Thanksgiving — But, No Turkey

You can read all that’s written about India but until you experience it, you can’t imagine the sensory overload. Old Delhi’s scruffy streets and teeming people…New Delhi’s elegant upscale neighborhoods flanked by tent cities of street people…great marble temples and monuments… and tiny stores apparently all selling the same goods. The old rich and new rich in their Mercedes…and everywhere the poor. Unfortunately, most of India’s population of over 1 billion people will never eat a dinner such as we enjoyed. Twenty-five percent live under the poverty level. What we spend in a day could support their families for a year.  Having done only a few days of sightseeing leaves me with the impression that the rich are getting richer while the poor are condemned. Many parents prefer that their children work – or beg — rather than attend school. There is an emerging middle class and the IT sector is booming, and it shows in the proliferation of high-end stores catering to the glittery young.  The country is growing and changing so rapidly that its infrastructure can’t begin to keep up. Roads once built for carts and rickshaws are carrying streams of vehicles of all types —   hordes of green and yellow “tuk-tuks” (three wheel motorized rickshaws), buses, taxis, cars, scooters and motorcycles and bikes. Add to that the pedestrians darting in all directions through the traffic…you get the idea. When our flight arrived in Delhi at 1:15 am, we were among the swarm of people waiting to get through immigration.  Continental Airlines introduced a non-stop flight from Newark on November 1, 2005 and American Airlines joined force on the 15th with a non-stop from Chicago. There were no barriers to funnel people into lines and it took nearly two hours to clear customs. Happily, we were greeted by a driver and a black-suited “airport officer” from the Taj Mahal Hotel (a member of the leading Taj group of deluxe hotels in India). During that early morning drive, it was already evident that Delhi is a city with so many layers that you could spend years here and never understand its multitudinous cultures or its diversity. You’ll hear much more about our travels in the coming weeks. In Paris, I’m an advocate of not staying in 5* deluxe hotels unless you have money to burn. In India, I don’t feel that way. Even sophisticated travelers need the services of an experienced hotel staff. Since tourism has grown by nearly 70% in the past two years, hotel rooms are at a premium. More deluxe hotels are slated to be built to accommodate the demand. Delhi is a city filled with treasures.  One that impacted me the most was the simple, bare room where Mahatma Gandhi lived.   One of his quotes that I would like to leave you with on this Thanksgiving holiday is, “The force generated by nonviolence is infinitely greater than force of all the arms invented by man’s ingenuity.” May all of Bonjour Paris readers, their families and the world be blessed with peace and sufficient prosperity.