Scott Visits India

The Trip Over

May 14th, 2006 at 7:19 pm

The trip to India began with me getting to the airport in plenty of time and a delayed fight to Newark. Once we arrived in Newark, Dolores (the person I am traveling with) found us one of those carts for disabled people and we hopped on so we could rush to our flight, which left the gate in about 15 minutes. It was tight, but we made it.

Although I was born in Indonesia and flew internationally quite a bit as a kid, I haven’t flow on an international flight since those early years (outside of Aruba a couple times). Not only that, but I certainly have not flown business class/first class on such a flight. We took our seats and I was amzed at all the room we had, but still a bit shuffled since we had just rushed over. Well, in the process of storing my bags, I managed to knock the wine glass of the passenger beside me into his seat. Great!! I tried to clean it up, and the man was really nice about it, but I felt like crap the whole trip because this guy was having to sit in the wine I spilled in his seat - I did offer to switch seats, but he wouldn’t have it. Other than that experience, the flight was simply amazing. We were served a 3-course dinner and later breakfast, we got the little bag with socks, the world’s smallest toothpaste tube, eye mask, etc and each seat had their own video screen (between the two flights I think I watched about 6 movies). After what seemed like a quick 8 hours we arrived in Amsterdam.

Since we had a 6 hour layover in Amsterdam, Dolores and I decided that we couldn’t just sit in the airport for that long, so we went and explored the city. The customs official convinced us that the the taxis were very expensive and we should just take the train into town. That would be great if we could read where exactly the trains were going. We braved it anyway, and ended up taking a train that led us way out into the middle of Amsterdam countryside. It was pretty and we saw lots of sheep, cattle, and other various grazing animals, but it wasn’t necesarily all we wanted to see in Amsterdam. I found someone on the train who spoke English and they set us in the right direction so we could catch a train into town. Along the way we stopped at a little coffe shop where I found a bathroom I had to put change in the door to use and a pre-packaged waffle (I love waffles) - two very different, but equally strange encounters.

Once we made it into town, we pretty much just walked around, enjoyed the architecure, the people watching, and the various trinkets in the store windows (sadly we were there too early for anything to be open really). I was pretty hungry and had been looking for some normal looking breakfast (ie. toast or eggs) and hapened upon a spot with “English Breakfast”. We sat down, I ordered bacon, eggs, and toast and then thought twice about it when I got the eggs and they weren’t scrambled as I had though they would be, but sunny side up and very udnercooked. I decided I would eat justt he egg whites and made due with that. While there, Dolores was impressed with the table of guys drinking 8 ounce classes of straight vodka for breakfast - I guess they were still going from the night before. Other than the architecture, the thing that struck me about the city was how many people used bikes. The train stations and other public transportation spots were crowded with thousands and thousands of bikes locked up or even just laying against the railings. Everywhere we went, bikes were all over the place. Probably because there didn’t seem to be a lot of room for cars - kinda like New York, but old school and…Dutch.

Impressions of Amsterdam: Lot’s of coffee/pot shops, really cool architecture, tons of grafitti, friendly people, lots of bikes, and overall cool culture.

The plane ride from Amsterdam to Delhi was much like the first flight, but less crowded and we had to fly around in the air for an extra hour because Delhi was having a dust storm. Seems to be a regular occurance here. When we arrived in India and went to get our luggage, I temporaily panacked as my box of food never showed up. I made my way to the counter and it had arrived ahead of me, so I got it and was happy knowing I had some back-up food if I got tired eating the same 3 things from the hotel menu.

First impression of India: crowded, hot, and dusty/dirty.

Dolores and I had a car from the hotel waiting for us at the airport, so once we finally found them, we were on our way. Now I know I was warned about the driving in India, but holly crap it is insnane! How do they not hit each other and run over all the pedestrians, bikes and COWS! that are going in every direction? Not only do people not drive in lanes, but if the quickest way to get somewhere is to go down the wrong side of the road into on-coming traffic - well then they do that too. I mean the cars come within inches of eachh other and never touch somehow. Add to that every person constantly honking their horns and you have traffic in India. The big trucks even have signs painted on the back saying “Horn Please” because if you don’t honk when you are beside them, then they don’t know you are there and will run over you. Speaing of the trucks, I hope to get some pictures of some - they look like Soviet era cargo trucks and have fancy royal looking strips of trim on the doors and inside the cabs along with neon lights, etc inside. Really cool looking. So we finally made it to the hotel and our rather plush hotel room- hardwood floors, big bathroom, nicely decorated, etc. - at least if I am going to be in a hotel for two weeks, it is a nice one.

Upon arrival I got some things setup with my computer and hit the bed. I managed to sleep for over 14 hours before waking up the next day to east “lunch”.

And the journey continues…