"87 year old Nigel Hankin has been living in New Delhi since the British left when they ceded Independence to the Indians - and if you’re lucky, you might be able to find him to take you on a magical tour of India’s capital city.""Watching a body being bathed in "holy" river water for a funeral may be an unusual thing to do on a guided tour, but that's the point of an outing with Nigel Hankin."
A fabulous description of our tour guide and our tour stops.
http://www.sawf.org/newedit/edit09182006/Places.asp
A great review by the BBC of Nigel's book:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3103075.stm
John and I had an extremely interesting and an even more extremely HOT tour of Delhi today with an 87 year old ex diplomat/ex WWII Veteran/British Army Captain. Nigel Hankin was disheveled, walked awkwardly (and as you might expect, slowly), and frankly did not look the part of a "tour guide legend" but in the 8 hours that we spent with him - he shared with us things we would have never dared to see on our own or frankly ever even known existed in our capital Delhi.
Because of a late start (group dynamic) and heavy traffic - we almost missed Nigel. We were to meet him at the British Embassy gate - the same gate at which I confirmed our tour with Nigel last week - at 9:30am. At 10:05 (barely late by Indian standards but remember, Nigel is British) we arrived only to have the gate guards quickly run out and tell us Nigel was walking in "that" direction. Thomas started running in "that" direction not really knowing who he was running after, but our driver caught on quickly and drove past Thomas to quickly find the very tall, lanky older man who was to be our guide for the day.
I won't write too much detail. It's clear from the other review I've read that we had the exact tour described in the links above - including many of the same quips, comments and jokes. Some of the highlights were:
- The funeral pyres. You might think it would be strange to watch strangers wash their dead, set up the wood for the pyres, light the pyres and cremate their loved ones. What struck me as more strange than watching this first hand was the lack of woman, lack of weeping and overall lack of "sense of tragedy" at such a gathering place.
- Visiting the ancient city well - still in operation. Coming face to face with the shortage of this precious commodity and seeing the conditions of the well (home to thousands of bats) convinced me we are right not to drink the tap water - even filtered tap water.
- Old Delhi - same place I went to Tuesday but in more depth with more smells, people and places. Almost too intense. After a while, the smells (including the open urinals) took over and at one point and I started to gag. Complete sensory overload. Our entire group of 5 was sneezing, coughing etc. before we left the area.
- In Old Delhi we passed a stall with sacks of an amber colored substance ranging from small beads to flakes. Nigel explained these were secretions of the Lac bug. This is where real Lac-er, and Shel-lac come from. John's boss Thomas thought we were in the spice market (it all blends together) and when Nigel placed some of these flakes in his hand - Thomas courageously placed it in his mouth. We all screamed STOP and he quickly started spitting and continued spitting for many minutes. It was humorous but probably a bit worrisome for Thomas. Thankfully, Nigel didn't seem too worried.
- My first Sikh temple visit.
- The place/basket where unwanted babies are left at night (mostly girls)
- My first peddle rickshaw ride through Old Delhi
- etc., etc., etc.
No comments:
Post a Comment