In February '97, Jailer and I flew into New Delhi to overnight before heading up to Kathmandu. The Connecticut "India Specialist" travel agent I used to arrange the trip warned me that the hotel (name escapes me) he was putting us at the first night, would be below the standards being used the rest of the two week trip. This was quite an understatement.

At the time, a decent hotel room in New Delhi was $175 and up, but this room was $80. By my American standards, it probably was overpriced by $60. I recall the lobby being pretty dark, when we checked in around midnight. The reason for this became obvious when we came back downstairs seven hours later.

The room also was a bit dark, but I attributed that to typical third world concerns about the cost of electricity. It felt unclean, and I was certainly not going to use the water supply, which would dispense a hellish collection of incurable diseases (hey, I was seriously jet-lagged, to the point where you are so wired, sleep was a physical impossibility – seem to recall Jailer slept like a baby).

Turned on the (circa 1962) TV. One station available, but with so much snow, watching was impossible. Couldn’t read, not enough light. Couldn’t look out the window at the neighborhood, as the outside of the window was so dirty, I couldn’t see ten feet ahead. So I tossed and turned in the bed, which probably hadn’t had the sheets changed from the last customer (no real evidence of this truly happening, but in my wired state, it was a absolute certainty).

Next morning, we went back down to the lobby, to meet our driver who would return us to DEL. As I walked down the stairs, I could finally see what the lobby looked like, since it was now well lit. Not due to the lights being on mind you, it was due to the roughly 8 foot wide gaping hole in the wall of the lobby, about thirty feet from the front door. While I’m confident the hole was due to some sort of planned construction project, it had the look of the remnants of a small bomb blast. There was even a nice collection of rubble, below the hole, to add to the bombed out ambiance.

In retrospect I’m confident I’ve stayed at places as bad or worse over previous 20 years I had been traveling, but this one sticks out in my mind. Likely it was because I was up the entire night, and had convinced myself in that jet-lagged state that this was the start of what was going to be two weeks of utter hell. In fact the rest of the hotels we stayed at throughout Nepal and India were fine. The travel agent did not deceive.





[This message has been edited by Craig6z (edited 09-23-2000).]