India: Wednesday (9-3-08)

Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that I visited a very overpopulated, very busy city in India. I didn’t travel to the rest of the country. It is like if someone visited Manhattan, New York the rest of the United States is hardly like that.

I forgot to mention that the flight from Paris to Delhi was only ½ full so I went to a row of 3 empty seats, put up the armrests and slept for a while. That was nice. I spent time charging the portable dvd player before we left, but it wouldn’t turn on:( The laptop battery was charged, but only enough to watch one Nip/Tuck episode. We went to bed late at night on Tuesday when we got to AC’s Aunt & Uncle’s place. Instead of calling them aunt and uncle, we call them Cha-Cha (term for Dad’s younger brother) and Cha-Chi. The names differ according to mother vs father’s side of the family and whether they are older or younger than Mom or Dad. It was confusing at first, but now I get it. Cha-Cha owns a factory that makes rubber seals. Since he owns the place he doesn’t go in everyday, but when he needs to.

This is the neighborhood where they live. Even though these look like apartments, each house is much bigger than an apartment in the US. Wednesday (9-2-08)

I woke up early Wednesday morning and sent some emails, them went back to sleep until 10 am. I woke to what sounded like 20 people in the house. It was only a couple of cousins that came to see us. I drank lots of juice in India; they had Tropicana mixed berry, OJ, and cranberry. The house we were staying at also had water filters, so water was not a problem. The shower was being worked on, so the shower head did not work. Most people in India fill up a big bucket of water in the shower and then turn the water off, so they don’t waste water. Every bathroom that we saw had these buckets in the shower. The bedroom that we stayed in had a window air conditioner and a ceiling fan; the master bedroom had the same. The rest of the house only had ceiling fans. We did go to India in a Hot month, but because AC’s cousin was getting married. It is better to go in November or December. In the evening we went to Cha-Cha’s daughter Minoo’s house for dinner. She has 2 cute kids. Everyone in India went out of their way to ask what I wanted to eat. I like chicken and can’t handle real spicy food, so everyone made special food for me.

Minoo's family:

Something else that warrants a post all to its self is the Driving In India, if you want to call it that. The roads that we traveled on are all paved. The driving is a free-for-all. Cars share the roads with large trucks, buses, motorcycles, scooters, auto rickshaws, bike rickshaws and cows. This is a very interesting mix. Nobody uses there side mirrors, so everyone honks their horns whenever they are passing someone, as you can probably imagine this is constantly. They drive fast and stop fast. Sometimes they follow the traffic lights, sometimes they stop then go anyway. Cha-Cha hired a driver to take us around in a mini-van. This driver was horrible. His name was Bitu and he says he gets a little confused at night. Our response: A LITTLE CONFUSED?? He drove the wrong way on 2 different one-way streets!! He missed an exit off the express-way so he backed up! It was totally nerve-wrecking. I get car sick here, but I sit in the front and am ok. In India I got sick every time I rode in the car. That made it difficult to want to travel far.

Wednesday was also the evening that AC and Cha-Cha went to the airport to pick up the golf clubs, which took 3 hours. Cha-Chi does not wake up for the door bell, so I had to get up and get the door when they came back. The problem was that the door was locked from the inside and I had to wake her up to let them in. That was kind of scary to find out that the door locks from the inside. I was thinking about fires, but AC said the houses were all concrete and we didn’t need to worry about it.

So far I have really only seen India at night, but I have been able to see wild dogs everywhere and cows on the road. I have also seen homeless people sleeping off on the side of the roads, some under mosquito nets.