New Delhi

For our sightseeing in Delhi, we got a car tour with Kavi’s cousin Bob, and they arranged a bus tour that took us all around the city. The bus tour was supposed to be in English, but their were three non-natives on the bus, so most of what was said was either in Hindi or heavily-accented English that was blaring from a microphone that was far too close to the guide’s mouth. But it was still a great tour. There was an Italian girl named Sara with us who was studying village architecture, so we wandered around together and exchanged stories. We went to the India gate and the President’s house where the lawn was being used by Army officials who were trying with everything they could to lift a hot air balloon into the air, the Kutab Minar where we saw some beautiful Arabic architecture and some precious puppies, a Hare Krishna temple where we were told that we weren’t circling an idol correctly and that the temple was where they turn western “hippies into happies,” the famous B’hai Lotus Temple where even Indians had to be completely quiet for the two minutes they were inside, a Swaminaren Temple that forced us to give up everything but our souls before we entered, the very crowded Indira Gandhi house where she lived and was assassinated, and the Gandhi memorial with its eternal flame. The tour driver tried to take us to the Red Fort, but apparently – a surprise to be the tour participants and the guide – the road and memorial were closed. It was the first of a few times that the glaring organizational disparities between American and Indian tour companies was made evident. But we went with it.

This tour was also the first time we figured out the system for the tour business in India in general. For shopping, the guides emphasize that we shouldn’t buy stuff from the street. It’s dirty, they’re trying to rip you off, it’s not good quality, they’re not good people, etc. etc. etc. Instead, they propose a shopping stop (that is never advertised in the tour information you get prior to the tour) where you go inside an air-conditioned building full of stalls where a staff is at the door to greet and guide you through shopping, and the prices are fixed at a considerably higher price than the hawkers you were just chatting with at a temple or memorial. In Delhi, Agra and Jaipur we were ushered into emporiums with promises of top-quality goods and cheap prices, and each time I found something that I had seen before marked up three or four times the original price. It is a great marketing scheme aimed at people who have no idea what prices should be, and it worked on our friend Sara – she left the emporium with a green silk salwaar kamiz that cost her probably as much as three of the same type of suits Kavi ordered later in the week. Kavi and I figured it out early on, and we waited to do shopping on the streets or with her family who could finesse a price to numbers that seemed so low that a profit to seem impossible. For eating, the guides usher us to restaurants that seemed to have opened just for us. In Delhi, in fact, we took a huge detour back to the bus depot because he wanted to take us to “good cuisine with north and south Indian food options”. Really, he just wanted to make us go to the restaurant that was owned by the tour company. The staff was ready to take our money, and the prices were once again some of the highest I had seen. It’s a good business being a tour operator.