Sunday Morning (cont'd)

Since we were up early, we went down to breakfast in the hotel restaurant. I didn't realize just how big the language barrier is between northamerican English and Indian English. There were lots of smiles and repeats back and forth and a few tries before our waiter could understand our order and we could understand his repeating our order back to us. Then he brought out mostly what we asked for. I won best breakfast by getting toast and Aloo Paratha. Had no idea what it was until it showed up: two chickpea flour "tortillas" with a lentil filling inside delicious but accompanied by the worst coffee of my life (tasted like water, chicory, sugar and milk).  Had we not been told it was coffee we would have guessed Ovaltine.  The waiter talked us into some fesh fruit and mango juice too. It was all covered in the cost of the room. At the end he made sure we we're full and happy.  Then he wrote his name on a card and asked us to give him a good review on Tripadvisor. 

It being 8:30 and with nothing to do until our flight, we left the hotel for a stroll. Our hotel was on a crazy street beside the main road to the airport and an onramp to an elevated highway. It was a raucous mix of city buses three wheeled bikes and cars continually laying on their horns.  At the first opportunity, we turned way from the main road and into the neighbourhood behind our hotel. 

The first thing that I noticed was that I was underdressed. All the men in western clothes had shirts with collars. Pretty quickly, Barb took off her scarf to use it as a shawl to cover her sleeveless shoulders.  The roads were unpaved, and until I saw the first cow, I had no idea why there were poop piles to be dodged.  The streets were more like narrow alleys that snaked around with no grid plan. Wire were strung back and forth overhead. There were 4-5 storeys  and built one against the other.  There were fruit stalls and businesses and small shrines to Vishnu and Hanuman at some intersections. 

 I was surprised by the wide variations in wealth that I saw in such a small area. I wouldn't say that I saw rich people, but there were a few late model cars that were solidly middle class. Some of the apartment buildings had nice looking balconies and security guards sitting at the entrances. There's an awful lot of private security ( or people dressed as private security) walking around the neighbourhood. 

Eye contact was ... awkward. I smiled and said hello and got more than a few stares. 

I get stared at a lot in places like this. As a 6'2" XXL foreigner, I don't take it personally, and hope that my freakish appearance is at least a mildly amusing event In their day. I wonder though if they saw me as a gawker or wondered if I was comparing what they had to what I have at home. For that reason, I didn't take photos (except for the first cow that we met).   

But then, there was one moment that I gawked. I was walking towards two very young girls, the oldest maybe 10 dressed in deep red traditional clothes with a very old looking face for her age and obviously very poor. She held a two foot stick that had been made into some sort of tool with cotton batting at the end and a piece of tin can. The tool interested me and then I saw her hand that gripped it: it looked old, older than my hands, like 70 years old. And I couldn't not look as we walked towards each other. As she saw me staring, she held out her other hand for money.