October 22 – First Day in India (Part 2)

We had a great flight from Mumbai to Delhi on Jet Airways, an Indian carrier.  I confess I had some apprehensions about it, but we flew in their business class and frsnkly, the seats were better than on British Airways Club Europe that we flew from Heathrow to Athens.  We had a large lunch served to us which was some kind of Indian food involving chicken, rice, potatoes and a ratatouille.  It was very tasty!

When we arrived in Delhi a representative from Abercrombie & Kent met us at the baggage carousel with a Jet Airways baggage handler and they took care of getting our luggage and escorting us out to our car for the next few days, an Audi SUV.  An aside here, the Delhi airport is huge and the cleanest one I’ve ever seen.

Then we were off to our hotel for the night.  Well, Delhi is a small city (only 17 million inhabitants!!!) with the same kind of pollution as Mumbai.  It was rush hour and the start of the Festival to boot, so traffic was once again insane. They drive on the wrong side of the road to begin with (as far as we Virginians are concerned) and they honk and cut in and make lanes where they shouldn’t.  At one point along the way on what I think was an expressway of some kind I saw a car going in the wrong direction.  No one seemed alarmed but me.

We arrived at our hotel, the Oberoi Gurgaon, which is in a suburb of Delhi.  There is security everywhere we go here and to get into the place they had to lower some of those moving concrete pylons.  The hotel is splendid with maybe one of the nicest rooms we’ve stayed in.  Everyone knows our name.  (How do they do that?)  We had dinner at one of the restaurants here called Amaranta. They serve seafood flown in each morning from coastal India.  We had an exquisite meal involving shrimp, crab and giant prawns and lots of sauces and chutneys that tasted great but I have no idea what they were.  They use so many spices and herbs that there are just layers of flavor.  We tried with our dinner a bottle of Indian Sauvignon Blanc and it was exquisite.  It tasted a little like a Gewürztraminer with some spiciness.  I never would have thought of India as a wine country but it was lovely. The chef came out to see how we were doing twice and gave me a gift box of spices as a present to try at home.

So after a busy day we’re calling it quits.  We can hear some firecrackers going off in the distance.  That’s a local custom for Diwali. It’s evidently as big a holiday for Hindus as Christmas is to us.  It has been a really interesting day.  We’re to be awakened early tomorrow morning for our ride to Agra where we’ll spend the next two days.  Sorry no photos to post today.  It was hard taking them from the car and we had no other opportunities.  Perhaps tomorrow.  Ciao for now.