Running in Delhi, 2013

Running in Delhi

When I came up with this title (pretty hard work), I hoped it wouldn’t be ironic. I was heading to India for the second time in early March of 2013 and was hoping our travel schedule would allow me time for a run most mornings. I received a schedule from my friends, Aby and Shoba Philip, whom I’d met and worked with for over two years at Good Shepherd Hospital in Siteki, Swaziland in the early-mid 2000s, but I couldn’t really understand it well, and apparently it had already been changed several times.

The chance of irony increased when I contracted influenza from a patient in mid-February. I missed three days of work, unheard of for me, and had a fever for 8 straight days. I had roughly ten days once the fever stopped to recuperate, but while doing that appeared to develop a sinus infection. My running was reduced, before leaving, to a tight-hamstringed jog in the early March chill of Pennsylvania and an abbreviated track workout at the track on the east side of Manhattan at about 6th St the day I left. The doctors with whom I’d been working had each written me a prescription for antibiotics on my last day at work (at which point I had been ill for 2 weeks), but when I went to get them filled the next day, the cheap generic drug Doxycycline had jumped in price to over $100 for 20, and another antibiotic, the generic of Augmentin, was even more expensive than that (I don’t have health insurance or a prescription plan – that is another story). I wasn’t feeling THAT bad, so I didn’t get either medication and thought, if things got worse, I could always get something in India, the home of many huge generic pharmaceutical companies.

Running, though important for my overall and mental wellbeing, was always going to be a sideshow anyway in a country like India. India is not known for its sports or its devotion to fitness. It is dead last in Olympic medals per capita (Of countries that have won medals. Australia is usually #1), and, though it fields competitive cricket, field hockey and badminton teams, they are about it. It is safe to say no one who is fit has gone to India and returned in better fitness. I was in really good shape, even for me, before I got ill, and the illness took some of the pressure off because I wouldn’t need to do anything extreme, but I would at the least need to try to regain some level of conditioning while eating all that Indian food.

I landed in Delhi after a 14 hour flight from JFK; the flight itself was not bad, but the seats on the undisclosed airline were very uncomfortable. The highlight for me was a quite long and in depth explanation of how the airplane toilet worked and what was allowed to go into it during the safety video. As best I could tell when I used the bathroom, the passengers took that video message to mean everything went on the floor.

A driver met me outside the terminal, and he quickly immersed us in Delhi traffic, something no one from the USA would adjust to driving in easily. There are apparently only two traffic laws in India: don’t hit anyone and don’t let anyone hit you. Anything else goes, and it appears really close calls are the norm (and perhaps even the goal). The only saving grace is that it mostly unfolds at low speeds, but enough bad things happen that India easily contends for the world lead in traffic fatalities.

We eased into a very narrow alley and about halfway down pulled close to a brownish façade. Time to get out – it was my hotel. It was also about 4:45pm in Delhi (India made the odd choice of making its overall time 30 minutes faster or slower than it otherwise would be; Delhi was 9.5 hours ahead of NYC as best I could tell, and the time remained the same throughout the large country). After the usual check-in confusion, including needing to hand over my passport so someone could take it to be photocopied for their records, I was taken in the coffin-sized elevator up two floors to my room, where the magnetic card system never responded to anything but a master keycard (every time I needed to get in I had to get someone with the master keycard to come there).

I had no idea before I got there what kind of surroundings I would be in while staying in Delhi, and my hopes for a quiet, somewhat suburban locale were very much dashed. Even the narrow alley was abuzz with chatting men, honking horns, rickshaws, and barking dogs, and there did not appear to be anything but dense city around there. I had no difficulty in dissuading myself from an afternoon run in the kind of chaos we’d just traversed (it had taken about 10 minutes to cover the last half mile), so I unpacked and then ordered room service, trying to stay awake at least until 9pm so I might have a chance of sleeping through the night.

The room service food was quite good and very cheap; I even got some ice cream. The room was a comfortable temperature and had some ambient noise from the nearby elevator shaft and the plumbing, so I easily fell asleep, but after midnight the incessant barking from the legion of stray dogs in the alley made me get up to search for and insert my ear plugs, which helped a little.

I was up early, well before the sun, and I debated the best way to try to run. It was better to wait until it was light so I could see where I was so as to remember, and maybe there would be enough people about to distract the stray dogs from their instinctual excitement upon seeing a human running. I like dogs, but I have been chased and harassed by enough dogs around the world to at least respect and possibly be mildly afraid of what a stimulated canine can do to a bare-legged human. It was with some trepidation I departed the hotel, holding the hotel’s business card in case I got lost or run over, and after a false start as the desk clerk tried to get me to run in the small (I am talking average suburban back yard-sized) park right across from the hotel which was fortunately locked, I started to walk up the alley. My GPS watch fired up surprisingly quickly, but I walked to near the intersection with what had been a crowded market when I arrived. There were a few barks from the strays in the market as I jogged around the corner and started to increase the pace in the market, heading to my right. There was a stray dog about every 50 feet, but they all looked like they would only chase me if I held an already prepared meal for them; they were up for no challenges.

The market ended in a T-junction with a busy divided road; the sidewalk on my side was not promising either way, so I crossed during a lull and ran into the traffic on and off the sidewalk. There was little traffic at this hour and I started to relax. I noted a sign on the right for a hospital and found there to be a wide, well-sidewalked, divided road heading to it. I took that.

Just as my elation at finding so nice a place was ascending, there was a road construction project in my way. Several wiry Indian men were standing and squatting on their heels (a very common posture there, one few Americans could sustain) around a metal asphalt cooker and piles of gravel. I was able to get around it without trouble by scooting to the opposite sidewalk, but I was quickly coming to the end of this relatively peaceful road and had barely gone a mile, so I was going to have to turn.

Turn I did, onto the least crowded alley there, heading to my right. That got more crowded, most notably with a pack of 6 or 7 dogs, so I turned again, then again, then headed back and through another junction, until it seemed like I would hit 4 miles back in the quiet, dog-filled market near the hotel, which was my goal. Along the way, I saw goats and cows grazing on the garbage in the streets. There was hardly a blade of grass for them otherwise.

I saw the bus for my travel company in the market; that was my landmark for my turn back into the hotel alley. I started to walk down it but it became obvious it was the wrong alley when my hotel failed to appear. Rather than go back past the people I’d passed already, I kept going, thinking there would be a right turn soon and then I could double back that way. Of course, when I took the right, I forgot how small that alley was, so I was wandering about, just a block away geographically, but very far by every other measure. Not one to ask directions, it took some hard swallowing to ask a scruffy looking guy, and he called to a young man who came running over. They peered at the hotel business card intently. The young man then vaguely pointed in the direction I knew I would have to go: back to the market.

It wasn’t far, and I saw the travel company’s bus again. This time there was a man washing the windshield, so I asked him and he pointed out the narrow alley I’d overlooked. There were now 2 buses parked there, with the alley between them; that was how I was fooled.

After cleaning up and a light breakfast of a spicy omelet (I am a cereal guy, but there wasn’t a chance of getting any decent muesli anywhere), I headed out with my driver from the day before. His goal was to entertain me until we met my friends at the airport at around 11am. He took me to a temple, which, other than being my first one, was most memorable for a guard asking me for a tip right under a big sign that said, in essence, “NO TIPPING!” I gave him a few of the rupees I brought along from my last visit with some hemming and hawing. All he’d done was show me where to stow my shoes for the two minutes I’d walked around in my socks (many countries and some of my friends’ parents are anti-shoes-inside. Considering what goes on in and just above most Indian dirt, I couldn’t blame the Indian people for thinking shoes were dirty and perhaps unholy.). I did not exchange any money otherwise since the Philips were planning to pay for everything and then have me reimburse them when I got home.

Otherwise the less time I spent in that traffic, the better. We ended up waiting at the airport a while longer than the driver had planned because I didn’t want to go to any more sites without the Philips. That way I was less likely to offend anyone or be taken advantage of, and more likely to actually understand what I was seeing.

I was very happy when they finally walked out the door of the domestic terminal. Standing around with a bunch of drivers is less than bracing company, but the whole scene was peculiar enough that time passed relatively quickly. We got back to the car quickly, passing a sign in the garage that said, among other things, “NO SPITTING! NO COOKING!” and were on our way.

Our first stop was a lovely set of ruins which also contained the tallest minaret in India, an impressive brick structure, and the iron pole, a 24 foot tall iron pole forged around 1300 years ago that has never rusted and leaves modern metallurgists puzzled as to why.

We were hungry and asked our guide/driver to take us somewhere nice. It was called the Red Onion, and they served red onions and dipping sauce for an appetizer (good!). The food was good and I was quite pleased.

Another temple filled some time, and then we were taken to a government textile mill, which I am sure is a standard stop on the guide tours and gets them a nice kickback. I bought a bunch of nice scarves for all the women in the family. After a brief drive around the government buildings, we endured the slog back to the hotel. Aby wanted to see the area, so we went for a walk around to decompress from the traffic. He and Shoba were interested in shopping; I was not, but I rationalized it would be nice to return with some presents.

We parted for the night with them wanting to go back out to have a look around and me ordering room service again (pretty good yet again). We had to depart early the next morning (the plan was for 6am), so I wasn’t going to run, and after a rough, noisy night I could only muster a quick set of exercises in the room and on the stairs.

We wanted to leave early to get a jump on the traffic, as we were heading on the main road south. My sinuses were worse, so I said something to Aby that morning, and at 6:30am he queued up at a chemists near the hospital I’d run by and bought me ten days of doxycycline with a probiotic included in each pill for slightly over $1US total. Quite a savings (Americans are generally not in on the secret they fund the pharmaceutical industry for the rest of the world).

The ride was infuriating, frustrating, fascinating, dangerous, and fatiguing. The road was sometimes three lanes, sometimes one, and had so many construction projects (12? 20? In only 140 miles!) where not a single soul was doing anything I was slackjawed (I only saw one person working at any of the sites: someone driving a backhoe). The trucks, or lorries, were to keep to less than 30km/hr, about 20mph, and they frequently got into the “fast lane” to avoid the weaving and bobbing of the other vehicles, so we were left to what other lanes were there and the shoulders. Oh, the shoulders! Full of bumps and dust, bicycles, rickshaws, both human propelled and with 2 stroke engines belching smoke, camel-driven carts, horse-driven carts, ox-driven carts, and resting cows (also in the road at times), but somehow so appealing to our driver he had trouble staying away from those shoulders. Throw in buses by the score and you have an ever changing, near Brownian motion of vehicles, only occasionally thrust even deeper into chaos by cars, trucks and buses coming THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION IN ONE OF THE LANES!

For those of you who have not had the opportunity to experience Indian traffic firsthand, let me try to explain it. You know the annoying guy (usually it is a guy, but occasionally a woman), usually in an Acura, BMW, or beat up Honda Civic with a rear spoiler and two hubcaps missing, who weaves in and out of each lane, cutting everyone off in selfish pursuit of shortening his journey by precious seconds? Imagine then EVERYONE driving like that ALL THE TIME. What would result in a fistfight, a windshield being broken by a nine iron, a fender-bender every 5 seconds in Los Angeles, Atlanta, or Boston occurs about five times every second on Indian highways, and no one ever shouts, gives the finger, or throws anything. They honk their horns, yes, and nearly constantly, but in a way that says, “I’m here, I see you, and let’s keep moving while I try to get by, thank you very much.” They are somehow completely selfish in their pursuit of the next meter in front of them and fully cooperating with everyone else in order to keep a catastrophe from occurring. It is like there is a voice in each driver’s head saying, “Me, me, me, me, me, ok, you, me, me, you, you, me, me, me, me, you, you, you, me, me, me, me….”

In order to drive like that you have to have an excellent grasp of momentum and the dimensions of your vehicle, and most of them do when the flow is good. It doesn’t take much to throw it off, though, and those things are happening all the time (there were, for instance, three overturned trucks/lorries en route). Yet, somehow the pedestrians seem to be unafraid to walk along the edge of the road and expect the vehicles all to go around them without mowing them down. I didn’t see a single pedestrian injured while there, but that doesn’t excuse them from all the chances they took.

After two hours we stopped for a breakfast of pirattas. I went behind the restaurant to pee, but that was in clear view of a man driving a tractor and a window into the kitchen, so I warily went into the toilet stall. My mission was accomplished, but it would have been better to have a stadium full of people watching me than to go back into that stall. After another 3-4 hours (and four toll booths), we reached the outskirts of Jaipur, where we met a guide who displaced me into the back seat. He wore a red trucker cap and plaid shirt and spoke his prepared remarks in intelligible English. We headed to the Amber Fort, a place of which I had not heard, and on the way were entertained by a seemingly endless line of elephants with men riding on their backs in the other direction on the narrow streets.

Our arrival was disorienting, as we drove up a steep hill to a gate where there were cars and people everywhere. The guide took charge and herded us inside with only moderate confusion.

I saw many interesting and inspiring things while in India, but the Amber Fort was the single most impressive thing. The yellow-orange walls were part of a remarkably designed and built complex of buildings all surrounded by an astounding set of walls reminiscent of China’s Great Wall: the hills around the site were criss-crossed with the walls and occasional guard turrets. I could have spent several days wandering around all the buildings. The detailed decorations were beautiful, often flecked with reflective pieces of metal, glass or enamel. They managed their water and the flow of the prevailing winds to have a cooler side and a warmer side to move to in the various seasons.

From there we drove briefly to a lower palace, the Jal Mahal, that was out in a lake. Two floors of it were under water, apparently intentionally as best I could tell (it was built before a dam nearby was finished). It was being restored, so we could only appreciate it from afar. We had lunch at a relatively posh place and then headed to another World Heritage site, Jantar Mantar.

Jantar Mantar is a fascinating place designed and built by an eminent astronomer and mathematician in the 1600s. It had multiple huge sundials that were accurate to within a minute or two of current time and several other puzzle like constructions that showed the astrological signs among other things. The precision was stunning.

Finally we walked a short distance to the old city hall, where I saw snake charmers for the first time, and a beautiful museum with, among other things, huge silver water ewers taken by the king when he went to England for a coronation so he could drink only water from India the entire journey.

We stayed in a touristy part of Jaipur at a very nice hotel. It had an exercise room, so I quickly put my stuff away and went down to it. I only had 30 minutes, so I ran for 10 minutes on a treadmill, only my second time doing that, and did some push-ups and balance ball work before showering and meeting Aby and Shoba for a walk down the street for dinner, which we ate at a promenade-ish place with several stands, including an ice creamery. Aby quickly got ill when we got back and threw up, but I was only a bit squeamish through the night (our only dodgy meal).

After a noisy night during which I called to complain about the racket people were making in the hall between 2 and 3am, I was up early again (4:41am) for a quick treadmill run before we started another brutal drive. Our driver spent the night in the car. He showed the ability that we would see in every driver: the ability to sleep anywhere (one we found asleep on the floor of a concrete gazebo, and he was hard to wake up). This drive was four hours, to the area around Agra. This highway was not as busy and perhaps a little more scenic, passing a huge area dedicated to brick-making and lots of piles of cow dung arranged for sale in attractive ways (take my word for it). Cow dung is often used as fuel for heat and cooking (I can only imagine the flavors it imparts).

Our first stop was before the city of Agra in Fatehpur where there is another ancient fort. Made mostly of red brick, it was impressive but paled in comparison to the Amber Fort. The guide here was a thin, elderly man who was curt, if not unpleasant. After we viewed the fort, which did not take long, he walked us over to another fort-like structure which also contained a famous (?) white mosque, where, if we went in and did everything correctly, we would DEFINITELY get three wishes granted. The guide was a bit evasive about the details, but he kept alluding to them and the allure of that granted wish. He seemed to think I would wish for a wife when he was told I was single. He also emphasized that the walk over was very treacherous, as the beggars were also pickpockets, so we needed to protect everything we had.

I walked quickly over and ignored any solicitations, making it unscathed. Aby and Shoba, however, didn’t follow my plan and were surrounded by a small swarm of young people trying to get them to buy various items. I had to laugh when he got to me and had some DVDs. He is a soft touch at times. While I certainly felt sorrow for children forced (?) to beg, rather than be in school or doing whatever children their age should be doing, I had almost no money and even less patience for that activity (perhaps it is unChristlike, but I have the feeling everyone begging is running a scam).

After the usual hassle about shoes and where to put them, we entered the buildings. The plaza inside was huge, with the white mosque on the right side about 100 yards away. There was another big mosque on the left side. The guide took us around to the right under a balcony, where it was relatively dark, and told us he was taking us to a man who would help us with what we needed for the white mosque. As we reached him, Aby and Shoba suddenly became very reluctant to participate but encouraged me to, saying they were Christians and didn’t want to pray in a mosque. The guide then focused all his attention on me, to my dismay, and started explaining a little more to me about things. He then told me to sit down in front of a skinny man who had a pile of cloths in front of him and some other items. I sat uncomfortably on the floor and listened as the guide told me I needed to take a certain cloth inside the white mosque as the first part of the ritual that would DEFINITELY grant me my wishes, and then the man started to flip through the cloths. At some point, it was mentioned the cloth I needed would cost me $90, at which point I leapt to my feet in a fury and said, “What is going on here!”

Taken aback, and perhaps a bit worried I might attack him, the guide gathered himself and thought his best strategy was further negotiation. He tried to lower the price and offer another cloth, and my questions about what happened to the cloth, i.e. did I get to keep it, were ignored. Finally, shaking my head and exasperated, I told him I wanted no part of it, and he then took us, every person steaming including himself, outside to meet the driver and leave. It left a bad taste in our mouths about that place, which otherwise would have been a nice memory.

The drive to Agra from there took longer than we’d hoped. We met a new guide there, a most pleasant young man who explained in perhaps more detail than we needed how he was an official guide who’d gone through special training to work there. He was a bit too much of everything, but he was so much better than the last guy I cut him a swath of slack.

He took us to the queue to get in the Taj Mahal: huge. BUT, since I was a foreign tourist, we got to go right to the front, and I was given the privilege of paying 37.5 times what Aby and Shoba paid to get in (750 rupees to their 20). But as usual, in addition to the exorbitant fee, there was a catch: I was not allowed to take any pictures or video after a certain point, and we had to pay a professional photographer who had rights to shoot on the grounds for the rest of the photos.

We made our way in through the crowds. The photographer popped up after briefly disappearing and took photos of us apart and together at one spot near the gateway to the Taj. Then we went through the gateway and it came into view. It is breathtaking; so brilliantly white and well made, with immaculate grounds and pools and with so many people milling about. I took a few still shots, then one panning video and had to take my camera to a guy who locked it in a locker and gave me the number.

We moved out to go to the Taj, but the photographer took us (mostly me) and made me do various standard poses at various standard spots. I was not that pleased: first it was embarrassing; second, he was very aggressive in pushing me right to the front and into the way of others (one photo had me standing on a bench and holding my hand like I had the tip of the Taj in my fingers, for example).

Finally we made it to the site and got in the line to go in. It moved quickly. There were no photos allowed inside; this was where the woman the king loved the most was buried, or at least, remembered. Still, there was a Russian-looking guy who kept taking cell phone shots. People were arguing with him, but he would not stop. A guard confronted him but still he wouldn’t stop, and the guard started to punch and hit him, but he still kept taking photos. He made Americans look good.

When we got outside, Shoba felt her blood sugar drop, so we hurried to the exit to buy her something. The guide, who’d stayed close to me the whole time, pestered and pestered me so I finally gave him a $20 tip (He said an American couple from Texas had given him $140 the day before. He said he wanted to go to America as his uncle lived in Texas and wanted him to come over there.).

While Shoba got a soda, I had to deal with the photographer. While we were in the Taj, he’d run out and printed all of the photos of me and put them in a photo album I could have for $52! It really makes you feel bad; I liked about three of them, which I could have had for about $7, but I ended up buying the whole thing. They were nice pictures, but truly overkill.

We got in the car and left – we had to drive back to Delhi, but for some reason the driver took us across town, in terrible traffic, to see another fort we told him we didn’t want to see. He turned around when we got there and realized what he’d done, and then we had to drive all the way back. Aby and Shoba seemed to like him; he was from Kerala, like them, and he spoke their language most of the time (so I couldn’t understand). He also used his left arm to gesticulate madly, as people in Kerala are prone to, and nearly poked me in the eye and mouth tens of times.

The next straw was when he more or less forced us to go into a shrine for Krishna (his birthplace?), which took us 30 minutes of walking to look at something for about a minute, then 30 minutes to walk back (I cannot remember one thing about that place except I was angry).

As we finally left Agra, he was driving even more recklessly than usual, and I was about to say something when we came upon a bridge that was perhaps 100 feet long. We were on the left side and coming at us on the right side were four large buffalo, moving with the traffic with no one around them. I said, “Those buffalo are more obedient of the traffic laws than the people.” No one laughed.

It was another 3.5 hours back to the hotel. We finally got on a true expressway, a toll road that was almost deserted. I relaxed as it seemed like it would take no time to go the rest of the way and we were infinitely safer, but now, after all we’d been through, the driver would not go faster than 100km/hour (about 62mph) and most of the time he was going about 90km/h. Every other car on the road blew by us like we were sitting still. I felt my sanity leeching away; I didn’t say anything because I thought there was some reason for it, but when we finally got out, Aby started to complain as well about how slowly he drove (Aby was famous for how fast he drove in Swaziland, once getting arrested for exceeding 160km/hr). At least we were back and the next day we were taking the train, so we would be spared any long drives.

I left the scene of the drop-off as soon as possible; I couldn’t bear to look at or listen to the driver anymore. We found our bags, which the hotel said they would lock up for us, on the stairway to the basement, unwatched. Nothing was missing, and I had to repack and get to bed early for another 6am departure. There was some concern about getting to the train station on time, but we got there 38 minutes early. If you have time to kill while you are in India, don’t try to kill it at the Delhi train station, though there are plenty of things to look at you will wish you had never seen. Perhaps it is part of the Indian nature, or maybe it is just their hard lives, but they seem to be able to sleep almost anywhere.

The train pulled in at 6:55 and we were settled in our seats in two minutes. The train was pleasant enough, and we sat three across with me at the window. I have traveled by train in the USA rarely but enough to know the trains tend to go through what I would call the bowels of the country: places where things are getting done the rest of us don’t want to know about. The train from Delhi to Armritsar was not that different, but it took the concept a little farther (Oh, India, must you always push the limits?) by taking us through the toilets of the Delhi suburbs. I saw hundreds of people squatting in the bushes and fields along the tracks, taking care of their morning ablutions in plain sight of everyone. After 30 minutes or so we were well adrift of the city and I saw few more examples of Indian sanitation, to my relief. There wasn’t much to look at otherwise, but it was infinitely more relaxing to be in the train than on the roads.

The five hours went by smoothly and we emerged into our own slice of chaos, as the driver was not there. Aby sorted it out and the driver soon turned up in a nice car. He looked quite different than most of the Indians, bearing a strong resemblance to the dashing Spanish golfer, the late Severiano Ballesteros, with a close-cropped side part rather than the high-floating pompadours that were so common. I was a little uncertain as to the plans, but we took time to check in at the hotel and then got lunch, which took a while. Suddenly we were rushing to get to our next destination, the border with Pakistan for the daily closing of the gates, which apparently involved more than a bit of pomp and ceremony, especially, I was told, lots of high leg kicking.

Traffic was light for India but still involved a lot of people and overtaking, and then we pulled into a dirt parking lot behind the equivalent of a strip mall. The driver let us out and we waded into the crowds. It is fascinating to me how an event that takes place every day for years can be so poorly organized, but this year I saw that not just in India but also in Iceland. Anyway, we were quickly separated from Shoba since the men and women were not allowed to sit together. For once, the ladies’ lines were shorter and they moved off rapidly. We came to several bottlenecks where the temptation was strong to walk outside the barricades (Aby explained to me that as a tourist I had to go through a different line and kept telling me to go ahead), but everyone who succumbed to the temptation was quickly herded back. We went through a series of metal detectors that did not seem to be plugged in while the guards didn’t seem to be paying attention at all, but it really slowed things down. Finally we came to the point where I had to go a different way, and then I went through two checkpoints where I was patted down and searched. After passing the last one I knew I was near, as I could hear the crowd cheering loudly. The walkway ended on a two-lane road, and to each side were large bleachers that could hold thousands of people. I was told by a man in uniform to sit on the curb just twenty feet to the right of the walkway. So, I had a street-level view of whatever was about to happen, jammed between two middle-aged women.

Music was blasting from the sound system and everyone was watching a group of young people dancing their hearts out about 50 feet to the right of where I was sitting, right on the road. They were mostly women and children, and I quickly spotted and became fascinated by a beautiful young woman who appeared to be of Scandinavian descent, with long, shiny brown hair, a few inches taller than the rest. She was an exquisite dancer, more graceful than the Indians, with a radiant smile, and she seemed to be enjoying herself immensely. I was reminded of the white tourist who came to the Catholic Church I attended in Zambia and sat right in the front and sang and danced with the choir and also seemed to be having the time of her life. More than a small part of me had the urge to go right out there and dance near this young woman; I expected it would be quite a scene, and in the end my reluctance to make such a scene won out and I sat quietly instead, taking it all in.

Soon the dancers were ushered away and the beautiful girl came and sat in the stands nearby. Now there were some Indian children on the road, and they were dancing a bit as well. One of them, a cute little boy of about 8 or 9, seemed to do some practiced dance moves now and then, and before long, he was doing a bit of a routine while the crowd went crazy. He did the worm and several other popular moves I cannot name with ever increasing roars. I was a bit tired of his showing off, and about that time a guard came out and made them leave, though the boy clearly didn’t want to (I heard later he was one of the guards’ sons and did the same thing nearly every evening).

Now there was relative calm, and the minutes ticked by. Finally some guards came out. They were all in brown uniforms of standard military design, with frilly red epaulets and fez-like hats, most carrying guns. What proceeded will take too much time, but suffice it to say, there were many men (and a few women) walking fast, kicking their legs up towards their chins, smacking their shoes loudly on the pavement, opening and closing gates about 150 feet to my left, and lowering flags. Most of the activity took place either at the gate or right in front of me (there were minutes where I could have touched the buttocks of one of the guards involved without much effort). The highlights for me were the moments the guards from the two countries met in between and did dramatic pumping handshakes. The Indian crowd seemed to be exhorted to cheer louder than the Pakistani one, and the announcer, who, I think, was Indian, pronounced them the winners.

It took about 45 minutes and was pretty entertaining in a very odd way, diminished only by the tourists around me standing up and blocking everyone’s view to take pictures (and later complaining about a pregnant lady who was blocking their views as well). Everyone started to leave, so I did so, and as I passed the point where the last checkpoint had been, there was the beautiful girl standing on the left side of the walkway, looking ahead.

I am not much for chit-chat, though I am quick on my feet. There have been many times in my life when I said just the exact right thing at the time, but there have perhaps been more when I was tongue-tied or came up with only a cliché. As I drew near her I hesitated. She flicked her long hair back with her right hand and my mouth opened, but then I kept walking and said nothing, though I think what I had come up with (“I really enjoyed your dancing – you seemed to have a lot of fun”) wasn’t bad.

I walked quickly back, not sure what the plan was at that point. I usually walk very fast, but the tallest man I saw in India, a young man who was about 6’10” and athletic-looking, passed me easily with a few friends. I soon saw the strip mall buildings and as I headed towards the parking lot, there was Seve, the driver. I was so relieved. We waited for Aby and Shoba for at least 15 minutes, and once they arrived the driver went to get the car. He must have parked it a long way off as it took a while until he pulled up, and by then the usual craziness of Indian crowds was in full swing. The driver muscled us right out and we were on our way back.

When we got back, Aby wanted to go exploring, so we went out and walked around for a while. Most everything was closed since it was Sunday. I did find a place that was selling fudge, so I bought some of that, and then we went back to our separate rooms. I ordered room service for dinner.

After a rough night in which I coughed a lot (but at least the room was quiet!), I got up for a run. I was excited, as the traveling had really restricted my activity, and I had been scoping the areas out as we drove around. There was a park for walkers right nearby, but I had the sense they paid to walk there, so I headed out a relatively vacant road towards another neighborhood. My legs were feeling better, and the tight hamstring was a bit looser, so I was getting up a little steam as I turned onto a two lane road to the left. That ended in a T with a busier road that had a nice shoulder for a short while to the left, so I went down there and turned around and headed back. I needed to go a lot farther, so I went past my original road but ended up having to frequently alter my route to avoid packs of barking dogs that looked meaner than Delhi’s. There were several people out running and many out walking, so in all it was pleasant, and the weather was nice. I came back the way I went out as it was fairly free of dogs still and did a few exercises near the hotel before heading inside, very pleased with myself.

There was a nice complimentary breakfast and I got my first fruit in days. Then we met the driver to be taken to the Golden Temple in Armritsar. It is not something you can drive right up to and park. We were dropped off about a mile away and on the way stopped at a memorial for the massacre of nonviolent protesters by British troops in 1919.

It was a garden and park surrounded by walls, and the protesters had been cornered there and randomly shot; they were also killed by their panicked stampede. Many bodies were found in wells on the site as well. The bullet holes remained in the walls. It was a sobering experience, as was the “crawling street”: this was an area were any Indian who wanted to travel on the street had to crawl its length.

We walked down a very crowded and busy street; there were no cars but many people and other objects in the road. Aby bought me a handkerchief to cover my head, a mandatory thing at the Golden Temple, which is a Sikh temple. We got to the place where we had to leave our shoes. It was crazy; I thought the odds of getting them back were less than 50% in the chaos. They had a carpet on the sidewalks and roads the rest of the way to protect my feet, and though it seemed far, it wasn’t. After walking through a puddle to cleanse our feet, we entered the grounds. The Golden Temple is beautiful, with sparkling gold trim and plating all over. It sits out in a large pool and can only be reached by a relatively narrow walkway at one end. We walked all the way around, taking it all in. There were many men getting into the water and bathing. They did it all in the open. There was another area where women could do it more privately and the queue there was long.

At the far end, there was a monument to a figure named Babu Ji. He was a 76 year old leader of the Sikhs in the area, and something some local ruler did ticked him off, so he vowed to kill that leader. He mustered his army and went into combat carrying a 26 pound sword. He met the leader and fought him but did not fare well and ended up getting his head cut off. Before his body fell, his assistant reminded him of his anger and his vow to kill the leader, so his body picked up the head and held it is his hand and fought that way until the hated leader was killed. There was a large painting of an old man with a giant sword in one hand and a head in the other hand, with the bloody neck resting in his palm. Pretty good story.

We continued on and went into a building that had some places to pray and spent only a few moments there. We came out to get in the line to go to the temple. The line was HUGE. There was no protest when we decided not to go in. We looked into a few other buildings; it was a bit worrisome to me, as most of the people entering made a bunch of gestures and knelt and often kissed the floor while entering, but I did not.

The walk back went quick and we got our shoes without problems. Because we didn’t go in the temple we had a lot of time to kill before the train ride back. Seve took us to another pretty temple we did not enter. I took a photo through the fence. We shopped in one area, then he took us to a mall (it was very nice), then we had a late lunch. Finally we sat in the hotel lobby for about an hour before we left for the train.

The train was uneventful. We had a nice meal en route. There was one guy who had the audio on his iPhone turned way up as he edited his emails – it made for a lot of noise, and he seemed totally oblivious. There were more troubles finding our driver in the dark in the Delhi station, and then he hassled Aby for extra money. A distasteful end to a long day.

I was up at 5:45am the next morning despite not getting to bed until nearly midnight. I ran a similar route, down the road to the hospital and then left at a roundabout and right up a busier road with a decent shoulder we had driven by whose walls were in various states of disrepair. I felt a little off, but I made it four miles. I stopped where the market ran into the busy road; there is a metro stop above there I hadn’t noticed before. I was just starting to walk when I heard my name called. Astonished, I looked in the direction of the sound and saw Aby, who was out for a walk and looking at the metro. We walked back to the hotel together.

We went to the Red Fort, another World Heritage Site in Delhi. It is very big, with high walls. There is a place in the front from which the Prime Minister gives a speech every year.The grounds were expansive and the architecture pleasant except for a series of buildings the British had built to lodge their soldiers. There was a throne room that opened on most sides where the throne, called the Peacock Throne, used to sit until it was stolen by the Persians, who still refuse to give it back (It is supposedly very nice). In addition, there used to be a huge, beautiful diamond there called the Kohinoor Diamond, but the British stole that and also refused to give it back as it was now a key part of the crown jewels. The palace had a lower level that ran through it that usually carried fresh water. It circulated through the complex and then was pumped back into a water tower, where it would then flow back through. This cooled the area down.

There was also an extensive bath house near the water tower. We went through several small but nice museums on site and then we arranged to take bicycle rickshaws to a nearby famous mosque. The guy driving mine took me on a crazy route and at times I imagined I was being kidnapped, but when we finally stopped at the stairway to the mosque, Aby and Shoba pulled up almost immediately. The Mosque was a ripoff, as I again had to pay a lot of money to take my camera in, and we had to take our shoes off. We left nearly as soon as we got in, all a little steamed. The rickshaw ride back took us a different way through traffic; I was gripping tight as we weaved through the honking cars and cut off a bus. The driver demanded a big tip. I am not sure how much Aby gave him, but they had words briefly.

From there we headed by car to a large park with memorials for most of the famous Indian leaders, including Ghandhi. As we walked the half-mile to the first memorial, Ghandhi’s, I asked Aby why they didn’t build them closer to the parking lot. It was a fairly large park, and we walked around for a good while.

We were hungry, but we also had to catch a plane that afternoon to Chennai, so we weren’t sure where to eat, but after a discussion in the tongue of Kerala, we arrived at a parking lot and then joined a long queue for a famous restaurant in Delhi that served South Indian cuisine. We got inside after about 10 minutes and Aby paid for us in advance. Then we waited to be seated. The man running the show was humorous with his shouting and impatience. In another 10 minutes we were wading through the crowd to a table in the back. I was given a metal food tray and a few condiments, then the table quickly filled with various dishes and men came around ladling rice and various other hot dishes onto the tray. I ate two plates, all the while soaking it in and watching the other Indians at our table stuff the food into their mouths. It was a riot, one of the more entertaining things we were part of and we thanked the guide for getting us there.

We flew on a relatively new Indian airline (IndiGo) that did a good job – we hardly waited and the flight was pleasant, though with tight seating. We arrived in Chennai after dark. One of Aby’s brothers lived there with his wife. Aby and Shoba were staying with them and I was booked in a hotel a few doors down. I was hoping against hope the traffic and driving wouldn’t be like Delhi, but in ways it was even worse. They dropped me at the hotel first and I checked in. It was a strange place, with few towels and little water in the room, and it was an exercise in tedium to get both.

Aby came by a little later and took me to his brother’s apartment, a 2 bedroom where they had lived for decades. I was a bit surprised at how small it was, but it was more than adequate. His brother, Thomas, was taller than Aby and had more hair. He had some gravitas, but he was very genial and made me feel comfortable even though we often talked about very serious things (for example, I thought the Muslim faith didn’t start until Mohammed began getting the messages from the Angel Gabriel, but Thomas said it had been in existence long before that but Mohammed only clarified how things should be). His wife, Betsy, was delightful: very funny and a good sport. We had a delicious meal and then I went back to the hotel, where I was kept up late waiting for water and towels. I was tormented by bugs during the night and eventually got up and turned on the air conditioning, cranking it a bit, sprayed bug spray all over me, and covered myself completely with the sheet, allowing only a small hole to breathe through, which was still attacked by bugs.

My alarm woke me and I got ready to run. Thomas offered to drive me to “the stadium” where he walked some mornings with a friend. It was a sports complex that had a large stadium (likely for field hockey and basketball) and other courts and fields. I ran on the various walkways and roads, tried to run on the local streets, which were crazy and too narrow, then back through the stadium and up and down some stairs until Thomas was done. It was better than nothing. Chennai was much warmer than Delhi and humid, as it was on the coast, so I was very sweaty in Thomas’s car for the ride back, which was not far at all.

After a breakfast buffet at my hotel, I met up with Aby and Shoba. Betsy came along as well as their driver took us around Chennai and then to St. Thomas Basilica. My Catholicism is very American despite all my time living overseas, and I found the details passed on about the life of St. Thomas to be much more thorough than those of St. Peter, for instance. He had traveled to India and started churches on the west coast and finally ended up in Chennai. While praying on a hill above the city, he was stabbed with a spear (I do not recall the motive). He was able to stagger down the hill to the site of the Basilica (no mean feat – well over a mile) before he died. The faithful built the basilica over the site of his death (what usually happens when notable saints die). The parking lot was nearly empty and there were very few people around. The church is about the size of the typical suburban parish church, but with a tall ceiling and all white. Inside it had very nice wall paintings (in English) about the lives of all the Apostles. In the front of the church, at the place we would receive communion in the US, there was a piece of glass in the floor, and one could see through the glass to the tomb of Thomas, which was in the basement.

We had to go outside to get to the entrance of the tomb, which was accessible through another building; shoes off, of course, and no photos. There was a woman down there to keep us in line. Outside the tomb, in a sort of lobby, there was a tribute to Pope John Paul II, who had come there and prayed in the tomb at some point. There were only some vestigial remains there; I cannot recall where the majority was, but I think they are in Rome. I saw some finger bones. It was nice, and I was happy we got to go there.

We drove parallel to the beach, which was very wide and very long. From the road to the water was at least a half-mile over the sand, and most of the area in between was filled with wooden shacks that were places of business, arranged in rows. We passed a sizeable monument, with a variety of cement and steel adornments on the sidewalk. It was the kind of thing that we might have for someone very famous in America, like Martin Luther King, Jr., but this was all for some local politician!

That road took us to another part of town and we parked in a lot that was more typical of Indian chaos. Here there was another chapel, but it was not at all like the Basilica. It reminded me of scenes from movies in Mexico, with lots of neon and flashing lights. There was a tiny chapel filled with people praying and a statue of Mary. The story behind this site was that a young boy was carrying milk home to his family when a woman with a small baby stopped him and asked for some of the milk, as the baby was starving. The boy was afraid to give any of the milk away, but he did, and it was miraculously replaced by a vision of Mary (or something like that).

That stop did not take long, and we were off to a snake and crocodile park in Chennai. That also was nice but didn’t take very long, and then we went to the place where St. Thomas was stabbed. It was on a hill that involved a wild ride on some narrow roads and then some walking up to the top. There was a small chapel where a service was underway, but we could look in, and there was a small place to pray around the side with some relics. The main attraction was a large and colorful crucifix around the back on a pavilion with a nice view of Chennai. The crucifix was famous for occasionally bleeding; it wasn’t doing it when we were there. There were lots of school kids roaming around on class trips.

It still wasn’t time for lunch! We were in the neighborhood of one of Aby’s uncles, so we drove to his place in a military retirement village. His uncle was 89 years old, a retired Major General in the Indian army. He was nearly as tall as I am and had a nice sense of humor.

We ate lunch at the apartment and then hung out there and chatted. Thomas was around. I am not sure what he did during the day, but he seemed to have a lot of responsibility to some local charities and to a few businesses. I headed back to the hotel to clean up and then went back to ride to a restaurant across town that served the food they liked from Kerala. Betsy’s sister, who was very spunky, came along, and everyone seemed to act like she was auditioning for a date with me, though she didn’t bother me a bit. The food was really good, then, to indulge me, we stopped at an ice cream place and I got three scoops. I was starting to feel better, which was great.

I’d been paying attention as we drove around and took note of the roads nearby. The next morning I went out for a run on my own. The road in front of the hotel was narrow, but there was a battered sidewalk on the other side, and it was only about 100 yards to an intersection, and all the rest of the roads were wider with obvious shoulders. It was a very enjoyable run; the traffic wasn’t too bad, people got out of the way, and I headed to where the restaurant had been. It was humid but not that hot, but I was still quite sweaty at the end: 4.32 miles. There was a place, along a stream, where I was exposed to one thing many people complain about in India: the stench of human waste of various kinds. That was the only place that happened.

I ate and went to the apartment where there were delays of various sorts before we left with a different driver and headed south on the road to Ponducherry to Mamallapuram. Betsy was entertaining and seemed to make everything seem spontaneous. We stopped at one point, backed up, pulled ahead, and then parked to go into another crocodile and snake park. This one was better than the one in Chennai, but I decided not to take my camera in before I knew that – big mistake (Every place a white man takes a camera means a payment for permission to use it). Aby and I went to see some snake handlers, and they had a bunch of different snakes out and crawling around while they were talking with us. They milked venom from a few cobras, one of which nearly got away, but, when offered its vase, crawled right inside.

Outside the snake place we had the good fortune to come to a huge crocodile enclosure as they were sending a crew in to clean it. They were scrubbing the cement waterways that wound through the enclosure. A man with a big belly and a big stick went in first and he started making a racket and poking the crocodiles closest to him, starting a huge thrashing exodus of the area he was in. A group of four or five women came in with brushes and buckets and started scrubbing away. The man kept at the crocodiles; some of them would confront him and hiss, but he went right at them and they always backed down. I watched them closely and it was obvious those crocodiles were not stupid. They knew what was going on and prepared for when the man came around. Still, they often crawled violently over each other, twisting and spinning. It was an enthralling spectacle.

The rest of the park had various types of reptiles in large enclosures; Aby was quite good at finding them. So many photo ops missed!

We drove into the town for lunch and ate at a small place that was good. Betsy wanted us to see the Radisson Hotel there and they all seemed to want me to go out on a catamaran at their beach. We went into the lobby and acted like we belonged, sitting on the plush furniture while the women went to the bathroom. Then we walked down to the beach. On the way, we walked through part of the hotel that surrounded its pool. It was the best pool I’ve seen: close to a quarter mile long, with little islands here and there, curving through and around the buildings. The beach was disappointing and I lobbied hard to leave quickly and told them I didn’t want to go out on a boat or do any swimming.

Our big destination was the famous Shore Temple, a World Heritage Site. The parking lot was busy with lots of people trying to sell us things. We had to pay to go onto the Shore Temple grounds. It looked to me like it was going to be a waste of time. Then Aby got into a heated argument with the ticket clerk. The clerk told Aby he didn’t have change and Aby would need to go get the correct change and come back. It went on for a while but eventually we were able to go in.

I couldn’t have been more wrong about a place. It was fantastic, helped by an absolutely beautiful day. They figure the buildings were made around 732ME. This temple was the only one not under water; there were 6 other temples off the coast. There were several places dedicated to fertility with phallic symbols, and otherwise there were many carvings that held up well despite the wear and tear of the centuries.

When done there, we were taken to another site where there were other carvings that looked like sand sculptures: elephants, temples and lions, all in one small area. There was a small man, a bit of a huckster there, who tried to get us to hire him as a guide. No one seemed interested in the group of about 12 who were there, so instead, he guided us around and asked for money after and did fairly well.

The drive back to Chennai took around two hours, and out of curiosity, I counted all the posters and billboards with a picture of the Chief Minister of Chennai’s state of Tamil Nadu. It was a challenge due to the traffic and the presence of posters on both sides of the street, but my final count as we entered Chennai was 173!!!! Talk about a cult of personality! Can you imagine if they had a poster of Barack Obama or Chris Christie every few feet along the Garden State Parkway? Interestingly, the Chief Minister, a jowly woman who looked like the offspring of a dalliance between Edward G. Robinson and Roseanne Barr, was a former Indian movie star. I happened to catch a glimpse of her while flipping through the channels. She was very petite, with her dark hair pulled tightly back, singing and dancing about, reminiscent of an Anna Kendrick. The old version might have been able to fit two inside the current Chief Minister. Her name is J. JayaLalithaa, which at least is a much better name than the Chief Minister of Delhi’s state, (I am not kidding), Sheila Dikshit.

Still another calculation derived the following equation:

Tamil Nadu Chief minister signs = very hot women along the road < goats+stray dogs+near accidents

The women of India are generally very beautiful, especially in their saris with their hair styled nicely, but in Tamil Nadu the number of very pretty girls was exceptional. For one stretch I figured about half the women on the side of the road were very pretty, but then we hit a dry patch with many more wrinkled, haggard ladies than young, pretty ones, and for a while there were no pretty ones. The Philips often hint they could find me a nice wife, and I am sure I could do worse, but my life is just fine the way it is.

Our last supper in Chennai was a lovely dinner at the apartment, heavy on curry, and we had a pleasant conversation after that ran late. The next morning I suffered the consequences of that much curry, but once I’d satisfactorily put that behind me, I was off on my last run in India. This time I headed to the right at the first intersection and followed my whims and the promise of sidewalks and shoulders where they took me. After a few relatively dead ends, I was on a quiet street that got narrower and narrower until in entered what was at best an alley, with 2-3 storey buildings on each side. There were not many pedestrians, but it finally got too busy, so I turned around and looked for any way out. I made it out and found another street that ran parallel to it for a little longer, and that out and back gave me enough distance. Aby said I was probably running around in the ghetto, but, though the faces didn’t seem pleased to see me, they were not inhospitable, either.

I left the hotel and then we had to kill some time before we went to the airport. The driver took us to the local mall, a high security place in a sunny plaza. That couldn’t kill it all, so we went back to lunch with Betsy and Thomas and then I finally checked out of the hotel. I slipped some money (for petrol, food, etc.)for Thomas and Betsy (they were heading to the US for a tour in the near future) on their computer (which they let me check my email on) and then we departed.

The airport was hectic (when we tried to cross one road, I told Aby it was easier to walk across a pit of crocodiles than to dodge the cars), and Aby embarrassed me by hiring a porter for me to take my bag a very short distance (I like to carry my own bags – they are not burdens to me). They were on a different flight back to Trivandrum. I was headed to Delhi, unsure of where I was to go and how much time I would have to get all the things done. It turned out I was flying from the international terminal in Chennai to Delhi, so I didn’t need to do anything special in Delhi before I left, which let me relax, but I had to wait in the airport for 2.5 hours to check in. During that time I read, sitting in a set of seats just across a barrier from all the relatives of the people who were flying and sitting near me. Given the choice, it seemed every Indian there preferred to sit right next to me than in the other open seats. I thought the flies that were pestering me might favor them, but they stayed right on me, mostly landing over and over on my legs (10-12 at a time – at least I was wearing pants). I got up to move around often to see if the flies would leave me, but they didn’t. I could only imagine how attractive I would be to flies after I finally landed in JFK 25 hours later. One last thing that made me laugh there was a saloon that had a tough guy face on its sign right next to a cherubic young boy.

Indian airports are always a bit puzzling, but I made sure I got where I needed to get and the trip back was a bit more pleasant than the trip over. The plane wasn’t packed and there was a nice man who lived in Westchester County sitting in my row who was a most agreeable seatmate.

I was pretty tired, not having slept much, when I got to New York. I’d decided to take the train from JFK into the city and then the subway to my friend Greg’s loft. I was very confused about where to go and was trying to sort out the map when someone behind me asked if I needed help. It was a transit policeman, and when I told him where I needed to go, he said he was headed part of the way and he would show me, so we walked together to the first train and then he told me when to get out. Excellent. The rest of the trip took a long time but I got there and managed to get changed and cleaned up a bit before catching my bus back to Pennsylvania. Initially there’d been only one open seat on the bus, the window next to a huge African-American guy who seemed to be traveling with a bunch of other guys sitting in the area, but he never said a word and I was able to read and play some Scrabble until he got off and I moved to the front so I could tell what was going on. I was the last one off the bus, and the driver, who’d jerked my chain when I was trying to board and asked him to clarify the destination, by that time was a bit friendlier.

It was a most memorable trip. India is fascinating. It is tough not to use clichés, but I learned a lot about an ancient culture, saw a lot of stunning architecture and art, ate tremendously good food, and had great company in Aby and Shoba to fill me in on what was going on. It was worth every penny and then some, and I would recommend you go to India if you know some people there you can trust to show you around. If you can, you should also try to run a bit there – it’s wild.

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