After the bar, Rob and I went back to Deeps place for a bit of Xbox360. It was pretty late so we just crashed there for the evening. The next morning we caught a rickshaw back to Josh’s place. Rob (who had yet to see any Delhi sights) and I made plans to head down to Old Delhi for the afternoon – someplace I didn’t really have a chance to experience yet either.

Rob and I took a rickshaw to Connaught Place and caught the Metro from there to Old Delhi. The Delhi Metro was a big surprise. It is the nicest Metro I have ever been in. The stations are large and immaculate. The trains are clean. It’s nicer than London and Washington DC – both quite nice Metros. Then you come out of the Metro into old Delhi and it’s like you hit some ripple in the space-time continuum that sent you into an alternate universe where everything was filthy and falling apart. Then you look back behind you and see the immaculate Metro station is still there and you realize that this is the real thing. Walking around Old Delhi is experiencing the really poor part of the city. It was interesting to walk around for a while – but I don’t really need to go back any time soon.

We took the Metro back to Connaught Place and found a McDonalds (with a bathroom) where Rob was able to take care of his (still present) sickness. Connaught place is rife with shops and stores. There is also an underground market we visited so Rob could buy some souvenirs to bring home with him. I bought a bag since my new collection of suits were not going to fit in the one carry-on bag I brought with me.

After shopping we headed back to Sehgal Bros. to pick up my finished suits, shirts and pick out a few ties to go with them. Then it was back to Josh’s place where a few of us played cards for a few rupees each until early morning. We played with Josh’s cousin who was heading back to Bombay the next day via train. We asked him if it was far and he replied – “no not far, only 17 hours.” 17 hours on a train sounds like a living hell to me, but I guess some Indians are used to it.

On Monday I went back to Connaught Place to blow the last of my Indian rupees since I was leaving early the next morning (at 2am). I bought a pair of cufflinks to go with two of my shirts that I had tailored with a French cuff. I returned to Josh’s place late that afternoon and ended up joining Liz for a drive down to Rajasthan before I left.

They received a night at a palace-turned-hotel just over the Rajasthan border and I tagged along with them to see the place before their driver dropped me off at the airport on the way home. The hotel was the Neemrana Fort-Palace Hotel. You would never know a luxury hotel existed in the area this hotel was situated. To get to it, you had to drive down a crappy dirt road, through a dumpy village, and around some sharp, unmarked turns and up the side of a hill. However, once you finally get to it, the hotel is quite amazing. There are random walkways everywhere throughout the hotel so it’s quite easy to get lost. It’s almost like there are hidden passages to get to different places. Each room has something unique about it – Liz and Josh’s room had a private balcony area over looking the village and countryside. We all had the buffet dinner at the hotel before Tapan (the driver) and I headed back to Delhi. Obviously, despite it’s strange location, this hotel was well known as everyone in the buffet room was American or British.

I made it back to the airport without any problems and left only an hour late from Delhi (I was getting used to the whole ‘in India everything starts late’ thing finally). I was a bit worried because now I only had a 1 hour layover in Moscow, but it turned out to be no problem and I made it back to Sofia without incident. Even my bags made it as well!

Share on Facebook

After our visit with Deep, Geno and I headed back to Sehgal Bros. to get our second suit fitting. They had the suits loosely stitched up to ensure all the measurements were correct. Both of us made a couple adjustments and we were quickly on our way back to Josh’s place for day 3 of the wedding – taking place that evening.

Day 3 consisted of a large reception at another very nice Delhi hotel. The purpose of this part of the wedding was to invite everyone who had come to the previous events plus some. Parent’s business colleagues and others not as close to the family would be invited to this event. The event officially started at 7:30pm. At 7:30pm all the white people were there. No Indians showed up until around 8pm and Josh and Liz didn’t show until around 8:30pm. Indians like to joke that India is on IST, or India Stretch Time – meaning everything is going to late all the time. We white people never really caught on to this concept. Very often we found ourselves at major events, at the designated place and time … all by ourselves. It started to be a running joke.

Josh’s cousin is a producer in Bollywood and brought with him some dancers the reception. The dancers were scantily dressed, did some rather erotic dances, and I think almost gave Josh’s parents a hard attack. I like them, though. Again, this evening had an all-you-can-eat buffet which caused some health problems with the non-Indians the next day. Several people got sick, but luckily I didn’t have any problems. The evening also included a DJ and some dancing by the guests. The whole thing winded down around midnight when a few of us went with Deep to find someplace to go out and party some more. We went to a few places, but most were dead. We had a few drinks at one club in a hotel near the diplomatic section of town. We only stayed for one drink and went back to Deep’s (quite nice) place to have a couple more drinks and play his Xbox360 on his huge plasma screen TV with Bose surround sound system. Very nice indeed.

Share on Facebook

Our destination – Sehgal Brothers, aka The Blues – was in South Extension Part 1. Our rickshaw driver confirmed he knew the location and we headed down in search of some new clothes. South Extension is basically two long strip malls on opposite sides of a major street – one side is “Part 1” and the other “Part 2”. We were dropped of on one side, which our driver confirmed was Part 1. We walked around looking all over for the store to no avail. Of course the temperature was hot and muggy so we had to augment our trip with an ice cream from McDonalds – which promptly melted before I could get to the bottom. After a good chunk of time searching we finally found out we were in Part 2 – on the wrong side of the road. The rickshaw driver obviously didn’t want to drive us the extra 0.5 km necessary to turn around to get to Part 1. We played a live game of Frogger and made it across the street and (finally) found our store.

We asked for the custom tailored suit section and were whisked to a back room on the top floor. Sehgal Bros. was one of the high end establishments in town so the cloth they had was all high quality Italian fabric. Their store carried basically all the high end brands – Versace, Gucci, Valentino, Trussardi, etc – so was a little intimidating to walk in. I was worried I wouldn’t even be able to afford a shirt there. As it turned out the prices were good. The fabric itself wasn’t significantly cheaper than US prices but, because the labor costs of getting the suits stitched was so cheap, the total cost of the suit ended up being at least 50% of what a similar suit (not even custom tailored) bought in the US would cost.

Geno had gone through the custom-tailored suit process before, but the process was all new to me. The back room was full of reams of different cloth. We would describe the type of suits we wanted. Two guys would scour the wall of fabric and pull off ream after ream. Geno and I would categorize the reams into “good”, “maybe” or “only a blind moose would wear that”. My plan was to get one dark business suit and another lighter summer suit to add to my current collection of one dark wool suit. As we went through the whole process I added another dark suit for a total of three suits making the sales staff that much happier. Geno added two suits to his collection and the store gave us a decent discount (after some haggling on our part) for purchasing a total of 5 suits from them. They then took our measurements and style requirements (single breast, 4 buttons on sleeve, etc). I had just increased the total number of suits I own by 400%. I figure as an MBA, chances are high that eventually I’ll have to wear a suit – I might as well purchase while the prices are low and quality is high. As it turned out, I got a bit carried away and added 5 custom tailored shirts and 4 ties to my 3 suits. Many of my female friends would be proud. Now I almost feel obligated to get a corporate suit-wearing job … almost.

The store was split between 2 buildings so after we were measured for the suits we went to the other building where we picked out fabrics and were measured for dress shirts that matched the fabric of our new suits. Finally we were finished with part I of our suit buying experience. We flagged down a rickshaw to head back to B-block, CR Park and the typical driving around in circles while the lost rickshaw driver asked directions over and over again.

The previous day the all the white people went to Fab India – a local clothing store specializing in traditional Indian clothing. I brought some dress clothes with me for the wedding, but opted to buy some traditional clothes for the Tuesday evening part of the wedding. I bought a red striped kurta and some white pajama pants (note: the word “pajama” comes from a similar Persian word meaning “leg garment” so these were not the plaid/superhero-type pajamas Westerners are accustomed to). The whole batch cost me something around $10 so it was worth it – at the very least for something cool to wear.

Day I of the wedding was at Josh’s parent’s house. The house had a large deck area where they built a tent. Adjacent to the tent area was a large common room where the rest of the festivities took place. Day one was basically for family and close friends – meaning about 75 people. They brought in some Rajasthani singers for some traditional song and dance. They consisted of a couple dancers – including a boy in a horse costume – a harmonium, drums and a couple singers. I really liked the harmonium instrument. It’s basically a pedal pumped organ and used fairly extensively in Indian music. Afterwards the party moved under the deck with a DJ, caterers, and more dancing. I think I sweat off about 5 pounds during the party from all the dancing and the muggy evening heat. My new Indian clothes were ready for the laundry.

Share on Facebook

So I get in the car not even knowing where he was taking me – I wasn’t sure if I was staying at Josh’s house, a hotel or what. People who actually plan ahead for things probably would have been having a nervous breakdown about now – but it was all part of the adventure for me. I figured the less I know, the better the blog story would be.

We leave the airport and the first think I notice is the driver’s obsession with blowing the horn. I soon noticed that all drivers in Delhi seemed to have an obsession with blowing the horn. No less than 25% of the drive was spent with the horn blowing and 100% of the drive was spent listening to other horns. I later found out there is a method to the horn blowing madness. In general, when you want to pass on the right you blow the horn twice. You blow it once for passing on the left. Turn signals are not used.

The drive from the airport exposed me to the thrill ride I will call, “traffic in Delhi.” The roads actually aren’t that bad (by Bulgarian standards) but the problem is all forms of transportation are using these roads. On a typical 4 lane divided highway you will see the following forms of transportation – all using the same road:
1. Walkers
2. Bicycles
3. Hand pedal 3-wheel cycles
4. Bicycle rickshaws
5. Scooters
6. Motorcycles
7. Auto rickshaws
8. Cars
9. Vans
10. Trucks (but only at night – trucks aren’t allowed in Delhi during the day)
11. Camels
12. Horses
13. Donkeys
14. Cows

The cows are the real exciting part. Since cows are sacred in the Hindu culture people just let them do whatever they want. Often what they want is to hang out in the middle of a major highway. Why they prefer a polluted highway to a green field I have no idea. At certain times they will randomly decide to cross the street. Without even looking at traffic they’ll just start to mosey across as a barrage of horns, screeches, neighing and whatever other noises are made as everyone tries to avoid hitting the cow. Sometimes they like to lay down and rest in the middle of the highway. Needless to say it takes forever to go anywhere.

I finally arrive from the airport at a small hotel. I checked in and went to take a nap hoping that at some point someone would come to get me since I had no idea where I was or where Josh’s place was. Luckily Liz stopped by a few hours later to retrieve me. As it turned out, the hotel/guest house was only a block from Josh’s place.

I don’t know what it is with me and hotels air conditioners – but I always seem to get the short end of the stick. This hotel was no different. The air conditioner allowed me to create 2 environmental conditions in the room – I will dub these conditions, “Sahara” and “Antarctica”. Despite having multiple setting on the knob – all of them engaged only two conditions – “high fan” or “high cool”. To turn the a/c off you needed to turn the knob to “high fan”. The first night I was there I had to go digging around for a winter blanket (which they conveniently had in one of the cupboards) to keep from getting hypothermia. I think I managed to sleep ok through Sunday night just because I was so tired. On Monday Geno (another friend from b-school) arrived and was assigned to my room. He did not yet know the full extend of the environmental controls – or lack thereof. I went to sleep with a winter blanket. He went to sleep with a sheet. I woke up in the middle of the night freezing despite my blanket. I looked over and saw Geno had rummaged through the cupboard at some point during the night and found himself a blanket. Still, it was damn cold so I shut down the a/c. A couple hours later I wake up in a pool of sweat and turn the a/c back on. The next morning Geno seemed very confused as to why every time he woke up the room alternated between freezing and blisteringly hot.

On Sunday, before Geno arrived I got to see a bit of Delhi with two of Liz’s friends from high school – Scott and Michelle. We headed down to a well known market – Dilli Haat to poke around for a couple hours. It was basically a crafts market where you could buy all kinds of trinkets and other things I have no desire to own. Still, it was interesting walking around. I managed to pick up a couple small items for Kat since, like most women, she likes items that clutter up your house. Like everywhere in India, everything is negotiable. If fact, if you don’t spend at least 10 minutes negotiating price you are probably getting ripped off. In fact, you’re probably getting ripped off anyway. By the end of the trip I had greatly improved my haggling skills.

Our travel to and from Dill Haat was on an auto rickshaw. Auto rickshaws are like carnival rides that actually take you places. First you negotiate your price, then you then hop in and enjoy the ride. The auto rickshaws fit up to 3 white people or 11 Indians. They are basically everywhere in Delhi and easy to flag down. All auto rickshaws have non-functional meters. Apparently someone had a great idea to put meters in the vehicles, but no one used them. Negotiating a price beforehand was much better because, especially when returning to Josh’s place, the driver got lost 100% of the time. The return trip back to Josh’s place required 15-30 minutes more time than the trip to the destination. Josh lives in C.R. Park – which everyone knows – but then B-block within C.R. Park, which nobody knows. Every trip we would go from corner to corner asking street vendors where to find B-block. Some of our rickshaw drivers had the memory of a goldfish. He would ask one street vendor, get directions, then stop 10 meters down the road and ask again – only to get the same directions. Hardly any of the drivers spoke English so you couldn’t provide any help. You just had to let them get lost and figure it out on their own. One of our drivers stopped to ask a guy with a sowing machine for directions. The guy had no idea where to go. The next day, another rickshaw driver stops to ask the same guy directions. I already knew he didn’t know the answer, but since the driver didn’t know English, I just had to watch the whole thing happen over again and enjoy the ride. I think I’ve seen all of C.R. Park in an auto rickshaw by now.

Sunday night I went out with Josh, Liz and some of their friends. We tried to go to a bar, but everything in Delhi closes down early on Sunday. The nightlife scene in Delhi is strange – the only places allowed to stay open late (2am being late) are bars and clubs in hotels. So basically, all the bars and clubs are in hotels. We tried to go to a bar “Ricks” in one hotel, but it was closed so we had to settle for the café next door.

On Monday we hired a car to see some sights around Delhi, but I’ll talk about that in my next blog posting.

Share on Facebook