Goodbye India

By tavishf - June 09, 2014

On Tuesday (6/3) we traveled from Kerala to Delhi. Our flight had a layover in Mumbai, so it was a long day of travel. For some reason, we had to go through security again upon arrival in Mumbai. We are still unsure why, but the best explanation is that flying domestically in India is much less structured/regulated than in the US. We took our second flight and drove to our hotel in Delhi. On the way, we drove down the “embassy road” where we saw the embassies of many countries next to one another, including the good old US of A. I almost went out for street food with a few friends and my professor, but he said we should not lest we get sick before seeing the Taj. We postponed for another night and instead ate at a really good restaurant.

My group toured Delhi on Wednesday (6/4). We began by visiting Gandhi’s cremation site. It is a simple monument, “just as Gandhi would have wanted it” according to our tour guide. Next we took a bicycle rickshaw ride around the city. This ride was my favorite part of the day—swerving through narrow streets around cars, pedestrians, and bicyclists; seeing the vibrant city life; puzzling at the confusing masses of electric wires; and enjoying the hot Delhi breeze. We then stopped for lunch and continued the afternoon with a drive by the Parliament building and Prime Minister’s house. We had a group dinner at a Delhi restaurant and went to bed early in order to rest up for the next day’s early morning.

We began Thursday by leaving our hotel at 6:00am. The drive to the Taj Mahal is 4 hours each way, and we wanted to get there as early as possible to “avoid the heat.” The Taj is incredible. There are walls all around the Taj Mahal so you cannot get a good view of it until you walk through the main gate, where you can then view the Taj in all its grandeur. The preceding gardens and fountains are really pretty. The inside of the mausoleum is relatively small, containing only the tombs of the king and queen. The whole structure is made of white marble, a rare resource. Everything about the building’s appearance and its design is perfect. For example, the four minarets are tilted slightly away from the main building so that if a major earthquake occurs, the main building will remain intact because the minarets will fall outwards. We then visited the Agra Fort, which paled in comparison to the Taj Mahal but was still a cool structure. It was approximately 47 degrees Celsius, so we were all very ready to get back on the bus in the early afternoon.

Before hopping back on the bus, Professor Ganguly bought me a sweet lassi from a guy with a cart on the street. I have grown to love the taste of lassi. Most lassis are not flavored with mango or other fruits—instead, they are offered sweet or salty. I always went for sweet. In Delhi that night, Professor Ganguly, Dr. Iacono, Devashish (TA) and his wife, a couple friends and I went out for some street food. We had some pani puri first. Pani puri are golf-ball-sized fried shells that are filled with chickpeas, a spicy sauce, and tamarind juice. We stood around the stall in a semi-circle as the man one-by-one made the pani puri and handed them to us in turn. They are mostly liquid and have layers of flavor, a combination of spicy, sweet, and crispy. We then had another dish, but I have no idea what it was called. It was delicious and the spiciest food I had all trip. It was made of potatoes and some other stuff in a yellow sauce, served with a fried bread product for dipping. It was so good I finished off a friend’s bowl despite the sweat dripping off my face from the heat and the spicy food.

Friday (6/6) was my last day in India. We had the day off to finish shopping and pack up for our respective flights. A few friends and I had a bit of a fiasco trying to go to a different market a few km away from our hotel. We took a few rickshaws, but when we got to the “correct” location, the driver told us that it was not a souvenir market we had asked to go to, but rather a used auto part market. He offered to take us to a “bazaar” with lots of souvenirs and handcrafts. I assumed that our tour guide at the hotel had mistakenly told us the name of the wrong market, so we agreed and allowed the rickshaw driver to take us to his preferred market. These shops were expensive (though good quality) but not what we were looking for. We eventually just told the drivers that we wanted to go back to the hotel and not see any more shops. Later we found out that the original market does exist, but he did not take us to it. He took us near it then to some shops where he probably gets a small cut of all sales. As far as scams go, this only cost a few dollars for the tuk tuk ride, which was worth a few dollars because it was really fun. Unfortunate, but not costly. We returned to the market a couple blocks from our hotel to buy more souvenirs.

Dinner on our last night was at The Spice Route, a restaurant in the Imperial Hotel. It is considered one of the top ten restaurants in the world! The food, a mix of South Asian and Southeast Asian food, was excellent. The ambiance was incredible. The walls are all hand-painted, each of the nine sections has a different meaning, and the restaurant is designed with the principles of feng shui. Professor Ganguly and Dr. Iacono thanked the group for the wonderful trip, and we presented our guides and university officials gifts as tokens of our appreciation for the work they all put into the trip. Sadly, we had to eventually leave the restaurant and head to the airport via a stop at the hotel. I made many new friends on this trip that I already can’t wait to see again in the fall back in Boston.

A post about Switzerland is coming soon!

Rickshaw ride around Delhi