After a little confusion describing where we needed to go, we got our prepaid slip and got in the cab. It was a little over an hour ride and he dropped us about 2.5 km away from where we needed to be. Our attempts to explain our intended destination to another cab driver failed and we decided to walk. It was pretty dusty and our walk was shared by numerous livestock on the way.
Carlos, Bruno and Adama (the friends we were going to see) live in this self-contained housing complex that reminds me of those distopian future books, or the Google/Facebook/apple headquarters.
We found our way to his building and signed in at the front desk. Some English letters just don't have equivalents in Hindi and after a couple failed attempts to correct the guard, I just nodded to whatever he put down. I'm Aoec Pernard from some made up address in India. *see slip below
Carlos works 1pm until 9pm because he coordinates some of his projects with clients in Argentina. He was able to show us where we could eat (we were starving) and his roommate, Bamé (who I also met in Thailand) joined us.
After breakfast (of naan and curry). We went to catch the bus outside the complex. Catching busses involves shouting the place you want to go and the packed busses shouting an affirmative or negative back at you. We got on what felt like the 10th bus. It was about an hour and a half ride to Exide, the downtown area where we were heading. We got off and walked over to the Victoria memorial, which was beautiful and obviously was finished 20 years after the death of the person it was made for.
The museum was a beautiful old English monument made of cool marble. We were too tired to fully appreciate the exhibits but some of the old paintings were nice. We sat on a balcony for a while and watched the crowd milling around below.
Outside we walked through the grounds before sitting by a pond overlooking the memorial until around 5 when it closed. We had wanted to see James Bond, so we walked another couple kilometers to an area that had some theatres. They were little hole-in-the-wall places that only had Bollywood movies at times that didn't work for us. We walked back to the bus area and waited for a while before giving up and catching a cab.
We've had so many cab experiences since we got here so it's hard to remember which was which but I think this was the one who argued with us about the fare and drop off location, wouldn't let us out of the cab. Didn't stop where we told him to, and after we paid him started yelling that we gave him the wrong bill (we didn't).
Back at the apartment, we talked with Carlos' roommates for a while before going to sleep around 10.
-AB
Crazy India
We will never understand
Explore the city
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