Indian passport ftw.

August 14th -

Saturday morning, we headed straight for the Taj Mahal. To get there, first you need to stop at a station where you pick up your tickets, and then take a golf cart, or a mini bus. It’s almost worth it to take a guide at this point if you don’t look Indian or hold Indian ID because they will offer to buy the ticket entrance in their price of a guide. The entrance for an Indian citizen, or Indian tourist to see the Taj is 20 Rupees, approximately 50 cents usd. For a foreigner, however, you will have to pay 750 rupees to get passed the Taj Gates. That’s approximately $18. This is the one time where my dad’s Indian passport was worth anything. If you ever want a discount to the Taj Mahal and other Indian monuments, museums, and tourist attractions apply for an Indian passport. Other than that the Indian passport is worth shit. Luckily my Indian Overseas Citizenship got me the hefty discount.

On an important note for the future India tourist- Guides should never cost more than 800 rupees for a group of four (about $5 bucks a person) for any walk through in India. They like to bargain of course, so they’ll say a high price to start with, and you can beat them down on price. A cheaper price doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll give you a cheap walk through, I’m pretty sure they have a certain bit of history memorized, and will shoot out the same walk through time and time again.

Also, Indians don’t bargain like any other race. There’s a certain art to it, which my dad has completely mastered. Once they say a price, he makes his eyes really big as if he’s in shock, and says something like “how am I supposed to eat if you’re charging me so much”, or something funny like that. By the way, that’s only funny because he’s overweight, so it’s quite ironic. Once you make them laugh, and they find you amusing, they’re more willing to give you a price that both parties will be comfortable with. Once the price with entrance has been negotiated pay the guide only for the residence ticket prices to start off with, and then give him the balance in the end.

The golf cart over should cost 5 rupees a person, and once they drop you as close as any motor vehicle can go you should get down and avoid all the street hustlers that try to sell you random stuff. Worry about that later, you don’t want to carry anything extra and those street artifacts are dime a dozen.

The day that we went, it was a beautiful day, but ridiculously hot. We wanted to take some family pictures, so I wore jeans and my Holland world cup tee. I thought it was appropriate since it’s also the same summer that our Nederlandse had such a good run in the world cup. Bad idea. If I had to do it over, I would’ve worn shorts and a tank, or a soccer jersey because in the photos I’ve got some serious pit stains. Either way, we hired a photographer who was working on some busted up Olympus camera from the 90’s, and they charge a flat rate of 100 rupees a picture. There’s no negotiating on these prices- we tried. Business must be going great for them. Still, they’re only allowed up to a certain point in the courtyard, so bring your own camera if you want any pictures up close on the Taj.

I’ve heard since I was young that the reason for the Taj Mahal is actually a love story, but after my tour I’ve come to realize that it really is just a story of favoritism and obsession. This king Shahjah had three wives, but loved Mumtaz Mahal the most and so he decides to surprise her with a building worth 40 million rupees. At that time each rupee was worth 20,000 rupees in gold. This didn’t even include the cost of marble, and red stone because he got that for free from Udaipur and Jaipur. Baller! It took 22 years to complete the building. Unfortunately, Mumtaz died before the building was completed. According to my tour guide, Shajah loses his mind at this time and asks his son to imprison him. (Remember Agra Fort?) At the same time he wants to build another taj mahal directly opposite the dirty river (that’s not it’s name; I call it that) but this time in black marble imported from Bulgaria. Could you just imagine how much that would have cost? Over the years, they switched out Mumtaz’ grave 3 times, finally she ended up in the main chamber of the Taj. When Shahjah finally died they buried them together. Classic Indian love story, literally.

Personally, I thought the Taj was everything I read about and more. It had this magnificent and powerful presence that gave me chills in the 110-degree weather. There’s a cool trick that not too many people know about, When you’re walking in through the gate, keep your eyes fixed on the Taj- as you walk towards it, the arches in the Taj gate give the impression that the Taj is actually moving away from you. I got some pretty sweet jumping pictures, of course and even though you’re not supposed to take pictures in the tomb, I snuck in a beautiful shot of both graves, and the artwork into each slab of marble. Sneaky, sneaky.

We left and the tour guide took us to some shop. Someone mentioned earlier never to buy at those shops because the tour guide gets a 40% commission on any profit made by those clients. We skipped out on that place, and I bought some cool souvenirs, peacock fans and dope scarves, and a couple of marble elephants. I negotiated the marble elephants and scarves down myself. I’m turning Indian.

Sicckkripur

August 13th part 2-

It was off to the Taj Mahal. Unfortunately as Friday the 13^th would have it we found out that the Taj is closed on Fridays. What a bummer. This really threw a monkey wrench in our plans since we’re short of days already. We finally decided to check out Fatehpur Sikhri, which is Akbar’s palace, the Agra Fort, and spend another night in Agra so that we could catch the Taj early.

In Fatehpur Sikhri, or Sikhripur (that’s what my dad calls it) we came across some of the best hustlers the world has ever seen. The first hustler was this little kid who tried to sell my mom some colorful pens for 100 rupees, which isn’t much, but my mom pulled the classic “no hablo ingles” line and the kid busted out with fluent Spanish. There were no excuses after that, my mom promised to buy a pack from him later. Then some tour guide came up to us went on an Ace Ventura spiel where he talked for 3 minutes non-stop until my dad said, “alright, let’s go.” The little kid hopped in the back of our auto rickshaw to make sure the deal went down eventually.

We headed to Akbar’s palace. From what I understood from the tour guides broken English Akbar was this king who was a total Bad Ass. He stood at 5 foot 3 inches tall and wielded a 24-kilogram sword; it weighed in the area of 56 lbs. Akbar had 3 wives, but had girls everywhere around his temple. When he went to bed he had four girls who he made sure bathed in Rose water before he allowed them to fan him with big peacock feathers. Talk about the good life.

The red stone temple displayed his three wives’ religious beliefs and was definitely pretty cool. The day was pleasant, lots of overcast, so it wasn’t too hot. We finished the palace, and it was time to head back to Agra for the fort. On the way over though, a really creepy monkey trainer came up to our window and had his monkey do backflips and other cool tricks. We gave him 20 rupees to which he said, “This only buys the Atta, what about the daal?” True. We shot him another 20.

The trip back took about an hour, but once we got there I realized how massive the fort really was. The Indian government decided to take over 2/3rds of the fort. You can do that when you’re the Indian government; just declare 2/3rds of a national monument as their property. There’s a white marble section in the Agra fort that overlooks the Taj Mahal. The story behind this white area according to the tour guide was that Shajah’s son imprisoned him into this white marble area for spending too much money. Also he mentioned that Shajah was going to give his power to somebody else other than his son. That might’ve been another factor for the imprisonment. The fort had an impressive moat area for crocodiles and a jungle area right beside it, which held tigers and other animals.

After a long day of tour guides we went to Jaypee palace and spent the night there.

Here I show off my photographic talent. The model in the picture is probably a homeless person just hanging out enjoying the day.

Our tourguide was multitalented apparently, he obviously knew what he was doing in this picture. Not bad for a tour guide. He also spoke 4 other languages including japanese.

This is a good family pic, notice the rolled up jean cuffs for airability and the callaway golf cap with 50 spf.

The oasis of Agra

So I won't be writing in real time any more, as time is pretty hard to come by in India.

August 13th, 2010 Part 1-

Slept in a little bit today, with a 9:30 wake up. Noticed that I’m getting kind of fat- I guess all the Indian food is starting to get to me. Whatever, I’ll lose it within a couple of weeks of being back in the states. If you ever plan to visit India, be warned that it’s impossible to escape high calorie foods and over eating, especially if you have any Indian relatives around you at the time.

Either way we spent the morning in the hotel’s pool, sauna, and had a nice family breakfast together. Here are a few pictures of the Amarvillas, this is basically what my future house will look like.

Besides the Taj Mahal and Agra fort, Agra is a dumpster. The Amarvillas is the oasis of Agra, where people can rest in luxury.

The service was excellent, everyone was well trained and so polite. The oberoi really has their stuff down. The employees of the hotel aren't allowed to take tips. Instead, they have a system down where if you want to leave a tip at the end of the stay you can put money in an envelope and leave it with the front desk, and mention anyone who was particularly awesome in providing a comfortable stay. I'm guessing their bonus is based off of awesome points. The oberoi probably has a star chart to handle awesomeness points.

This is the view from our room you can see the Taj Mahal and the Red Mosque right next to it.

A zoom into the Taj. It looks massive from even this far away.

The pool's concept was really cool, there was an indoor section with a lounge in the back and this fantastic Ganesh art piece.

A good mother/son picture to put up. Close up of Ganesh, the god of good luck and prosperity.

British airways business class style luxury chairs. This was right when you exited the elevator on our floor. The painting in the back provides for a scenic backdrop.

Here's a picture of Anmol and me before we were about to head out on our day's adventures.

Forget Obama's Health reform, Come to India!!

I haven’t been able to post in the last few days because of not having any Internets. India produces an incredible amount of software andiphone apps every single year, but wifi hot spots seem to be non-existent.

On Wednesday, My mom wanted the entire family to get a few medical check ups, so we headed over to the doctor’s office. I’ve had some sinus problems lately and the doctor told me it’s probably because I don’t keep my mouth shut. Indian doctors are pretty direct, but in all seriousness he told me to keep my mouth closed and breathe in through my nose at all times. I then faced my fear of needles for the first time in a few years- as always, I couldn’t look as they sucked out blood from my arm but it was painless and fast. Then it was MRI time. If you ever want some cheap medical tests, you might as well make an India trip out of it. I paid $50 usd for an MRI of my sinus cavities, whereas they run up to $3000 in Miami-Dade.

After that we grabbed some lunch at some well-known restaurant in New Delhi. I’m not really used to this food yet, it’s a bit too heavy for me, but the butter chicken (chicken makhanwala) is out of this world. Contrary to what it sounds like, Butter chicken is chicken cooked in this red creamy sauce it may or may not have heaps of butter in it, but it is pretty delicious. The only setback to such a heavy lunch is that I was still full 8 hours later. I felt like I had just eaten 20 minutes before, I guess that’s a regular effect of the food here in India. The Indian food from back home has less spices,and less cream, and comes with less heartburn and acid reflex.

I wanted to go to Chandni Chowk after lunch, my dad’s very skeptical about me going to that area. It’s this crazy market with crazy bargains but according to my dad there is no space to walk or breathe while you’re there. The real reason I want to go is because my mom was born into that neighborhood and I would like to get a chance to check out where she’s from. My mom and I were goingto head there, but the monsoon rains came out of nowhere. Disappointing, but a welcome change of weather from that serious heat.

It’s sale time at the stores here, so instead we stopped at a small branch of stores. Everyone in India must have watched the Russel Peters comedy like 1800 times, because during my short shopping experience I heard “take it and go” like 15 times. And after any Indian says it they get this stupid smug look on their face, like they just cracked the newest joke on theface of India. Yeah, like we haven’t heard that one before. I bought my dad an Indian Cricket training tee, and some shorts so that he can wear it to show the world the one team he does support.

Then I went home and spent time with the Sethi family until I got tired, knocked out and woke up at 6 the next day.

Since I was up so early on Thursday morning, I figured I’d go for a swim with Uncle Ramman. The drive to the country club was nice in the morning. It was very serene, there was very little of the hustle and bustle that surrounds the Delhi streets during the daytime. None of the gyms in India really have swimming pools. There’s no mega-gym like L.A Fitness and the drive to the country clubs take a good 20-30 minutes. To get to the club, we had to pass by the India Gate; it’s a monument dedicated to the soldiers who fought during World War II. I asked uncle Raman why it was even there, because I thought India didn’t even participate in WWII. He looked at me like I was joking and explained that we fought with the British, because we were still under their rule at the time. Ohhh.

The morning swim was nice and although it was so early, thewater was already warm. I’ve come to realize that Indian people hate order. There were proper lanes in the pool, and two Indian men were swimming sideways, perpendicular to the lanes. I guess Indians swim like they drive- with complete disregard for any standard or norm. When I got home mom made me leave right away to speed shop with her. It’s like the wedding season never ends. I’ve been to maybe 5 to 8 Indian weddings in the last couple of years, and there are no signs of wedding travels slowing down. It’s almost like a domino effect- when one Sindhi gets married there are like 10 other Sindhis who get married immediately after. Either way, I got shot down again for a Rajasthani Hat.

We got home packed everything upreally quick, and took off for Agra. Time to see the Taj Mahal! I’ve read that Agra is a total dump, but the Taj Mahal is one of the most beautiful man made objects this world has to offer. We had to switch our plans from Jaipur to Agra due to hotel availabilities, but I was so pumped to finally get on the road. The drive took about 4-5 hours, and we had a quick dinner and went to check into our hotel The Oberoi Amarvillas.

Wow. What a hotel. First a man dressed in typical Rajasthani attire, with a great hat and a fantastic mustache, greeted us. I know this region is famous for its mustaches, so I’m really excited to see some of the best mustaches in the world in my next few days here. The hotel is decked out with great contemporary Indian furniture and art, and the service is fantastic. Everybody is so polite, and they don’t accept tips so you know they’re not putting on a façade at all. It’s quite late now, so I’ll post more later. By the way, I can see the Taj Mahal from my window. :)

- August 11th & 12th

P.S I tried paan for the first time this trip on Thursday, it was ridiculously gross. I plan to give it another shot before the end of this trip

At the start of our road trip we saw this bus, I guess it had just broken down so you can see the guy in the white trying to fix it. With a closer look we can really see how India works- the guy in the white wifebeater is supervising and giving direction to this other guy who is directly under the bus. Talk about down and dirty.

As we left Delhi, this monument called the Lotus Temple was in one of the most southern parts of the city. It's just amazing how the architect designed such a symmetrical building shaped like a lotus. I've come to learn now that Indians architecture is based off of symmetry, i'll explain a little more later during the Taj Mahal blogs.

Now accepting donations for a Rajasthan Hat.

The weather was predicted to be partially sunny with thunderstorms 119 degrees Fahrenheit Real Feel Temperature in New Delhi today. Basically what that means is that accuweather takes all these different factors, like Delhi’s predicted high of 95 degrees, and mixes it in with Delhi’s relative humidity of 88% and shoots out a number to give you an estimate of what the weather really feels like. 119? No big deal… We were talking about the weather today and I was spoon fed some weather sense. Basically the reason for the monsoon season is because India gets so ridiculously hot it creates low pressure systems where eventually it just rains hardcore to cool the temperature a bit. Unfortunately for some reason it won’t rain this year, with all the global climate patterns changing, so there’s an expected 2-week extension on monsoon season. Fantastic.

Mom wanted to go get her hair washed, and my dad suggested for me to get a manicure and a pedicure. I guess my nails might be gross, so we headed over to the salon and I hit my first translation barrier of the trip. There’s still this major separation of gender here. Go figure, the world’s largest democracy has so much yet to achieve in terms of equality. I got mom and Anmol settled in their section of the salon, separate but equal I suppose, and headed over to the gent’s section. I asked the guy about a manicure/pedicure, and he raised the price on me from the cart menu. Of course I got upset and was like why does it say one price on the cart menu but you’re trying to charge me like 4 us dollars more? And of course, he played the ‘I don’t speak any English card’, where he nodded and said “Ha, manicure, pedicure” repeatedly. I got frustrated and left. After my mom was done, she tried to come help me ask them, but the service was miserable so she got frustrated as well, and tried to leave in a hurry, but ran into the glass door. I think I might have broken my funny bone. Not the fake one in the elbow, but the real one in my ribs.

The rest of the day went smoothly. We went to go shop for salwar kamises and saris. I found one that was really nice, kind of a copper-orange color. Mom wouldn’t let me buy this epic Rajasthan hat, the one that all the princes wear in the movies; she claims I wouldn’t use it. I think if I got that hat, I wouldn’t ever take it off, just cruise around the house, do my laundry in it, and cook meals in a hat. The possibilities are endless.

The night was pretty standard- another round of drinks, another serious crash off of Jetlag. I realize I haven’t taken many pictures here, which was one of the main purposes of my trip, but fortunately I haven't missed recording anything too wild yet

Hopefully tomorrow we’ll be able to make our way to Jaipur for the start of Teejri.

Guns don't kill people... Jet Lag kills people!!

Not much to do today. We woke up at 2:30 pm india standard time. Mom made me breakfast that ended up being a half desi/ half Indian omelet. (An egg white omelet with capsicum and onion.) I’m basically turning Hindu already. Uncle Atul gave me a serious lesson on how to eat mango in India. Basically you’re supposed to squeeze the mango until it gets a bit pulped out on the inside and then you bite off the top stem and suck out the juice and the flesh of the mango comes along with it. The mangos in India are incredible.

My first attempt at eating the mango belonged on fail blog, I bit half way into the skin and all the juice and the squeezed pulp fell out. I decided that would be my only attempt for the day.

We had a late lunch at Haldiram’s, which is a vegetarian joint thatserves a bunch of mithai and has different stations of food. My dad ate two portions of cholle batura just to prove to my mom that he could.The usual. I tried to order some dhai puri but they didn’t have any of the regular kind. They only had monster dhai puri. I’m sure that’s not its name but that’s what I call it. Basically they gave me the fattest puri in all of India, threw some masala in it, loaded it up with tamarind and sweet yogurt. It was service with a paan-stained smile.

Speaking of pan, right after we went to get some pan. Ididn’t have any but saw the guy make it. The pan man has a store that is half the size of my closet. I do have a walk in closet though, don’t wanna brag or anything… But still he sits there all day serving up pan with no room to stretch his legs.

Right about then the Jet lag started destroying me. This must’ve been around 6 pm but my parents said I wasn’t allowed to sleep, because I had to get my sleep schedule back on track. I mean that was cool apart from the fact that I’d be woken up 3 hours after I fell asleep later on that night. Either way, right after t

he pan we hung out with Uncle Ramman, and Uncle Atul and Ramman’s mother. She’s such a nice lady; my mom decided to bore her with wedding pictures. She handled it in stride though, and used her age to her advantage. She told my mom that her eyes couldn’t handle prolonged computer use. Aunty – 1 Mom- 0.

Ankur and I went to go pick up some soda and chips so that we could start drinking. I feel like every time I get into a car in India I might just wet my pants out of fear. If I have a heart attack while I’m here, you guys know why. So we get some kingfisher (delicious Indian beer), soda, some more pan, and some chips and head back to the house for some drinks. Uncle Atul’s created this bar in his house called the “corruption room.” It’s got this whiskey lounge feel, and he has a glass showroombehind the bar, it contains some really cool ornaments and souvenir pieces. One of them is this mask that’s very tribal, for some reason I think it is just the coolest. We drank black on the rocks and ate Indian hors d'oeuvres which were absolutely delicious. The chicken sheikh kebab wrapped in romali roti was my favorite.

Ankur and I headed to hang out with a friend of his, definitely good times we got some late night kulfi, which was just ridiculous. There are two types of ice cream carts in New Delhi. One is in red and white I think it’s called Quality. You don’t want to go to that one. The blue and yellow cart is where the good Kulfi is. Trust me on this one. At this point the jet lag mixed with the alcohol and whatever drug they put in the kulfi to make it so good hit me like a brick wall. I actually knocked out in the car, despite my fear of being ina car in Delhi.

We finally got to the house, and I got into bed only to be woken up by my dad yelling at his black berry 3 hours later. Oh family vacations.

Oh yeah, you better believe it. Monster. Dhai. Puri.

Here Anmol and my dad race to eat Kulfi before it melts. Anmol dropped a fat chunk of Kulfi on her shirt.

This is Paan. It's a bunch of natural Herbs wrapped in a beetle leaf, and is basically the Indian version of herbal crack. Every day millions of Indians get their paan fix at their local dealer. As you can see from this picture, this poor man is anxiously waiting for his fix so he can get back to life.

Let's get Enculturated!

I am the worst Indian ever. I eat beef, think pere-pou’ing is a gross tradition, and much to my grandparents’ dismay, I can’t speak a phrase of Hindi or Sindhi.

A few months ago, when Maharaj looked at me and proclaimed “You are now a Hindu man,” I couldn’t really understand why such a strong wave of emotions swept over me. Was it the fact that my sister was about to get married in a few days? Or that I had just witnessed another moment where my parents sacrificed somuch to give me things I secretly desired? (Even though I definitely insisted I really didn’t want anything.) It may have been that so many people I hold so close to me had flown, bussed, or carpooled their way to Miami earlier than necessary just to make it for my Janya. That might have been it.

Or could it possibly really have been the fact that I was proud to be a Hindu man?

I would prefer to believe it was the latter, but in all honesty, I have absolutely no idea what being a Hindu man really entails. I remember wondering what the coconut in my entire ritual was about; I just found out recently that the coconut was my Janya buddy since I didn’t have another person to Janya with. I mean if I did then that would have been a real party… Regardless of the reason, I ended upshowing a little more emotion than I would have liked to show. There were about 60 people plus photographers and videographers to catch that prized moment on camera for pleasure, or blackmail.Whatever.

That occasion got me to thinking “I should really explore my culture while I’m young.” I asked my mother at the beginning of summer for atrip to India to allow me to learn more about Indian Culture and she was all for it. A month later we were planning tickets. We got stuck with the craziest route- Dallas to Frankfurt to Switzerland and on to New Delhi. So after 35 hours of travel, some half assed plane rest, a bottle of South African white wine (which is spectacular btw), a dozen plane meals, and half dozen mimosas later, we finally reached the motherland.

Just to think, if we had to do this trip in economy, I don’t think we would’ve made it… Either way, the jet lag and lack of sleep has definitely got me a little bit delirious. See ya,

Sahil

Here Delta finds another way to screw me over- after delaying my 6:15 am for two hours due to "crew's rest", a compartment wouldn't close in the plane, and they decided to delay the flight for another 45 minutes until the pilot and a passenger were finally able to successfully close the compartment. I missed my first flight from atlanta to dallas due to this first flight's delay. Delta then grudgingly put me on standby for the next flight out to Dallas.

luckily I made it to Dallas, where the next 32 hours of my journey started. This was taken on the first flight, lufthansa dallas-frankfurt

Delhi's airport has built a new wing for the Commonwealth games with different art pieces, each one of these hands has a different meaning to them, and is right above customs. If I tried to take a photo of anything in states immigration I probably would get detained and cavity searched.