Good Times

India caught our attention immediately on the drive to our hotel. We were just mesmerized by the chewy air and the din of car horns and the trucks of every description piled tens of feet high with cargo, the favorite seeming to be marigold blossoms. Every other marigold truck had a shrouded woman riding on top of the load. No room in the truck or just making sure the load didn't fall off?  Each truck had emblazoned in large letters on the back: HONK HORN. And they did. Horns were blowing all around us. I tried without success to ferret out the rules of horn honking by watching our driver. I watched in amazement as a highway marked for three lanes actually was made to accommodate five. This was chaos, but somehow it worked. We got to our hotel, the Hotel Good Times.

Hotel Good Times

Since I had no rupees, I had to tip in dollars. I gave the driver a 5; this obviously overkill because he kept hanging around asking what else he could do for us. The hotel staff was beyond helpful. The guy who helped us with our bags also brought 3 bottles of water and 2 ice cold beers to the room - $10 with tip. Again it must have been generous because we had a friend for our entire stay here.

We had arrived in Dehli at 8:40 the evening of November 3 - exactly on time. We flew on Continental and had a love hate relationship with this flight. It was packed full of Indian families - almost all of them with small children. On the one hand, I love Continental's in flight entertainment system - a couple hundred movies on demand, as well as video games and TV shows. On the other hand, the Continental flight staff were particularly unfriendly and cold. They weren't rude, and they were professional but they were obviously well worn. Maybe unenthusiastic is the word I'm looking for. I mean, we were packed in this tight little tube for 14 hours, couldn't someone have spared even a hint of a smile?

By the way, if you ever have a layover at Newark Airport in Terminal C, I heartily recommend Caliente's Cab Company, a Mexican restaurant near gate 99. They served great margaritas and we had one of the best hand-prepared guacamole dips anywhere.

It only took us 10 minutes to clear immigration. I think this was because most of the people on our flight were Indian. The domestic lines for passport control were huge. Also, judging from the visa application process, India must put all kinds of bureaucracy around travel by people of Indian descent. Our fast track through passport control was more than offset by the 40 minute wait for our luggage. It was quite amusing to watch how too much technology can screw something up so badly.

The baggage carousel was brand new and state of the art. It had two feeder belts feeding luggage onto the oval. Each feeder belt had this nifty sensor that could detect a gap on the carousel to feed a bag to. Pretty clever way to keep the carousel from being fouled by too many bags, don't you think. Except that if most of your flight is, say, hung up in a long line in passport control, no one is removing any bags which means a new bag won't be fed until someone claims a bag already on the belt and pretty soon people are waiting for about an hour for their luggage.

We had arranged a hotel transfer through our tour group and found our driver right away. We were sharing a ride with another tour member, Kathleen, who was scheduled to arrive 20 minutes after we did. I tried to make productive use of the time by getting cash from the ATM. Not to happen, though, since all three ATMs scattered throughout the terminal would not work. I was having some anxiety because I kept getting messages like I was using the wrong kind of card. I knew something was up with the machines when I couldn't even get cash from the Citibank ATM with my Citibank ATM card. I noticed no one else was having any luck either. This is the first time in our considerable travels I have had trouble getting cash in the arrival airport. It was also a sign of things to come.