Three weeks ago, John, Ian, and I flew to Delhi for a few days of exploration in northern India, a few days of relaxation, then a friend's wedding in Goa.
Northern India
Fortunately, we’d all gotten a decent amount of sleep on the 8-hour flight over to India, so we were able to take in a bit of the scenery and the experience during the drive. The road width, structure, and markings had absolutely no correlation with what actually happened on them. Although the roads varied between two and four lanes, that didn’t stop anyone from taking, well, anything with wheels in any direction they chose.
It wasn’t uncommon to see an auto-rickshaw, a few bikes, a donkey pulling an overloaded cart, a few trucks, and cars four- or five-abreast in the space where maybe two of them should have fit. Not only were large trucks passing right next to bikes, but occasionally someone would decide it wasn’t worth the effort of crossing several lanes to move with the flow of traffic, so they’d move against traffic. There were quite a few times we saw a tractor pulling an overloaded cart of bricks, straw, or other materials, blocking at least one lane, moving toward the flow of traffic. Let’s just say I’ve never heard a car horn used in as many different ways – it worked as a “watch out, I’m here” as well as “you’re in my way,” “what’re you doing?!?” and other messages.
I’m not quite sure how, but our driver was able to keep us moving through this chaos without coming into contact with another vehicle. More power to him!
On the drive, we saw drastically different parts of the country. Leaving Delhi, the road snaked between supports of what will soon be an elevated highway and a tram line, supposedly in time for the Commonwealth Games later this year. As we went a bit further, we saw areas with slums stretching from next to the road, far into the distance. Getting further yet from the city, we eventually saw wide open fields with brick kilns built scattered about the countryside, and with people laboring with brickmaking in the 105+ degree heat.
Agra
We got into Agra shortly before sunset, and had our first experience with hotels. We’d booked all our rooms for the trip through Taj Hotels website – we figured that if the resort where the wedding was being hosted was a Taj property, we wouldn’t be going wrong by booking the rest of the hotels through them.
The driver pulled up to the gate of the hotel, stopped, and popped the hood for the security team to inspect the whole car. After that, we were let close to the building to unload and check in. We then had to go through metal detectors ourselves and have all our luggage scanned with airport-style x-ray devices before being allowed into the lobby. This became standard operating procedure for every place we stayed the rest of the trip – I guess they’re rightfully a bit cautious after the attack on the Taj hotel in Mumbai last year.
As soon as we walked through the scanners into the lobby, we had our first exposure to another regularly occurring quirk – the power went out. You could hear the “clunk” of air conditioning suddenly stopping, and all the lights went out, but nobody flinched or said anything – life continued, staff checked us in with the still-functioning computers, and we began to learn that this was a regular occurrence that doesn’t actually impact much of anything.
By this point, we were all a bit exhausted, and just had a quick swim in the pool, dinner at the hotel, and crashed. This evening was also my first and worst experience with Delhi Belly – the well-known experience where your body doesn’t quite know how to accommodate the changes in climate, food, water, and everything else. It made for a bit of an interesting night, but I was at least mostly with it for the next day’s exploration…
The Taj Mahal
Tuesday morning, we checked out of the hotel and rode over to the Taj Mahal. Before we even got out of the van, a guy had made us as his mark and determined he was going to be our tour guide. We didn’t acknowledge him right away, but after the first few minutes and when he started giving us some helpful advice, we decided we’d at least start the bargaining and see what type of a charge he would have for taking us through the sites.
It ended up being a good choice to hire him – he got us around a few of the queues, pointed out a few good photo opportunities with no crowds, became our group photographer, and had some interesting random knowledge, too!
I have to admit, on first walking through the entrance and being able to see the building, it was incredible! I’d expected “okay, it’ll be a big building” – yes, it certainly was, but was also much more powerful than I’d expected it to be! We took a few hours to explore inside and outside the cathedral, before heading off to Fort Agra for a quick walk around and a few photos.
We then decided we’d head off to see Fatehpur Sikri, a lost city from millennia ago. It was a 40k drive out into the country, taking a solid hour to get there. Once we did, we were immediately attacked by a group of men offering to take us to the site and be our guides. Our driver cautioned us about this, but we figured it would be a better choice than walking multiple kilometers up the hill in 100+ degree heat.
This led us to my one and only experience in life on an autorickshaw. Think of it like a three-wheeled bike with a 5-hp lawnmower engine, carrying four tourists or 15+ locals. They took us up to a large temple, plaza, and building. Unlike the other tourist sites we’d seen, this had many more people begging, selling junk, and just lying around throughout the site. We were a bit surprised, but figured we might as well continue through the area.
Eventually the guide took us to a temple at the center of the site, and explained a tradition where we had to give something to the goddess who was there, making a wish. Conveniently, the “something” that we should be giving to the goddess was a shawl or other piece of fabric that one of the guys sitting nearby was selling at drastically inflated prices. After much haggling and being told repeatedly that it was for either “charity” or “a good cause,” we decided we didn’t particularly need to make any wishes, and excused ourselves.
We got them to drive us back down the hill to the van, when we realized that we may not have actually seen it all… There were many tour buses there, but we had seen enough tourists to fill maybe at most one bus. We showed a few photos to the driver, who said “yes, yes” implying that we’d been to the proper site, but that didn’t give us too much confidence. We began the drive back to Delhi, not knowing whether or not we’d actually seen the site we set out to see!
After looking a bit on Google Maps, we realized that yes, we were actually in Fatehpur Sikri, but we’d only seen a small part of the whole site. Alas… we should have taken the driver’s advice and not even bothered with the hour’s drive there, but it was an amusing experience regardless!
After another six-hour drive back into Delhi, we checked in at our hotel late Tuesday night and once again just had dinner and drinks there. After a western-style breakfast the next morning, we were off to the airport and to Goa.
Goa
It’s difficult to describe just how different Goa was from our first two days in the north of the country. Having left a large international airport in the landlocked dusty city of Delhi, we arrived to the tropical, coastal state of Goa and headed for a coastal resort.
We got in late on Wednesday afternoon, were greeted with coconut water, dropped everything in our rooms, and promptly headed for the pool. It looked out onto the beach, the ocean, cliffs to one side, and a beached ore carrier in the other direction. Quite a picturesque setting, even with the ship there!
We headed off into town for dinner that night, then crashed back at the hotel. Thursday was a quiet day with massages, a game of scrabble looking out over the beach, some more pool time, then dinner back out in town again, this time with a few more friends who’d come in over the course of the day.
The days Friday and Saturday were quite similar – relaxing by the pool, exploring the beach a bit, and just generally enjoying some down time.
Saturday night, we all changed into our kurtas for the first wedding reception. The reception was absolutely incredible – there was a dance floor, DJ, sofas, dinner tables, and a buffet all on a cliff overlooking the sunset in the ocean.
We got to see Kanika and Rob, the bride and groom, enter in their traditional Indian wear, then Kanika’s relatives performed a set of dances, gave several speeches, and finally we got to see Kanika and Rob dance before the dance floor opened up for the whole crowd! All in all, a great night!
Although we had a bit of a slow start the next morning, we went off to see several ceremonies through the day, before the big event of the evening. Rob, his family, and all the male guests met to get ready for the event – we ended up having turbans made for us, then had a bit of a procession across the grounds of the resort, representing the groom entering the bride’s hometown for the beginning of the ceremony. After an hour or more of dancing our way over to the wedding location, Rob entered and they had the full marriage ceremony that evening, followed by a dinner, photos, and a bit of quieter dancing than the previous night.
The next morning, most of the group headed back to London, New York, Mumbai, or wherever everyone calls home. Instead, I made my way back to Delhi, to work the week there.
Delhi
At work, half of my role has to do with technology development, so I’ve been leading a team of 20 or so developers based in India who do our actual programming and design work. Since I was already in the country, I figured it’d make sense to spend some time with them, to put names with faces and to get a better understanding of the work environment.
I gave a “here’s what our system does and here’s why we’re enhancing it” presentation to the full team on Tuesday morning, then met with smaller groups throughout the remainder of the week to work through specific functional requirements, address questions, make design decisions, and confirm where the relationship with this contract vendor is likely to head over the remainder of the year.
This was a definite change of pace from the prior week’s complete disconnection from the chaos of work, but absolutely valuable experience.
In all, an absolutely great trip! Now, I’m just trying to take it easy for the next week before running the marathon here in London next Sunday!
