Traveling Eleven and a half Times Zones Away - A Journey To India

The Wife has always been infatuated by the colors of India.  She's been drawn to the glittering gold trim of a sari, the fiery red sauce of a curry dish, and the white marble of the Taj Mahal.  For me, I was concerned more about the brown—that is, India’s poor reputation for dirtiness, polluted water, and rampant animal and human fecal matter.  Nevertheless, like any happily-married couple, the wife always gets her way, so off to India we go.

For the past six months we researched our trip.  The Wife poured over several guidebooks, TripAdvisor posts, and books on Indian history and culture.  I just perused a bunch of Bollywood flicks, episodes of Outsourced, and an issue of Maxim India that I had found on the Internet.  We arranged for our trip through Deepa Krishnan, a travel agent, blogger, and very helpful contributor to the India TripAdvisor forum.  Last year in Peru, we were very fortunate that our trip went absolutely according to plan.  With the issues of road congestion and transportation delays that plague India, we would probably be pretty happy seeing 80% of our planned itinerary.

Our first stop was a five hour layover at Chicago's O'Hare airport.  Despite being the third largest city in the U.S, Chicago has a pretty disappointing airport.  It's functional, but lacks the special amenities such as secured trams or automatic walkways between terminals, free WiFi, or charging stations for electronics.  But what the airport DOES have is Rick Bayless' Tortas Frontera.  Frommer's has named them one of the top ten AIRPORT restaurants in the country--a distinction that evokes the same mixed emotions as the winner of a tranny beauty contest (Yaay!...Eeewww!).  Despite the stigma against airport food, the sandwiches there are really worth the airport-inflated $11 price.  The cubana is tasty but the pepito, containing tender braised beef short rib, jalapenos, cheese, and salsa verde, is even better.  We chased them with mango-lime and raspberry prickly-pear juices.

Fourteen hours, three in-flight movies, and one bar of Vosges' bacon and dark chocolate bar later, we landed at the Delhi airport.  We discovered that India has one central time for the entire country.  However, it is off 30 minutes from the rest of the world.  How odd.  We picked up an Airtel sims card for our cell phone for 500 Rs right at the entrance to the airport (we also added an extra 1000 Rs on it for good measure).  A copy of my passport and a photo were required.

My first impression of New Delhi is that it seems like any other big city.  There are lots of cars on the well-paved roads.  The houses and buildings seem fairly modern.  And the people wear Westernized dress.  No slums.  No army of beggars.  No cows.  But, it is only the first night.

We checked in at the Hotel Palace Heights located within the inner ring of Connaught Circle.  It is definitely no palace.  The rooms are modern with a comfortable bed.  It is a little cramped.  But, it is a nice, clean hotel not unlike a Holiday Inn, except without the screaming kids running in the halls nor the soft-core Spectravision movies.