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| People trying to get money at the India Reserve Bank |
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| Shopping at Ogaan |
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| Goan Shrimp Curry |
Driving in Delhi
End of Day Cocktails, it is 6pm
Dancing Celebrating Lohri
Not all A380’s are the same. We flew on Lufthansa from Los
Angeles to Frankfurt. Lets just stay we like Singapore Air better. Our flight was delayed due to the welcome rain in LA. We
arrived in Frankfurt and had 1 hour to make our connecting flight to Delhi. We literally
ran for what seemed like 2 miles to get to the gate, it was so far from our incoming
flight. We finally got there and it was a ridiculous scrim of people trying to
get on the plane. This was the chaos of India vs the authoritarianism of
Germany. India was winning. We asked several Lufthansa employees if there was a
special line for Business Class. They said no.
An Indian couple had been on our plane to Frankfurt and we
had chatted with them. The woman had to go to the bathroom and took a small
elevator up to use the lounge. She returned to tell us the unmarked lounge was
the Business Lounge and had direct access to the airplane. We left the crowd
and were internally grateful to her. Why it wasn’t marked or the Airline employees didn’t direct it to us is beyond me.
We finally arrived in Delhi around 1:30 am, were met my
Vijay our trusted driver and friend who drove us into Delhi to the Imperial Hotel
where we would spend the next 3 nights. In the morning after breakfast that
included Poha (my favorite India breakfast treat). We were picked up by Vijay.
We then drove over to pick up John Carpenter, our friend from San Francisco, who
was joining us for part of the trip.
Ogaan is Cathy’s favorite store in Delhi. We hit 3 of them
in various locations. Good news: Ogaan was having a sale. We discovered at the
Ogaan store at Hauz Khaz they have an excellent restaurant. It has been open
for 3 years but somehow we never knew it. The food was great for a light lunch.
The air in Delhi can be retched but today it was clear with blue sky visible.
We returned to the hotel about 4pm for a short Jet Lagged
induced nap. Today was a Punjabi festival: Lohri. It is a harvest festival
celebrated by fire and dancing. At our hotel – The Imperial, that is owned by a
Punjabi family, Lori was celebrated. A huge fire was built and there was dancing
around the fire. It was definitely fun.
After a wine and a Martini we headed to our favorite Delhi Restaurant: Vida for fantastical Manchurian Cauliflower, Spinach Chat and other
great foods.
A word amount money. There is none in India, or at least
very little. We had about $900 Rupees leftover from our last trip and didn’t
see any reason to convert them back to dollars, as we knew we would be
returning to India and would then have to pay another conversion fee. India last
fall, decided to declare all of their
1000 and 500 rupee notes worthless unless you turned them into a bank for new notes
in a 48 hour period. The idea was to defeat the wide spread corruption in India
of “Black Money” undeclared for tax purposes. Our rupees were then worthless. We
tried to exchange them today at the Indian Reserve Bank, but they said only people
with Indian Passports could go in. We haven’t given up an will try again
tomorrow. Oh well it is only money. There is a limit on how many US dollars you can convert into Rupees. It is
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