My second week in India I visited the Delhi area and stayed at the Gold Regency Hotel (http://www.goldregency.com) the Parharganj area of the city, not too far from the city center Connought Place. As a research associate, IFMR pays for my travel and asks me to keep the costs down. That means I generally stay in 3-star or less hotels and that I pay anywhere from 600 rupees (about $14) to 3,500 rupees (about $85) depending on the location and my ability to find a good place quickly.
The road on which the Gold Regency finds itself is called Main Bazaar, and for good reason. Small storefronts line both sides and their goods and their salespeople spill out onto the street most of the day and late into the evening. Most taxis refuse to drive on Main Bazaar during the day because it gets so crowded. My first night I arrived in Delhi by plane about 7:30 PM. I was put on the on the first floor (which in India is the floor just on top of ground level). The hotel has a restaurant on the ground level with live entertainment until 1 A.M. My room was right above the restaurant and right next to the street. I didn’t get nearly as much sleep that night as I was hoping.
When it turned out that I needed to stay in a Delhi hotel for the rest of the week, I decided to give Gold Regency another chance, but I asked to be put on the second floor. It seemed that the hotel was so pleased that I came back at all that not only did they put me on the second floor but they also put me in a larger and nicer room. The best part of the room from my perspective was that it had immediate access to the hotel’s balcony overlooking Main Bazaar. The balcony wasn’t necessarily intended to be used by the hotel’s guests – it had two large billboards attached to it in various configurations and clothes lines hanging between metal and cement pillars – but it provided me with a pleasant vantage point from which to people-watch on the street below and in surrounding buildings. An "India & Me" moment came that evening as I was watching a young man across the street on top of his own apartment building trying to get a small paper kite to fly (there was a light wind blowing). As I watched him tease his kite into the sky, I saw three or four other people also watching the young man’s efforts. The young man, aware of his audience, was trying to put on a good show. As he succeeded in getting his kite higher and higher, five or six other small dots in the Delhi evening sky came to my attention. It became obvious that this was not the only young man or woman who had purchased a small paper kite that afternoon in the Paharganj area. The next half an hour was a moment of connection for me, an experience of feeling that I was sharing – as an equal – space and time with others who previously had been foreign to me. I enjoy that sensation.
Another moment that involves the top floor of a hotel. This one happened two weeks later when I made my third trip to Mumbai (Bombay’s new name). My second trip to Mumbai (three weeks ago) was rather sudden, and the hotel that IFMR usually uses for research associates was completely booked (not a rare occurrence in Mumbai - it is often difficult to secure a hotel room in the city). Thus that afternoon I surfed the internet quickly and reserved a room at a somewhat random hotel that seemed reasonably near the domestic airport and that had a room available and was relatively cheap. Upon arriving in Mumbai, I was, as always, approached by the large number of touts gathered outside the terminal’s exit. I usually don’t pay them any mind, however this evening I was a little more open to their suggestions - the hotel to which I was headed was just as much a random variable having been selected sight-unseen and without any specific recommendation. When a particularly convincing tout promised me that #1- his hotel was better than the one I had selected, #2- he would secure the exact same price I was going to pay at the other place, #3- that it was in the same area as my selected hotel, and #4 (the reason that pushed me over the top)- the hotel came with free transportation to and from the airport, I decided to give it a try. I wasn’t disappointed.
I was taken to the Hotel Four Seasons (not the US version, but a 3-star Mumbai copy) (http://www.iloveindia.com/hotelsinindia/mumbai-hotels/hotel-four-seasons-mumbai.html). The hotel was reasonably clean and I ended up receiving very good service for the price. Thus when I returned to Mumbai the next week and IFMR’s normal hotel wasn’t available, I went straight for the Hotel Four Seasons (it had become a known quantity). Similarly to my Delhi experience, the hotel staff was so pleased that I had returned to them that they put me in a very nice room on the top floor of the hotel (in this particular building this is the ninth floor, or tenth story).
As soon as I saw this new room they put me in, I was hooked. It is a corner room overlooking the city of Mumbai out the south window and overlooking the Arabian Sea out the western window. The hotel is in the Juhu area of Mumbai, right on Juhu Beach. In general I appreciate good views, and this room, #9052, has a particularly good view.
Jennifer was coming to Mumbai that weekend, and I immediately went down to the registration desk and reserved the same room for those three nights (Jennifer, I believe, has already written about the weekend’s activities). That first night I was able to work from my computer while watching the sun set over the ocean and Mumbai’s lights come on and planes take off and land from the city’s airports. It was, again, a connecting moment, not necessarily with any particular person or people, but with a city that I had heard about as legend for years and was beginning to get to know.
Other moments that I don’t have time to write more about right now include
- Speaking with a Sikh on a plane about his outward and inward expressions of faith (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikhism)
- Visiting the birthplace of Sai Baba, a Hindu Saint that lived in the late 19th and earl 20th century, in Shirdi, Maharashtra, after a field visit and being crowded into a small room with his jade statue where devotees were giving flowers and food to the gods and the priests were returning the gifts to the givers after allowing the gods to take their portion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirdi_Sai_Baba)
- Visiting a Hindu temple in the rural town of Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, where Shiva is worshipped as fire and as water, and having a guided tour of the temple grounds with a group of ICICI bank employees and Professor Antoinette Schoar, through the virtually empty temple where in each room a prayer was said and we had the chance to dab a little paint on our foreheads (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiruvannamalai)
- Realizing in Pune that I was in a city that felt the size of Provo (a town near where I grew up in Utah with about 80,000 people in it) but which contained more people than the entire state of Utah (Pune has over 4 million people - Utah is approaching 3 million people) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pune)
- Taking a public bus between Pune and Ahmednagar to keep costs down and enjoying being part of the public means of travel.
Photos of some of these events are coming...
The road on which the Gold Regency finds itself is called Main Bazaar, and for good reason. Small storefronts line both sides and their goods and their salespeople spill out onto the street most of the day and late into the evening. Most taxis refuse to drive on Main Bazaar during the day because it gets so crowded. My first night I arrived in Delhi by plane about 7:30 PM. I was put on the on the first floor (which in India is the floor just on top of ground level). The hotel has a restaurant on the ground level with live entertainment until 1 A.M. My room was right above the restaurant and right next to the street. I didn’t get nearly as much sleep that night as I was hoping.
When it turned out that I needed to stay in a Delhi hotel for the rest of the week, I decided to give Gold Regency another chance, but I asked to be put on the second floor. It seemed that the hotel was so pleased that I came back at all that not only did they put me on the second floor but they also put me in a larger and nicer room. The best part of the room from my perspective was that it had immediate access to the hotel’s balcony overlooking Main Bazaar. The balcony wasn’t necessarily intended to be used by the hotel’s guests – it had two large billboards attached to it in various configurations and clothes lines hanging between metal and cement pillars – but it provided me with a pleasant vantage point from which to people-watch on the street below and in surrounding buildings. An "India & Me" moment came that evening as I was watching a young man across the street on top of his own apartment building trying to get a small paper kite to fly (there was a light wind blowing). As I watched him tease his kite into the sky, I saw three or four other people also watching the young man’s efforts. The young man, aware of his audience, was trying to put on a good show. As he succeeded in getting his kite higher and higher, five or six other small dots in the Delhi evening sky came to my attention. It became obvious that this was not the only young man or woman who had purchased a small paper kite that afternoon in the Paharganj area. The next half an hour was a moment of connection for me, an experience of feeling that I was sharing – as an equal – space and time with others who previously had been foreign to me. I enjoy that sensation.
Another moment that involves the top floor of a hotel. This one happened two weeks later when I made my third trip to Mumbai (Bombay’s new name). My second trip to Mumbai (three weeks ago) was rather sudden, and the hotel that IFMR usually uses for research associates was completely booked (not a rare occurrence in Mumbai - it is often difficult to secure a hotel room in the city). Thus that afternoon I surfed the internet quickly and reserved a room at a somewhat random hotel that seemed reasonably near the domestic airport and that had a room available and was relatively cheap. Upon arriving in Mumbai, I was, as always, approached by the large number of touts gathered outside the terminal’s exit. I usually don’t pay them any mind, however this evening I was a little more open to their suggestions - the hotel to which I was headed was just as much a random variable having been selected sight-unseen and without any specific recommendation. When a particularly convincing tout promised me that #1- his hotel was better than the one I had selected, #2- he would secure the exact same price I was going to pay at the other place, #3- that it was in the same area as my selected hotel, and #4 (the reason that pushed me over the top)- the hotel came with free transportation to and from the airport, I decided to give it a try. I wasn’t disappointed.
I was taken to the Hotel Four Seasons (not the US version, but a 3-star Mumbai copy) (http://www.iloveindia.com/hotelsinindia/mumbai-hotels/hotel-four-seasons-mumbai.html). The hotel was reasonably clean and I ended up receiving very good service for the price. Thus when I returned to Mumbai the next week and IFMR’s normal hotel wasn’t available, I went straight for the Hotel Four Seasons (it had become a known quantity). Similarly to my Delhi experience, the hotel staff was so pleased that I had returned to them that they put me in a very nice room on the top floor of the hotel (in this particular building this is the ninth floor, or tenth story).
As soon as I saw this new room they put me in, I was hooked. It is a corner room overlooking the city of Mumbai out the south window and overlooking the Arabian Sea out the western window. The hotel is in the Juhu area of Mumbai, right on Juhu Beach. In general I appreciate good views, and this room, #9052, has a particularly good view.
Jennifer was coming to Mumbai that weekend, and I immediately went down to the registration desk and reserved the same room for those three nights (Jennifer, I believe, has already written about the weekend’s activities). That first night I was able to work from my computer while watching the sun set over the ocean and Mumbai’s lights come on and planes take off and land from the city’s airports. It was, again, a connecting moment, not necessarily with any particular person or people, but with a city that I had heard about as legend for years and was beginning to get to know.
Other moments that I don’t have time to write more about right now include
- Speaking with a Sikh on a plane about his outward and inward expressions of faith (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikhism)
- Visiting the birthplace of Sai Baba, a Hindu Saint that lived in the late 19th and earl 20th century, in Shirdi, Maharashtra, after a field visit and being crowded into a small room with his jade statue where devotees were giving flowers and food to the gods and the priests were returning the gifts to the givers after allowing the gods to take their portion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirdi_Sai_Baba)
- Visiting a Hindu temple in the rural town of Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, where Shiva is worshipped as fire and as water, and having a guided tour of the temple grounds with a group of ICICI bank employees and Professor Antoinette Schoar, through the virtually empty temple where in each room a prayer was said and we had the chance to dab a little paint on our foreheads (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiruvannamalai)
- Realizing in Pune that I was in a city that felt the size of Provo (a town near where I grew up in Utah with about 80,000 people in it) but which contained more people than the entire state of Utah (Pune has over 4 million people - Utah is approaching 3 million people) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pune)
- Taking a public bus between Pune and Ahmednagar to keep costs down and enjoying being part of the public means of travel.
Photos of some of these events are coming...
posted by Rock at 6:42 AM
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