William, My New Entrepreneur Friend

I saw my new friends the next morning. ...Afternoon. All this time I'd been eating outside of the hostel, but they told me the food here was amazing so I decided to try it out. I was not disappointed. In fact, this was probably the best food I'd had yet in all of India. Chicken tikka masala for the win. I can't believe I'd been missing out on this the last couple days! After breakfast, I headed out to find a travel agent. My next destination is the southern state of Kerala and I need to figure out how to make that happen. Oh, and it's a holiday here today. Again. Because that's how things are in India.

Holiday festivities. Of some sort. I think this celebration
involved sinking one of the gods into the sea.
Is that offensive? Is it offensive to ask if that's offensive?
I need to become more worldly.

So... here's how that went. I walked into the first travel agent's office. It was a woman working by herself. She did not seem happy. I walk in with my usual smile and she snaps at me "what do you want?" So I tell her I want to go to Kerala. Without saying anything to me, she gets on her cell phone. So I ask her her name. She doesn't respond. I ask again. No response. I ask again in Hindi (which, whoops, isn't the local language here). This time she turns to me and snaps again "you don't want to know my name, you want to book a ticket." At that point I smiled back at her, said thank you, and walked out. About 200 feet down the road I found another travel agent who, I kid you not, was smoking a blunt, out in the open, while he was helping two other clients. The other clients were Canadians, a super nice, young couple. When dude saw us giving each other glances he was like "what, do you guys want some?" I asked him about my travels, he quoted some absolutely ridiculous prices, and at that point I decided I'm just going to do this on my own.

William's shop is down the road to the right. Apparently
close to the "Razor N Scissors" which I assume is where
he gets his hair cut. After all it is the "Stylist Salon in Town".

Near my hostel, there's a little snack stand run by a guy named William. William is awesome. He's probably in his sixties, skinny, maybe 5"10, standard brown-skinned Indian but with no discernible Indian accent. He spent a lot of time abroad before coming back to India. I've purchased water from William a few times now and chatted with him briefly each time. He's been really nice and helpful whenever I've needed to find something in the area. On my way back, he invited to me to sit down with him at his stand. It's on somewhat of a back road so there's basically zero car traffic and very little foot traffic. I was curious about William's business so I asked him about it. He started with a shop half it's current size, but with his success he was able to expand. That success was driven primarily by the money he made from his phone booth. I think you can see where this story is headed. Over time, the phone book earning took a dive. He wants to invest money into giving his place a facelift, but he doesn't see that being a profitable use of money. I concur. The shop could definitely use an upgrade, but it's just not located in the right place and it's not differentiated enough to draw people to it. Shops like his are all over the place, which makes location the big key to success. He'd have to branch out into a new line of business if he really want to make that investment in his business worthwhile. So for the time being, he's getting by just fine. He owns his property, which from the looks of it on the outside is pretty big, relatively speaking. I asked William about microfinance and he was really familiar with the concept. It would seem that access to capital wasn't the issue here, but rather the core business itself.

I really wanted to be able to help him. Maybe someday.

My First Hostel Friend!

On my way out this morning, I met BM who was checking in. I asked her if she had any plans for the day and then invited her to come join me in exploring New Delhi. Thankfully she said yes because today turned out to be so much better with company. She's a couple years older than me and from England. She's been traveling for a little while through Nepal and India so she's slightly more seasoned than I am at this (though... who isn't, amirite?).

Jama Masjid, New Delhi

We walked a few kilometers to to Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in India (it can hold up to 25,000 people!), which was built in the mid-1600s. It was a beautiful mosque and I said my afternoon prayers while we were there. Being white and obviously a foreigner, BM had to pay a Rs. 200 entry fee but I didn't say anything (so they wouldn't hear my accent) and just walked inside without being bothered. I'm pretty sure everyone there thought I was her guide, which is fine by me.

Red Fort, New Delhi

After that we walked down the road to the Red Fort, which was also enormous. This time, I wasn't able to get away with pretending I was a local and had to pay for a foreigner ticket. In fact, I was even plucked out of line and told to go to the foreigner ticket line. How did they know??? The Red Fort was originally constructed as a palace and it showed: the place kept going on and on, it was enormous.

Chicken Maharaja Mac Meal

After the Red Fort, we started making our way back to the hostel. We both hadn't eaten yet that day and earlier we had been talking about McDonald's and out of nowhere, these iconic golden arches appeared! Naturally, we HAD to eat there and of course, I had the Maharaja Mac. It's was actually pretty good - it's like a big mac in structure, but made with chicken and Indian spices. Also, the fries taste the same. Also, the ketchup taste the same! I've finally found good ketchup on this continent, and of course it's at a McDonald's.

View from Club India Rooftop Restaurant

Later that night we went out to dinner at a place called Club India, which... let's be honest, when you find a place called Club India, you have to eat there. It also turned out to be surprisingly nice. We ate on the roof and the food was surprisingly good. I had chicken tikka masala, but BM had a Japanese dish, which I was skeptical about at first but when I tasted it, it really did taste like Japanese food! Well done, chefs.

Today was definitely the most enjoyable day I've had in India yet.