Buddy/Swap and Delhi's Contrasts
As it turned out, while in Gujarat, I received an email from my previous travel buddy JM (see all the TNB posts from December/January) saying that there was another Rice Alum coming to India, a girl named Kim Swanson, and he wanted to know if I could be in Delhi to pick her up at the airport to smooth her transition into the country.
I might have already mentioned elsewhere in this blog that I think Delhi is perhaps the worst city in which to introduce a first-time visitor to India. And I want everyone to fall in love with this country as I have over the past 6 months. I think there is a lot to love and learn in and about India, but since there are no second impressions, just stepping out of Delhi's airport can be one HUGE strike.
I emailed back saying I was currently traveling with Mary, but if I was going to be in Delhi when she arrived, I would most definitely pick her up. Lo and behold, she says she's arriving on January 30, at 10:30 AM (on the same flight that Mary came on a few weeks earlier). Mary was leaving for Nepal on January 30th at 1:00 PM. Not only was I going to be in Delhi, I was going to be at the airport already, too! Some things are meant to happen, and I'm convinced I was meant to pick up Kim Swanson at the airport.
So out went Mary and in came Kim. Our first stop was the backpacker stop - Paharganj. After stepping out of our taxi, we were immediately accosted by a flurry of touts. Amid their pitches for hotels, one dropped the words, "brand new hotel." So I said, let's check it out. And for the first time, a tout actually got me a really good deal. The Star Villas DX (deluxe - and they weren't lying) Hotel was brand new and Kim expertly haggled her way to a room for Rs. 400/- a night - by far the best value room I had ever seen in India. All the hot water you could want, a comfy foam mattress, new-and-working satellite television, and a wool blanket. Thinking over to my uncle's house and its mattresses and odors, I actually contemplated getting a room there too.
But what surprised me most was that Kim just dropped her bags off in the room and said, okay, let's explore the city. I was blown away by how much energy she had. After flying in from who-knows-where-developing-country-in-Africa, she spent a full day in and around the city. We hung out in Paharganj, went to Lajpat Nagar (where Kim got henna on her hands), got her a SIM card in Ansal Plaza and stopped in Connaught Place for dinner and some drinks. It's the most active day I have probably ever had in Delhi, and she was doing it fresh off an overnight international plane flight!
The few days that she and I spent hanging out together in New Delhi were full of the contrasts that I think embody India so well. I would meet her in the dusty, dirty, packed, and tout-infested Paharganj where she spent Rs. 400/- on a hotel and we would head over to Connaught Place or a market somewhere and find a restaurant (had to have dosas for Kim) and pay $1 for a stuff-yourself-silly-thali. We'd then talk, people watch, and haggle over Rs. 20/- trinkets for most of the afternoon, and then when we were pooped would head to nice restaurant for dinner - and then we'd leave India for a while by entering DV8 or QB'A, both really posh bars (QB'A has 3 levels with a VIP island in the middle and fiber optic lighting in the ceiling) and drop Rs. 1500/- on some dumplings and a few mocktails (the alcoholic drinks sounded really bad). And then we'd emerge again and she'd head back to her hotel in the narrow, dank, wet (and now dark) alleys of Paharganj, and I'd fight tooth-and-nail with a rickshaw driver to take me back home for Rs. 50/-.
India's newfound wealth has made Delhi a pretty amazing city. In a 5 square kilometer area, it houses the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich - and caters to all of them. And even the burgeoning middle class is catered for too. Did you know that McDonalds India delivers?
How amazing is that?
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