Well, arrived in New Delhi yesterday to 46 Degrees, blast furnace hot, in the late afternoon. My hotel, as described in trip advisor didnt look great from the outside and the taxi driver was like......ooooo not good hotel. Raising my anxiety a bit but I pushed on and like the review turns out it was nice and new on the inside. I checked in relaxed for a bit and then decided to head out. Apparently there were supposed to be a couple of malls in the area, and the hotel offered a ride there. I decided I needed to go for walk so I headed out on my own. It is a little suburban here being close to the airport but I passed by a sweets shop and went inside, just wanting something small to tide me over, I picked out a couple of cookies and the woman was like thats it ? I said yes so she gave me a couple of extras and said have a good day - free! I thought that was great.....ended up getting a bottle of water and directions to the mall. Good start to things which was great because I was not especially looking forward to what I had seen before from this city. It was about a 20 minute walk to a series of three gleaming new malls. They stood out like an Oasis. For two months I had seen nothing like this. They were really nice but had a couple things that were different from your typical Western Mall. Valet parking, and metal detectors and lots of guards some with rifles on the outside. Inside - you could have been anywhere in the world, all of the same brand name shops. Judge me if you want but I went to MacDonalds and had some french fries, not quite the same but better than any other of the limited fries I have since being away. This was very certainly a different India than I had encountered so far and I think it really highlights the disparity between rich and poor. I wandered into a bookstore and ended up buying a book that was recommended to me by Katharina Nickoleit the journalist I met in Varanasi - called Revolution 2020 it is set in Varanasi. Written by Chetan Bhagat, he is supposed to be one of the biggest selling Indian authors of an English title. While reading the book in the mall, I noticed they had a movie theatre and I was in the mood for an escape of sorts. The new Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow was playing and I picked up a ticket, which they dont sell at the Theatre but on the floor below ? Anyhow, while waiting for the movie to start in the lobby because they were not seating people I struck up a conversation with a guy a little younger than myself. It was nice to chat with a Local person who wasnt trying to sell me something! Turns out he lived right around the corner from the Hotel I am staying at an offered to give me a ride home after the movie. I really enjoyed the film and the theatre was super nice - I had a least a foot in front of my knees before the row in front of me -quite posh. A couple of things stood out - they stopped the movie half way through to have an intermission - I wasnt sure what was going on at first I thought they were having technical difficulties and was like ahhhh man, this sucks........but then all was fine. On the subject of the treatment of women, they actually had ads on the screen that related to stalking and harassment and that you can go to jail for it. It appears they are making strides in making things better. Also as strange as it may seem but they actually showed a little information ad about what to do in an emergency, and where there exits were for the theatre that we were in - good idea I thought. After the film got a lift to my hotel and an invitation to be picked up to have breakfast with his family in the morning, which I accepted - what a kind offer. Should be interesting ! Flight today at 2pm heading to Sringnagar in Kashmir, Northern India !
Posted on: Tue, 10 Jun 2014 03:12:27 +0000
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