Category Archives: travel in India

bio, travel in India

India 2008: Delhi > Dehra Dun > Mussoorie

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This trip began with a mad rush to the airport. I’ve been booking and taking so many flights lately that, not surprisingly, I got confused over the departure time for this one: thought it was 6:45, but as we got in the car and I did my last-minute paranoia check, I realized the flight would take off at 6:15.

Enrico managed to get me to Malpensa in time for a skidding rush to the counter to check in my enormous pink suitcase – it helped that I had already checked myself in for the flight online. I then proceeded almost directly onto the plane, with only a brief stop for an indispensable espresso and a pastry.

During my three-hour layover in Amsterdam I took advantage of my Platinum-for-life status with KLM (the fruit of six years of four flights a year in business class, back during the dotcom boom) to use their lounge, which was unpleasantly crowded but at least had free WiFi.

I think it was also my Platinum status that got me the best seat in Economy class: aisle seat behind a short row so there was no seat in front of me at all – legroom galore! I could even have worked on my laptop, but I didn’t. I watchedAaja Nachle on the video-on-demand system, and read a Montalbano book that I had somehow previously missed.

KLM Indian meal

“snack” served just before landing. The food wasn’t quite what I was in the mood for at that hour, but the greatly reduced and presumably recycled packaging was interesting

A driver sent by Momotours met me at the airport and took me to the same apartment where Ross and I had stayed in December. I slept fitfully for a few hours. In the dawn I heard a strange bird call. Now that I’ve looked it up, I suspect that identifying it as a koel is probably wrong (though the call sounds like that to me). Can anyone tell me what bird this is (it doesn’t appear in the video – I could only hear it, not see it)?

The driver came back and took me to Old Delhi Railway Station, which was soon bustling with travellers. I chatted with a young American couple who moved from the US to Dehra Dun and are running Himalayan hiking tours from the US – they were escorting a group of people just arrived from Tennessee. Indian tourism is booming in all directions!

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Another ride on the familiar Shatabdi, with the familiar Shatabdi breakfast:

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“Premium white slice” refers to bread. I never butter my bread in Italy, but in India the butter tastes better to me.

The train arrived on time (not always the case), and another taxi picked me up for the ride to Mussoorie. Getting out of the messily booming city of Dehra Dun seemed to take forever; I amused myself taking pictures.

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Indian sign painters never seem to think of checking their spelling. A small panel at the bottom rear of a beautifully-painted truck in Delhi was inscribed: “Pewor Brecks”. I had to think hard about that one.

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travel in India

Bombay Signs & Sightings

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^ above: Santa Claus – and Congress party head Sonia Gandhi – wish us a Merry Xmas. Santa looks concerned about something overhead…

Dec 25, 2007

I took pictures during a long taxi ride today (and some other days).

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^ “Drink [it] cold, make/do enjoy!”

Below: Two women got into this three-wheeled scooter taxi:

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…followed by a bicycle and a boy:

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^ Dairy products

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^ …and observe that the pillion riders (motorcycle passengers) almost never wear helmets – not that the drivers do, either. There is a helmet law in Delhi, at least for the driver, but it appears not to be universal across India, and only indifferently enforced.

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^ I was trying to get the sign that’s partially obscured by Mr. Paunchy: “Ambulance Day & Night – Hearse”. Just in case the ambulance isn’t in time, I guess.

But “Nippy Caterer” is pretty funny, too.

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Billboard outside a school: “Congratulations [name] – national topper in Cambridge International Examinations.”

“Topper”…?

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^ There are many signs like this throughout Bombay, and, indeed, a great deal of incovenient roadwork going on.

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Dakshin Restaurant: South India’s Finest, in the North

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^ above: a selection of chutneys (coconut, tomato, coriander, ?) with crunchy fried things to dip in them. Delicious as these are, don’t fill up – there’s a lot more food coming!

While in Delhi I spent a morning working at Sun’s office, which is such a hive of activity that desks are at a premium! Then Ritu, a colleague, accompanied Ross and me to lunch at Dakshin, a restaurant in the Marriott Hotel in the Saket area of south Delhi.

Dakshin means “south” in Hindi, and the restaurant features premium versions of the foods of south India, in a beautiful setting with excellent service.

We ordered the vegetarian thali, a traditional Indian style of meal which works very well as a tasting menu. This began with rasam, a traditional accompaniment to every south Indian meal: a thin, spicy soup served (in this case) in gorgeous heavy brass bowls.

rasam

I don’t have a lot of experience with south Indian food, but this was the best rasam I’ve yet tasted – a rich, aromatic broth, probably less hot than real south Indian norms in deference to the tastes of foreigners (and, for that matter, north Indians – real southern cooking is too spicy for many north Indians).

After that the main meal arrived: the thali is the large, round tray, in this case with a banana leaf perfectly cut to fit inside, with little bowls of goodies arranged around the rim.

south Indian thali

From bottom center, going clockwise: tamarind rice, plain rice, lentils, a curry made from gram flour and coconut milk, potatoes, dal (lentils) with spinach, coconut curry with vegetables, something veggie which I couldn’t identify but liked, raita (yogurt). This menu will change according to season and what the chef finds in the market that day.

In other thalis, you might leave the space at the center free for a mound of rice, so that you have room to mix it with the dal and other goodies.

In this case, the center is occupied by appam, a bread made from rice flour and coconut milk – spongy on one side, crispy on the other, light, fluffy, delicately flavored, and thoroughly yummy! South Indian cuisine features many variations on breads made from rice flour, such as dosa and idli.

All in all a very wonderful meal, even though Rs. 1000 or so per head is extravagant by local standards – prices have gone up shockingly in Delhi, especially against the weak dollar.

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Mussoorie Miscellany

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So much to write about, but I’ve been so busy with so many things that it’s hard to gather my thoughts into a coherent narrative. So… a few random notes and photos.

Life in Mussoorie is a lot more comfortable (and energy-intensive) than it used to be. Room heaters run on gas cylinders are very common, though apparently every winter there are dire warnings that there will be a shortage of cylinders, and this year it might even be true. Failing those, there are kerosene heaters and bukharis – wood-burning, cast-iron stoves (above).

There are vehicles everywhere now; it’s easy and cheap to get a taxi almost anywhere in town. I’m out and about far more than I ever was before, because I know that, no matter how far I walk out, I don’t have to walk back unless I want to.

Today Ross and I walked down from Sisters’ Bazaar to Landour. Our first stop was the shoemaker where yesterday I had picked up a pair of made-to-order sandals (to wear in warmer climes): Rs. 250, about 5 euros.

Today we ordered copies of Ross’ beloved Fornarina cowboy boots (the green one in the photo below). Hers will be red with black stars, mine black with red stars. Rs. 2500 (50 euros) each. The originals cost 250 euros.

handmade cowboy boots

Next stop was Inam the tailor, where I dropped off a length of hand-embroidered Kashmiri wool to be made into a salwar-kameez outfit. These are so beautiful and practical in winter (at least in places that don’t have much heating) – and will definitely turn heads in Lecco!

Then we stopped at the dosa shop – the same old one that was so popular in my student days. Ross wasn’t sure she liked dosa (a thin, griddle-fried bread made from rice flour), but soon decided that she did. This was my masala dosawith wonderful tomato and coconut chutneys, and a side of sambar:

<dosa

Mussoorie is still full of unintentionally funny signs:

funny Indian sign

I had to think about “attechies”.

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How to Obtain an Indian Visa in Milan

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Today’s hurdle in getting Ross off to Woodstock School is getting her student visa. I have had several occasions to get visas for India at the Indian Consulate in Milan, most recently two years ago when Ross and I travelled to India together.

It wasn’t easy that time. We were both travelling on US passports, and, as I already knew, the Indian consulate, in order to give a visa to a non-Italian national at a consulate in Italy, wanted proof of residence. This is usually easy to get: you go to your local Ufficio d’Anagrafe, where you are registered as a resident of your comune (municipality), and they print out something saying you’re a resident, with your home address and the date at which your residency began.

The hitch was that at that time we had been in Lecco for only two years, so our residence forms showed “resident in Lecco since 2003,” and the Indian consulate wanted proof that we had been in Italy for at least three years (what were we supposed to do if we had just moved to Italy…?). I happened to still have copies of some very old residency forms from Milan for myself (in Italy, keep copies of every official form that has ever passed through your hands – you never know), but had no such thing for Ross.

I pointed out to the Indian consulate employee that, as my daughter, Ross was likely to have been living with me in Italy for the last 15 years, but the lady insisted on documentary evidence.

Fortunately, Milan’s main Ufficio d’Anagrafe is right next door to the Indian Consulate. I ran over there, stood in line for 20 minutes, paid 13 euros for a “historical” certificate of residence showing that Ross had been resident in Milan since 1991, ran back to the consulate with that, and they accepted it.

This time around, I wasn’t too sure what they would require to issue a student visa to a US citizen resident in Italy, besides the official letters from Woodstock School and the SAGE Program showing her as a “bona fide student”. I checked the Indian Embassy website, and could not find much except a new form to be filled in by non-Italian nationals which will then get faxed… where? – for a fee, too. The site also had no information about the hours of the Milan consulate – I could swear this info used to be there, but can’t find it now.

I wanted Ross to suffer through this process with me (and I wasn’t sure whether they might want to see her face), so I insisted that she accompany me on the visa expedition. The earliest we could do it was today, now that school has ended (she couldn’t have applied much earlier anyway, as the student visa is only good for one year and she will not graduate from Woodstock until May 30th, 2008).

So we got up bright and early this morning to come to Milan, picked up some cash to pay for the visa, and had coffee and brioche at a bar near via Larga. Swung into the side street where the consulate entrance is located, and saw the usual line of (clearly Indian) people. Then the man at the door told us that for visas we had to go someplace completely new. (Would it not have been useful to put this information on the website…?)

We fell in with an Italian in the same situation, and shared a taxi to the new location, via Marostica 34. Along the way we talked about his reasons for being in India: he lives at Auroville, and told us a lot about that. Sounds interesting; I’ll have to look into it more closely.

The new Indian Visa Outsourcing Center (phone 02 48701173) is very posh compared with the old consular office, with rows of seating, air conditioning, and even numbers to take (though I’m not sure how far these were actually being observed). The service truly is outsourced, to Italians. (I will refrain from pointing out the humor in this.)

Of course (story of my life), we’re a special case. The man at the window had never before had to do a student visa for a non-Italian national, and wanted to call the consulate for instructions. So he asked us to wait until “after 11” when they could call and figure out what to do with us.

later – We were called back to the window a few minutes after 11, the senior man of the agency (called Nando) looked at the forms and said they could be submitted as-is. He didn’t seem to think it would be any big deal, which relaxed me quite a bit. The visa might be ready as early as next Wednesday, otherwise I’ll pick it up when I return from the UK the following week. It cost 120 euros – Americans pay more than anyone else in the world for visas to India, apparently in a spirit of reciprocity for the amount Indians have to pay to get visas to the US. (Plus there was the fee for the mysterious fax.)

I’m still a bit nervous that something will go wrong – when it comes to Indian visas, I’m never happy until I have the damn thing in my hand. But I think it’ll be okay.

Ross, now that the Italian school year is over, is finally able to relax enough to get excited about this adventure she has chosen. And that makes up for all the hassle and stress I’m going through to make it happen for her.

Jun 20 – Visa in hand!

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