Saturday, October 2, 2010

India, Day 1: Delhi

The morning got off to a slow start. Although people speak English, we have trouble understanding one another. For example I had trouble grasping that breakfast was complimentary, but once I found out, I was delighted, and it was Nescafe coffee powder which I am absolutely in love with, despite how weird that is. There was a man at breakfast who hovers over the toaster and gets really excited if you want toast so he can make it for you. The rest of the breakfast was parantha and some sort of aloo dish.



Food is terrifically cheap here. Dinner only cost me about $1.50 and I got a full vegetarian thali. Then I was terribly thirsty because it’s tropically hot as hell here and tried to order a sweet lassi, but they misunderstood and I got a ‘sweet lime soda’ which scared me because I drank it and was expecting yogurt. My driver was looking at me strangely because I was eyeballing this soda so carefully thinking that maybe in India, lassi is made with soda water, but there might be chunks of yogurt hidden in it, and I asked him if he thought it was safe to drink.


After a visit to the tour office where the boss plied me with anise cookies and chai, I visited several beautiful tourist sites and monuments. I was proud of myself because I only got suckered into giving a guy $1 for being my tour guide. Really I just felt bad for him, and he had really smooth moves as a fake tour guide, sidling up and just starting his tour spiel without giving you a chance to say no. Everyone at these monuments tries to get you to give them money for watching your shoes and being a tour guide and things like that, which is frustrating, but I suppose better than simply begging. Plus even though I brought conservative clothing with skirts that go below the knee, it turns out that unless the skirts are to the floor, you have to wear these ridiculous pink and orange flowery polyester robes at the temples so that all the tourists look like idiots. The people who designed this system are definitely having a laugh about it. I was lucky they even let me in, I suppose, because the signs say no unaccompanied women are allowed.


I saw a beautiful old mosque with a pool of water in the middle that was all red sandstone (which burns on bare feet but I refused to pay for temporary slippers! Note to self: have to figure out why slippers are OK but shoes are not?). Then I went to the Red Fort which also was very lovely, it is half in ruins but being restored. Again, all red sandstone. There are a lot of stray dogs and adult people who seem to just lie around and sleep at these monuments on the ground. I guess it’s not a bad life. I went to a 3rd red sandstone place called Humayun’s tomb that was quite impressive, full of little marble coffins and beautiful geometric shapes in mosaics like stars and octagons. It seemed like a mini-Taj mahal. After that I had nearly run out of money, but my driver misunderstood my request to stop for the day and we went to a place called Lotus Temple. Luckily Lotus Temple does not charge because it is run by the Baha’i, who are trying to recruit you. The Baha’i are very nice, so the recruiting is not very annoying. I didn’t know anything about Baha’i before, but it seems it is a very benign religion that just wants everyone to get along and love each other. The Lotus temple is a big white temple that looks like giant petals like a flower opening, surrounded by 9 little blue pools of water. It was gorgeous, and I tried to say a little prayer that people would all just get along, in honor of the Baha’i.


So I ended the day completely broke without even enough money for dinner, but was so tired from jet lag that I fell into bed at 6pm and woke up at 4:30am, excited for the next adventure.

3 comments:

  1. Alison: "but it seems it is a very benign religion that just wants everyone to get along and love each other"

    Well Alison, For starters Baha'is are not as unity conscious as they claim, as they don't allow women to be part of the top decision making in the community. I don't think that is 'benign' as far as social justice is concerned.

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  2. well, random person stopping by my blog, I don't claim to know anything about Baha'i other than what I heard in a 5 minute spiel at the temple and a pamphlet they gave me, but the pamphlet specifically states as one of the tenets of the religion:
    "Equality of men and women".

    So if they're not actually living their beliefs, well, I guess that makes them similar to people in every other religion, but at least they've got it on paper.

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  3. Yes, their literature is misleading as is their other media. Their scriptures actually claim that the Baha'i Faith is a male primogeniture religion and that women do not have equal inheritance laws (if a husband dies with out a will leaving their family home to the wife, even if she has contributed to it, it goes to their oldest son). What is sad, is that many of the enrolled don't even know about some of these binding laws, which in time will all be applied.

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