Travel Along With Me

We all had a restless night of sleep except Texil. It was probably us anticipating going back to crazy Delhi after we had been enjoying our time here in Rishikesh. Anyway, we woke around 7:15a.m. Kali and Tilak both had diarrhea – just in time for us to be on the road again.

Our taxi picked us up outside of our hotel at 8:15a.m. Thank goodness it was a clean taxi and the driver was, as usual, very kind. He took us to the Haridwar train station. We got there at 9:15a.m. Our train was not scheduled to arrive until 10:45a.m.

We found some seats to sit in and wait and we were soon constantly hounded by beggars. Tilak gave to some of them. One man that came to us said that he was not a beggar but he needed money. He claimed he was from Nepal visiting and while he was here his passport was stolen and he was out of money and needed to get to Delhi to get another passport. Of course we had no way of knowing if his story was true but Tilak gave him some money to try to help him out. After that we decided to walk around for awhile to get away from the beggars – it was overwhelming.

The train arrived at 10:50a.m. Tilak had purchased us Second Class seats this time and it was significantly more comfortable of a trip. We had our own compartment. They brought us blankets and pillows and snacks to our seats. We enjoyed watching the scenery outside of our window. There were miles and miles of sugar cane fields. There were kids playing cricket. Women laying laundry out to dry. Very old buildings made of brick and stone that were falling apart but used to house families. We saw a slaughter house outside of one of the Muslim communities. The stray dogs in that area looked very healthy. We saw a mosque that looked like a miniature Taj Mahal.

We opened the door of the train compartment that we were in and held to the handle to look out the train. It felt nice to hang out the door and feel the wind hitting my face and know that I was in a completely different part of the world and had the pleasure to see the beautiful things that I was seeing. How wonderful!

We had lunch on the train. You had the choice of rice with an Indian dish or a Chinese dish. We got some of both and ate what we could. It wasn’t that good.

We found out that the train was running late and were not sure when we would be to Delhi.

We ended up arriving at 5:00pm. (We were supposed to arrive at 2:30pm) We were met with pollution and crowds once again.

We got a taxi to take us to our hotel. On the way there we saw some really creative poor children who were entertaining the persons sitting at the stop light in exchange for money. It was two little boys, probably brothers. One was about 8 yrs old and held a drum. He played the drum while his brother (probably 5 yrs old) with a mustache painted on his face would dance, jump, do cartwheels and jump through a hoop. It was absolutely adorable. I could have just squeezed them. Unfortunately it all happened so fast that we did not get a chance to give them money before the taxi driver took off when the light turned green. I wish that I would have thought to get their picture as well. I will definitely hold that memory in my mind for a long time.

When we got to the hotel (27 Jorbagh) we were not pleasantly surprised. It was supposed to be a nice room that we were renting. The reservations were for 2 double beds and a semi-deluxe room. The room had two very small twin size beds only. We asked for a cot and made another pallet with our sleeping bag and blankets trying to make room for all of us and Llyn and Carter. We unpacked and decided to go to the All American Restaurant that was mentioned in our Lonely Planet book. We walked to the restaurant. It was not too far from the hotel. We had to cover our faces to protect ourselves from the smog.

The restaurant was pretty good – almost like American food. We pigged out!

When we got back to the hotel Tilak worked out getting a taxi driver to take him to the airport later to pick up our friends Llyn and Carter. They are to join us for the last week that we are in India.

I decided to take advantage of our bathroom that had a shower! Turns out the shower nozzle did not work and so I took yet another bucket bath and the kids and I went to sleep since we had to get up at 4:30am to catch our train ride to Agra tomorrow!

The kids and I slept in at Hotel Florence. Tilak on the other hand could not sleep well. He was up with the light on in the bathroom reading the Lonely Planet and trying to plan our transportation from city to city for while we are in India and also find things for us to do in Delhi the next day. I woke once in the night and spent a little time with Tilak trying to make plans. When I woke, I heard horns honking in the street outside of our hotel and people talking. I immediately was excited to see this new world. There were several power outages while we were getting ready in the hotel. The hotel had a generator that kicked in when the power would go out. When we were ready to go and explore we packed our things and went down to the lobby to work out a taxi. The taxi that the hotel wanted to set up for us was too expensive and so we decided to go find one on our own. We left our bags at the hotel and went out to explore Delhi. Immediately leaving the hotel we saw all the shops were open. The shops looked a lot like run-down storage buildings with the garage door that opens. There were lots of people walking on the streets. There were cars, motor rickshaws, cycle rickshaws, bicycles, motorcycles, busses, etc all on the tiny road we walked. The pollution was very strong smelling and the litter was every where. I did notice several women and men sweeping the ground outside of their shops with home-made brooms made of twigs. The power lines were a mangled mess! There was no sense of organization to the utility poles. And some of the wires were put together with string. No wonder we had so many power outages in the hotel! Many of the stores were guarded by security guards with machine guns as we saw at the airport. I found that intimidating. Kali was quickly overwhelmed by the pollution as she was last the night before. She began to cry a little bit and I reminded her that this was a country much different than ours and that we should try to enjoy seeing something new. I assured her that we were NOT there to stay but to explore. She seemed unsure of everything that she was seeing. We walked around for sometime and decided to find a taxi to take us to the National Museum there in New Delhi. We found a taxi stand and Tilak asked for a rate of 140 rupees to take us to the museum. The man agreed and placed us in his taxi. He then looked at Tilak and said “300 rupees. Fixed rate!” and then he slammed the door closed. We could have refused and got out of the taxi, but we were too tired to do that so we let him take us to the museum. We just watched out our windows from the taxi. The museum was gated and had a couple guards there. The grounds were kept very clean. All persons entering the museum had to lock their baggage up in a separate building before entering. The males and the females had separate entrances into the museum and you were searched/frisked like they do at the airports. The cost was 300 rupees per adult and the children were free. We were given headsets so that we could take an audio tour of the museum and learn about what we were seeing. We had to leave our passports with them to get the headsets. The inside of the museum was circular with three levels. It looks square from the outside. It was lunch time when we got there and there was a cafeteria there on the second floor so we decided to eat before we began our tour. The restaurant was small with a small Indian cuisine buffet (4 steam pots with rice, lentils, paneer and and a vegetable mix). All of the staff greeted us as we came in and were eager to please us. We ordered bottled water to drink. Texil did not like any of the food but forced down some rice and naan for me. Kali enjoyed the rice and naan. I enjoyed a little bit of all of it. Tilak would have enjoyed it all as well but he began to feel badly (probably from no sleep, and all the stimulation of this town) and could not eat much.

Throughout the museum there are several god and goddess statues in the halls and the museum was sectioned into lots of rooms with different themes (coin collections, musical instruments, war weapons, old silk tapestries, mariner, etc.). The kids enjoyed using the headsets to learn and we spent several hours there. Tilak continued to feel badly so we decided to go back to the hotel and let him rest. On our way out when we were checking our headsets back in to get our passports another foreigner wanted to take Kali’s picture for a school project she said that she was working on. Kali agreed. Outside of the museum there was a glassed-in elephant carriage that we took pictures in front of. Across the street from the museum we found a nice taxi (Mercedes). They charged us the same amount as the old taxi that we had on the way there and this one was clean and it had a/c!

On the drive back to the hotel at many of the stop signs/lights beggars were coming up to the taxi looking for money. Tilak told me not to make eye contact because then they won’t leave if you do, but I could not help it I had to. The first woman that came to our door looked very young (around 16-17) and had a small baby boy (around 16-18months) in her arms. They had a sad look on their faces and it tore at my heart strings to see this. She and the baby were dressed in dirty clothing and their hands and fingernails were dirty as well. The baby did not have any pants or shoes on – only a sweater. She was tapping on the window, putting her hand out and then putting to her mouth. She would then show me her baby. I looked them both in the eyes and smiled and was trying to share love with them since I was not giving them money. The baby began pointing at the window and I would put my finger up to the window on his. He would laugh and I would do it again. The mother smiled at me and continued to put her hand out in a gesture for money. She walked away when the light turned green.

At another light there was a woman who was deformed that came to the window. She was short and had a large hump on her back that shifted her whole body to one side. It was hard for her to hold her head up. She was a little more abrupt when she came to the window. She knocked hard to make sure she got everyone’s attention. She put her hand out and to her mouth as the other woman had. I smiled at her and tried my best to show her that I cared for her as a human being. She seemed to only want one thing from me and that was money. I decided I would give to her but the taxi driver took off because the light had turned green. I wanted to take a picture of these women and the child that I had met but felt that it may be rude. I will remember them for a long time though.

When we got back to the hotel room the kids and I wrote in our journals and Tilak tried to take a nap. His nap was interrupted by his hugging the toilet bowl to throw up. I felt bad for him. We decided not to go out for supper that night. We stayed in the room and had snacks we had brought from home and played cards that we had brought from home. Soon it was time to leave to get to the train station for our overnight ride to Kathgodan. The taxi driver could not take us all the way to the train station because he did not have the right permit. He had to drop us a block from the station. We got out and walked the rest of the way. It was very crowded with cars, people, etc. on the way there.

When we got to the train station it was filthy. People were laying all around us. Some were homeless persons, some were sadhus, but most were just everyday Indians waiting on their train to come. We began to look for a place for us to wait for our train. Some Indian teenagers wanted a picture of us and then us to take one of them. We did. I thought it was strange the way they acted – suspiciously- but we just carried on. So after that we found a place on the ground like everyone else and waited for our train to come. We bought sleeper class tickets for this overnight trip. When the train came we found our seats and began talking with the persons sitting there with us. After awhile other persons where showing up saying they had the same seats as us. We pulled out our itinerary and found that we were in the correct seats but in the incorrect train car. We needed to move down a car. We apologized and moved to our true correct seats. We made small talk with the persons whom we would be bunking with. Most of them spoke enough English that we could carry a conversation. Soon the kids and I decided to get into our bunks. Tilak was enjoying a conversation with the gentleman next to him.

The bunks were 3 layers. One set of three were parallel to the train and the other two sets were parallel to each other which created a box-like cubby. This is how all these sleeper cars were set up. There were about 4 cubbies per train car. The beds were plastic with a small layer of foam in them. When we got in our bunks (we were all on the top bunks) I loaded us down with mosquito repellent. I had noticed mosquitoes right away when I got into the train. We then pulled out our journals and wrote about our day. After Kali wrote in her journal she started talking and writing notes back and forth with some teenage girls in the cubby next to ours. She really enjoyed doing this. It caught the attention of several boys in the cubby next to the girls and they began talking to Kali as well. For a short time Kali got down from her bunk and sat with the girls and they shared their blanket with her. The train made several stops. At one of the stops one of the teenage boys who had been watching Kali with the girls asked my permission to take her off of the train to get her some wafer cookies. I did NOT feel comfortable with that and said No and by that time Tilak was in the bunk below me and said No in unison with me. I would like to believe that he was only being kind, but for some reason it made me uncomfortable and I told Kali it was time to go to sleep. I got her snuggled in her bunk. Texil had been playing his game boy and decided he wanted to snuggle with me in my bunk. The kids fell to sleep pretty fast and I could not sleep well. I am sure it was a combination of worrying about Kali since she was in a different bunk, swaying back and forth from the train running on the tracks and my mind thinking of the things we were going to do next.