Lodhi Gardens, Delhi

November 8, 2008

So, following our plan that we visit some of Delhi's more peaceful spots today, we next had Raj drive us from Humayun's tomb to the sprawling Lodhi Gardens, an oasis of lawns and trees in this busy city.

According to guide books, Lodhi Gardens was originally the site of two villages surrounding monuments surviving from the 15th century Sayyid and Lodhi dynasties, but the villagers were relocated in 1936 in order to create the gardens, which ere landscaped by the British. As there is little architecture from these two periods remaining in India, Lodhi Gardens is an important place of preservation. The tomb of Mohammed Shah is visible from the road, and is the earliest structure in the gardens.

Here Jeff and I saw , as well as ancient Indian tombs, a very helpful series of signs which identified the birdlife we saw in this area (cuckoos and mynah birds!), children playing cricket, and long lines composed of hundreds of school children of all ages, who waved and shouted hello at us as we passed one another along the pathways.

As well as being a pleasant place to walk, the Lodhi gardens finally gave us an opportunity to photograph those chipmunks who had eluded our cameras so skillfully back at Humayun's tomb.

Humayun's Tomb

Once a burial ground for the Moghul emperors of India, the site known as Humayun's tomb in Delhi eventually became a park for the British colonials. To me it felt like pleasant uncrowded place to wander on a warm day. I did not write much of its history in my journal, but these are the things impressions that stuck with me.
Ancient tombs white marble, deliciously cool to wander in. Old men sweeping the tombs with long wispy brooms.
Stone lacework on the arched windows. Tiny staircases and passageways to explore. Views over the lawns of the park gardens.
Dogs sleeping in the sun. Dusty palm trees and long pathways along tiny channels of water that led to small fountains. An enormous water-bug. Chipmunks scurrying everywhere.

Breakfast and Bird-Watching on the Roof

Saturday, November 8, 2008

The prospect of exploring India seems so much more exciting and palatable after a night's sleep and a breakfast spent bird-watching on the rooftop patio.

We watched large hawks chase pigeons through the maze of buildings around us, dive-bombing low over our heads as they chased their prey. A large eagle of some sort glowered from its perch on a nearby hotel sign. There were some small green parrots playing on the roof across the street (like the ones in the photo below which we took later on today), a few doves, and of course those ubiquitous little LBJ's (little brown jobs), tiny birds pecking for our toast crumbs.

A man from the hotel sat with us for part of our breakfast, pointing out attractions on the map and advertising the services of a car and driver which could be rented for a few hours or all day.

Since we were hoping for a relaxing day before the tour with Exodus started, and yet still wanted to see some things before leaving the city, we decided to hire the fellow, who was named Rajneesh (Raj for short). For under twenty dollars, we would have a guide and transportation all day in New Delhi in his little white car. Just for fun, I started counting the number of times Raj leaned on his car horn---32 times. And I think he might be conservative in that around these parts. :)

A Long, long Day:Leaving for India...and Arriving

November 5, 2008

Isn't it strange that you can start a day leaving your own front door on one side of the world and end it eating curry from a rubble-filled kitchen thousands of miles away on the other side of the planet? And still be running on three hours sleep?This is the story of how Spider Girl and Jeff travelled to India and Nepal.

Well, it was actually our friends' front door that we left behind, and it was two days that felt like one long one that stretched and stretched in a blur of airports but the feeling is much the same.

We flew Air Canada from Vancouver to London Heathrow, departing British Columbia in the early evening and arriving about noon London time. Our plane was overbooked and we are just happy to get on even though our window seats have been usurped and we are stuck in the middle of the plane. After this ten hour flight, we feel pathetically grateful to have booked a Yotel room at Heathrow. The train tunnels from Terminal Three to Terminal Four are lit with a moody blue, and in our ship cabin-sized Yotel room we are greeted with more mood lighting, this time a soft, cocooning pink shade.

The shower is hot. The bed is soft. Somebody is drilling hammering something in the hallway doing renovations until we ask him for the love of all things holy: stop it. After that, all is bliss , and whatever we paid for this tiny room feels worth it, even for the mere four hours we have it.

Our next flight is on Virgin Atlantic to New Delhi, leaving a wintry London around ten o'clock at night and arriving in the sultry smog of Delhi about noon Indian time. Once again, we are seated in the middle of the plane but the little movie-playing screens on the back of the seats in front of us make the long flight more bearable. An ironic feeling to be flying over Afghanistan watching the movie "Sex and the City. Mentally thumbed my nose at the Taleban somewhere below.

As our plane came into the descent over Delhi an announcement came on that they were going to spray insecticide inside the cabin, but hey, not to worry, it's perfectly harmless. Well, except to the bugs---and oh---you better cover your eyes everyone.

And there went two or three crew members marching up and down the aisles, two cans of bug spray in each hand, merrily fumigating us where we sat. I finished sputtering on the fumes, and asked what kind of insects they were spraying for. "Oh, lots of different things! Anything!" came the cheery reply.

And so we arrived in India.

Delhi sweltered under a thick yellow-brown haze and 27 Celsius. The airport seemed relatively quiet compared to what I'd been expecting. No problems with customs or retrieving our bags. But the driver from our pre-booked hotel didn't show up at arrivals, so we shrugged and hired a car from the airport who would take us there for about twelve dollars (500 rupees). It was a good decision.

Riding in this little car with our driver in his crisp white uniform and cap was our first glimpse of India: and we had previouslythought there were adventurous (crazy) drivers in Italy!

We honked and wove our way through a chaotic sea of buzzing, roaring, weaving, erratic traffic: open-sided tuk-tuks with bare-footed drivers, motorcycles carrying sari-clad passengers riding elegantly side-saddle, buses, bicycles, cars sporting dents aplenty all obeying some universal code of the road apparently based on faith in the gods.

At one point we noticed two guys lying on their backs on the dusty, garbage-strewn highway median. They were reading books, and we theorized that they'd made it only halfway across before deciding it was safer to stay there a while.

Our taxi driver displayed a gold-coloured Ganesh elephant head on the dash and bobbed his head to Hindi pop tunes as he navigated his way into the narrow, dusty crowded streets of Karol Bagh, the congested neighbourhood where he eventually found the Rahul Hotel Palace--after asking twice for directions, once from a man carrying crates of chickens on his bicycle.

From our hotel (not so much a Palace really), the steady street sounds of honking horns and distant shouts gradually became a strangely soothing background as we relaxed and napped for five hours. There was no question of going for a relaxing walk around our street as we often do to unwind from a long plane trip in a new place. One, we really felt exhausted and ready to just sleep. Two, it wouldn't be relaxing to go for a walk here. I'll be honest and say that the noise and rubble and general ambience of Karol Bagh was not for the already-disoriented to deal with. It was intimidating .

Around eight in the evening we emerged from our room and used the hotel's free internet to send "we made it here safely" emails to all, and then up to the roof-top restaurant to dine on butter naan bread, spicy masala tea, and a huge bowl of butter chicken. The food was excellent, despite the fact that the open kitchen is literally heaped with rubble. Renovations perhaps, but it looked more like earthquake-recovery.

From the roof we had a good view of the busy street below. We also spied where extra mattresses and pillows were stored in the open air. Dust and pollution made the air feel curiously heavy to breathe.

The staff was friendly, but no, this was not a luxury hotel. On the one hand, our room had a beautiful marble floor and beautiful tasselled curtains; on the other hand it's a good plan to bring your own toilet paper sometimes. And we luckily did.

Lights off at midnight, ending our first day in India.

London Natural History Museum

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

When in London, I highly recommend you pop out of the South Kensington tube stop and have a good long visit at the British Natural History Museum.

I had a fabulously interesting afternoon here today and Jeff and I vowed that we'd come back here again before we leave.

We had dinner at a little fish 'n' chips place called "Seasons" on Cromwell Road and spent the rest of the evening relaxing and catching up on laundry and email. Our B&B gives us free internet access: we love these guys! :)

St. Tommy's in London

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Yesterday afternoon after finishing at Hillingdon Hospital and familiarizing ourselves with our new neighbourhood near Victoria Station, we finished up the day visiting the British Museum for the second time on this vacation (we visited the day before leaving for Nairobi).



Alas this time, as I wandered through wondrous artefacts and the stolen treasures of the place that is with good reason sometimes called the Attic of the World , I felt so under the weather and slightly nauseous I couldn't really appreciate the things I was looking at. Feeling like quite the party-pooper, I asked Jeff and his mom if they'd mind returning to the B&B.

Aside from another venture to the local supermarket called Sainsbury's for some groceries for dinner, that was it for me today.

The first photo on this page is the view from our room at the Luna & Simone B&B , a really nice place to stay. We were on the second floor. Jeff's mom had considerably more stairs to climb as her room was on the top floor, two flights up from us.

This morning Jeff's mom chanched the oozing dressing on my arm. I was rather glad I was travelling with a trained nurse as the job was almost impossible with just one arm. She noted that my arm was getting red and swollen above the burn and worried about the red line creeping above it towards my shoulder.

I decided that there was nothing for it but to seek out some antibiotics somehow and I went down to consult with the two friendly desk clerks about the best pharmacy to visit. Their names were Mark and Peter and I believe they were brothers who owned the hotel.

Their very helpful advice included:

*Don't go to the pharmacy without a prescription--antibiotics would be very expensive for a traveller. Instead go to the hospital. Especially as they noticed the ominous creeping red marks on my arm.

*They also recommended St. Thomas Hospital and gave me directions (take the #24 bus to Westminster Square area), starting from a very convenient bus-stop directly across from the Luna simone .

So, on a big red London double-decker bus I rode to yet another British hospital. This was the one where Heather's friend Muriel worked for years apparently, Jeff's mom told me excitedly.

St. Tommy's was directly across the river from Big Ben and the Parliament buildings so while I checked myself into Emergency, Jeff went for a walk to see the nearby sights.

After a short wait I was seen by the very noble-looking Dr. Abdul Said. He was a very thoughtful and soft-spoken doctor from Eritrea who observed that even though he was African he'd never get something like henna done in Africa. Sigh. Yes, in hindsight it seems rather dodgy.

It turns out as well as the second-degree burn, the henna had also given me a case of cellulitis/blood-poisoning. It was a good thing I returned to a hospital.

He was extraordinarily helpful and gave me an amazingly light plastic material to lay over the burn. It felt about a million times better than the rubber dressing.

Like the other hospital, he gave me a generous bag of medical supplies free of charge, as well as a antibiotic prescription that I got filled at a futuristic pharmacy downstairs with a complicated-looking robotic dispensing-arm that was displayed behind a plexiglass wall in the lobby. The sign said something about it being one of the few of its kind in the world. It reminded me of one of those perpetual motion machines at Science World.

The antibiotics cost me six pounds fifty--very inexpensive. Everything else was free. And they hadn't even seen my passport or my insurance or anything. I felt very grateful. From here on in, although my stupid arm continued to annoy me, I was no longer worried that it would become more serious.

Just for interest's sake I'll mention that a BBC film crew happened to be filming in the emergency room where I was, so who knows maybe one day I'll see myself in some obscure medical documentary. The photo here shows St. Tommy's with a double-decker bus crossing on the bridge in front of it.

Jeff and I left the hospital by noon (after a quick lunch in the hospital cafe called "Tom's") and ventured out into London. We could see five or more helicopters hovering in the skies over London from our vantage point near the London Eye.

Apparently we are here just in time for a major media event! There are 75,00 people gathered in Trafalgar Square today...after eighteen years England has finally won "The Ashes" trophy back from Australia! They get really excited about cricket around here. The British people we travelled with in Africa kept us quite up to date about the state of the matches the last two weeks.

Flying Nairobi to London and an English Ambulance Ride

Monday, September 12. 2005

The four of us flew all night long from Nairobi to England.

I'd had such a good time in Africa, but now with my arm in pain all I wanted to do was leave it behind and get to England. It was a long and miserable flight. I felt tired and nauseous.

Drat it all, this was my thirteenth wedding anniversary and I didn't want to feel this bad. Sigh. My arm felt like a dead weight. I kept trying to peek under my bandages to see how high the blisters were getting. Jen asked to see, but got a horrified look on her face when she did.

The bright moment in this laborious flight was Jeff's mom presenting us with tickets for a Andrew Lloyd Webber musical in London for our anniversary present. It was a lovely surprise! I hoped fervently I'd be able to go to the show on the 14th.

We landed at Heathrow at around six-thirty in the morning. As usual there was a zoo of people milling around to get through passport control. We hurriedly waved goodbye to a few of our safari group (Andy, Pauline, and Graham) as we all hurried off in separate directions. While Jeff and Jen and their mom got in the enormously long lineup, I scooted off to see if I could spot someone to help me.

I approached an airport security fellow in an orange vest and meekly asked him if there was a way I could get some medical help.

It was amazing how fast things happened after he got a look at my arm and found out I was coming in from Africa.

We were all whisked to the very front of the passport line-up and our passports were barely glanced at. An ambulance was called. Apparently I was going straight from Heathrow to a nearby hospital.

The airport security fellow waited with my family for the ambulance to arrive. At one point he jokingly said, "Oh, don't worry luv, they'll just chop it off and it'll be fine." Alas, his attempts to cheer me up didn't go over well. I burst into exhausted tears. "Oh dear", he said, "Just a little gallows humour there. Sorry about that."

Around about this time Jen had to leave for her flight to Canada. She looked ready to cry herself when she gave me a hug. Geez, I was such a downer at this point in the holiday.

The airport fellow told us that he'd seen quite a few people in his time coming back from holiday from places like Spain with injuries of this sort. Black henna had a well-known bad reputation apparently--wish I'd known that. It was illegal in England, and lots of other places too.

Anyway, I got in the ambulance by myself as Jeff and his mom had to stay behind with our luggage and take a taxi to the hospital. I rode to Hillingdon Hospital in Middlesex with a very cute paramedic named Maurizio. He tut-tutted over my arm a little but did a much better job at cheering me up than the well-intentioned fellow at the airport.

He also told me that once on vacation his wife had wanted to get a black henna tattoo from some gypsies on the beach and he had talked her out of it fortunately. Maurizio grinned and said. "I'm going to go home and use you as a shining example of why I was right!"

I was still waiting in Hillingdon's emergency waiting room with a stack of British tabloids when Jeff and his mom found me. Ambulance rides are free for travellers in England, but taxi rides are fabulously over-priced. I cringed at how much they had paid for the short ride here.

A nice nurse named Claire Picton looked at my henna burn and pondered aloud how best to treat it. At last she decided the best thing was to drain the blisters and loosen the pressure. Jeff's mom wasn't so sure this was such a good idea (blisters protect), but I was wildly happy at the idea of getting rid of that horrible tight feeling.

When the blisters were opened it felt like somebody was pouring a large cup of warm water over my arm. Ugh. It felt better instantly but my arm wasn't going to win any beauty contests.

Heather brought out her camera and I asked her to please not take a picture for posterity. Now I wish I'd let her. The photo in this blog taken three weeks later is nowhere near as gory. At the time I really didn't think I'd want to look at that later, but it would have been an interesting souvenir of sorts---here's me on vacation in the hospital. :)

Next nurse Claire fitted some sort of awkward rubber-like sleeve over the burn and then re-bandaged it. She also gave me a big bag of sterile gauze, bandages and the like free of charge to take with us.

Unlike a Canadian hospital, they did not ask to see my identification, my insurance, or indeed anything. It was all free. Heh, except for the taxi ride.

We left Hillingdon by mid-morning and made our way by bus to an Underground station where we rode to Victoria Station. The Bed and Breakfast we'd reserved was apparently within walking distance and we set out to find it.

It was in walking distance but we'd come out the wrong exit of the station and got a little confused finding it. What should have been a ten minute walk was half an hour.

I'd never felt so glad to finally find a place in my life.

Leaving Zanzibar and Being Sick at Nairobi Airport

Sunday, September 11, 2005

We were scheduled to leave our place on Nungwi Beach for the drive to Zanzibar Airport mid-morning.

That still left time for one last walk down the beach and the local lanes lined with bougainvillea bushes and grass-roofed buildings for some last minute souvenir-shopping. After all, we couldn't take Tanzanian money out of the country officially, so we might as well spend what we had left over.

Some bargaining at the little shop where I'd spotted the big blue tinga tinga painting with panels of animals the day before used up most of the rest of our money (about thirty dollars). I was really pleased with this purchase---and it rolled up nice and tight once the merchant removed it from its plywood frame.

Before we left our villa, we also retrieved our passports from the hotel safe. I'd had some reservations (okay, some paranoid thoughts) about the safety of leaving our valuables there because we'd heard that some nearby hotels had been held-up by robbers but it turned out fine.

As for my arm, it was not fine. As I said in a previous post, the black henna on my arm was quite distinctly causing a reaction. Its outline was red and raised and puffy. I told some other concerned members of our group that I just had sensitive skin and that I sometimes had skin reactions that could be taken care of with the allergy medication Benadryl. Unfortunately, the Benadryl was far out of its league. But at the time, I was still hopeful that the swelling would go down soon.

The airport was about an hours drive away. Oh my goodness, it was such a hot day! Probably the most heat we've felt since we arrived in Africa. We sweltered in the airport lounge while we waited for our 3:15pm flight to Nairobi.

Jeff's mom also had to talk Jen out of buying an elephant figurine in the airport giftshop, similar to one that Jen had seen before on the island and admired. Heather had to confess that, er, she was already getting one of those for Christmas. :)

As we took off from Zanzibar and climbed high above the island, I could see the beautiful blue and green jewel tones of the waters of the Indian Ocean from the air. Gorgeous!

But the very last picture I took in Africa (I took over a thousand) was the one on this page of the men clinging to the outside of the local matutu truck.

Our flight from Nairobi to London was delayed for a long time. It was supposed to leave shortly after eleven pm , but the plane did not take off for London until about one in the morning. It was an excrutiating wait for me. By this time, the black henna reaction was making me miserable and nauseous. I couldn't eat the food from the airport-coupons provided to us. My head ached. My arm was beginning to weep from the frighteningly high blisters that had sprouted all down my arm and hand.

The nurses in the medical unit of the Nairobi Airport were kind, and they tried to be helpful, but they had very limited medical supplies in their first-aid kit. All they could do was wrap my arm (in what seemed to be the last gauze bandages they had) and advise me to seek out a doctor immediately upon arrival in England.

We made a cash donation to the nurses towards replenishing the first-aid kit. Note to self: don't get sick or injured in Africa if you can help it. My experience visiting the Meserani Snake Park's little medical clinic had made me aware of that quite recently, but I hadn't planned on using the medical system at all here. In fact, almost all of us travellers had given away all our bandages, antibiotics, etc. to the Meserani clinic. I was lucky to be able to get one antibiotic tablet from Jo while we waited in the departure lounge. I suspected I might need it.

Last Night in Africa

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Tomorrow we'll all be on planes heading for the British Isles. It's home for most of the people who have travelled with us on this trip to Kenya and Tanzania, and it will be my family's next stop on our vacation .

Travelling in Africa has been the most memorable trip I've ever taken, most likely one of the most life-enriching things I've ever done. If you ever get a chance, just go.

I'd definitely travel with Exodus Tours again as well. Excellent guides, great places, and we had the great luck of signing on to the same expedition as a great group of travelling companions.

We celebrated our last night of the trip by having an enormous barbeque on the beach, sitting at long tables on the soft sand and drinking and eating and talking until quite late.

The Henna Incident

Saturday, September 10, 2005

WARNING: DO NOT EVER USE BLACK HENNA!

It is not the real plant-based henna which when painted on leaves a brown or reddish colour on your skin.

The black henna looks pretty but it is likely to contain POISONOUS dyes and chemicals and can cause SEVERE ALLERGIC REACTIONS in as many as one in ten ( not always on the first application which may only sensitize you to it, so if you have ever got one of these black henna patterns done without incident, please don't get it done again.)

Remember when I said the two dollars admission fee to the Mnarani Natural Aquarium was the best two dollars I ever spent? Well, this was the WORST three dollars I ever spent.

I got this done in front of my beach hotel in Nungwi, Zanzibar by a very nice local woman. She painted a very beautiful design. Unfortunately, this whole experience was a nightmare afterwards.

The design felt okay at first, but I had second thoughts about having done this almost right away, and tried to peel the henna paste off only ten minutes later (they recommend you leave it on for an hour). I ran up to the bathroom in our room and tried to wash it off, but as was common in our hotel the water was not currently working.

Fortunately they got the pump going withing the hour and I took off what I could. It still felt okay, but that inner little voice of mine was already telling me that this had been a bad, bad, idea. I tried to hush it. After all, I've had henna applied many, many times in my life and never had a problem: at bellydance parties in Canada, in the city of Marrakech in Morrocco. But that was real henna, not the black henna.

It was during the night (when my arm began to itch and burn) that I began to realize I was having an allergic reaction and by the time I was on the flight from Nairobi to England I was nauseous and the blisters were at least an inch high. I wouldn't have thought it possible for your skin to contain so much fluid...



Flashforward: This Black Henna resulted in visiting two hospitals over the next several days after I arrived back in London, England. I received a severe second-degree chemical burn which resulted in huge painful blisters and blackened tissue. My arm weeped pus for several weeks and had to be swaddled in a rubberized second-skin and bandages. I took antibiotics for the blood poisoning that occurred.

A year and a half later I consider myself very fortunate to not have a disfiguring scar. But I still have faint outlines on my arm where the black henna was painted on even now.

Yeah, don't do what I did on vacation, folks.

Snorkelling Trip

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Jeff and his sister Jen (as well as a number of the group we travelled on safari with) decided to join a guided snorkelling trip offered by a local company.

They rented masks and flippers and headed out this afternoon on a dhow equipped with an outboard motor, although they used the sail most of the time.

They sailed out to a likely spot and then swam in clear shallow water (maybe ten or twenty feet deep) among brightly coloured tropical fish and coral. The guides offered the snorkellers some sort of bread to offer the fishes and some came and ate out of their hands, although Jeff said the fish disdained to come and eat his bread.

There was quite a strong current, however, so that although it was gentle enough that you could swim against it, one did have to swim constantly or the current would move you too far from the boat (or into the boat...Jeff mentioned he bumped into the boat a few times.)

Alas, it seemed that nobody brought an underwater camera so the only picture of the trip we have is that of the boat coming in at the end of the day.

The boat came right back to the beach in front of our hotel, but the heavy surf made the boat bounce up and down so much it was hard for people to climb out. Jeff was one of the lucky guys who got to climb into the water to try and hold the boat steady so the others could disembark. He was soaked.

An Afternoon By the Beach (While Jeff was Snorkelling)

Saturday, September 10, 2005

While Jeff was out snorkelling, his mother and I decided to stay landbound and explore the village a little more and perhaps do a bit of souvenir shopping. It was our last full day in Africa, so it was now or never if we wanted to do that.

Jeff's mom had a whole list of people to shop for, and she enlisted my help to bargain for better prices with the merchants. She hated haggling. I enjoyed it.

We haggled for her tinga tinga paintings, wooden elephant figurines, and carved salad tongs. All her Christmas shopping was going to be finished here and now.

Myself, I had my eye on a large tinga tinga painting that hung above the doorway of one of the open-air shops on the beach. It was painted in many small panels with whimsical animals in each and I really admired it, but the price was frightful--perhaps not for North American standards but it was certainly one of the most expensive paintings I'd seen. I decided I'd bring Jeff to see it later.

Meanwhile I contented myself with a small impressionistic zebra painting.

As well as shopping, we spent some time drinking good, strong African coffee in the little cafes. One of the cafes was run by a friendly British girl and I tried to imagine what it would be like running a small restaurant at the edge of the Indian Ocean. It was a nice little place.

We watched local women gathering the edible seaweed that blankets some sections of the beaches here. They carried it away on their heads in baskets and pails to eventually be sold (apparently) to the Japanese market.

We watched a man mending the thatch on the roof of a house, and met a couple of young boys and their monkey Ali. We passed by women sitting on the beach selling massage, braiding hair in corn-row braids, and painting henna patterns on visitors. I wish we hadn't seen those last ladies. I really do. "It would be fun for you to get that done", said Jeff's mom, "since you didn't get it done in Stonetown."

Sigh, I wish (I REALLY wish) I hadn't gotten it done here either.

It was a beautiful day, but I made a bad mistake (thankfully right at the end of my time in Africa). This brings me to the Henna Incident...... well, first let me tell you about Jeff's snorkelling trip.