On this day in 1999, we were sipping free champagne on a flight between Amsterdam and New Delhi to celebrate our first wedding anniversary.
I was working at Kruse at the time, and our off-shore contractor wanted us to come visit and have some personal contact with the team. The ramp-up for the visit was quick - only two weeks, which was quite possible in the days before 9/11. When it was decided that I would be going on the trip and the date was picked, the question was essentially, “Got anything going on that week?” And my answer - “Just my first wedding anniversary.”
I have the impression that sending your wife with you on a week-long business trip around the world because it was during your first wedding anniversary is not something that most employers would do. Mine did.
So we found ourselves packed into coach seats for the 11-hour second leg of our flight to India, sitting next to a man that smelled like bad beans. We told the flight attendant it was our anniversary, which would be spending almost entirely on the plane, and she provided us with two small bottles of champagne.
Landing in Delhi that night was interesting. In 1999, the conflict between India and the rebels in Cashmere was still ongoing. As a result (or maybe this is the standard practice), there was a noticeable military presence throughout the airport. With the security restrictions in place, we had to find our way from the jet (no jetway, just a set of stairs to the tarmac and some pointing toward a door of the airport) to where our hosts were waiting for us.
I’m not sure what I was thinking it would be like, looking for someone at the airport. We followed some military personnel down a hallway, hoping that it led the right direction, but they entered a door at a dead end with a sign that read “no entry”. The people that followed us because we seemed to know what we were doing were quickly divested of that illusion.
After collecting our bags, we made our way to the airport exit, where mobs of people pressed against a gate, looking for the arrivals. I don’t remember how we encountered our escort, but was very relieved that we didn’t have to figure out where our hotel was on our own.
My trip to India was primarily for business, but our hosts spent quite a bit of time hauling us to various locations in Delhi to sight-see. There were some very old structures in our tour, though it’s been so long I might only recognize them in photos. Unfortunately, our camera was “misplaced” in the hotel, so we don’t have any photos of the entire trip. Note that in most of the interesting places, photos were forbidden anyway, and not just by “no photos” signs, but by people carrying automatic weapons.
During the almost obligatory trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal we had plenty of time to chat with our hosts. The contractor assigned two escorts to us, a man and a woman, both about our ages. Neither of them had seen Star Wars. We also discovered more of the culture there by talking with them.
The woman said she would be in some trouble because of how late she would be getting home for escorting us. Apparently, the whole of India shuts down at 6pm or so. People don’t usually eat dinner out. Anyone that does stay out for entertainment or food too frequently is labeled a miscreant. She didn’t want her mother (with whom she lived) to think poorly of her, and so she hoped that her boss would be able to smooth things over.
Driving in Delhi is… interesting. The road is painted with two lanes, but there are five lanes of cars. All of the cars are tiny. When you rent a car in Delhi, it comes with a driver. The drivers communicate via nearly continuous horn blasts. Cows in the road cause much distress as drivers press their cars even closer to each other to allow the cow room to move. Giant orange trucks overstuffed with something resembling cotton also plow their way through the city streets. It’s a surreal and deadly dance.
Of note on the trip to Agra–
There was an elephant and camel-parking station about at the midway point, where food was served.
Our hosts did their best to find food that they thought would be palatable to our tastes (especially meat, since apparently Americans are incapable of eating vegetables), even though we kept insisting that whatever they ate was what we wanted to eat. And so we ate a lot of chutney and fried cottage cheese.
We stopped at a “small” historical building outside of Agra that had interesting acoustics. There were many odd wild animals there. There were peacocks, monkeys, and parrots around this place just like you might find squirrels here in Pennsylvania.
The experience at the Taj Mahal itself was interesting, especially since I hadn’t thought that we would be able to take the time to visit. There were things I did know about it, but quite a few things that I didn’t know.
The Taj Mahal is a tomb and a Muslim shrine. It is significant that it is Muslim because much of the region is Hindi. The big white building that you see in photos is not the whole thing. There are several buildings surrounding that that make up the entire structure.
The marble construction of the building is amazing. Around the entire surface of the building, the marble is engraved in very fine detail. Very fine. And the building is very big. Yes, it’s an impressive bit of work.
We were informed, like many of the historic places we visited that the British (a term flippantly used interchangeably with “raiders”) had stolen all of the gold that used to be part of the shrine. Inside, the roof used to be covered in engraved gold. To obtain the gold, the British simply lit fire to bales of hay and melted it from the ceiling, causing much fire damage to the inside, and leaving none of the beautiful gold artwork intact.
Another thing significant about it being a Muslim holy place is that you aren’t allowed to walk on it in shoes. At the base of the main building’s steps, there is a place to leave your shoes so that you can enter on bare feet. Yet the stones of the steps are worn with ages of people walking them.
We did some shopping around Delhi. They took us to the fanciest stores first - stores that are basically set up for foreigners to waste their money. I don’t think they truly understood the kind of travelers we are until we were set to leave. They eventually took us to Connaught Place which is really what we were looking for. Lots of small kiosks and simple items. When they finally realized that we wanted to shop where they themselves would shop, things became a lot more relaxed. Sad that they didn’t get this earlier on.
We left them in New Delhi and secretly took a flight to Pune. Pune (pronounced “POO-nuh”) was the home of another contractor that was trying to woo us into selecting their services.
We had been warned not to drink the water on our trip, and to only drink bottled or explicitly “safe” filtered water. On the flight from Delhi to Pune, our plane was loaded with the bodies of two soldiers who had died in teh conflict with Cashmere. The flight was delayed for the necessary loading and paperwork. During this time, we were served Coke with ice cubes in it.
The Pune area contains a thriving university town, with three universities, if I remember correctly. The food there was quite different from what we had in Delhi, but still tasty.
Our stay in Pune was short and not too thrilling, although I spent most of it with our host while his wife took Berta shopping. Her account of the shopping trip is fairly interesting, and the odd items with which she returned are still decorating our house.
From Pune’s small airport, we had to hop to Mumbai for our flight home. The flight times were arranged such that we would have to stay in the airport overnight to wait for the flight. With the Indian military guarding the airport entry, and a hole in the ground for a toilet, we slept warily for the six hours before our flight home arrived.
On the flight to London, neither Berta or I felt very well. I think it was the water in the ice cubes on the flight to Pune that finally did us in. After we landed in Heathrow, I got a cup of Sprite to settle my stomach a bit, and ended up barfing into it. So much for taking a quick tour of London while waiting for our plane to arrive.
We managed to talk a ticket agent into seating us in an emergency row for the return to Philly. This was a great boon, since it put use closer to the restroom in addition to giving us room to spread out.
Since that first year, we’ve not done much for our anniversary. One year, we stayed overnight without the kids in Atlantic City to see a concert (Puddle of Mudd, which was good) and last year we spent the weekend in Disneyland, also without the kids. That was a good trip. Still, it’s hard to top the India trip for crazy anniversary destinations. I think when the kids get old enough to appreciate it, we might use our anniversary as an excuse to travel to some additional exotic locations. I’ve always wanted to see the pyramids.
