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We had breakfast at the hotel and we went to the square that seemed to be the commercial centre of the town, where the Kwality restaurant and the handicraft tent were located. It was still early for indian standards (about 9am), so almost every shop was closed. That bothered us a little, because we wanted to buy a suitcase and some handicrafts. These we managed to order; although the tent was still closed, there were people inside, so we managed to talk to them. We had already made our minds yesterday about what to shop, so we order two small carved wooden tables, and some more small wooden things, we would pass there later to catch and pay for them.
We were needing cash and were had no travellers checks left, only a few dollars, so we needed to find a place where we could have cash with Visa card. We tried the closest bank, but it didn't looked like opened. Actually it had the door half opened, but there were only two or three men inside. I tried to talk to one, but apparently he didn't understand me at all, maybe it was too early to him to work. The place looked rather run down and I didn't see any Visa logo, so I guessed that they didn't work with credit cards for sure.
We remember to go to the bank branch of the hotel. We had another excuse to go back there, but I don't remember which. Giving credit to the driver, who kept saying that the banks wouldn't be opened for at least one hour, we headed to the market near the fort. It's quite big, and there one can find anything. These indian markets are really fascinating, with so much life, colours and exotic smells. We were the only tourists in the place, but we weren't much bothered by anyone, shopper or not. I guess all the hustlers in the area operate near the fort gate.
For our surprise, considering that it was located inside a luxury hotel, they didn't operate with Visa card in the bank branch of Clarks Shiraz. We tried to change money at the Kashmir shop of the hotel, offering them their commission. We were known there already, we used to chat a little bit there when we passed by and we had promised to buy something before we check out. We would have preferred to pay some commission than to go to another indian queue and be serviced by some slow bank bureaucrat. We had been told that the only bank that worked with Visa was State Bank, so it looked like being owned by government, so we would expect even bigger hassle. The employee of the shop was very surprised with our proposal, almost frightened and he insisted it would be unlegal to do such transaction, so we gave up the idea. Strange thing in a land where everyone seems so full of imagination for earning some money...
Before we went back downtown, we went to the hotel tours agency for asking the price of a taxi to take us to Fathepur Sikri in the afternoon and then to the train station. As the price was only slightly higher (Rs 500? 600?) than the prices we had heard from the touts that had hassled us, we reserved it. After all, we were expecting to be saved us some harassing bargaining by doing that. Although they mentioned a visit to a "genuine carpet factory", they seemed a little more trustful than those street men.
At the first State Bank branch we were sent to the "international" branch, which was nearby. A curious thing, much "Agra style": the paper where the bank clerk wrote us the address of the other branch was a comission's receipt to some carpet and handicraft shop.
The "international" branch looked a lot more like a western bank, it had a cleaner look and the computers were less rare and more modern, the opposite of the other (main) branch. It turned out that this wasn't the place yet. Happily we were in the "banks area" of Agra, so the Baroda bank that they pointed us was also nearby, 10 minutes walking.
That Baroda bank looked even more western, not only in the decoration, but also in the way the customers are treated. Not that indian employees are unkind, but generally they are kind of lazy and they give the idea that they are doing you a favour and they act like they have all the day to do that little thing that anywhere else wouldn't take a minute to finish. However there were two uncommon things with the bank, it had an uniformed guard as a porter, carrying an old fashioned big gun, and it had two or three smoky and noisy generators outside, which made a large cloud of dark smoke all around the bank door. We guessed that they couldn't trust the public electricity.
In less than ten minutes we had our rupees, a real surprise for someone who was already used to the time that those simple things take us in India. When I saw that they used an electronic machine (POS?), like those we have in our shops, I feared that it would take us the rest of the morning, considering the quality of indian telephones, but it all went alright.
In the afternoon we went to Fathepur Sikri, which was the one of the capitals of the moghul emperor Akbar. This was our only long journey outside towns we were doing outside Goa. The landscape is monotonous, a large plain with some trees here and there. We passed through some villages, most of them looked rather run down, poor and dirty. There were many big rain pools, some of them looked like small lakes, those near villages were generally very dirty. They were, however, used by people to wash themselves and their clothes. We saw also lots of cows and even more buffaloes, as well as other animals. We saw also some trained black bears. Their masters earn money making them do some sleights, or just making them stand. I wonder if there aren't any accidents once in a while, with such big animals, tall us a person.
The road was wide and the pavement was in a relativelly good shape. Our car was a "classical" indian made car, an Ambassador. It was relativelly confortable and it even had air-conditioned. It looked a bit like the english cabs, probably it was a copy of any british model of the 40's or 50's. Apparently they are widely used in India as luxury taxis, except in Goa, where the more luxurious taxis looked more like american cars of the 70's.
The driver was polite and talked with us a little bit, explaining to us some of the things we were seeing. Maybe he was hoping to get a good tip, but at least he didn't look like trying to get us into something. Perhaps that is an advantage of pre-paid taxis, we have less probabilities of being hassled.
There wasn't much traffic, so the strange driving style of our driver didn't look much dangerous - he drove generally in the middle, when not in the wrong side, only returning to the left side at the last moment when something was coming towards us. There weren't much cars, the traffic was mainly buses, trucks, rikshaws, motorcycles and other uncommon veicules in Europe, like ox carts. Well, everything we were used to see in Agra, apart from
In Agra and on this road there are many funny three-wheeler that serve like buses or taxis. They look like a mixture of auto rikshaw, bus and truck. They were like a big auto rikshaw with two, three, or even four rows of seats and had front of truck. I guess they are manually made with remainings of rikshaws, buses and trucks. Their appearence is rather frightening, specially because of their front.
Fathepur Sikri was built from scratch in the XVI th century, just to be abandoned some years later. Perhaps it's because of that it is a so magic place, a real ghost town abandoned and untouched during centuries. The official reason for the desertion was the lack of water, which I find very strange, considering that it is clear that there was much planning work in the place. Although I didn't read much about it, I suspect that there were political reasons behind the abandonment, but who am I to pose historical hypothesis?
Akbar was a kind of enlightened ruler, much tolerant about the different religions of India, which was allways a rare thing in conquerors. He had three wives, one hindu, another muslim and another one christian, however the "more important" was the hindu one, maybe because her religion was that of the vast majority of indians. His prime-minister was also hindu. He had a great empire, from Persia and Afganisthan to Burma.
The architecture style is clearly moghul, which seems a kind of mixture of arab, persian and, a little less, indian, to our unexpert imaginary. Some of the buildings had a stronger indian influence than may be found in other places, namely Agra and Delhi, although one of the palaces of the Agra Fort had some indian style carvings. That was another sign of Akbar's religious tolerance. There are many hindu and jain motifs in the carvings decorating the buildings, besides those more common muslim-persian ones. Another exotic monument found in the city is the tomb of the preferred elephant of the emperor. The animal was really loved by its master, it even served as judge - supposed criminals were put under it, if their heads were smashed, they would be guilty, so they had deserved the death, if not they would be released.
Foreign people have to pay to enter the walls of the city. Believing in our guide, the town occupied the whole area inside the walls before it was abandoned. He mentioned a million inhabitants, or half of that, I'm not sure, anyway some times more than London had at the time. Nowadays most of the walled area has no houses, apart from a little village and the fort or palace zone. In this we would have to pay also, if it wasn't Friday. It seems that entrances in indian monuments are free every Friday. When I went out of the car to pay for our entrance, a man approached the car with a huge black bear, giving Rosario a little scare. I was so busy getting rid off a man pretending to be a guide that I didn't notice the bear.
At the entrance of the fort, we ended up hiring a guide. We were very lucky with him. At the beginning we didn't want any guidance, but he managed to convince us, mainly because his ways were completely different from we were used in India and he looked very educated, very calm. He explained to us that the place was rather large and we wouldn't be able to understand what we were seeing without a guide. He claimed he was the oldest official guide of Fathepur Sikri, probably it is true, he didn't look like a liar. The certificate he showed us had a truly official look, nothing like the other one. He didn't insist much and he refused to discuss his price, Rs 40, I think, that impressed us well.
He knew a lot about the history of the place, he was a real good professional and liked what his job. It was very pleasant to hear telling all those tales. He didn't rush us at any time, he was wonderfully calm, and he advised us not to buy anything in the mosque area, the only place where there are shops. Vendor are quite agressive at that area. One of their favourite methods is to offer you some little piece, like a stone elephant, to get you into their shops. Actually we ended up buying some stone artifacts at the shop where we stopped to drink some water. Again, we were well impressed by not being hassled to buy anything there, because they didn't discuss prices much and their prices looked attractive when compared to those of Agra. Maybe we were simply naive, maybe we were lucky to find the exceptions to the rule.
This mosque area is separated from rest of the fort. It's a large yard with two great gates, one of them it's the "Asia gate", supposedly the tallest gate in all Asia. The entrance appears to be allways free. One has to go in bare foot or with a cloth covering your shoes. They rent those clothes outside the gate where we entered.
Inside the yard there is a white marble tomb, from a muslim saint. A bit like S. Francisco Xavier, this saint's corpse is said to be incorrupt. He lies bellow some coloured blankets which were covered with flowers and money, with his head turned to the direction of Mecca. It is a custom to make a wish while tying a little piece of thin coloured rope in the holes of the marble walls of the tomb. Then we are invited to throw some money to the tomb. The guide explained to us that the tomb is private property, it's owned by the descendants of the saint. The man who appeared to be guarding the place dared to observe "Only that?". Actually I was wondering if I might gave some more money, but after I heard him, I was so furious that I decided that it was really enough, so I answered him decidedly "Yes, it's enough". I don't remember how much did I gave, but I get allways angry when people say "what you want to give" and then they want more than we give them. I know, that's common, not only in India, but we must be firm once in a while, other way we are also contributing to the situation getting worse.
According to some legend, this saint originated the construction of the town. In spite of having three wives, Akbar had no children and he was desperate with that, so he went to see this holly man, who predicted, among other things, that he would have a son in a year or so. The emperor was so glad when the prediction went real with the birth of Sha Jahan, the builder of the Taj Mahal, that he constructed that magnificent city. I wonder if the saint predicted also that Akbar's grandson, Aurangzeb, would be the contrary of his grandfather in the religious tolerance, turning apart every hindu temple he could, killing and forcing people to convert to islam, after he had taken power emprisioning his father, who spent his last 16 years looking at his beloved wife's tomb, the Taj Mahal from his window in the Agra Fort. After all, that was a quite more common politic for a muslim conqueror, and he had the bad example of what portuguese were doing in his indian territories with the wicked inquisition.
When we arrived in Agra, the driver insisted on paying a visit to a carpet factory. We had already decided to try it, so we agreed. The factory was almost empty, I guess they were just waiting for us or others like us. They showed us how carpets are made inside a large and dark room. Considering the time they take to be made and the delicate work, carpets are very cheap. We were impressed by the quickness of the workers, working under a fainted lamp, almost in the dark. They insisted to offer us a thea and they showed us some carpets, explaining the themes and other details. The vendor was very good at his job and it wasn't unpleasant to talk with him. We lost our heads and bought a large silk carpet decorated with flowers. It changes colour as we see it from one side or the other. It cost us Rs 13000. We also ended up buying a silk embroided rug, Kashmir style, also with floral design, that cost us about Rs 3000. Probably we paid too much, but, what the hell, we kept some beautiful souvenirs, they would cost us a lot more at home and we had no patiente nor time to look around for the best prices. We can't be sure of the quality, but they look excellent, maybe we are lucky.
Back at the hotel, we went to the Kashmir shop after packing. We had become acquainted with them, and we had decided to bought a cottom cloth to make curtains and some pillows. They were hand embroided in wool with flowers, quite eye-catching. They tried unsuccefully to sell us a carpet also. We had another explanation on Kashmir carpets and their themes. The owner was an educated and kind man, we talked with him with pleasure about our lives, the way we live and so on. At the end we were a little sorry for not buying any carpet, he "deserved" that more than those of the factory and his prices looked much the same or even cheaper. We had our curtains and 3 pillows by little more than Rs 3000.
I have very good impressions of Kashmir people I have talked too. They enjoy a good conversation and are not very boring as sellers. I noticed that they aren't much apreciated in India, they are generally seen as robbers or dishonest traders, sometimes even dangerous persons. Maybe there are some reasons to that image they have, but those ethnic rivalries are allways to be suspected, there are good and bad persons everywhere, so it's very ugly to judge people by their nationality or religion (which I know I'm doing now by posing my good opinion on Kashmiris). In Nepal I become friend of a Kashmir shoper who helped a lot when I lost my passport. He lost several hours trying to help me without I asking him and I hadn't bought anything from him.
We had to wait a long time for the train back to Delhi. It was late more than an hour and a half. It wasn't a very pleasant wait, we were tired, we were carrying a lot of weight, it was hot, there were a lot of beggars and lots of mosquitoes. I had never seen so much mosquitoes in my life as in Agra. They appear at dusk and form clouds around every lamp. They don't bite so much, considering their quantity, but they are annoying. Probably because of being a more touristic place, the beggars at this station were more hassling than in Delhi. One has to devellop some insensibility to deal with such poverty, but it's not an easy task, one feels really sorry for those people.
This time we were on a three seats row in the train. In the window seat there was a very drunken young man, who kept going to the bathroom, probably to throw up. He was in a real bad shape, he had much difficulty in talking and listening and he was very clumsy. We were fearing that he would throw-up on his seat or on us, but happilly that didn't happened. We managed to change place with him so he could leave his seat easier. The indian boys near us were very amused with him.
We had dinner in the train and it wasn't so bad. They also gave us a lot of water bottles for free.
When we arrived in Delhi we had part of our luggage carried by a porter. They literally invaded the train as soon as it stops and start grabbing every pack. When we arrived the taxi we had a little discussion with him because he wanted Rs 20 for each volume, instead of Rs 10 for everything he mentioned in the train. I finally gave him Rs 20 and he went away. We arranged the taxi by following a tout in the station hall. We had to bargain a little more with the driver when we reached him because the price we had agreed with the tout while rushing through the station wasn't good for the driver - that's India. These train arrivals in India are really a thrilling experience, very hard to describe. Imagine ourselves tired to death, carrying tonns of stuff, moving in a crowd in a dark place, paying attention not to loose sight from the porter and bargaining the price of the taxi with a tout.
The placed where we stayed is another luxury hotel, the Park, in the Conaught area, the center of New Delhi. It's on one of those wide streets with trees of that part of the town. From the window of our room we saw a large part of the town. It looks a little strange - the design of the city is modern, with straight streets, much modern and tall buildings, but also a lot of secondary alleys with much open fields with grass, trees and smaller houses with yards, very often looking much run down; it's like if in every backyard of fancy building there is a little slurb. We had had the same impression in Bombay, although a little less, and not in the downtown areas of Colaba and Nariman Point. I guess that may be understood as a sign of some social peace, in other parts of the world there is generally a more clear distiction of rich and poor neighbourhoods. Or maybe those smaller houses that look somewhat miserable are not so poor for the local standards, and they belong to wealthy people also.
At least it is much different from South America, for instance. I use to say that one doesn't have to get off the plane to notice the great social gaps in Venezuela. When I was there the plane flew some time over the sea side near Caracas, beside beautiful green mountains. We could see two kinds of urbanisation. There were bunches of randomly disposed small houses with uncovered red bricks, standing on the slopes. Then there were well mantained walled areas of tall buildings and villas with gardens all over and swiming pools. We could easily imagine the armed men and dogs guarding these places.
This was our last day in India. We had breakfast in the hotel, then we waited for the people of A.'s travel agency in the lobby. At our arrival we had a message from them, we had to pay for the difference between the prices of our original reservations and the changes we had made. In the meantime we deliver our luggage to be guarded until our going to the airport. The people from the agency, a girl and a boy, were very kind and attentive. They hadn't confirmed our airplane tickets yet, but they assured us they would and then they would leave message at the reception. They didn't accept any tip, and that made me wonder me if I hadn't offended them with my offer. Consequences of two weeks in India, one gets so used to pay and tip for anything that it becomes hard to stop the habit.
We headed then to Conaught Circus, the center of New Delhi. Looking to the LP map, it looked easy and nearby, but we concluded quickly that it was nothing like it. That LP map lacked a scale and it lacks a lot of streets, so it gave the false idea that the Connaught area is much smaller than it is in reality, actually one can walk for hours in areas that seem very little in the map.
When we were at an impass, a good looking young man approached telling us he was from the government tourist office and his job was to help tourists for free. Maybe it was because we were in a modern and western looking town, we forgot momentaneously all we had learnt during this trip, so we accepted his help, even suspecting a little, that was too good to be true. After we explained him that we wanted to stroll around a little bit, see Counaught Circus, maybe trying to find some silk and head for the Red Fort. Clearly, we were being naive, tolding him about buying silk, but that was the main purpose of this walk of ours, we wanted to make a last effort to find the cloth for my mother and we were having trouble finding shops or emporiums.
We went first to an agency, which was owned by "a friend" of our young man. It was run by kashmiri and it looked like they were specialised in travels and tours to Kashmir. There we saw the all thing, they wanted to take us for a stroll in some emporiums and then rent us a taxi for taking us to the fort, back to the hotel and then to the airport. I wanted to go out, but Rosario was a little tired and not in the mood for bargaining with drivers, she was a little tempted to accept their offer, so I accepted relutantly to negociate with the agency man. We agreed in be acompaigned auto-rikshaw to one or two emporiums nearby by and then have a taxi at our service the rest of the day, until the hour to be at the airport (our plane left around 23:30).
So we went to two emporiums with the first man. He didn't harassed much, he didn't look very confortable with his job, maybe he was rookie, maybe he was a truly good fellow, he seemed a little bit shy. We didn't buy anything, apart perhaps some minor very cheap things. Those emporiums aren't cheap, although the quality of their stuff looked very good. The sellers were kind and didn't bother us much, probably because the places were state run and they didn't earn any comissions; or maybe we didn't look wealthy enough to be worth bothering, they might be used to other kind of customers, and we looked a lot like moneyless backpackers. Again, we found difficult to find silk with suitable colour for my mother, at least for reasonable prices.
Back at the agency, they tried to persuate us to go to the Red Fort only in the middle of the afternoon (it was about 11am or noon). They insisted also that one hour would be enough to see the Fort, so they wanted us to go shopping for some more time and wait in the hotel after we went to the fort. They were clearly trying to spare some money with the taxi and earning some comissions on our shopping. They were forced to give us what we wanted when we looked bothered, even a little angry and we said we could simply go on our own. It turned that the taxi wasn't theirs, they went outside to find one.
We had finally our taxi which would be with us until we reached the airport. We were lucky with the driver, who was a calm and kind man. On the way to the Red Fort we stopped at another emporium in Old Delhi, but again we didn't buy anything. Old Delhi is much different than New Delhi, older, with narrow streets, somewhat more crowded and more dirty. Nevertheless, the area of the Red Fort and the Jami Masjid, the big mosque, is rather empty and with wide streets. It's also very polluted and dusty.
The Red Fort isn't as beautiful as the Agra Fort, but still very impressive and with the same style. The view to the river, the Yamuna, the same that borders Agra, is not so nice, there were remainings of some large fair, and it was rather dirty.
The gardens and palaces were crowded, mainly by locals, who were enjoying their saturday afternoon. Although there are some run down areas, the place is relativelly well preserved, specially in the area of the palaces. The museum and the Moti Masjid, the "Pearl mosque", were closed, so we didn't visit them. Some parts of the fort are still military areas where visitors are not allowed. The place was the british headquarters.
We took our time, enjoying the gardens and seeing the life around us. There were many families strolling around and visiting the palaces. We observed that the major part of women dressed traditional clothes, a pleasant festival of colours for our western tourist eyes. There were also some young couples flirting. We felt a little transported to the past, watching how they were shy and "respectful" with each other, almost not touching apart from giving hands. We noticed also that there weren't any groups of girls without parents nearby, although there were a lot of large groups of boys. Indian society is still much traditionalist, the women liberation didn't reach this place yet, although they had already an carismatic woman prime-minister, Indira Gandhi.
We tried unsuccefully to send a telegram to a friend couple that married this day in Portugal. They don't operate telegrams in the post office inside the the fort, aparently it's common that post services are totally separated from telecommunications services.
Although we were advised by the driver not to buy anything inside the fort, Rosario didn't resist to went inside a shop which had beautiful silver ear-rings with semi-precious stones on the window. She was still unhappy for not having bought a pair she had seen in Goa. She didn't because I found the price to be exorbitant (Rs 500, I think). We liked the owner and his stuff, so she ended up buying two pairs. We are allways well impressed when the vendors begin asking reasonable prices and they don't look much willing to bargain much, and this was the case. He charged about 3% comission for paying with Visa, but I was prepared to that, although we hadn't been charged before anywhere else. Rosario was very happy with her buys.
We noticed with satisfaction that vendors here are not so agressive as we had been used in Agra. Of course there were some postcard sellers, but they didn't hassle much. I guess that there is a strong relation between the density of foreign tourists and the "hassling activity", and here the number of foreign tourists wasn't very high when compared to the number of locals.
Back to the taxi, the driver tried smothly to get rid of us, we wondered that probably the men from the agency didn't explain him exactly what we wanted, or at least he was trying to give that impression. He persuaded us not to go visit the Jami Masjid, because it was prayer time, so we wouldn't be allowed in and it was a dangerous place - "much kashmiris" - he said. He refused politely to take us there because of the complicated traffic. We ended up not going there, we regretted it after, since it wasn't too far to walk to there, but the talk of the driver had left us little willing to be robbed or hassled. We saw it from the fort and it looked beautiful, specially at that sunset time. The dust, mixed with the orange colours of the sky, gave it an even more impressive look.
We were starving, so we asked the driver to take someplace where we could eat. He asked if Nirula's was ok and we agreed. That place is mentioned in LP as having a fairly good fast food, both indian and western. Actually we didn't like the outside look so much, so we entered another restaurant nearby, an indian one. Initially I though it was the "Delhi Durbar" that is mentioned on LP, but then I checked the book and I concluded that the mentioned "Delhi Durbar" can't be the same, as it is far from Nirula's. Perhaps "our" restaurant wasn't called "Delhi Durbar", but "anything else Durbar", or maybe there are more than one "Nirula's".
Apart from a couple who was taking some thea, we were the only customers, but that wasn't a problem, they served dinner at that early hour for Delhi habits (a little past 6 pm). The restaurant had that characteristic old fashioned indian look, with uniformed waiters, very much like the Kwality in Agra, although not so touristic. The food was fairly good, the portions enormous.
When we finished dinner we strolled around a little bit trying to find a bookstore. Rosario was curious about if she could find any biology or ecology books. Some people say that it's possible to find some good editions at very good prices, and we were also interested in bringing some documentation on India ecological projects, natural parks, fauna and flora. We didn't succeed, so we went to meet our taxi. We noticed that business activity in Delhi away from those modern streets isn't much different from that of Agra - a great deal of the work is done outside the workshops and shops, which are generally rather small. Nevertheless, we saw some larger stores with a more modern look for the first time outside Pangim. The streets of the area were a bit run down, muddy and dirty, with much repairing going on. We wondered if that was still consequence of the big floods from a month ago.
We managed quite easily to convince the driver to take us to a bookstore. He showed better good willing to serve in our desires that time. He went to Connaught Circus, which is a huge gardened plaza. It is a quite cosmopolit place, for the first time in India, we felt in a modern urban wealthy area. We saw many foreigners that didn't look like tourists, lots of indian people with truly western look. The shops had also a fashioned look, and they were spaceous and well iluminated. Unhappily for us, it was closing time for commerce, so we didn't find any opened bookstore.
The drive to the airport was rather long. On the way we passed many iluminated and places where they were having big parties, the driver explained to us that they were hindu weddings, which are very frequent on Saturdays this time of year. During the day we had noticed some already. We passed also some nice buildings, namely the and the Taj Mahal (?) hotel and a large new temple, maybe the Bahai house of worship that is mentioned in LP.
We noticed again the high tendency of indian drivers to save their machines' pieces - our driver switched off the lights of the car in every road with less traffic. That it is quite common in Delhi and Agra.
We finally arrived the Indira Gandhi International Airport, our last place in India. We said goodbye to the driver and tip him with more than Rs 100. After all, we wouldn't be needing much ruppees inside and apart from some lazyness, he wasn't so bad with us.
We had a long wait until catching the plane. We were told to be at the airport at least 3 hours before departure and we did it also because we had nothing more to do. It was about 8 pm and the departure time was scheduled to 11:30 pm. We waited near the British Airways booth, which wouldn't open until 9:30 pm or 10 pm. There was only a restaurant and a small shop in this part of the airport, we had no access to the free-shop and departure lounges before we had checked-in. The place wasn't much crowded and it was quiet. This airport had a much modern and confortable look than the others we had seen on this trip.
I managed to pass to a place where I saw a telegram office. Since I had plenty of time, I tried to make a last atempt to send that congratulations telegram to our friends wedding couple. The clerk looked very bored with my intrusion - "I'm here so calmly, there are no customers, who does this foreigner think he is to be bothering me? Maybe he thinks I'm here to send his telegrams! What a nerve!" - he might have thought. First he found very strange that there was a country named Portugal. After seeing my determination he handed me a telegram form, which I wrote down. Then he spelled the whole telegram twice, very slowly. He found strange that the place was "Hotel Gouveia" and the name of the town was also "Gouveia", then he asked again: "Portugal, country?" - "Yes, Portugal, country, in West Europe..." - I answered him again. He moved slowly to one of the two machines they had and pressed on or two buttoms with no reaction from the machine. He approached me again - "Doesn't work, impossible to send" - he said. "Maybe we could try later, no?" - "No, it won't work in the next hours." - "Well, I can come here in two hours..." - "No, no working tonight!". "Well, he must know what he is saying" - I thought ironically, and I gave up, my friend wouldn't receive his first telegram from India on his wedding day!
That wouldn't be our last contact with indian eficiency. We were in the first group checking-in, since we were very close to the booth. I asked specifically for the window seats on the last row, that's our favourite place in 747's. I was given reservations for "non-smoking", which I found very strange, since I have never seen a plane with smoking area where the last rows weren't "smoking". I approached the lady again and asked if she could change the seats to "smoking" - "You might have asked" - she said - "Excuse me, madam, but I though the last row was 'smoking.'" - I answered. She gave other boarding passes and I thanked her. I noticed that the row number was far behind the first ones, so clearly she hadn't care for my request the first time.
Before the plane departure we discovered that our little problem with our check-in was a minor one. The "smoking" and "non-smoking" seats were scattered among the whole plane and people who specifically had asked for "smoking" had been put in "non-smoking" and vice-versa. It was a terrible mess! The hostesses were also very confused with the fact, usually that rear cabin is *allways "smoking". There were non-smokers quite irritated with being in a smoking area with their tickets saying "non-smoking" and there was a furious man who was specially mad, he argued he had prefered to fly BA with a stop in London to a direct flight to USA just because he could smoke, so he was being cheated and he refused to not smoke the whole trip. It was necessary much negociation and diplomatic work of the staff to solve the problem, but I guess that much people remained unhappy.
Well, that's all. The trip to London went normally, apart from being late more than an hour and half (I'm not sure if this was only because of the smoking case).
I won't give you details on our "indian style" arrival - for our national shame, there was nobody carrying the luggage trolleys back inside the luggage delivery, so none were available. No one seemed to be solving the problem and everybody refused to take responsanbility or give the name of someone in charge.
We had my sister waiting for us, who took us to my parents', where we had our first portuguese lunch in two weeks.
THE END.
© J. Mário Pires, 96
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