shops selling food, clothes and haircuts were located on the 1st floor. Most of them you didn’t walk into, you just stopped on the muddy street and picked what you wanted from the display. After about 10 minutes of walking and seeing how close people really can live together we came to our families building. We walked up a concrete staircase with no banisters for a couple of floors. It was the same amount of light as if you were walking in a hallway at night and the room at the end had it’s light on with the door halfway open. We arrived had our family’s house and were greeted with a large amount of hospitability.
It was an 8’ by 8’ room with one bed, one electrical outlet, a light bulb with two wires sticking into the outlet, and a small freestanding cupboard. Honestly my first impression was that the father of this home was a simple man. He insisted that I sit on the bed and then he introduced us to his wife and 3 children. He talked about Jesus in simple broken phrases that I assumed he had overheard numerous times from people in church. He then broke from the polite conversation and said that he was a snake and he had been very bad. He was actually drunk when we came to visit and his wife was visibly embarrassed. He then pointed to an old bible in a basket on the wall. He told me that he had read and memorized most of it. So we talked for a while longer about his depression because of lack of work and what he may do next. It wasn’t a fluid smooth conversation but thankfully we had interpreters to make sure everything was being understood. Before we left the church we were asked not to bring bags or camera’s. There was not a problem with crime here, it was just a matter of keeping honest people honest. I think it was good for me so I didn’t obsess about trying to capture what life was really like. The only picture I really wish I could have taken was one of a crayon drawing made by one of the kids. It was of an extremely colorful freestanding home with blue skies and birds. It was the ultimate contrast to where they were currently living.
I’ll finish my impressions in my next post. For now check out the pictures that I could take.
http://rwlindell.com/digpics/Delhi,%20India%202006/
