Kick My Ass

The Shatabdi Express was a much better train. They even served food. Maybe that was what did it. I am ill, ill, ill. My insides were like a crowded theater and someone yelled fire. All night long I shivered and threw up yellow liquid, long after the dahl was gone, I threw up glorp, goopy, clear and yellow, just an acidic mess, with something similar coming out the other end. And I couldn’t get warm. It wasn’t til this morning that I realized I have a fever as well, and even though my liquids are gone, I am still tasting something foul. I have no energy, and no interest in anything. Perhaps it’s a flu?

When I got the hotel last night I was greeted way too efflusively by the night manager. I had to shoo him out of my room about 4 times.

I have to go to the airport later to pick up those creatures. I asked at the front desk if they had an extra room as we will all be crammed in on top of each other here and I don’t know if I’m contagious.

Kannauj at Last

It seems I did well to come. My friend here has been absolutely amazing. He has bent over backwards to make my stay as delightful, comfortable, fun and fruitful as possible, introducing me to people, food, and other things that I would never have met on my own. I really owe him this entire trip.

Every day has been packed full and so I will try and go chronogically. My first day in Lucknow was a series of rickshaw rides as Rajnish took me around the town to show me some of the more lusterous sights. He is from a village near here, originally, although he now grows nagamotha and patchouli in Raipur. But he knows Lucknow well. That was my first taste of Lucknowi chaat.

Next day we went to Kannauj, the traditional and ancient perfumers city. I had heard the rumor, started by someone here in India, in the aromatic business, and for our American ears, that Kannauj was dangerous for foreigners; that we were being attacked and shot in the streets. Sounds like an attempt to deflect our interest in visiting one of the Meccas of perfume. I have wanted to go to Kannauj for about a decade but no longer harbored much hope that I would find the “real” attars, undiluted essential oils. Since so much is adulterated here in India, with “value added” and the like, it’s sometimes necessary to ask adulturation questions in several different ways and even then you may be lied to. For example, if DOP is added directly to the receiver at the very beginning then it’s already there when the sandalwood comes over, right? So you don’t need to add anything else, so, the logic can twist, you are not adulterating the oil. There are an infinite number of ways to deny adulterating an oil, while never actually denying it. Most of the world don’t care, it’s true, and this is only important to a very few of us total geeks. But here I am, one of them, and a fanatical one at that, poking around in such places as Kannauj.


The first place we stopped, Mohammed Afzal, Mohammed Aslam Perfumers, are friends of Rajnish. They made a beautiful shamama attar and dehn al oud. We sat upstairs, in a sparsely furnished reception room, and were served fruit, tea and cookies. Imagine my shock when we were robbed by a rhesus monkey who ran in through the open door, grabbed all our apple slices right out of the dish, and bounded out and over the wall!

We left by car, driving in fits and loud horn honking starts, through Kannauj’s narrow ancient lanes, with our first stop being the Aroma Institute. I had seen this place online and will not bother saying much except that you know sometimes when you have great energy with someone, immediately? And sometimes the opposite happens….So it was here and I can’t even remember the head of the institutes name, but I think we both wanted to beat the other senseless as soon as we met. He was irritating and officious and aggressive. Once he found out I was trained in aromatherapy he began firing off questions at me regarding the process I go through in my head when I make a blend, insisting I quote certain clinical trials to him and acting like he was going to arrest me and sneering at my non-scientific interest, all while texting on his mobile. Anyway, I was removed from his presence at the earliest opportunity and we were given the usual short institute tour. I told Rajnish that if I ever agreed to tour another institute that he should just shoot me.

We had passed a sandalwood distillery on the way and I was slavering to get to it. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that I could see sandalwood distilled. I know the state distillery in Mysore is closed and has been for a long time. I was told by someone the next day that the Karnataka state distillery has been closed for 30 years now.

Off next to one of the local sandalwood distilleries, a man named Kapoor, who supposedly constantly distilled sandalwood but just not at the moment. I found out later that he is a master chemist and well known compounder who can adulturate anything and evade a GC. As we sat in his dim and dark office, looking up his imposing presence from the other side of his desk, he talked about all his massive clients all over the world. Yet that didn’t stop him from telling me he could supply all my sandalwood needs, for an astronomical price of course. He tried very hard to appear generous yet important, and gave me a couple of samples of nagarmotha and sandalwood. He distills sandalwood 11 months out of the year, and had bought his latest wood at the log auction in November. So he should have had some sandalwood around. But the only wood I saw was some of the outer wood from the same tree, the wood with no essential oil, being carved in the courtyard. I hadn’t realized that so much of the sandalwood tree is unusable for aromatics. This must be what many of these sandalwood carvings are made from. And lots of the powder one sees around. Then we went down to have a look at the actual stills and I couldn’t even detect a faint odor of sandalwood. It doesn’t seem like these stills were blazing away only weeks ago. Besides the definite uneasy feeling I got from this man, who reminded me of a creature living in a dark, wet pit, there was nothing at his place to corrospond to him distilling sandalwood or anything else, really. Rajnish wouldn’t even drink the chai he gave us.

Outside, 6 or 7 bearers loaded a truck filled with kegs of rose and kewda water, which I now know goes in Lucknow Biriyanis. On the wall of his office, among the garlanded saints photos, sat a garlanded photo of a kewda flower. I’m guessing this is what he survives on.

Next stop was a vetiver distillery, with men sitting around in chairs in a circle of cut khus. When asked if they distilled sandalwood we were told no, but then gently herded to the back and shown that in fact, they were distilling sandalwood, under lock and key and strict secrecy. The men outside weren’t to know that anything more than khus was being distilled here. There are various reasons for this but the basic gist is that the distillation is illegal. I think perhaps they didn’t get the logs legally, but that is speculation on my part. The receivers were all behind a locked, unmarked door, and taped thoroughly to prevent leaking and evaporation. I was stunned at such a coup! I did not expect or even consider that I would see sandalwood being distilled! Right outside the still though, sat barrels of plasticizer. There could be no other use than to stretch the sandalwood, either selling it as sandalwood or attars. I don’t even have the contact information for these guys but I did get some pictures.

The next stop on our journey was a larger facility run by a man who clearly was relieved to send me packing to his brother in Mumbai. I want to see the Jasmine Sambac extraction down in Tamil Nadu, having seen it 10 years ago, and now would like to go back and buy our jasmine directly from them. Mr. Das showed us around, to the traditional extraction of Genda (marigold) attar and Hina (henna) attars, but into DOP, not sandalwood. Apparantly it’s possible to order your attars in pure sandalwood, dop/sandalwood mix, or pure dop. But from my conversations with these distillers and Rajnish, I don’t think there is much of a chance of getting pure sandalwood either alone or in attars, even if you pay for it. I was very fortunate to be accompanied by Rajnish as he’s a grower, not a businessman or a chemist, and there seemed to be a minimum of cant involved when he asked a question. The distiller would look a bit sheepish and then admit that the chance of getting pure sandalwood was virtually nil. I am really so grateful for this as I so often get the runaround. This facility was also doing khus, which is vetiver, and when it’s done in copper it’s a ruh, so it’s Ruh Khus. Again, I saw plenty of barrels of DOP and took photos of them. There is no other possible use than as an adulturant.

So there are quite a few distillers still in Kannauj, even if there is no sandalwood, or very little legal sandalwood available for them. But what can you expect? Most of these distillers are several generations. This is often the case in India. Where you might find us in the west adapting to changing markets and other external factors, in India it’s a lot slower for these forces to take effect. When your entire family has distilled, for generations, in a particular city, and you are known there, and all your family history is there, it’s going to be difficult and complicated to pull up your stakes and change professions. So we have plenty of distillers scrambling however they can to make ends meet.

The aromatherapy industry is so tiny you can barely call it an industry. Really we have to include ourselves in the perfume industry. But we’re not, because the important thing in all standard uses of essential oils is uniformity of quality and availability, and price. For us it’s different. At least for me it is. I am looking for a beautiful oil free from adulturants; and not rectified, folded, strengthened, added to in any way, taken from in any way, just 100% pure and natural, the way it grew in the plant. That is the minimum. To be a beautiful oil, it has to have more than beautiful energy, prana. Preferably it’s been grown in optimum conditions, which vary. Preferably it’s been distilled with love, knowledge and respect for its nature. Preferably it’s been stored in good conditions. Preferably the people who have harvested and distilled this oil have a good attitude, are compensated enough so that they don’t have to worry about feeding their families, and love what they do. Preferably the oils smells exquisite and sparkles with an effervescense that you just can’t improve on, no matter how talented your lab technicians. “Nature Identical” is an oxymoron. It’s an idiotic, arrogant concept, smug in its surety that only major constituents count, because of their bulk and percentage, and that the less prevalent ones don’t matter simply because there are less of them. Tucking some extenders in there might fool people who care only about an initial “smell” but ultimately such a practice will undermine what we love, and the oil will be less. Essential oils are exciting and lovely—they are wonderful to smell, to inhale and taste. They are the souls of the plant, carefully and magically brought over through the process of steam, it’s modern alchemy. A perfume oil is simply that: a perfume oil. It might smell pretty but it’s a pretty poor substitute. It’s the difference between going to the Sahara and watching a tv show about it.

Yesterday Rajnish came for me on a motorbike and we spent the day riding around, me sidesaddle, waving at the astonished crowds, I felt like the Queen of the Rose Parade. We ended the day with a couple of meetings, one with some Jain guys who said they used to distill roses into palmarosa! This guy is terribly interesting when he chooses to speak but it’s difficult to get him to say anything. The other meeting was with someone Rajnish had not yet met but wanted to for years. Sometimes everyone just takes a liking to each other and that was the case here with Mr. Singh. We discussed sandalwood at length and I asked in as many ways as I could what would I have to do to get real, unadulterated, Indian sandalwood oil? So this is what we came up with: He has bid or is bidding at the May log auction. If he gets the wood it will be trucked up to Kannauj where it will be distilled for me, for us at Enfleurage, and I will come and be a pest and sleep at the still (although he doesn’t believe I will do this as it’s 7-8 days distillation and May or June in Kannauj is hideously, horribly hot.) The total output will be a kilo or two and we are taking it all. It will be very expensive, I can’t even guess how much. But it will be there, Inshallah. And at the same time, in the same vicinity, the ruh bela will be distilled. This is jasmine sambac, which grows all over India, and even though most jasmine oil is absolute, ruh bela is water distilled, in small quantities, in copper. This is a ruh and it’s done basically the same way as vetiver, Ruh Khus. It would be great to see it but first I must settle this sandalwood thing. I will try not to get my hopes up, for so many promised things never materialize and this could be the same.

I have forgotten to write about another food experience—Lucknow is very justifiably famous for Biriyani. This is Mughlai cuisine and I am not familiar with it. In addition, I am a vegetarian, and Biriyani is served with meat, but once again Rajnish came through, as we zipped up to a small street specializing in Biriyani. We went in, sat down and he ordered me plain biriyani, a little side plate of curry sauce, and then, after, a delicate paneer dish in tomato sauce, and some bread, fine and thin, and another specialty of the street. All I can say is that this is the traditional Islamic Cuisine of the Nabobs of Antiquity. Ultra refined, exquisitely sophisticated, delicate and complex, this is the food of royalty. I cannot even imagine what was in that rice, besides rosewater! And Kewda (Pandanus odoratissimus, or Kadi) water, cloves, and…….? I ate my rice, swooning, and the curry sauce, which I applied sparingly, accompanied it perfectly. This is impossible to describe. The paneer dish and the bread would have easily been the best, most delicious things on the table in most normal circumstances, but I ate some of them, and had more rice. Anyone who wants to visit this miraculous temple to food should tell the rickshaw driver, Dastrkhoan, Near Tulsi Hall, and the UP Press Club. Telephone is 262-5297. English not spoken. But you can always point.

Tomorrow I catch another train, preferably a less vermin infested one, back to Delhi, to meet Tom and Jill when they fly in Sunday night. Rajnish has already left. I’ve had an interesting and fruitful time here in Lucknow, have eaten well, shopped, and blasted around on a motorbike, exactly what I needed.

After this I was hungry for another chaat visit. So down the street we went, to another chaat guy, and there are plenty of photos here. It’s the same story—aloo tikki (potatoes,) mutter (peas,) or dahib bara (yogurt riddled balls of chickpea, I think.) Then you’ve got sweet and sour tamarind sauce, hot mint/cilantro sauce, roasted ground cumin, fresh garam masala, shaved ginger, powdered chile, lemon, yogurt and crisp pani puris crumpled on top. The custom is, after you eat, and are full, you start with the pani puris, he pokes a hole in the shell, puts a bit of potato mixture in, and dips it in the pani puri water, and I have to figure out what’s in it. Then you pop the entire thing in your mouth and even though this is difficult, it’s mandatory and if you think it doesn’t matter and do half then you get scolded.

Sometimes the World Acts Just the Way You Wish It Would

I was gamboling about Lucknow with Rajnish, who had come up from Raipur to meet me and help me find the attars in Lucknow. We’d spent the day eating, wandering, and shopping for Chikan, Lucknow’s famous embroidery. Toward evening we found ourselves on a back lane near the zoo. Rajnish mentioned that I should meet a scientist, an essential oil scientist, who occasionally came to Raipur, and who lived “somewhere near here.” We stood around wishing, I think. Most of the street signs and local advertisements were incomprehensible with the exception of directions to AirBorne: AirHostess Flight Academy.We walked along a back lane, next to an open drain, through the twilight until a tall man appeared, and with a minimum of fuss, joined us. We continued down the lane until suddenly we were directed to a doorway, behind a shop, and entered a slit in the buildings, through, down, turn, up and over and the passageway opened into an essential oil warehouse. I couldn’t help murmuring in delighted amazement. Vats and kegs of essential oils lined the walls, were stacked on shelves, hundreds of kilos of locally distilled specialties. There was no store attached but an adjoining room was filled with men discussing….aromatics I would guess. This was someone’s warehouse.

We found our way into the inner sanctum, a tiny office filled with unopened mail and covered with Jain saint’s photos on calendars, clocks, memoriam…we drank tea and discussed ourselves. I got to geek and ask questions regarding Indian Essential Oils that, before this, I could have only dreamed of asking for I knew no one to ask who might give me a correct answer. But to these gentlemen, I was not their customer, and I think I probably don’t represent any source of potential income, at least not yet, and so I believe what I heard, and what I can not write down here, at least not yet, until I have sifted and figured. When you print something that goes around the planet, even if it’s only read by a few people, then it’s likely better to examine the facts a little first. But today we are going to Kannauj and arrangements have been made to show me the attar manufacturing! I have been told there is still sandalwood attar being made in Kannauj. I don’t dare hope, cynical and disillusioned as I have become. The learned scientist himself suggested that 99% of India’s essential oils are adulterated. Grim, but not really surprising unless you take into account all that citronella.

But back to other events as I sit here typing at 5 in the morning; we ate and how. Rajnish has taken me to some of the best chaat places in Lucknow, which means some of the best chaat in the world, since Lucknow is recognized for chaat as well as chikan. We found ourselves at the New Kesherwani Chat House “Delicious chat and Gulabjamun” and the address is 22, Kailash Tower, Ground Floor, Aminabad, Lucknow-18. I think that if you are going to Lucknow you should write this address down and ask people about it once you get into the old city and the very small streets that motor vehicles can’t pass through. The chaat wallah occupies a corner and these pictures are a poor substitute for the taste and aroma but here they are anyway. The bricklike cake things in the foreground are mostly peas (mutter) with I don’t know what, and once ordered they are broken up and heated on the grill and chopped into these tiny leaf bowls. The round pancakes behind them are potatoes and to the left are the Gulab Jamun, which are fried milk balls in rosewater syrup.
Chaat means snack, kind of. Usually it’s a potato or chickpea or lentil base served with some toppings and sauces: with lemon, tamarind sauce, cumin, coriander, turmeric, yogurt, cilantro, and topped with a crumpled puri and served in small portions. Chaat is a cheap, filling, local and delicious snack. We had the unbelievable pea chaat first, and then one with potatoes, then dahi puri, the yogurt and spice filled mini puris, yum. God.

Food in Delhi—I went out with the other guest at my little Bed and Breakfast, and his friend, a local who brought us to Punjabi By Nature, supposed to be one of the best restaurants in Delhi and it certainly impressed me. The essence of the restaurant is that Punjabi people are very passionate and enjoy life, including the indulgence of the senses. One of our appetizers was pani puris, but served in a novel way. Pani puris are small crispy fried puff breads (puris) filled with a watery (pani) lentil tamarind broth and some chaat toppings like cumin and coriander. But these came dry, with everything except the sauce and accompanied by 5 vodka shots, flavoured with tamarind, mango and pepper! That was the dipping sauce. I have to say I was shocked and delighted with it. Punjabi By Nature served perhaps the best garlic naan I have ever had the pleasure of putting in my mouth, and the baby vegetables specialty was delicious, as was the dahl. If you are in Delhi I highly recommend this restaurant.

It’s difficult to mention everything. I had wanted to describe the rest of what happened in Delhi, as well as the terrible Gompti Express Train, and this in particular is important because it was a milestone for me and my experience of vermin in this world. One of the delightful Punjabi men I sat next to graciously changed places with me, taking my window seat, which I had thought would be pleasant but which turned out to be a cockroach thruway with plenty of them skittering over the curtains, scuttling over the seats and walls, everywhere. But according to my friend Mr. Kemar, “these are not bugs; the name for them is cockroach!” I also learned that Kadmal is bedbug. And we’ll leave the subject of bugs now for rats. I am a New Yorker, and spend plenty of time in other rat infested cities as well: Mumbai for example. So I’ve seen plenty of rats, and had more experiences with them than I like to think of. But never have I seen the boldness and glee of the rats in the railway stations we passed through, starting in Delhi. This includes the chai wallah’s stand in whichever station it was that I got out to stretch my legs. Even with the men present rats scampered over the counters, on the roof, and underfoot. Despite my firm belief that what you don’t know can’t hurt you, or probably won’t, or at least not as bad, and my refusal to ever look closely at any commercial food preparation, I had to admit that that was it for me, at least for this railway line. I was starving later, but couldn’t bring myself to buy a sandwich.

Just Starting Out

After a flight that went on forever- I watched 6 movies- we landed at Abu Dhabi, usually one of my favourite airports. It’s growing fast, set to give an alternative to Dubai, but it’s still comparatively small. The huge new main terminal is not open, and the teeming throngs are confined largely to the small blue tiled rotunda. I do like the airport though, because even with the chaos, and jam packed gates, it’s manageable, unlike, for example, evil London Heathrow.
I went to the gate, breezed through security as I was the only person, and everyone I showed my boarding pass to kept trying to send me back because, even though my Delhi flight was listed for gate 17, the Beirut flight was leaving from there. Delhi? Delhi? The word itself seemed a mystery. No one, not a security guard or a gate agent, no one in the vicinity of gates 16-19 had ever heard of a Delhi flight. But rather than insist, they all just shrugged at me, and let me pass by to see for my self, and sure enough, my gate said Beirut.

Now at least I have the excuse that I just got off a 14 hour flight but you’d think that the people who work there would have realized that once that Beirut flight had gone, once it was set to take off, once that flight was boarded, then the next destination using that gate would be Delhi. And sure enough it was, but in the meantime I had wandered in, seen “Beirut” and toddled out like a fool, past security, and back into the main terminal, realizing too late that it was the right gate and Delhi was now listed of course and if I wanted to sit anywhere, I needed to get back to the security which was now a solid mass of people.

I sat and waited for the line to clear a bit, with about 60 men on their way back from working in the Gulf, but the crowd got thicker, with incoming buses (from the planes) emptying at the same place and the disembarking crowds had no idea where to go so they stopped, creating a bottleneck, and stood, milling about.


We were already boarding the buses which take passengers out to their planes, so there was a great competitive shoving and pushing to get on this bus. They crammed us on, like it was a Calcutta city bus, and not just one of three that would take us 100 feet to our airplane, a plane we all already had confirmed seats on. So in we went, like cattle to the abbatoir. And then we sat. And sat. I think we sat about 10 or 15 minutes, which is quite a long while when you’ve just come off a 14 hour flight, stinking and sweating and pressed up against each other. Yet on we sat, waiting and watching on the silent bus.

We finally took a left onto the tarmac to make a slow circuit of the airport, stopping briefly at each plane. I realized, after some time, that we were looking for the Delhi plane. I couldn’t hear the conversations but the driver kept hopping out and going to talk with guys in overalls. I imagined the conversation: Is this the Delhi plane? No, the Delhi plane is there only! Is this the Delhi plane? No, the Delhi plane is this side! Is this the Delhi plane? No, this is the Bangladesh plane! Is this the Delhi plane? Oh, sorry, it’s on the other side, just this way! And so we went back to where we started, right back to the doors we’d charged out of 30 minutes earlier. Then we turned around and made another pass through the airport going in the other direction. Finally we found the right plane, filling it entirely. For many, this was one of their first airplane rides. As soon as seatbelt light goes off, bang! Off come the seatbelts. No one wants to ride with those things on!

Same story as soon as we hit the tarmac in Delhi, wham! Everyone throws their seatbelts off and leaps up for the overhead bins immediately. We hurtle down the runway in total chaos.

Once inside the terminal I could see that Delhi is making huge improvements to Indira Gandhi Airport, but these have just begun and so the entire place was torn apart. They had run out of arrival forms to hand out on the plane—and so gate agents stood to the side helpfully handing them out as we disembarked. Once we were in line we began comparing answers and noticed that some of the agents were handing out departure cards instead! Both of the customs agents must have enjoyed that very much. Let’s just say we took our time going through. But at least I wasn’t the only one laughing.

Eventually I managed to collect my belongings and stagger out into the mayhem, and into a car bound for my Bed and Breakfast in Vasant Kunj, which is actually quite far from the center of Delhi although we pretended it was right in the city.


Delhi was quite cold. Very cold actually. People are bundled up like New Yorkers and you can see your breath even in the daytime. It had been 22 years (!) since I was last in Northern India and of course it’s changed a great deal. But in addition to the modernizing, and the ease of telecommunications and financial transactions, which was never the case before, Delhi has been selected as the site for the 2010 Commonwealth Games and the city officials are taking it very seriously. They began a “green campaign” a few years ago with the result is that Delhi is completely covered in trees, with plenty of lawns, bushes, hedges and flowers. It’s hard to realize you’re even in a city most of the time. They have done an excellent job, and planting continues at a frenzied pace. Additionally, with the exception of a couple of minor traffic jams, the roads were wide open and the general pace slow and steady. So when I was asked how I found India I could actually say “kind of relaxing” much to the locals astonishment.

I stayed at a Bed and Breakfast, a new concept for India I think, but a nice change. On the downside it was far from town but everything else was good. I’ll give the link below for anyone reading this who may decide to try it. The proprietor’s name is Renu and some would call her eccentric or even odd. She is very interesting though, speaks perfect English, and is open, warm and friendly. She knows a lot about Delhi as well. She has a fat and sweet, very spoiled ex street dog named Doogie who gets up early every morning to go lay in the car and sleep. Her little place is 14 km from Connaught Circus, in a gated residential enclave, at the end of a dead end street. There is even an ATM on the corner. The house is cute, warm modern and spotless. She has 2 servants and there are only 2 bedrooms for guests, both with king size beds. My first night there we ordered takeout which was cheap, fast and delicious northern Indian specialities. We just sat and talked and talked until I realized that I was actually passing out as I sat there, and so took my hallucinations to bed.

The next day I hired a car and driver for 8 hours and went off in search of another hotel in the center, as my friends will be joining me next week and we will be too many to stay in Vasant Kunj. So, fully aware that I was not in my right mind I went to the train station to buy a ticket for Lucknow. I managed to find the tourist information window, responsible for quotas and the like. Theoretically this means that an otherwise sold-out train may be able to accommodate you since they must fill the foreign tourist quota. But the yang to this yin was startling. It also apparently means that they need to fill seats on terrible trains with a minimum of tourists as well and this is what happened to me today, when I traveled to Lucknow on the horrifying Gompti Express, a cockroach infested, dingy, filthy cantankerous purgatory on wheels, whish is so far from actually being an express, that it stops to let better, cleaner, more important express trains pass it by!

So as I bought my train ticket and reached for my purse I realized it wasn’t there, and, looking around frantically, I saw I’d left it on the table where I’d filled out the reservation form. Some Spanish tourists had it. Ok, so I wasn’t supposed to be out. I wasn’t responsible. At least my documents and money were tied to me and not in that purse I was so careless with. Chastened, I crept back to the car and we were off to Connaught Place to find a hotel. The driver stopped to ask directions and that was all it took for us to get caught in the clutches of The Travel Agency.

I had a feeling all was not well, as I sat in the tiny office on a back lane and we discussed my upcoming itinerary but the man, whose name I now forget, insisted he was a government employee and to relax, that he wasn’t going to ask me for any money because he is paid to do his job. Etc etc. Right. Even with my brains leaking plasma out of my ears I couldn’t swallow that one. I spent a couple of hours going over the merits of various hotels in other cities with him. And I needed a local one. But he called the ones I was interested in and they were full. He even gave me the phone to talk to the guys. But he had one, and the pictures were lovely. It was a bit pricy , and in Karol Bagh, not Connaught Place, and I said it sounded great but I needed to look at it and he insisted on sending his guy with me and my driver. I knew there was a rat; I could smell it but I wasn’t sure exactly how or what the scam was. As we drove endlessly to Karol Bagh I realized that it was the whole thing, and I called the supposedly full hotel and they weren’t full! Had anyone called in the last hour? No! Aha. The Karol Bagh hotel was not even finished. The walls were not really intact and it had no windows yet somehow it was still decrepit. There were no guests, only construction workers. I cannot imagine what they thought of me but when I asked, out of pure curiousity, what the hotel charge per night was, they wrote $180 USD! I was still laughing an hour later. Can’t blame them for trying I guess. The Travel Agency wanted me to pay about $1000 up front to secure my hotels in the future and also to rent a car. Amazing to think some people fall for this; the guy insisted that I was to pay him and he would give me vouchers for the actual hotels….

Next I wanted to go to Chandi Chowk but even as we pulled up the rickshaw wallahs were chasing the car and half pulled me out of it, demanding I hire them and I realized I was still in no condition to do anything complicated where I have to have my wits about me and so off I went to the serene and tranquil Lodi Gardens where the dogs were happy and the trees seethed with parrots like wild fruit.

www.newdelhibedandbreakfast.com